My New MTB
Earlier this year I bought a 2018 Santa Cruz Tallboy C. This is my first full squish mountain bike, and it is awesome. The thing just floats over rocks and is much more forgiving than my old hard tail. It has 29" wheels, a 12 speed cogset, disc brakes, and a dropper post, all of which make the bike completely different from what I'm used to. Comparing times on Strava, I am faster on descents and any reasonably bumpy sections with this bike, which isn't exactly the point of getting a bike like this, but it is nice. There are trails I had stopped riding with my old hard tail because they were not fun that this bike makes fun. And that's the point.
Mid-August Weekend
Here are some photos and a video from the weekends activities: the Rocky Mountain Airshow on Saturday, and and a hike up Rattlesnake Gulch Trail in Eldorado Canyon State Park] on Sunday.
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Giant Cowboy & Longs Peak
Cowboy Longs Peak
Yes, that's a giant cowboy in front of someone's home, with Longs Peak in the background.
more ...My Colorado Rides
Below is a kernel-density map showing where and how often I've ridden my bike around Boulder in the last year and a half. I've posted things like this before for my rides in California. The color map (the legend is in the bottom-left corner) indicates that anywhere there's a green dot, I've cycled through there at most a few times, and anything between blue and purple are my usual routes. There are a few red points mainly centered around where I live, which corresponds to places I've been through a few hundreds of times.
Looking at the map, I'm a bit surprised at the amount of exploring I've done out in the plains. I didn't realize I had done that much out there. I also want to note that most of the dead-end segments are due to geography - the roads end where the segments do.
Fall Colors
The view from the Peak to Peak highway. You can click on the image to find the full-sized version, and I highly recommend you do!
Fall has hit the Front Range, and the Aspen trees are showing it. I took these photos on my bike ride today, and I could have taken dozens more, but I would have never made it back home! I wasn't the only one out there admiring the fall foliage - traffic was about as busy as I've ever seen it, and I saw many people pulled off to the sides of the roads taking pictures of the trees and views.
Since most of you cannot be like all the people I saw today and admire the views in person, here are some of the more spectacular views I felt were worth stopping for and sharing.
Riverside Drive past Raymond. This is one of my favorite roads in this area. It takes 2 hours to get to, and it's over 7500 feet in elevation, but it looks like this the whole way.
A panorama of Riverside Drive between Riverside and Raymond. Happily, even today the road had almost no traffic. Again, you should look at the full-sized version!
more ...Some Rocky Mountain NP Pics
Twice in the last two weeks we have visited Rocky Mountain National Park. A while ago we realized "Hey! We live less than an hour from a National Park! We should visit it more often." And so we are trying to do that. Two weeks ago we went with Melissa's brother, Matt, and his lady friend, Kelly. Today it was just the two of us. Here are some pictures from the two visits.
Kelly, Matt and Melissa
The view from Trail Ridge Road
A trail winding through the Aspens
Melissa and Stephen and some rocky peaks
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