Riding With Courage: Day 10 - Dolores, CO to Placerville, CO

Yet another day with no service. I woke up bright and early in Cortez, CO (4/10) and set off back up through Dolores, CO and into the mountains. It was a steady climb, through Rico, and all the way to a peak of a bit over 10,000 feet! All in all, I climbed just under 5000 feet in 30 miles, very, very slowly.

I finished the day in Placerville (the second Placerville of the trip!) at an empty house that is up for sale. To get to the house, I had a joyous downhill of about 14 miles. And when I mean downhill, I mean I maybe got about 20-40 pedals in the entire way. Besides that, I just cruised in.

I gave a brief little about the trip because there are three things I want to write about besides that. The first is the family I stayed with In Cortez. Friends of an old friend of mine in DC (I haven't seen her in way too long!), Adam, Trayce and cute little Noah were so nice to let me stay at their place for the night. I met up with them for dinner at a great Chinese place, then off to their place where I was able to clean my bike, do a load of laundry and get a great nights sleep. Adam and I hit it off really well and talked at length about adventuring and endurance sports. I plan to be in touch with that great family for a good long while!

The second was a great lunch I had in Rico. I stopped at a tiny little drive through coffee shop where I got a wrap and a coffee, then sat outside with these two cool guys ad chatted for about 45 minutes. One of them is a Mono Skier named Felix Snow (no legs, so he sits on a chair with skies and goes hardcore down the mountain), and he was not only just a chill, cool guy, but a damn well educated one as well. Told me all about the area, how it came to be, where things were and why. Rico is a tiny little town, and he told me it was not a small town, but a big family and they he really didn't want me going around and telling people how great it was as to keep it that way. How around the area was the site of the tallest volcano, and over the thousands of years, the land had dropped to the levels it was at now, some 8 or so 14,000 foot peaks. The craziest thing was that he told me back in the day there were huge bodies of water up there, mountain oceans I believe he called them. So, the San Juan Mountains are a pretty cool place to check out at some point.

He had told me I had to get to Telluruide. But I just wanted to keep on pushing. My time was so slow, I could not bare to think going 10 or so miles out of the way, downhill, even if it was some of the most beautiful land in the world. I will have to come back. As I climbed another pass, a man in a truck stopped to see if I needed any help. We ended up chatting for some time about directions and such (apparently I could have saved myself tons of climbs going another way… oh well!). He then met me upabout 14 miles outside of Placerville where I had stopped for snack and told me he had a place for sale that I could crèche at. Bill turned out to be a damn cool guy. Wild and a bit eccentric, but with a heart as big as these mountains I was riding through. He was just out there to help out, do good things and do it all with an energy I was envious of. I am so thankful to have met him, and I wlll be in touch with him as well for a good long time.

This is a big part of this trip I was excited about, the people I would meet. I have had nothing but pretty cool things happen all along, even when they were a bit frustrating, they ended up being pretty interesting, and of course, a good story. My legs are still working fine, the pain in my leg is still there, but not as strong, and my body in general is just feeling like biking is what it's supposed to do.