To test out the feat of bicycle engineering that is the Surly Long Haul Trucker I decided to ride up to Fort Collins and back (map), a town that I had previously only been to once - for a Victor Wooten show.
Cait was originally going to go but decided that her approaching return home and stresses about working over the weekend precluded her participation on the ride. Cameron (Lil' Tittle and close friend from EVEN) and Cody (Bear, my roommate) were both wont to embark on a 51 mile journey with little notice and perhaps lack of equipment and not enough time over the weekend. Maybe I should publish more libel about these guys and what they think in my own words (but they are both space-astronaut trillionaires). Whatever the reasons, I went by myself.
I've never ridden that far in one day. Aside from the fact that I would also be forced to make the same journey the following day - I figured I should see what it was all about. The answer is tranquility. I didn't feel so lonely with Clifford Brown, Gordon Goodwin, Bela Fleck, and Nils Landgren coming through my headphones. The ride out was cloudy, comfortable, and very scenic with so many views of the Rockies I was not always able to look at the roads.
Google routed me on a bunch of backcountry roads which did not announce the names of towns or villages that I was passing through. I didn't even realize I was in Fort Collins until I passed a bus stop advertisement with "Fort Collins Real Estate! Call this number!" on it. I didn't even realize I had passed through Loveland since no businesses on the road I went through had any indication of city in the title, they were all ambiguous, and a little boxy.
My couchsurfing host was not picking up her phone when I arrived at 11:15 after exactly 4 hours of riding. Raging party the night before was my guess. I was right...it was for the grand opening of a tool co-op that she had assisted in starting - they allow free use of tools, donations, and trades, and drinking on the job is just one of the perks (I said tools, not heavy machinery). So with Krista MIA for the moment I passed out in a park across from her apartment for about an hour before deciding to head to New Belgium brewery - the famed maker of Fat Tire. I'm not an advocate of drinking at noon, or by myself but hey, I had been riding and it was time to relax. At the brewery they give out tokens for free beer samples - no tap beer can actually be bought and they don't take tips (freegans eat your hearts out, and drink too!). Instead of being alone I ran into a Couchsurfer I had hosted in June from York, Pennsylvania and a high school friend of his. A very pleasant surprise. The most original tasting beer was the Sour Brown Ale which was as if they took some of those Warheads candies, fermented them, and put the result in a keg. I'm sure it technically classifies as beer, but funny faces are usually made from taking a shot of 151, not a sip of the Sour Brown. In any case, I'm a fan.
Upon my arrival at Krista's house I learned that she was leaving immediately to go to Minnesota for a friend's family reunion, but she was quick to encourage me to hang out in FoCo with her friend/boyfriend, John, and sleep at her house even though she wouldn't be there. I easily accepted, chilled with John and Larry, then got back on my bike and followed John as he took me around town on what could be considered a tour of his daily routine.
We stopped by a Food Not Bombs house where several refrigerators in a shed were stocked with some odd assortments of fruits, vegetables, orange juices, protein shakes, empty pizza boxes, and a random number of things in various stages of being eaten. John explained that if you know of enough places around town, you can eat for free almost the entire week. I had some delicious farmer's market quinoa, and some tomatoes and lettuce from a nearby garden. Then we went down to the Poudre river and watched people float lazily by in tubes. It was a lazy Sunday after all, and everyone was enjoying themselves outdoors.
We ate at a restaurant called Avogadro's number where I had a homemade tempeh garden sandwich with mushrooms and peppers.
I realize this post is getting pretty long so I'll wrap it up - we went over to his friend Kyle's house - a happy bear with a thick beard. The company was great and we continued our free food adventure with two enormous shopping bags from Big City Burrito - one filled with rice, the other with potatoes. Apparently the employees just hand out the food to whoever is there when they close at 10:00 instead of throwing it away, and it did not go to waste!
One last quick story about John - he told me about a series of mountain cabins to the west that were built by the US military during the Cold War as a training grounds in case troops had to be shipped to Siberia. Each cabin is about a day's trek apart and he and 5 or 6 other people did it during the winter with snowshoes. One day they got lost and the trail routed them around a hill instead of directly over it - it appeared more straightforward on their map but the land had since been reapportioned. Three of the members of their group, including a 60-something year old man named Wayne (a true adventurist that enjoys the wild antics of 20somethings when he's not making cherry jam or rhubarb pie with his wife), after having snowshoed well into the night could physically not travel further and made a fire and slept out in the mountains in the snow in the middle of winter. John and the others decided to keep going and didn't arrive at the cabin until 3 in the morning, and went back to get the others around 6 when the sun came up.
A fool's journey? Well, they were prepared with winter gear, but getting lost isn't something that one would always like to factor in when estimating timing. Especially such a large diversion, but it made for quite an intense experience, and repeatable story (hopefully aptly conveyed).
