Disaster Strikes

This Saturday I had an epic adventure with Pete and Ben that involved us riding up Rollins Pass, a dirt road that goes over the continental divide and eventually takes you to Winter Park, although you can only do that with a bike. Its about 13 miles up to the summit from where we started. Anyways, we rode our bikes up and brought our ski gear with on the trailer, it was pretty ridiculous. We did manage to get some runs in at about 11700 ft up, but it started to rain and we headed back down below tree line.

Unfortunately, along the way back to the car I was riding the road was extremely bumpy, and as I was using my cross bike I had no shocks so every little bump was felt. The smoothest part of the road happened to be next to a ditch on the side, about a foot or two deep. I had kept the skinny tires on the bike because I was too lazy to switch them out, and I got a little to close to the edge of the ditch. The dirt gave way and the bike pulled into the ditch, which wouldn't have been too big of a deal except I was towing a trailer with two snowboards sticking out of it. As I went into the ditch, the one of the snowboards buried itself into the ground, sending me on a little endo over the handlebars. Luckily, I wasn't going very fast so I just received a few scrapes, but the rear derailer took a big hit and bent the hanger (the part of the frame from which the derailer hangs) enough to wear I could no longer pedal the bike! This is a pretty common repair, so I think I can take it to a bike shop and get it fixed for a few bucks. I've actually had it happen on my old mountain bike a few times, so I'm not too worried about it. Pete went on ahead to get the car as I scooted the bike along, and he eventually picked me up. Little did I know that somewhere along the crash I lost my digital camera, never to be seen again. Somehow, it flew out of its holder and neither one of us noticed. I'm a little bummed about it, but it wasn't too expensive and I got some good use out of it while I had it. The worst part is I had some really great pictures from the day on there and now I'll never get to see them.

This is not the end of the disasters. We were running late, Pete needed to pick his fiance up about 35 miles away from where we were at 4:15 PM and it was 4:15 PM by the time he got to me with the car, so were trying to get moving. The road was bumpy as I said, and on the way back down, Pete's bike somehow fell off of his rack. We got out and sure enough, the slot where the wheel connects on the front fork was bent 90 degrees! We manages to straighten it out enough to where he could get it back in the bike rack, but he now needs a new fork. To top it off, on the way back to the highway we got stuck at some train tracks for about 20 minutes, making us a whole 1 1/2 late to pick up his fiance!

In summary, we had an awesome day of biking and skiing, but it was a little soured when in about 1/2 an hour we managed to inflict hundreds of dollars of damage to ourselves and make Pete loose his car privileges for the rest of the summer, as his girlfriend is sick of him being late to pick her up at the summer camp she works at and is keeping the car up there with her!