After seven days of riding across the Rockies, I can say I completed every goal I set forth for this week. Granted it wasn’t a long list.
- Ride every day, every mile: Done
- Meet new people and make new friends: Done
- Survive the week without injury: Close enough
Team Blazing Saddles? at the finish line
I’m looking back on my experiences of the week and I’m still a bit overwhelmed at it all. Not just in the number of miles ridden or the amount of climbing done, but in everything I got to see, and everyone I got to meet. It was truly an amazing week, with 2000 remarkable people.
While trying to share this experience with family and friends, I took a lot of pictures, and some of them even turned out pretty good, but they all fail to convey the true grandeur and remarkable beauty of the scenes and landscapes I was trying to capture. Sometimes, you just have to be there. I am thankful I got the opportunity to do just that.
As I nurse my aches and pains accumulated over the last week, I’m hoping everyone else on the ride had as much fun as I did. And I know when I look back I’ll remember the feeling of camaraderie and the sense of accomplishment felt with each climb done and day completed and will conveniently leave out the burning quads, screaming hamstrings and gasping lungs it took to reach that point. Memory can be a funny thing and play tricks on you. But in this case, I’m making a conscious choice to omit those pesky little details.
As we go our separate ways, whether your trip home is 2 hours or 2 days, may your journey be a safe one.