And a very successful week out if was.

Above all else, the trip was a validation of my life over the past year. Professionally, in the competence of my meetings and interviews on Tuesday. Athletically, in riding the White Rim on Saturday for the third time. And most importantly, personally, in the amazing people I spent time with along the way. Tom, and the crews at the commune and Absolute Bikes, Dave, Chris, Jeny, Ed, Craig and Sheron, Fred and Susan.

It’s all about you, readers.

Best laid plans went willfully astray, as Ed said, in a bottle of Chimay and one continued theme of the trip: my lack of desire to leave. Getting old, perhaps, as feet are growing less itchy. I did eventually break inertia, stopping in Idaho Springs for grease and caffeine to fight the vestigial fuzzy head. Then onward, dead iPod causing no hesitation, on to Minturn and the Meadows Mountain loop. It’s a great ride, right off the interstate, 4.5 miles and 2k+ up to 10,000′ on leisurely two track, then fantastic swooping singletrack down the other face of the mountain, with a few miles of bike path (!) to close the loop.

Too bad it likely snowed up high Monday or Tuesday, and the slow melt had left the top 500′ of singletrack resembling moose snot. I was able to slip down reasonably well, wheels packing in a vaguely manageable way, until one errant pedal stroke ripped the rear derailleur in two. Damn Lenz and those strong hangers, I suppose. The singlespeed trick worked for a while, until movement (locked suspension nonwithstanding) caused an undirected upshift and a very tightly bound chain. Once I got that off, it was a silent coast down to the road, with a bit of one-footed flintstoneing thrown in.

I’m a terrible mechanic, and more than the cost or the lost daylight was dreading the process of dialing in the indexing, so when the gents at Over the Edge Sports offered to do it for very little I was sold. It even gave me the “opportunity” to grad a spinach, basil, and artichoke heart calzone at the Hot Tomato (where I want to intern so I can learn their crust), and a night ride on Chutes and Ladders, where the rain gave back a little of what it took, in infinite traction and absurd speeds. My theoretical evening of peace and loneliness, drinking tea and reading in my camp chair, was interrupted by the unexpected vocalizations of my neighbors. Mountain biking was not the only endurance sport going on that evening in the dark of the western slope. Folks from Oregon with the old red Civic and orange Santa Cruz, I salute you and your happiness.

Thursday was riding with the man himself, Craig Tuttle. I tired my best to sabotage things, going to the Tabeguache trailhead when he went to the Kokopelli. I was the guy who didn;t check his email, so I drove out to the scene of the crime so many months ago.

It’s really good stuff, even more so when you can see and know your context. We rode everything, in the manner of gleeful, greedy kids on a day stolen from the best of autumn. Mary’s, Horsethief, Steve’s, Troy Built, Mack Ridge, Moore Fun. All good, but in collection truly exceptional. Did Craig say 28, or 35 miles? 2700′, or 3700′? In either case, it seemed both much more and much less.

We headed on to Craig’s place in Castle Valley, where I settled into the first of several evenings of overwhelming hospitality on the part of Craig and Sheron. What more can I say but that I fear I may never be able to repay them? Perhaps that is not the point.

Friday Craig took me on a favorite loop, from the base of Poison Spider, along Potash and up Long Canyon, across to Gemini and to points further. Long Canyon is an interesting climb, enjoyable in the drawn out and and dully painful way it had become now that I was starting to understand the granny ring. Each turn draws you along, further and further out of yourself with false promises, saving the steepest part until the end, in a hidden corridor filled with sand.

Craig had a newish, secret, illegal trail in mind for the return. Until we met a BLM ranger driving up the decaying access road we were flying down. He couldn’t ticket us for intending to break the law, though our intentions were obvious. My emotions about such actions are conflicted, caught up in a layer of laws, idealizations, and justifications, none of which make the practicality any better. Conflicted, we continued down Gemini, picked up the “green dot” for a final few miles of excellent potential, and crossed over to blue dot.

The bit of blue dot we saw in the Rim Ride only hinted at it’s full extent, the highlights of which are a (theoretically) 100% rideable climb up Gold Bar, and a vastly more efficient, if not necessarily easier, way across the rim. It seemed a lot shorter than ever before, though I think suspension made me a bit biased. Poison Spider remains the necessary evil it always has been, and soon we were down at the truck, another exemplary ride in the bag.

White Rim, my culmination and undoing, will have to wait until tomorrow.