No miles on the bike today, other than pottering around Estes Park on a bike with no bags on it.

Two highlights of the day; I took the Estes Ariel Tram up Prospect Mountain, a small prominent peak in the middle of Estes Park, this morning and did a short hike to the west summit, the view from the top, almost 360 degree of Estes Park, was worth it, great way to start the day. The other highlight was doing absolutely nothing, watching Netflix and letting my body store calories instead of burning them.

I plotted a route back to the TransAmerica trail. Tomorrow I’ll head down to Boulder, the largest town I’ll go through since Missoula, and just like Missoula it’s a quirky, liberal city nestled at the base of a mountain range.

Day 29, I’ve been on the road for 4 weeks and today is the first day of week 5. The ride from Estes Park down to Boulder was fairly quick and easy.

I got to Boulder by mid morning and used the time to run a few errands in town. I visited the Google office in Boulder where I grabbed some lunch with a great view of the flatirons. Photos has a very small presence in the Boulder office and I met the colleague I work with, and he shared some route advice with me for tomorrow. Boulder is cute with amazing bike infrastructure and a tonne of outdoor shops. I can see why people like living here.

Over the next day or two I’ll make my way back over the Rockies and join up with the TransAmerica trail to continue on.

To get back to the west side of the Rockies from Boulder, and rejoin the TransAmerica, I took Rollins Pass, an unpaved mountain pass that’s only accessible to bikes and on foot.

From Boulder I followed the bicycle trail out of town and up Boulder Canyon, and then joined up to a series of dirt roads that took me to Rollinsville. The grade got pretty steep in sections, I had a lot of elevation to gain.

From Rollinsville there’s a 7 mile road that runs adjacent to the railway line and the river, and as the road ends it turns into a very rocky road up to Rollins Pass.

For 10 miles I bumped over the incredibly uneven road surface. In the morning the sky was clear, but as has happened every day I’ve been in Colorado, clouds formed, the wind picked up, thunder rang from the sky, and raindrops fell. I got showered on a little as I got near to the top.

Rollins pass was graded for a railway so it was an incredibly even 4% grade the entire way up, I did’t really notice the climbing over all the bumping. Once it got near the pass it went through a short tunnel, but the tunnel is closed as it’s unsafe, which is why cars are unable to cross. For bicycles there’s a singletrack trail that goes up and over. This part was very steep and I struggled to push my bike up and over. But I got there.

The views from the pass were pretty amazing, the rocky mountains with patches of snow, very green with water flowing, and haze in many directions as the precipitation fell. The road on the west side was quite a bit better than the east, there are multiple trailheads on the west so I guess they must grade it, it was still rocky in places but overall much better.

So tonight I’m sleeping back on the west of the Rockies, and tomorrow I will rejoin the TransAmerica and continue heading south.

Today I started In the cool mountain air at 9,000 feet and had to descend to the Colorado River at Hot Sulphur Springs to rejoin the route. It was frigid going downhill on my bike before the sun came up. I followed a series of bike trails and a dirt road to get back to the TransAmerica.

From Hot Sulphur Springs the trail follows the Colorado River through a tight canyon, again with a railway line, and then it opens up into a wide valley. We’re actually going west here, the wrong way! At a town called Kremmling we leave the Colorado River and follow a tributary, the Blue River, upstream due south, and I kept following it for the remainder of the day, until I got to Dillon Reservoir where I’m camping tonight.

The Blue River goes through the Green Mountains (I guess they liked naming things after colors, the mountains are in the White River National Forest). True to their name the mountains are green. Further beyond there’s a jagged mountain peaks with snow patches that you associate with the Rockies, but they always lie at a distance. The mountains are hard to capture in photos as dramatically as the appear in person.

As soon as I set up camp the winds picked up and the dark clouds that were hanging over the mountains blew over and opened up, ripping with thunder. I took shelter in my tent, and mostly stayed dry, popping out to cook dinner. The reservoir is surrounded on almost every side by mountain peaks off in the distance.

Tomorrow I’ll pass over the highest pass on the TransAmerica, although I already have that beat with my side trip through Rocky Mountain National Park, but it will still be fun to go over a high mountain pass.

After North Park and Middle Park comes South Park. This morning was frigid again, and nothing had dried out overnight. The first part of the ride was on dedicated bike lanes, before joining back to the highway for the climb up to Hoosier Pass, the highest pass on the route. At 11,500 feet it’s still 1,000 feet below the pass I did through Trail Ridge Road, and roughly the same elevation as Rollins Pass. The road twisted up and over, and I descended into South Park. This was my last trip over the Continental Divide.

Descending into South Park I followed another dedicated bike lane, although as I jolted over every fracture in the asphalt I looked longingly as the comparatively smooth surface of the shoulderless road. The lane took me to the mountain town of Fairplay, with the snow capped Rockies as the backdrop, and the South Fork of the Platte River winding through the wide grass plain.

I followed the Platte for about 20 miles, as the snowy mountains got more and more distant in my rearview. The trail started climbing up again, through green landscape, surrounded by low, rounded, and forested mountain tops. I passed through a relatively low pass and left South Park, beginning a long descent for the rest of the day.

The Rockies continued to make their own weather, the clouds formed, thundered, and I got sprinkled on again. As I was descending in the afternoon I looked up at one of the hillsides and thought that it looked like snow under the trees, but assumed it was an optical trick as I was lower and the temperature was warm, but as I cycled lower there were small snow patches on the road sides, I think the thunderstorms dropped snow here. The wind also picked up at this point, and started gusting 20-30 mph, I had a reasonably strong headwind the rest of the day. Not fun.

I had to do a longer day today, there’s not really anything between South Park and the Royal Gorge area where I am tonight. As I descended I rode through green valleys (not green compared to England, but not sagebrush desert that I have been riding through), the temperature rose considerably (the thunderstorms dropped the temperature a lot higher up), and the wind continued to gust in the wrong direction.

As I got nearer to Cañon City, where I am staying tonight, the valleys abruptly ended and were replaced with rock gorges and canyons. The official route follows the highway all the way into town but Komoot really wanted me to take Skyline Drive, it added an extra 160ish feet of climbing, at the end of a very long day I was skeptical, but I relented after seeing the highway stretch to 4 lanes, and I was really glad I did, the one way scenic drive follows a knife edge ridge of a rock out cropping that juts out into the wide valley that Cañon City is located in, the rock is really neat and the views were amazing.

I’m close to the end of section 6 in Pueblo now, but still around 200 miles from the Kansas state line. From here the trail stops going south and starts going eastwards to the Atlantic.

Today I took an easier day and cycled the relatively short distance to Pueblo, the last major town I’m going through in Colorado, and the end of section 6. The weather was forecast as overcast with chance of thunderstorms and rain most of the day, but the good thing was that this kept the temperature way down so it made for very pleasant riding conditions. I took advantage of this and left mid morning.

The ride loosely followed the headwaters of the Arkansas River, which flows through Pueblo, and which I think I’ll be following out of Colorado. The scenery was turning back into a high desert, but the rocks were totally different, they are thin layers of ancient seabed, limestone, ancient lava flows, etc. The rocks erode where the water flows making for all these shallow canyons with many many layers of rocks making up the walls, it was really neat.

Instead of taking the TransAmerica route, which follows a state highway all the way, I took a slightly more direct route that took me through a state park and onto a dedicated bike trail, the Arkansas River Trail. The highway I took lead me past a huge concrete plant, down a highway with almost no cars on it, undulating through the canyons.

I could see the mountains in the distance on three sides, and they seemed to be shrouded in the clouds receiving most of the precipitation. It wasn’t until I got to the state park that a shower came, and the timing couldn’t have been better, I got to a campground that had covered benches, literally as the rain started I ducked under a bench and ate lunch while it fell all around me. As I finished lunch the shower had passed.

The reset of the day was following the river trail into Pueblo. The surface was warm and most of the moisture had evaporated by the time I started cycling again, but there were puddles here and there where the water pooled. The town of Pueblo is like many of the towns I’ve been through, a mix of old and new. The center is laid out with large old buildings in a grand style, and on the outskirts of town are the new highly commerical wearhouse like buildings with 100 foot high signs vying to be visible from the interstate. It’s all very American.

With the end of section 6 I’ve now travelled 2,043 miles on the TransAmerica trail, although my trail has taken me at least a few hundred in addition to that. I’m halfway through the mapset, and 150 miles shy of halfway through the distance. I’ve finished the American west with its mountains and deserts and the Pacific coast. From here I’ll be dropping through eastern Colorado and into the American Midwest, Kansas and Missouri.

Today I left the mountains behind well and truly, as I rode through the Colorado Piedmont, which makes up the Colorado side of the Great Plains.

I left Pueblo on a US highway and split off onto Colorado state highway 96, which I followed for the rest of the day. This is a little used thoroughfare, the traffic sticks to the US highways that parallel the state highway, and traffic was sparse all day, for long periods no cars or trucks went past me at all. The highway parallels a train track the entire way also.

At the start of the highway the Arkansas River is nearby and there were many irrigated fields, or maybe they just benefited from being close to the river. It wasn’t until mid morning that the partitioned farmland gave way to wide open grassland.

For long stretches there was no point of reference as I cycled. The highway goes through a string of small towns, some barely towns at all, and most had tall white, what I presume were grain stands. You could generally see them come out of the haze about 7 miles away, and for the next half hour or more they gradually became more distinct.

My day kind of felt like I was in the Michel Gondry music video Star Guitar, the plains were constant, the railway track was constant, powerlines generally strung up beside the road, and the features recurred, signal boxes, bridges, perpendicular country roads, grazing cattle, grain towers, a couple of nodding donkeys.

The thing that stuck me most is just how vast the plains are, it really does feel like you’re right in the middle of nowhere with no way out. It also makes me wonder what it looked like in its natural state, with roaming herds of buffalo, and presumably the wolf packs that hunted the buffalo.

Tonight I’m staying at a church with a number of west bounders, I also met some west bounders on the road too. I’m only 14 miles from the Kansas state line after making a big push today, so tomorrow I’ll also leave Mountain Time and enter a new state.

So today unfortunately, was not like the other days. I woke up earlier than normal because some other people in the church hostel I stayed at were getting up very early to take advantage of the morning ride. I didn’t mind, I like an early start, and as a bonus there was already a pot of brewed coffee on the go when I got up.

I was only around 14 miles from the Kansas state line so I started pedaling and around an hour later crossed into Kansas. I expected to change time zones immediately but apparently the 4 counties that border Colorado are on Mountain Time also, so I had to wait for the next county to put forward my clocks.

On the way to the next county I caught up with a cyclist I’d been crossing paths with for the past couple of weeks, he’d got back ahead of me after my side trip to Boulder, so we rode together for a little while and chatted as we rode. We hadn’t actually ridden together previously, we just talked off the bikes. As we were coming up to Scott City, around 15 miles away, he was riding up ahead of me and I had my head down turning the wheels. I didn’t notice him stop to wait for me, and bam, I caught up with his rear wheel and over the handlebars I went. Ouch.

I won’t go into graphic detail, but a passing driver was kind enough to stop and offer to drive me to the nearest hospital in Scott City ahead. The bikes were loaded up in the back of the pickup and we were driven to the Emergency Room. Because my head hit the pavement they ordered a CT scan, and also took scans of my face to check for broken bones. They put in a drip and gave me some pain meds, some saline, and cleaned up my face. I had some cuts on my face that would need stitches, but while the CT scan of my head was clear, I had hit my tooth on the pavement and it caused a minor fracture. They wanted to send me to a hospital with a trauma unit that was familiar with this type of injury, the nearest one was two hours away in Hays.

The social worker explained to me that Kansas was large and remote, and I was in the middle of nowhere. To transport me to Hays I needed to wait for the local volunteer run ambulance. After a couple of hours it seemed like they would not be able to take me that day, and my options were to go by air, which sounded very expensive and was medically unnecessary, or an ambulance crew 3 hours away had agreed to come by, which would be 5 hours total once we got to Hays. Fortunately the local ambulance agreed to work into the evening and drive me over, and unlike the other ambulance the local ambulance also agreed to let me load my bike into the back of the ambulance. I was so grateful to the ambulance crew.

I had the accident around 12:30 Central Time, we had changed timezones in the middle of all of this, and it was after 7 by the time I arrived to Hays. The oral surgeon was the oncall trauma surgeon, and he was aware I was coming as he consulted when deciding to transfer me. He came in a little later and calmly explained to me that my injuries were low complexity and relatively minor, despite what it may feel, and he would be able to patch me up under local anaesthetic. Overall he was very reassuring and made me feel very comfortable. By 10 pm I had my tooth straightened out and temporarily wired to its neighbours for support, and 28 stitches total across my nose, lips, and chin where I had scrapped the pavement. I got my medications and the ER nurse organized a ride with the hospital security guard who was kind enough to drive me and my bike to a hotel in town.

At the end of a long day I was feeling sorry for myself but glad to be patched up, and grateful for all the care that I had received in Kansas. It wasn’t the day I expected when I woke up.

Today is the second day since I started cycling that I didn’t ride my bike at all, and this time it wasn’t through choice. While I was injured and patched up yesterday, my bike also received some damage as it careened into the pavement, the front wheel is not even round enough to rotate through the fork, and the right brake lever got smashed into two pieces. Both are toast and beyond repair. I tried to stand on the front wheel so at least I could hobble the couple of miles across town but it is permanently bent, the bike is not for riding.

So today my two priorities were mostly taking care of myself, which was easy, I was already in a state of forced immobility, and secondly figuring out how to fix my bike. The town I’m in doesn’t have a dedicated bike shop, and the brake lever I need will have to be ordered, even in a large city no bike shop would have it in stock. I called up the nearest bike shop in the next town over, an hour away by car (have I mentioned Kansas is huge and flat and very sparsely populated outside of the major cities), which also is a little closer to the TransAmerica trail. The mechanic hoped on the computer with me on the phone and placed an order for the parts that I need. They should arrive by Friday and he said he should be able to work on my bike the same day.

I only booked two nights in Hays while I figured out what to do next, so tomorrow I’ll use the local taxi to drive me and my bike over to Great Bend where I’ll be able to hopefully have my bicycle repaired the following day. If all is well by Saturday I could rejoin the trail and continue east, Great Bend is near to the start of section 8. There’s only about 100 or so miles that I will have skipped ahead. If nothing else having a working bicycle will be liberating as these cities are not navigable on foot. I haven’t been able to explore the Hays downtown which is almost an hour away on foot, which is not only a lot of walking but also unappealing in this Kansas summer heat.

Not much happened today, I got a taxi to Great Bend, about an hour away from Hays. It’s on state route 96, which the TransAmerica follows from Pueblo, first as a Colorado state route then as a Kansas state route, but the TransAmerica turns off of 96 just before it gets to Great Bend.

My motel is about a mile away from the bike shop, and on the way to the motel we stopped by the bike shop to drop off my bike. The shop is still expecting the parts to come in tomorrow and hopefully get it back rolling again.

The taxi driver took me the more scenic way, driving the state highways instead of the interstate, which meant I got to see some of the route I will skip from the car. It is more of the same, very gently rolling highway through wide open farmland, the railway line running parallel to the highway with grain hoppers every so often. Compared to the Colorado portion which was used as open grazing for cattle, in Kansas its primarily crops, corn, feed, and wheat.

That’s about it for today, taking It easy and looking forward to being self mobile again. Kansas is also heating up, it’s hot outside in the afternoon, and there’s a haze over the state since I got here from the wildfire smoke blowing down from Canada. Both typical for this time of year.