Distance - 39 miles, Avg speed - 9.0 mph
In anticipation of wise words from the bike shop owner guru of Kremmling, Numb Stuff eagerly awakes to the 6am alarm and runs downstairs to find the bike shop owner/night duty manager, John spinning the front wheel of his bike round in the lobby while staring into space. Unfortunately, John offers no solutions to his problems, so NumbStuff asks how safe the paved route, highway 9 to Silverthorne, is. Oh, there have been lots of cycling fatalities on that route, says John, but there is a superb detour round Heeley Lake that you should take, although this adds 10 miles to your journey. Not exactly news he wanted to hear, NumbStuff decides not to share this with Dirtbaby who is a natural worrier.
We settle on taking the highway 9 which is the Trans Am route, missing out the climb up Ute Pass, so that we have time to get to the bike shop at Silverthorne. This road is so busy and the hard shoulder is about 6 inches wide. The speed limit is 65mph, and it seems that the drivers are not only determined to treat that as a minimum speed limit, but are all trying to imitate Sandra Bullock in her “Speed” role, ie nobody is prepared to let up on the accelerator pedal. That apart, it is a fairly easy ride to Silverthorne – we see a large eagle’s nest en route, and we arrive at the city limits well before 2. We are passed by a few roadie cyclists and we yell out – where’s the best bike shop in town? They stop and tell us not only where the bike shop is, but point out the best Chinese/Thai restaurant in town as well.
We ride under the interstate 70 and up to the shopping mall, where to Dirtbaby’s delight – there is a DAIRY QUEEN! But first, we must sort out Numb Stuff’s front wheel and we dutifully proceed to Mountain Sport Outlet just to see the two Texan Studs and their BOB trailers pull out.
The bike mechanic at the store is Val, and she is amazing. She listens to our tale of woe, and calmly fixes a solution, all for $9. We are just so grateful – immediately NumbStuff’s bike is running better, and we go to Dairy Queen to celebrate with ice cream – the hot fudge chocolate sundae that Dirtbaby remembers so well from Northern Tier days – bliss! We then visit the local liquor store and sample the O’Dell brewery levity beer.
The afternoon storms sets in around 4pm – during this time, Dirtbaby does the laundry while Numb Stuff sorts out the GPS so that we have waypoints going forward. We then try out the recommended Chinese and stuff ourselves with Thai peanut curry. That night, there is another electrical storm – we leave the motel room curtains open to enjoy the spectacular lightning strikes while enjoying the comfort and security of viewing it from our beds rather than from within our tents!
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