Hi.  I’m not big on these 7 am starts.  It is cold in the mountains, supposed to be 48 at 7 am, but Kent (Eriksen) says that we’ll be warm once we start climbing up Rabbit Ears Pass, 20 minutes into the ride.  Today is 110 miles with a 1000 other bikers.  Should be fun.

Bill and Catherine decided to come out for the ride from Topeka, so they jumped into Catherine’s car and drove all day yesterday.  They made it to Steamboat just in time for dinner. Kent and I went for a couple hour ride around Steamboat Springs, on dirt and gravel some.  It was great.

Kent is going to ride the 110 miles on a tandem with a woman he’s never ridden a tandem with. Kent is a tandem master.  He is doing Leadville with his wife, Katie, in a month and it will probably be over 10% of his yearly mileage.

Like I said yesterday, Vincent and Brian Jensen are riding the 68 mile race at the Breck 100 today.  Hope they have good luck.  The winning time last year for the 68 miles was something around 6:20 I heard.  I’d like to be riding less than that today.  Guess it depends how much we mess around.  I have no idea how this ride goes.

Kent cooked up buffalo burgers for dinner last night.  I’m not sure I’ve had buffalo before.  We’ll see how it works for a pre-ride meal.

Okay, kind of short, but I’m short of time.  Hope you have a good weekend.

Kent and his friend, Chris, out riding on gravel yesterday.

They had an amazing number of volunteers at registration yesterday.

There was the longest stretch of road construction I’ve experienced in years between Silverthorne and Steamboat Springs. Maybe 10 miles long? Anyway, there were lots of guys, as usual, standing around not doing much. These guys were watching one guy guide this little remote control compactor. The machine was pretty cool.