Steve Tilford

Yesterday I went for the first ride since I got here. And I wouldn’t have probably done that unless Vincent twisted my arm. There was a ton of stuff to still be done with the fence and weather was supposed to come in today. But I’m so glad he did. It was a rejuvenating experience, which shouldn’t have been so surprising, but nevertheless, was.

I find it so interesting how doing more physical exercise, when you’re already dead from physical exertion, can actually add energy back into the equation. I love it. I was a little worried about going out riding with Vincent here. Usually we just ride up Lookout Mountain, which is pretty much every man for himself. But Vincent gave us a choice to ride over to Red Rocks, which I jumped on.

It was a little wetter than I had anticipated. There was a lot of spray coming off our wheels, which was pretty cold on bare shins. But, I like my legs being cold while riding. I always seem to ride better when my legs are cold. I like cold water on bare skin. I don’t mentally like it much, but physically I do.

We rode along the foothills from Arvada south, through Golden and then south to Red Rocks. I haven’t ridden in Red Rocks forever. I sort of get it mixed up with Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. I’ve went to a few concerts there, but not recently. Anyway, it was super scenic.

When we were riding back, I noticed a highway sign for US6. It goes up a canyon to Idaho Springs. I’ve ridden US 6 once in my life. It was back in the early 90’s and I was mainly racing MTB bikes. I was living in Boulder and there was a NORBA National in Winter Park. Don Myrah and I decided to ride from Boulder to Winter Park. We rode up to the Peak to Peak, 119, and then headed over towards Idaho Springs. We coasted down a huge descent and when we get to US 6, it says No Bicycles. The road is closed to bicycles, supposedly because there are some tunnels on the road and too dangerous for riding. Whatever the reason, it was a weekday and we decided to just ride the short distance to Idaho Springs.

I don’t remember exactly how many tunnels we had to ride through. Maybe just 2. It is a short distance, less than 2-3 miles. We rode through all the tunnels and at the end there was a sheriff. He pulled us over and told us the road was closed to bicycles. We explained what we were doing and he told us we had to turn around and go back to the Peak to Peak, through the tunnels. I said we had already ridden the road and he said that there was no way he was going to let us ride on. I told him to just give us our tickets and let us go, but no. No ticket, no going on. Go back.

So the dude escorts us back through the tunnels and tells us we can ride back up 119 and there is a gravel road that goes through Cripple Creek or somewhere. It was really out of the way and we were riding a long ride already. So, we sit there and decide to hitch hike. We sat at the intersection hitch hiking, while the sheriff sat across the road watching. If the sheriff would have left, we would have just rode back again. It took a while. Maybe 20 minutes. Finally a couple teenage girls stopped in a little Toyota. They were all giggly and wanted to know where we wanted to go. We said Idaho Springs. They said it was just a couple miles. We said we knew that and pointed to the sheriff and told them our story. They said if we could get our bikes into their car, they’d take us. So we take off our wheels and jam ourselves into the Corolla or whatever it was.

The sheriff just watched. When we all got squished in and got moving, one of the girls waved to the cop and flipped him off, which I thought was going to get us stopped again, but didn’t. So, we did the 3 minute drive to Idaho Springs and pulled over in at a convenience store. Right when we were unloading our bikes, one of the girls asked us if we wanted to get some beer and go get drunk in the mountains. Don turned red and couldn’t say a word. He started unloading his bike super fast. I think he might of been a little embarrassed or something. I told them it was a great idea/offer, but we had to ride up to Winter Park and were racing that weekend, so we’d have to decline.

I’m not sure what the offer did to Don, something like the ride did for me yesterday, but the rest of the day was a nightmare for me. There is a pass from I-70 to Winter Park and Don throttled it the whole way. I could barely hang on.

I haven’t been up US 6 since then. Anyway, pretty good memory.

The fence is officially finished, I guess. Just a few rocks to move around the posts. It looks pretty good. It was way more work than I’d anticipated, but isn’t that always the case. We’re going to Boulder to have dinner at Andy Hampsten’s house and then heading back to Kansas tomorrow, I guess. But, that isn’t written in stone. It’s easy to get caught up in a new project when Vincent is involved.

Riding up through Red Rocks was pretty scenic.

I climbed these guys when I was a kid.

Vincent and Bill riding. I was the KOM leader for the day, even if they won’t admit it.

We ended up working pretty late into the night. Here is a picture Vincent took of me using the light on my iPhone to see the line on a post to miter cut it with a circular saw. Not the safest work enviornment.

Bill putting the finishing touches on the welded wire.

At least it is straight.

All finished.

Yesterday was an adventure. We were just finishing up on a few things on the fence, moving rocks of course, when I heard that it was supposed to snow somewhere between 5 and 15 inches yesterday evening through this morning. I had a tentative plan on working and heading over to Boulder to have dinner with my friend Andy Hampsten, but Andy hadn’t called and it had already started spitting snow at 4. Normally I don’t let weather dictate my daily routine, other than riding, but this was different.

We’d already ridden up Lookout in the afternoon. It was an unusual ride because Vincent didn’t get to the top with Bill and I. I put a little pressure on him at the bottom, because he usually just throttles us and I wanted him to be a tad hurt at the start. He’s kind of a mental rider, so I guess I put a little too much pressure on at the bottom. It was a good ride, considering the it was cold.

My van sucks in the snow, plus the traffic between Denver and Boulder is really ugly around dinner time. Anyway, Andy called and said to show up around 6:30, there wasn’t much snow on the ground and Lisa, Vincent’s wife, said to take her car, which is a Honda Element, 4WD.

Vincent’s new house is right near 93, which runs from Golden up the front range to Boulder. I was so surprised that it was nearly nonstop headlights going south on 93 at 6 pm. The first time I was ever on 93 was back in the late 80’s and I rode my bike from Golden to Boulder. I’m pretty sure that not one car passed me the whole way. When I got to Boulder on Broadway, there was a huge sign that said Bicycles allowed use of full right lane. It was amazing at the time. I thought that it was the coolest place I’d ever been. Man, how that changed.

We got up to Andy’s right at 6:30. He had invited a few of his close friends over. One was Doug Emerson, who owes University Bikes on Pearl. I’ve known Doug for 3 decades or so. I haven’t seen or talked to him for a while though. I was in his shop a few years ago for the Coor’s Classic DVD release, but he was vacationing in Hawaii, thus not there. Anyway, it was fun catching up with him.

He’s personally building a velodrome in Erie, east of Boulder. I’d heard about the velodrome, only by the news of a storm wreaking havoc on it last fall. He got me up to speed on the progress. It is pretty amazing. He called it his own little “Field of dreams”. Pretty cool. He is hands on there, doing the labor and raising the funds to build it. Guys like this is why we all get to race bikes.

The dinner was awesome, beyond awesome. Andy leads tours to Italy which focuses on riding and cuisine. His company is called Cinghiale, which I think is wild boar in Italian, but don’t quote me on that. If you’re looking for a super bike tour experience, you should check out the link above. Anyway, Andy really knows food, wine and bike riding. He got a rotisserie chicken from Will Frischkorn’s shop, Cured. It is a high end cheese, meat and wine shop on Pearl. The food was great. Andy baked the bread and the wine was super. I don’t usually eat like that, so it was a real treat. It makes me appreciated food more.

I wanted to check out Andy’s basement. It got some flood damage and he just finished the repair. I used to stay at Andy’s house when he was racing full time in Europe. It is a log cabin that the marathon Frank Shorter used to own. He bought the house when he and I were team mates on the Levis team. He lived just down the street in a small apartment and we walked a lot of his stuff up the hill for the move. He didn’t have much back then, as none of did.

His basement was pretty much as I remembered. It was a mother-in-law apartment when Frank Shorter owned the house. But Andy used it as a bike room/workshop. Now he has a wine cellar there too, but it still stores his bike and tools there too.

My favorite Andy basement story is -One morning, I woke up and looked out in the backyard and there were a ton of Powerbar wrappers spread across the lawn. I thought someone had “broken in” his bike room, which really wasn’t breaking in since it wasn’t locked. Anyway, I rush down the basement and Andy had a few cases of Powerbars all packaged up. Some animal had chewed through the cardboard and there were a dozen or so gone. It was a mess there. On closer inspection, I went into the bathroom and there was a pile of wrappers surrounding the toilet. And the toilet seat was covered with little raccoon footprints. I laughed and laughed.

I would have given anything to have a video of the whole process. I wanted to see those guys take their Powerbars, open them, which wasn’t easy with human hands, and then go to the toilet and dunk them into water to eat them. Like I said above, there were lots and lots of wrappers. I bet those raccoons felt pretty horrible, later, after those Powerbars swelled up in their stomachs. It is a good memory.

We didn’t stay that late, a little after 10:30. But then the day got interesting. It was really snowing, like blizzard snowing. We started down 93 and it wasn’t plowed at all. And it was snowing so hard you couldn’t really see the road. We got maybe half way back to Arvada and we came upon a wreck. We were maybe the 5th car or so in line behind lots of flashing emergency lights. I made an executive decision and pulled a u-turn. Driving back north was no better, couldn’t see much. We got back to 128 and headed over towards the old Morgul-Bismark course. There were a couple snow plows coming towards us. I moved all the way to what I though was the right shoulder, nearly hitting the reflector poles, but still nearly got hit. It was incredibly close, I’m not sure what the plow driver was thinking. At the top of McCaslin, which is at the top of the wall, it was nearly a white out. We headed south on Indiana, towards Arvada. There was no one on Indiana and that road brought us back close to Vincent’s on 64th. We got back around midnight, unscathed, which was fine.

I’m thinking of driving back tomorrow now. The roads are shitty and the day is already sort of started. There are lots of things to do here, like put up blinds, assemble Vincent’s new Eriksen Di2 road bike, etc. The weather isn’t good in Kansas, so I’m not missin’ anything there either.