Rob & I arrived tired in Denver. We had a place to stay and we would meet Bob & Denise for the first time. We hurriedly knocked on the door and waited for them to answer. They welcomed us with comfortable beds, food, and showers. We intend to stay here for a day and a half to get ready for our big haul.
I found Bob & Denise through the Northeastern University Outdoor Club Alumni network and we connected over Boston life. It was odd to arrive in Denver, 30 hours from Boston, and see a wall size portrait of my home-town college. First things first, get the bikes road ready. They were in small parts tucked into the Corolla. We opened the trunk and stared, “Are those frames inexplicably tangled forever?” It took some delicate rough-housing to arrange the parts to each bike in two distinct piles. One for me and one for Rob.
We installed our sponsored parts from Old Man Mountain bike racks with some heavy modification. Never before had a rear rack from OMM been used with a B.O.B. Ibex trailer. The woes of a heavily laden cyclist. I busted out the hacksaw and made quick work in trimming down attachment points on the rack. Within a few hours we had a bomber rear cargo setup, rack and trailer mated as one. This conversion is likely not recommended by either manufacturer and I’ll be the first to claim it works.
Bob & Denise called us in for steak and beer. A notable flavor to the meal was the Vanilla Porters Bob brought home. We hoisted a few drinks with our meal and decided to explore the night life in Denver on our newly assembled bikes. A bike ride before our bike tour.
Denver is like Boston in many ways. One way in which it is notably different is the road width and traffic patterns. Riding a bike in Denver is as peaceful as cruising through a park; riding through Boston is as peaceful as riding a bike through an endless flock of geese on a diminishing cobble path.
We suddenly became engulfed in hundreds of cyclists. What? It’s 10pm on a Wednesday night and no cars exist, only bikes. Many of these bikes are cruisers and many of the bikers are drinking. We asked around, they call themselves the Denver Cruisers and they are hundreds strong. We road with the Cruisers for a mile and bid them farewell. Rob & I could feel the elevation of Denver, 5,280 ft., in our lungs and muscles. We were not acclimated to the high plains of Colorado. We went to bed and slept extremely well, dreaming of our contraptions taking us into the American Rockies.
