Sunday, October 15, 2006

To Boulder and Back

I went for a ride this morning and decided to just take the E470 Tollway to where it ends near Boulder. $10 in tolls gets you there in about an hour, going about 80mph most of the way. The weather was briskly cool and sunny, so perfect riding weather. Maria just cruised along, making no perceived extra effort at maintaining 80mph.

I get to Louisville shortly after 10AM, fueled up (48mpg) at a gas station on South Boulder Road. I then took South Boulder Road in towards the mountains and hit Boulder City limits soon afterwards. South Boulder ends up near the base of the foothills of Boulder and I stopped there to take a picture of the Flatirons for which Boulder is famous for; only to discover I'd left the camera at home! Oh well, I am sure I'll be up there again, transiting Boulder to go to points West and NorthWest.

Turned around and headed south on Broadway which turned into CR93 which I rode all the way to Golden, nice smooth road with winding turns and little traffic this morning. South of Golden the road becomes CO6 which I took heading south until I entered Lakewood and was inside the Denver Metro area. Once I realized CO6 was going to become 6th Street I turned off on Wadsworth Blvd and "enjoyed" city traffic riding until US285 which I took North back into Aurora, did an errand and got home by Noon.

Not a very exciting or eventful trip, mostly just riding around, practicing stops and starts using only one finger mostly on the front brake lever and relying mostly on the foot brake for stopping at lights and such. It's a much smoother process and both the headlight modulator and brake flasher worked fine to get the cager's attention at intersections and stops. I saw several bikers out riding, trying to get one more ride in while the weather is good.

Maria, all clean after the ride

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