It was high time for Brigitta, my '87 BMW R80, to get some exercise!
We would end up riding perhaps 60 miles or so, meandering the county roads to the NE of the cesspool that is the Metro Denver area.
The day was warm and mostly sunny with incoming weather clouds evident to the west as the afternoon moved towards evening.
First stop was Saint Isidore Church along the I-70 Super Slab near the small farming town of Watkins. I was hoping for a nice view of the Front Range Mountains but the haze and clouds made that impossible this ride.
So instead, I posed Brigitta near the entrance to the Saint Isidore Cemetery, a place I'd not noticed before on previous rides:
I then rode to the town of Watkins and spotted signs for the "Colorado Air and Space Port". Space Port? We have a space port in Colorado? So of course, with much doubt in my mind, I followed the signs.
As I suspected based on what I knew of this area, it turned out to be the Front Range Airport, rebranded as a space port!
So, what gives them the right to call themselves a Space Port?
From wikipedia: In October 2011, the Governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper, formally requested that the federal government designate Colorado a "spaceport state" and that the airport be designated a spaceport for suborbital horizontal takeoff flights (HTVL and HTHL).[8] Spaceport designation would allow a facility offering suborbital tourism, travel, and cargo transport from one point to another on Earth. The Denver Post reported that "No vertical launches are planned at the Front Range, unlike most of the other eight certified U.S. spaceports. Instead, space planes — an emerging technology — will use regular runways and jet engines to take off and land, switching to rocket power above 50,000 feet."
So no, I didn't spot any space craft while wandering around the "space port".
Heading west a little bit away from the "space port", one passes several solar panel farms and eventually one can see the white canopies and ugly "mustache" hotel of the Denver international Airport.
As a sign of the Covid-19 times, you could see a line of idled aircraft parked on the outskirts of the airport, waiting for more "normal" times and traffic patterns. I wonder if we'll see such normalcy again.
The clouds had moved in by now and so Brigitta and I headed back home as winds picked up as well.
Brigitta performed flawlessly as usual, she's barely over 101,000 miles (roughly) on her odometer.
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2 comments:
Hello Dom,
I like to imagine you living and riding in a pristine, mountain wilderness free of noise and thrum of human activity. An idyllic existence of stresslessness and freedom.
And then I'm reminded reading your post that you are trapped in the Denver Metro area and it's work to escape. Puts my two-mile ride into a vast State Forest into perspective.
You know how much I love Brigitta. The one time I rode her is indelibly etched into my mind and had me searching for one for a long time. Had the '92 K75 not come along when it did I can easily see myself riding an old R bike.
A Space Port. The sort of thing that captured my imagination as a kid but now it's hard to see beyond the politics of such things. Hopefully I'm wrong.
I hope you, Martha and the family had a fine Memorial Day holiday. And that some new normal surfaces that we can all tolerate!
Thanks for the comments Steve, Memorial Day went OK here, experienced an exhaust leak issue with Fiona, the '99 Ural with the Beemer Engine but I think it's resolved....will find out tomorrow morning after sealants cure.
Yes, trapped is the exact word for my situation, at the eastern edges of the cesspool but still trapped as its at least 45 minuter, closer to an hour, to clear the cesspool that is Denver and reach the foothills.
Brigitta awaits you, come out west, you and Kim!
As to the spaceport, I get the feeling it was a "me too", "we're important too" move by the Colorado Governor.....politics.
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