Colorado

“Have some peach cobbler for me,” Tanya text-messaged on the morning of the Peach Festival of Lafayette, Colorado. “And peach bread, peach ice cream, peach pastries, peach pizza…”

I would have been glad to, but there was one problem: at the festival, I could find almost none of this. At a drinks stand there was lemonade, orange-ade, lime-ade and other fruity concoctions, but no peach-ade. The jams and jelly booth had plenty of jars containing strawberry preserves, grape jelly, apple butter, etc., but no peach jam. A pizza vendor only served wedges with cheese and pepperoni or sausage. None of the crafts tents featured any artwork of fruit. Continue reading »

“I’m from Crawford,” Tanya told friends and me earlier in the year when we asked where she grew up. “You’ve never heard of it.”

She was right. But over the course of the year Tanya told us more about her idyllic little hometown tucked away in the western slopes of Colorado, about how she misses it more than anything else in the world. She further piqued our curiosity with reminders about how years from now, she intends to move back especially since she owns some land in the area. Happily, she invited us to join her on a camping trip there for a couple days during a week she was in Crawford visiting family. Road trip! Continue reading »

It’s been a good year but one thing that causes me a bit of remorse has been the trifling amount of cycling I’ve done in 2009. By this day on last year’s calendar I had already done three weeks of pedaling (on average) over 100 miles a day in the Tour Divide, whereas so far this year there’s been only two occasions where I could claim that I had ridden 100 miles per week. Including this one. Continue reading »

Colorado scenery is lovely during so many weeks of the calendar that having to pick one’s favorite time of year can be mentally wrenching. Trying to do so is like trying to decide whether Scarlett Johannson is more attractive than Natalie Portman or Jessica Alba or Deanna Russo. Like the Colorado seasons, all are beautiful but in different ways.

Yet, whenever October rolls around, I usually find myself thinking at some point or another, “this is Colorado at its finest…” Continue reading »

“We [heart] Leadville @ 10,200′,” proclaimed a long, hand-painted sign leading to America’s highest incorporated town near the heart of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.

This sign was suggestive of a few things. First, the residents here are proud to live in this town surrounded by forests and (more distantly) mountains. Second, being at such a high elevation, they are more oxygen-deprived than most of the rest of the nation.

But belying the fresh white paint on the sign was a portion that — thanks to vandals — once displayed a ‘D’ instead of an ‘L.’ As it turns out, “Deadville” could have been an appropriate name of this town. That was the conclusion I drew after Nick and I went there during its busiest week of the year. Continue reading »

Despite it only raining two or three times in the last month or so, Fort Collins has turned about as green and lush as I’ve ever seen it. It has also been perfect weather for cycling, or actually anything outdoors in short sleeves.

See these photos of the Front Range!