Breckenridge snow sculptures part II

Last year it was really warm when we went to the snow sculptures but not today. As we went over Hoosier Pass the temp was 16. It looked warm but the mercury didn't lie. It took FOREVER to find a place to park. Eventually I just parked at City Market and we walked the bike path up the show. My wife is such a good person. She was seriously worried about us getting in trouble and having the car towed. She's cute.

I thought this was the sharpest sculpture of the show. It featured a mother Grizzly and a cub fishing for Salmon. The details were amazing. You have to look closely but the cub had ice for teeth and claws.

This was another one of my favorites. It's a guy ice fishing outside of his shack. The scarf was really cool. That's a seal peaking up through the ice in the front.

This was Mother Grizz.

On the way back home we were treated to a killer sunset from the mirrors.

CTS V

Heather and I went over to Breckenridge to check out the ice sculptures today. Cadillac had a booth near the sculptures. They only brought one car but they only needed to bring one car. This is the 2011 CTS-V Black Diamond Edition. It looked like the car was driven from the dealer because it was dirty which was a bummer. Even still, the paint is incredible look at. They use aluminum flakes in the paint and it really is stunning. It also comes with these 19" wheels with Brembo brakes hiding behind them. I couldn't get too many good pictures because of all the people looking at it. One guy was busy talking about how he'd love to have it if it wasn't a 6 speed manual transition. I wanted to bitch slap him.

The interior had Recaro seats that were two tone leather (black bolsters with tan inserts). They shoulda had the hood open to show off the 6.2 motor and that supercharger that makes about 550ish horsepower. At about $70,000, I will never have the pleasure of owning one of these.

Endurance Cross

I read about this new race on the Dicks site and really thought it was neat. It's supposed to be an endurance cross race of 100 miles. It's in Jefferson City, Missouri. There is no entry fee but the promoter is asking for racers (80ish registered already) to bring items suitable to support a nearby no-kill shelter (things like food, bowls, etc.). Check it out.

The Gold Belt Tour

Today I got out for about 3 hours of one of the nicest rides I've done in a while. It wasn't on singletrack but it was still really cool. I drove out to Gilett and parked near the KOA and started a really nice loop towards Cripple Creek and then through Victor. This area is rich in mining history and there's still a lot of gold being extracted from that area. My loop basically went around one of the largest mines in that area. In the slideshow you'll see one picture with tiered levels of gravel. They were massive. On the right of the picture you'll see two dump trucks. Those trucks use tires that are over 12 feet high. You can barely see them in the picture. There's also a picture of my bike next to one of those tires. They have a max load of 311 tons and they cost $24,500 a piece. I'm definitely going back to ride that loop again. I passed up several opportunities to ride up either trails or gravel roads to check out really old mine shafts and equipment.

What an amazing ride!!

I got out for a 3 hour ride today out by the gold mines in Cripple Creek and Victor. There is some really amazingly cool old mining gear out there. I love checking that stuff out. I did get some really cool pictures and I think I'll put those into a slideshow later on tonight. But...whenever I ride, I am always looking on the side of the road for stuff. Sometimes I find cool sunglasses, bones, tools, antlers, etc. but today I saw this tackle box and then turned around to make sure I had really seen it. It was way down this embankment. I climbed down there and started going through it.

Spoons from Daredevil and Kastmaster are easily 5 dollars a piece. I bet I brought home 20 of them in addition to about 10 Rapala's. There was tons of Power bait and all kinds of other crap in there too. Not sure how the hell it got there. Then I looked around and saw all of these hanging from a nearby tree.

Then I found this.

And this.

These are wooden lures that were made back in about 1930 by a company called Paw Paw. The top one is a 9100 Runt lure and the bottom one is a Pike replica lure. I bet these are worth 15 bucks a piece. What a killer day. Hope you all did something cool.

Not sure why I like riding in the Deckers area as much as I do but...I do. Probably because I get to ride right next to the river for most of the day but there's also a lot of good options out there too (plenty of ATV trails and there's that one Colorado Trail, not to mention all of the shady people growing marijuana out in the hills). Today I stuck to a bit of pavement and then a good chunk of moist fire roads.

This was the start of about an hour straight worth of climbing. I was a little worried but I was able to ride it all even though a chunk at the end was done so at an alarmingly slow pace (more on this in a bit).

After topping out on the climb, I was rewarded with this.

Cool old Ford truck. I'm sure it would fire right up.

This part of the climb put the hurts to me in a big way. It was 15%. Shortly after this I started having my first bit of trouble with the El Mariachi. The rear cog was looser than a thrift store turtleneck. Luckily, it was all downstream or flat back to the car so I was able to limp it on in. I needed another spacer to tighten things up. It was tight before I left so the only thing I can think of is that my brute strength shrunk the thickness of the spacers. I'm quite strong.

Side of the road treasures

It's not unusual for me to see tools, bungee cords, random keys, used condoms, key chains, etc. while out riding. For some reason, when riding back in Missouri (mostly South County) you could see girly magazines in the ditch. Sometimes I stop to check some of these treasures out. Sometimes I actually throw them in my pack (never the girly mags or used condoms though..honestly). Today there was no time for debate. I passed these and made an immediate 180. You can only find glasses like these at finer truck stops along major interstates. Or....in Woodland Park.