Here we go...BBT 2014!!!

We are excited to announce the BBT 2014.  This year Gary and Kiki will be bicycling to 3 festivals in 3 weeks.  Pagosa, June 6th, Palisades the 13th and the biggest whopper of festivals; Telluride Bluegrass Festival the 19th.  Then we will point our bicycles north to Idaho, the land of hot springs.

Almost Home, CottonWood Hot Springs

We are on the tail end of the Bluegrass Bicycle Tour. The festivals are now over (6 in 8 weeks) and we are bicycling back home to wonderful Crested Butte.
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After RockyGrass, we hit Boulder to visit our dear friend Easy Mac and Lizard and RedWood. Yes, weird names, but we all met on the Appalachian Trail. They call us Rigatoni and Angel Hair, if that helps any. After Boulder, we made our way over to Longmont (15 miles) and stayed with our cousins Jill and Kevin and their kiddos. So in over 7 days, we've cycled exactly 25 miles!
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After Jill and Kev's we saddled up the bicycles again and headed up and over Trail Ridge Road (12,100 ft.) in Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park. Lots of road cyclist on the road that would pass us as if we were standing still. I think the 7 days of non-cycling have affected us because today we only make it about 45 miles before we looked up at the looming switchbacks and decided to stealth camp on a flat piece of land hidden from the road. That's the beauty of cycle touring, good camping is only a small push of the bike away. We were lucky because exactly 20 minutes after getting up the tent, the skies opened up and we were experiencing a real Rocky Mountain downpour.
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The next morning we got to experience the major climb. The views in RMNP are well worth the effort to get up there on your bicycle. In fact, once you get to the pass, there is a cafe where you can enjoy some coffee. That's above tree line at 12,000 feet. Most folks are just excited to be in such a place and they arrived in cars! So you can imagine how excited we were.
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From there it was downhill into Grand Lake that had a great town park for us to take a nap in the shade. Our next stop was Uncle Jerry's in Silverthorne, home of the world famous Hot Tub. We spent the night there and enjoyed loads of good conversation.
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Pushing onward from Silverthorne, we got to enjoy 15 miles of bike trail up to Copper Mountain and then the climb up to Fremont Pass on our way to Leadville. Fremont Pass is unique because it takes you right next to the Climax Molyebdenum Mine in all it glorious destruction. If every one from Crested Butte visited this site and saw what such a mine can do to the landscape, they'd be recharged to fight against the proposed mine in Crested Butte. It's horrible and sad.
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We've had a "Foul Weather Fund" of $200 bucks since we started out on this adventure, which was meant for hotels along the way when the weather good too gnarly. But, surprisingly, we've only had to dip into it once, in La Barge, WY, and that was for mosquitoes, not rain. So since we have so much of it left, we've decided to treat ourselves to spa/resort/hot spring here in Buena Vista, only 60 miles from home.
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That's where we find ourselves now. At CottonWood Hot Springs. They've got a great common room with couches, pool table, scrabble, computers, TVs, the works. The perfect hangout for long-distance cyclist. There there is the hot springs and the real bed! We are in heaven!! So we'll pass the night here and conquer cottonwood pass before coasting into Crested Butte and the completion of our tour. So now its off to the hot water and relaxation.

RockyGrass 2009

The BBT, after 65 days on the road and 2300 miles has made its way back into wonderful Colorado. You know I really underestimated the distance of the BBT as I first thought it'd be around 1750 miles, but we're still 300 miles from home and have covered 2300 miles. It's amazing that we've still arrived everywhere we set out for on time.

One thing I've discovered after being on the road for so long is that my culinary discretion has competely gone out the window (if I ever really had any before is up for debate). The above pic shows both of us enjoying hot dogs and 64 oz of sugar water also called Coke at my favorite watering hole, Conoco. This one just north of Fort Collins. These are perfect spots to get off the bike for a spell. Free refills, onions for your hot dogs in a ketchup-like package, A/C, and clean bathrooms at your disposal.
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I have decided that the only way to actually eat like an "American" is to bicycle 70 miles a day. That is what we are doing lately with our ice cream and fast food and soda intake. Luckily we are burning it all off as we cycle. This type of eating can continue for only 2 days after we finish our cycle tour unless we want to gain 5 lbs. a day. But for the time being, it is what we are craving. I feel sorry for folks that eat this way and don't do outlandish exercise to offset it. That is a recipe for disaster.
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We arrived at RockyGrass on Thursday. After we checked-in we set out to set our tent up, seeking shade as our number one priority. It seemed odd to us that where we chose to set up was completely void of others but we just figured we were early, so we set up and headed out to visit our friend who lives in Lyons. I'm gonna make a long story short here. We we got back to our tent at around 8pm it was gone, literally. All our stuff was in too. We were sorta freaked out to say the least. Plus, the sea of humanity around where our tent used to be was completely out of control. You could not walk without tripping on a guy line of another tent. There was no grass left to be seen anywhere. I have never seen a festival camping scene with that sort a tent density. You could step from the door of one tent directly into another tent, I am not kidding. So we were sorta frantic for a bit, but the chaos of people made it so no one really knew (or cared) about the whereabouts of our tent and stuff. On our way to the main info desk, we stumbled on the new location of our tent. Someone (later we learn it was the RockyGrass "tent police", obviously ex-BlackWater employees) had moved our tent some 50 yards from its original spot. The must have drug it, because all our stuff was inside. They staked it out again (sort of) and now we were directly in a sun spot with neighbors about 1 foot on either side. Not our idea of a good campsite. So we decided to take the tent down and move to a more reasonable location. (Apparently we had set our tent up in a location that didn't "open" until like 6:30pm. Live and learn).
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But, as has happened on this trip all the time, our bad luck turned into better luck. We ran into some friends who had some ground saved and they offered it to us. A quick compass calculation showed that it'd be in the shade in the morning (most important for sleeping-in, which I planned on doing) and we had a new home for the next 3 nites.
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The lineup at RockyGrass is really unmatched by any other festival I've been to (except maybe MerleFest or Hardly Strictly). Any one of the many acts here would be the headliner at other festivals. They even had a TBA spot on the schedule that turned out to be none-other-than Yonder Mountain String Band. I was in heaven with all the good music. My favorite acts of the week had to be the Steve Earle, The Wilders (pictured below), Danny Paisley and Southern Grass, Del McCoury, California, Kruger Brothers, Steep Canyon Rangers, and Sarah Jarosz.

There there is the actual venue itself. A river runs thru it, literally. Some folks even put their chairs in the river as their spots from which to enjoy the shows. Here is a pic below of the mass of people cooling off in the river during the festival. The stage is nice because it has an open back that shows the trees swaying in the breeze with is way better'n any tapestry that could be created.

We thoroughly enjoyed the festival and the town of Lyons. There is the Stone Cup Coffee shop that was only 1/4 mile from our tent door that had a $1 cup of joe and an honesty jar. How cool is that, especially since the lines to order specialty drinks snaked out the door. It was truly the place to hang out when not in the festival.
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We won the RockyGrass campground challenge (for Saturday). This is the challenge for the most eco-friendly campsite. We advertised our site as having nothing, and hence the smallest footprint and most eco-friendly and got the most votes. We won a nice prize and got the BBT announced on the main stage which was cool. We also won this award at Telluride BF. It's nice to get a bit of recognition for bicycling to the festival.
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I'm still sorta in shock that the BBT is somewhat over. We successfully hit 6 festivals in 8 weeks without any problems. I'm always grateful when we are able to this on any long-distance adventure, It is never a given since life can throw you many curveballs. Lucky of us, we are both good curveball hitters. Now we just have the 250 miles of riding to get home.
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For those of you that are considering bicycle touring in the future, I'd like to highly recommend it. I can think of no better way to simplify your vacation plans. Life gets so easy when you are bicycle touring. The activity of the day is bicycling. All you really have to worry about is water and weather. Camp wherever you get tired. Save money because your main activity is the biking which is free. Eat lots of food, guilt free. See the country in a way that is not possible from an auto. And each month that your spend traveling on a bicycle you become more in tune with your body and your inner self (you have lots of time to think while you are pedalling). Your happiness will grow in spite of yourself. If there is a downside to bicycle touring, I'm at a loss to think of it.
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Here's a closing pic: Biking about 1000 miles thru Wyoming has helped to deter us for ever wanting to try Meth. I guess that is a big problem for that state. Not sure why it's so bad there. Here is one billboard in downtown Laramie, WY.

Laramie, WY --> Lyons, CO RockyGrass!!!!!

From Laramie, WY we decided to just get the Lyons the most direct way and that meant taking 287 thru Fort Collins. That meant getting some time with our friend Andy. He put up some neat signs on the road that led us to his house via backroads, below is the first one we encountered.
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Kiki had her first corn dog today and I mean ever! I guess the touring has finally opened up some cravings in her that she has been suppressing. She actually didn't know that corn dogs were wrapped in "Corn" bread until I made the connection to her that that was why they were called "Corn" dogs. We had a good laugh.
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Got a great nights sleep and a great feed at Andy's house. How nice it is to land in friendly waters even after only 3 days of riding from the last festival.
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Took backroads to Lyons from F.C. and have now arrived to the granddaddy of bluegrass festivals out west. Lots of "Lance Armstrong" types on the roads cycling past us without so much as a wave or a howdy. I find that a bit odd, but I guess that big city for ya (Say it isn't so Joe!). I've never seen tents packed so tight as this year at RockyGrass. You literally cannot walk through the sea of tents with out hurting yourself on a guy line.
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Well, the library in Lyons is not offering long computer time, so I'll have to add more tidbits later. We'll be heading to friends in Boulder for visits on July 27-30th and then it's about 250 miles back to CB and the completion of the BBT. It's been a great "ride" and the lineup at RockyGrass is quite a reward for our efforts.

License Plates for Snodgrass

I am starting a new charity. It is called "License Plates for Snodgrass". Here's how it works: While bicycle touring you see about 2 license plates a day on average, on the side of the road. I thought I could pick up the plates and then have some of the greats musician I get to see at the festivals sign them. I can then sell them and donate the money to help save a local mountain in Crested Butte. More on that mountain the fight to save it at FriendsofSnodgrass.org.
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You can check back at this link often and see what new license plates are available as I'll be adding more as I find them and succeed in getting them signed. And remember there is only ONE of each plate available. This is a one-of-a-kind souvenir and for a good cause too.
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So if you'd like to donate to save a mountain while helping to beautify our highways and get a nifty autographed license plate you can do so by emailing me. I can send your plate when I return from the BBT after Aug. 5th. The plates can be purchased for $25.

This is a Nebraska Trucking plate signed by Steve Earle at his performance at RockyGrass 2009. A classic plate signed by the seminal truck driving song singer himself.


The ever cool, Spring Creek, posing with Colorado plate #1, Spring Creek is from Colorado too. (this plate is still available)





Wyomingans, Anne and Pete Sibley with Wyoming plate #2, (this plate is still available)

BearTrap Festival --> Laramie, WY

You know you are in Wyoming when you pass mail boxes like this one. If you can't read it, it says Cheney. I thought about what a great and realistic opportunity it was to maybe give ol' Dick a piece of my mind, but I opted against.

We arrived at the BearTrap Festival but only after the toughest hill yet. From Casper proper to the festival grounds, it was about 5 miles and 3000 ft. That wasn't so much the problem, the problem was that some of the grade must have been 10% or more. We made it, but our faces were turning blue. We even had one German couple stop and give us some juice and tell us they felt so sorry for us. We we elated to finally arrive at the top though and see the festival stage and grounds. Now we just had to follow my friend Steve's map and find his family's cabin, where we'd be staying for the next 3 nights (big coincidence I know). As we were searching for the cabin and about 5 minutes before we were going to officially declare ourselves lost, there comes Steve and Melissa in their car to guide us in the last 1/4 mile. We were expecting them this weekend, but the timing couldn't have been better. Their cabin was built in 1952 by Steve's grandfather. It's a log cabin tucked in bunch of pine trees. A peaceful place to be. We felt really pampered to have such accommodations.

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The festival is only a 2-day affair, so we had all of Friday off which called for a trip (in the car) to Casper. I coerced everyone to stop by the Dairy Queen as we passed it. Mostly because I began hyperventilating once I figured out that Steve, the driver, was actually going to pass it up. I was like, "NNNNOOOOOOOO, PLEASE GOD NNNOOOOOO!". So, they took pity and we all enjoyed some sort of ice cream treat (though I'm pretty sure I enjoyed mine more).

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We tracked down the festival host, Jana and let her know of our arrival. They were super stoked that we'd arrived. Turns out that the Casper newspaper had done an article about the BBT recently. Plus, during the 2 days of the festival, they announced our tour's info and statistics four times! We felt pretty special to say the least. But man, after bicycling up Casper Mountain, I was like, "Hey, do you think you can throw a coupon for a double bacon cheeseburger with curly-q fries in with those props?"

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Our homies, Spring Creek, is playing BearTrap. We love them and have since they were the house band at the Princess Wine Bar in my hometown of Crested Butte, Colorado. Below is a picture of them during their first set Sunday morning. They even played my request, "You Don't Have to Move That Mountain". They put on two incredible sets and the crowd responded well too.

One funny thing that happened during the festival was during Asleep at the Wheel's set, there was lots of rain and wind and lots of people called it quits and headed out. Then their headman, Ray Benson, starts talking about all the people who have left and says "All those folks that left were from Colorado", and the crowd went crazy! I sorta hunkered down, proud at least that I had stuck it out. But then again it served me (us) right since in Colorado we tend to joke a bit (a lot?) about Texas skiers (Asleep at the Wheel is from Austin, TX).

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BearTrap is a nice festival, still very small scale, which I like. There was camping galore all around the festival for those that wanted to camp and Casper was only a 15 minute drive down the mountain for supplies and what not.

We headed out of BearTrap after one last night in the Cabin. That was some good sleeping let me tell you. Still, we must be in biker mode because the haystacks immediately reminded us of muffins and made us hungry. Here's another thing I've noticed about Wyoming. I've determined that the towns here support one liquor store per 100 people. So for example, if you roll into a town of 340 folks, you can expect to find 3 liquor stores.
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We are taking some long and windy roads. Wait, that's confusing. I want to say the wind blows on these roads not that they are curvy. We are in sight of lots of wind farms each day now. Seems like Wyoming has it all when it comes to energy resources, oil, gas and wind and lots of sun too.

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We stayed last night in Medicine Bow, WY. Pop. 274, liquor stores 2. It was blazing hot out. Someone said 96F. We sought shelter in the gas station convenience store. Things were looking good when I spied a fountain station and even some chili and crackers. Now I have to admit, a pot of chili in a convenience store would almost never catch my attention but at this moment, it looked so good. I served myself a bowl and ate it standing up. Plus they had a bucket full of saltines, of which I must have put about 30 packets into my chili. In fact, when I threw away all the wrappers for my saltines, I was a bit embarrassed because they became all un-crumpled and the shear quantity of them looked sorta ridiculous as they cascaded into the wastebasket. But man, was that chili good! Oh, and did I mentioned that they had a soft-serve ice cream self-serve machine too! Goodbye 96F, Hello extreme nausea! We both hurt ourselves.

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We're staying tonite in Medicine Bow. This is the town made famous in Owen Wister's novel "The Virginian". One qoute from the book is particularlly famous "When you call me that, Smile," and is written many spots throughout the town. They are pretty proud of this connection to this famous book. There is the Virginian hotel, Trampas Hotel, and the Miss Molly Laundromat. We hung out in the free town museum and learned all about Medicine Bow and life in the early 1900s. That evening we camped in town park which invites campers with tents to overnite there. We felt very welcomed in MB.

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From MB we've decide to beeline to Rockygrass because we don't want to risk missing any of the awesome music (you should just check out the lineup!). So that has us on Hwy 287 all the way to Fort Collins where we are looking forward to hooking up with our good friend Andy. He and his wife just got back from bike touring New Zealand and the trial and tribulations of bike touring are sure to be fresh in memory. It will be nice to reconnect with him again (his wife is, unfortunately, out of town).

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The ride into Laramie has been somewhat uneventful. The winds have not been hurtful which is better than nothing. All our systems are greased and running smoothly. We've got this bike touring down to a science really. I know where everything is in my panniers (finally) and I don't get such a sore rump anymore. We can put our tent up in no time flat and I really look forward to bedding down for the evening in our familiar abode even if it is in an unfamiliar place. 50 miles doesn't seem very difficult. I am sick of the clothes I bicycle in and look forward to ceremoniously burning them when we return to Crested Butte.
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I had to throw this pic in. It is as you arrive into Casper, WY. We were hungry too, but I have to say, their "reverse psychology" didn't work on me. We just pedaled on to a different diner.

Thermopolis --> Casper, Riding with the Tiger

So as mentioned, Aaron, above, has dropped out for a bit to give his hurting knee a rest. He's been applying ice and Tylenol, but needs to just not bike for a bit. We'll meet up again in Casper at the BearTrap Festival. We're sorry to see him go as it was fun to have a official Posse on the BBT, but that's cycle touring for you.
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The road from Thermopolis to Casper begins with 25 miles though the Wind River Canyon with was some stunning scenery. We get to Shoshoni after that and this appears to be more ghost town than real town. Most store fronts are boarded up and aside from the gas station, there is not much going on. Fine with us though as what is going on involves a counter to sit at and a fountain drink machine to refill our sodas with. I'm a little concerned with how much soda I can consume while I'm bike touring. Speaking of concerns, did I mention that I had ice cream 3 times yesterday? Oh yea, and speaking of yesterday, I met this 86-year old WWII vet that was just as nice as can be. He gave us a good run down of the history of Worland (where we were eating breakfast ice cream #1). But he did say one thing that was sorta odd. He was talking about Ten Sleep, the town, says, "Well once there's these hippies came to town and the locals just sheared 'em (guffaw!)." Now I'm not sure if he was refering to a physical shearing or a metaphorical shearing, but all the same I wasn't sure that it was a P.C. thing to say, then again, I'm not sure that he gave a damn. Still, a super nice old guy who I would have loved to chat with for weeks on end.
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OK, back to the travels. We're now heading from Shoshoni to Casper on a road, Hwy 20/26, that one local describes, I'm not making this up, as "100 miles but it feels like 300". Now if that doesn't get you amped up to ride, I don't know what will. Below is a sample of that "300" miles. Nice shoulder though and we did have a wicked tailwind so we weren't complaining.

About 1/3 way to Casper, with no shade in sight, we get to the hamlet of Moneta (2 buildings). OK, time to do a little begging. We ask some guys drilling for water if we can take refuge in an old abandoned barn near them. They say "Sure, just watch out for rattlers". Hey, man, anywhere would have been better then in the sun and wind. So after kicking some dead rabbits from the barn that was giving the area a rather foul odor, we hunkered down for a couple hours in the shade. The drilling men came in after a while (and woke us) and we chatted about drilling. Actually, we bombarded them with all the questions one gets while cycling past all the oil and gas works in Wyoming. They we really nice. One called his Dad "his old man". Smoked Camels. And drank 2 Bud Lights each for break. Now this was "real Wyoming". Below is a pic of us in our pitiful break spot, you can't see all the rat turds, but they are there believe me.

At 1/2 way to Casper, we arrive to Hiland. This place was CLASSIC. Let me tell you, I did not say the O-word here (Obama). In fact I'm pretty sure I did everything I could to appear like a local oil-rigging roughneck who just happened to be on bicycle tour to 6 bluegrass festivals between assignments (I put my gum inside my lip to make it appear like I was chewing). Hiland is in the absolute center Wyoming on the map. We were elated to find out that they served Hamburgers and Fries. And tried not to pay too much attention to some of the wall decorations, like the one picture below or the photo of Hitler that said something to the effect of "Hitler registered firearms in 1935 for the betterment of the population", or something like that.

This gas station was sooo cool though and even had two lazy boys for us to relax in after our burgers and fries, which, by the way, only cost $5 each!

Today was really panning out to be the classic bike touring day, that is you never knew what was going to happen, it just kept happening. And that's when Aaron stolled in. We're like, "What! How did you get here?" He had hitched a ride with a couple Shoshoni Indians who were heading to Casper. His bike was thrown on the back of a big pile of luggage so that it was higher than the cab of the truck. All three of them squished into the cab of the small mini truck. We wished him well and will see him again in a couple days and can't wait to see what stories he'll have to tell.

So the wind is just howling and it's going in our favor. This makes for great biking, both because you can fly (15 mph vs. normally going 11mph) and you can speak normally because you don't have the wind in your ears. It really gives you a "rider's high" to cycle with the wind. We call it "Riding with the Tiger" as in Tiger Woods, as in TW, as in Tail Wind. We go thru all this code because we don't want to jinx the wind. Sorta like when someone is pitching a no hitter. Just ignore it and hope things don't change.

Did I tell you this place, Hiland gas stop, was the real deal? 50 miles from the next town? With a rifle sitting by the cashier (loaded I'm sure). I'm serious, right there, leaning on the counter, just begging some to drive off without paying for their gas. There were so many things I could have snapped picures of.

So the wind is just howling and it's going in our favor. This makes for great biking, both because you can fly (15 mph vs. normally going 11mph) and you can speak normally because you don't have the wind in your ears. It really gives you a riders high to cycle with the wind. We call it "Riding with the Tiger" as in Tiger Woods, as in TW, as in Tail Wind. We go thru all this code because we don't want to jinx the wind. Sorta like when someone is pitching a no hitter. Just ignore it. That's what we do too, just ignore the wind, don't mention it, and maybe it'll just stay the way it is. As we pulled into camp this evening, I realize we have just eclipsed 2000 miles. Yee-haw. A great ending to a wonderful day.