Goodbye Copper, Hello Park City

This morning Stephen, Nate, and I got up early to make the most of our remaining time in Copper with a mountain bike ride. We rode a ways up (lots of up) the Colorado Trail. It had some nice tricky technical sections, and it was very scenic, much like everything else in the area. I managed to stay upright the whole time, including some really fast descents. I'd venture to officially say that I have good bike handling skills off-road.



We posed for some tree-mounted timer shots with a camera, including this nice shot after crossing a stream.



Also worth mentioning was Stephen's near-crash (technically a crash, I suppose). He went over the handlebars on a steep downhill and managed to land on his feet and take 4-5 hops down the trail with the bike between his legs. It looked painful, but I really couldn't help but laugh.

After the ride I finished packing up and Molly and I headed out West from Copper with our destination being her hometown of Park City, Utah. Along the way it was really fascinating to see the change from the mountains into canyons and eventually into desert country.



I hadn't realized how close I-70 came to the Moab/Arches NP/Canyonlands area, but it definitely renewed my interest in visiting those parks again (and mountain biking in Moab).

Along the way, we continued to have to baby the truck along. It has a tendency to get a little testy (overheat) when the weather is warm and we're going uphill. We only had to stop once to let it cool off, and after lots of encouragement it started behaving a little better. This is definitely the truck with the personality. Hopefully a shop in Salt Lake can fix some of the behavioral problems.



After arriving in Park City, I had a tasty dinner with Molly's parents and got to meet her family. They're definitely a nice bunch and I get the impression they want to make sure I enjoy Park City.

The next few days hold in store:
-Taking the truck in for service
-Seeing my long-lost sort of sister
-Making some keys
-Mountain biking
-More mountain biking
-Pretty much whatever else comes my way

Copper Day 1

After waking up to a sunny morning, I as able to deduce that Copper is indeed a beautiful area.  We were up on the 5th floor, and we had a nice view down on our trucks.

We also had a good view looking West towards the rest of the village and the mountain.

I decided to test out my legs a bit in the morning and go for a short ride.  Nate's dad was gracious enough to lend me his road bike for the weekend, and other than a couple flat tires it worked great.

I decided to head up towards Vail pass and unknowingly made it to the top 5 miles later (I found out it was the top the next day - more on that later).  There's a really nice bike path that parallels I-70 up through the path, though it does get a little crowded during the middle part of the day since it's such a big area for outdoor recreation.

After the ride, we had setup for the weekend's event (the Copper Triangle cycling event).  Our expo was right at the base of the mountain near the lift, so we were tortured by watching mountain bikers coming down the hill all day and wishing we could be doing the same.

After set up we had the expo until 9PM, and I left a bit early to go make dinner since we had a kitchen at our disposal.  I made spaghetti and carbo-loaded a bit to make sure I was ready for the long ride in the morning.  I didn't sleep particularly well that night, partly because I was anxious to find out whether or not my legs, lungs, heart, etc. could actually handle an 80 mile ride at serious elevation.

Boulder and Driving into the Mountains

After relaxing a bit this morning at the hotel and catching up on the news, I headed into the main part of Boulder looking for a bike shop.  Since I don't have cycling gear with me and I'm doing the event this weekend, I needed a jersey and shorts.  I found a Performance Bicycle (one of the biggest chain bike stores in the country) and they were having a huge clearance sale, so I picked up some gear for fairly cheap as far as cycling gear goes.

Then I went and explored the CU campus for a while before lunch.  I wasn't expecting all the stone buildings, but it's a really nice campus, and in a great setting too!

I also managed to sneak a peak at Folsom Field.

I met up with Greg and he briefly showed me where he works and what he's up to, and then we went to Half Fast Subs (say it out loud), which was very tasty and had one of the most overwhelming menus I've ever seen.  I couldn't capture two of the boards in this picture.

After lunch Greg had to get back to work, so I wandered around one of the main malls in town and eventually decided I needed something refreshing to drink.  I ended up at Jamba Juice, which was a wise decision.  Then I headed to an arcade/mini golf place that also happened to have a run-down driving range with cheap range balls and even cheaper rental clubs.  I hit about 80 balls and relaxed there for a couple hours.

For those of you familiar with golf clubs, I was also surprised to learn that apparently Cleveland's Hi-Bore design is nothing new.  One of the lefty clubs was this old beaten up club with a sunken crown just like the Cleveland design, only it was much older.  It was also made out of carbon fiber.  It also didn't work very well.

After gassing up the truck, I met Greg and his girlfriend Dana for dinner at the Southern Sun brewpub, which had some tasty food and good root beer on tap (I had to drive following dinner).  It was great to see Greg more and get to meet Dana.  After dinner I picked up Lyndsay in Denver and headed West into the Mountains on I-70 as the sun set.  The drive into the mountains was really scenic, even mostly in the dark.  The truck handled the climbs well for the most part, and we got to Copper in a reasonable amount of time.  Copper itself seems like an amazing place from what I can tell in the dark.  There's a ton to do here, and it's incredibly scenic.  Our hotel is really more of a condo, and since we have a kitchen and meal prices are a little spendy, we'll probably try to do some of our own cooking.  I'll update more on Copper tomorrow when I can actually see it, but I'm impressed so far.  Should be a great weekend.