As I mentioned during recaps of my time in Albuquerque last year, it's very grounding to me to have mountains nearby. In Boulder, they were always there--sorry, Sandias, I love you so much, but these mountains were so much bigger--and I felt right at home. Dan was ready to move there. His uncles lived outside the city, where people had little organic farms and kept horses or a few cows, and so we got to drive through that into Boulder, which was a pretty small city. I'm not sure I could live in a city like that without a really big city (like Denver) within an hour's drive. Maybe some day I could, but not yet.
On the morning we left Boulder, we traded in the rental car for a Budget moving van, the cheapest option to get us, three bikes and a bunch of bags to Leadville and then home to Texas. We stripped everything out of Dan's car and left it with his uncles, who are mechanics--I don't know what they've done with it, but Dan told them to sell it for scrap, use it as spare parts or get a new (used) engine in there and sell it, it was up to them.
We drove to Leadville and got there midday Thursday, and we parked the Budget van in the Delaware Hotel lot and took everything up the steep stairs to our room. We showered and changed and found that the wind had picked up--it was cold and dusty--and spent the afternoon wandering in and out of little stores. Almost everything closed at 6 p.m.
On Friday we did mostly race related things--all the riders were required to do an information meeting, we had to make bags filled with spare tubes and extra clothes and food for each of the stops, and there was a free carbo-load dinner for riders and their crews (mostly friends and families and other bike bitches). We found a little bit of spare time to take a cruise around the roughly 12-mile loop known as the Mineral Belt Trail, which climbs into the hills around the town and through old mining sites. I won't lie: The ride totally kicked my ass, lung-wise; the altitude plus the climbing portions of the ride made it tough for me, even though 12 miles is an easy distance. I took lots of breaks, making it look like I was really psyched to stop and take photos. I also nearly ran over an ungodly number of chipmunks.
Saturday, people started lining up for the race before dawn, so we went to bed early, but neither of us slept very well. Dan had been training for this ride for roughly six months, and I'm the planner and the organizer for these sorts of things, and kept running over lists in my head: Did I have everything packed for the next day? I didn't have a car to get to the stops; was I going to get to all the stops and see Dan at all?
Hot damn, those alarm clocks went off early on Sunday morning.
