Day 46, Frisco to Fairplay, CO

Miles – 36

Miles From Start/To Finish – 1,990/2,238

Ave Riding Speed – 3-25 mph

Hours Start to Finish – 6

Weather – Sunny and 74

I left the window shade of our motel room open last night so we could be up and get at it for an early start. At 5:30am I was scrounging around the motel room at the Summit Inn in Frisco, CO. Around 5:45am Kim woke up and looked at me with a weird look and said, “you know it’s only 5:45!” I put on some coffee with the motel 4-cupper and then I remembered that I wanted to freshen up the air pressure in our bike tires at the bicycle shop across the parking lot and they didn’t open until 8am. So much for beating the traffic! I slowed my groove and took my time getting ready. We had lime yogurt and split a banana for breakfast. Then we took inventory of our trail snacks and figured we had enough to get us through the day.

At 8am we rolled over to the Rebel Sports bike shop and borrowed their hand pump to bring up our tires to 75lbs of pressure while Kim picked up some electrolytes. We ended up chatting with the manager for a while and pedaled away at 8:45am

We backtracked to the bike trail that went behind the east side town and continued along and around the Dillon Reservoir. On the south end of Frisco, we actually got lost. Kim asked someone for directions and we ended up in a place we had been 15 minutes earlier. We pulled over on a little side street that was on the bike trail and pulled out the map again. About that time a lady was walking on the other side of the street and knew exactly what our problem was, we were lost. She walked over and said we were going the right way, again, but that the trail up ahead is not marked very well and to follow the trail under Hwy 9 and hang to the right through the Frisco Adventure Park and pick up the trail to Breckenridge. The lady was very kind.

We continued on to the Adventure Park and stopped at the main building so Kim could hit the bathroom. I chatted with a couple ladies who worked there. The Park is a pretty cool. They offer snow tubing, beginner skiing, hiking, biking, skateboarding and disc golf. Kim returned and we told them about our fundraiser and handed them our card. The ladies also confirmed the direction to the paved trail to Breckenridge.

We departed and got on track for the ride to Breckenridge on a bike path around 9:45am. It was crazy busy, but a great ride into Breckenridge. We had a few people pass us along the way and ask us where we were heading or offer encouragement. We met one couple along the way who had a place in the area and we told them our story while riding the path. In Breckenridge, 10 miles from Frisco, we pulled over and they said they had a friend that is raising some money for a stronger MRI technology they developed that would detect things like breast cancer much easier. Pretty cool and we hope it gets to market. There are lots of politics behind the scenes in our health care system including, insurance companies, health care providers, drug companies, lobbyists and the government.

We hit the public bathroom in Breckenridge and while we were filling our water bottles, we met a young couple who approached us and asked if we are doing the TransAm. They said they did it a couple years ago, going east to west. The were in town from Denver for an overnight and their first time away from their young child. Ends up the young mans mother lives in Chaska, MN. We asked for her name but didn’t recognize it. We continued out of town, now well behind our anticipated schedule and surely, we were headed for a high traffic volume ride up the no-shoulder Hwy 9 for the next 11 miles.

The traffic was intense and we concentrated on the being as close to the white line as possible and stopping every mile for the first 7 miles to regroup. During one of those stops I asked Kim how she was doing and her comeback was, “I’m not smiling. I didn’t survive breast cancer to get run over by a car on my bike.” Most of the car drivers were considerate and gave us as much room as they could. Riding uphill in a low gear and moving slowly can make it difficult to keep your bike straight and not swerve back and forth.

The last 4 miles were steep switchbacks, but the pine forest mountainside was beautiful. We rode what we could, but we were just going to slow for safety and began to walk. There was one driver, from the oncoming direction driving down the hill and he must have been having a bad day and yelled at every bicycle rider coming up the hill to let all of us know that he felt we should get off his road, in colorful language. In hindsight I wish I would have just smiled or didn’t acknowledge him, but I gestured back to him to let him know he should find a new road.

Kim was feeling the altitude and the legs just weren’t doing it for her today. As we neared the summit she had a moment, but kept moving forward. In those instances, I tend to revert to, let’s get through it as quick as possible versus slow down and prolong the agony.

After a few more non-ridable switchbacks we reached the top of Hoosier Pass, elevation 11,539 feet, at 1:15pm. It’s a huge milestone of the adventure, but there’s still a lot of game left to play. There were a ton of cars in the gravel parking lot, so we snapped a picture to commemorate the moment and got on our bikes for the 11-mile downhill into Fairplay, CO, elevation 9,954 feet.

We checked into the Riverside Inn at 2pm. The hotel manager put us on the first floor due to being on bikes. We dropped off our gear and walked back to the grocery store for a roasted chicken, pickles, cottage cheese, a small deli noodle salad, chips, salsa, Kombucha, Gatorade, M&M’s and a grapefruit. Upon our return to the hotel, it was open season on everything we bought at the grocery store. Kim is taking a nap for a bit and then we’ll get to figuring out the plan for tomorrow as we look forward to climbing back out of the mountains. The next big milestone will be reaching the halfway point of the TransAmerica Trail in Eads, CO, sometime next week