Merry Christmas!

Per tradition, here is my annual Christmas Card. Merry Christmas to all of you out there!

There is no situation that can't be made worse by a bad decision.

This last Saturday I went out for my weekly "Long" bike ride. I've been upping my game on the endurance end for a while now, hopefully preparing for riding a loaded gravel bike (my new Salsa Cutthroat) on the Tour de Los Padres ride in late March next year. It's around 280 miles with over 25,000' of climbing. This is almost all on dirt, with no stores or such to replenish food if I mess up and overestimate how hard it will be and how far I can average every day. I HOPE to do it in 5 days. I've been talking about this ride for well over a decade now (WOW!) I figure it's time to put-up or shut-up, and just do it. So being as I am totally unable how to figure out how to put in simple blank lines (since the Blogger re-do a while ago), I have inserted pictures to break up what otherwise would be an enormous paragraph. So, the following picture is Big Pine Rd on the way to Big Pine Mt.

So, I clicked-in (to the pedals) just a bit after 8am into a clear and pretty chilly morning (it was 42 at my car, and about a mile into the still-shaded-canyon my Garmin showed 32.5 deg). Daytime highs were forecast for mid-60's to around 70, which is PERFECT! I've ridden this part of the Sierra Madre Ridge many tims over the years, it's one of my favorite pieces of the TdLP: Santa Barbara Cyn to Sierra Madre Ridge/Big Pine Rd, then left on Big Pine Rd heading towards Big Pine Mountain. A good portion of this ride borders 1 and sometimes 2 wilderness areas (not long after I make the SMR and turn onto Big Pine Rd, the Dick Smith Wilderness is on my left, and about 5 miles past that the San Rafael Wilderness now borders the dirt road on the right...wilderness on both sides but the road is neither (can't take Mt bikes into Wilderness areas, nor motor vehicles of any type). It's a really beautiful area, SO very picturesque. The following picture is looking out into the Dick Smith wilderness on the way to Big Pine.

Anyway, I was nearing the top of Big Pine Mt (with just a bit over 4000' of climbing already in the bank and just about 19 miles from my car) when disaster struck. The rear derailleur was torn off the bike by a 5 cent piece of plastic when I shifted from 2nd gear to 1st. It happened in the blink of an eye (and this is my 'new' bike, which is just a few months old). But as the title of this post says, there is no situation can't be made worse by a bad decision. I'm 19 miles from my car, the time is around noon, I haven't seen another soul, I'm riding alone, and now I have a broken bike. Not exactly a great situation, but at least I'm not hurt or anything. In the following picture I'm getting close to Chokecherry Spring, evidenced by the trail becoming canopied for a few miles in this area.

Note: the cause of the derailleur rip-off I determined was the black plastic strip on the front derailleur that pushes the chain onto the big ring. Somehow it caught on the chain during the gear-shift, and amazingly it lodged into a chain link which then yanked it the rest of the way out of the front-derailleur on the way by, making it down and around the front small ring just fine, but it DID NOT make it thru the lower rear derailleur pulley, which then tried to follow the chain up and around the 1st gear cog, ripping it right off the bike. So...the 1st bad decision (there were a few it turns out) was to use my chain-break too and make a Single Speed drivetrain. I broke the chain, took off the ruined derailleur, then broke-out more chain so it now wrapped around the front small ring and 2nd gear on the back. There was a small amount of chain-sag on the bottom (where the chain goes front to rear, all the tension is on top which turns the wheel). I truly thought I was in like Flynn and could now pedal up the climbs on my way back, and coast on the downhills...yep...I'm da MAN! And in this picture (below) I'm at Chokecherry Spring. It flows out of the side of the hill, and someone has piped some of it thru a white PVC pipe into a trough that is always chock-full of fresh water.

It SEEMED like such a good idea at the time. But No. MAYBE on a hard mounted bike-trainer sitting side your house that would work, but it turns out not to be the case out in the real world. Without a chain-tensioner keeping tension on that sag on the bottom, there's NO WAY the chain will stay on the cog I put it on (2nd gear) even tho you'd think it would. I coasted down the hill I was climbing when my nice ride was ruined, and then started pedaling up the 1st climb of my return trip. Not too far up the chain suddenly dropped down to lower gears (3rd/4th and beyond). Much like the initial disaster, it happens FAST. But that wasn't really a problem, I'd simply stop and put it back to 2nd and start climbing again. This happened many times in maybe the first mile or so of climbing (so now I'm around 16 miles from my car). All good things must come to an end, and so karma kicks me in the head AGAIN as the chain (the sagging bottom swinging around as I'm climbing the bumpy rocky dirt road) catches a tooth and it jumps to 1st gear real quick and in a hurry (1st is the largest cog, with each successive cog being smaller in size down to the 11 tooth cog). This is BAD BAD BAD (worse than the derailleur being ripped off). You see, it didn't actually 'jump' up to 1st, it GRINDS up onto 1st, giving me now a SUPER TIGHT CHAIN all of a sudden. And there is no way I can un-do that. With the enormous 15mm thru- axles this bike is equipped with, there's flipping the skewer of old and having the wheel plop out of the dropouts which would let me get the chain off of 1st. The thru-axles mean there are no dropouts. Thru axles are like a giant bolt going thru the hub. And I can't unscrew the thru-axle without damaging the axle/frame...it's so tight I can't even budge it. NOW I'm really in a bind. In the following picture I've rounded a corner and there is a spin-off trail, you can see it winding thru the brush towards that little ridge headed towards that distant peak on the upper right of the pic. That's all wilderness.

What to do, what to do. So...I THOUGHT I could still make it as the pedals still turned but very hard (with terrible noise). I figured that with minimal pedaling (only on the climbs) I would still be fine, and sooner or later the chain would give it up and just break, and I'd be right where I was at mile 19, only closer to my car. Well, that didn't happen. What DID happen is that 3 of the 4 aluminum bolts holding the small-ring to the big-ring suddenly ripped out of their holes, so now the small ring (with the now not tight chain still going around it) is held on very loosley with 1 of 4 bolts (and that one is loose, likely damaged too). So NOW I have no choice...I'm walking the climbs like I should have been from the very start, only instead of just a broken rear derailleur I've now got a ruined ring set too. The following pic is a panarama of the same shot above, just includes my road continuing towards Big Pine Mt.

So by now maybe (or maybe not) you are wondering about my 2nd bad decision. At this point I was pretty sure I was going to be out here a while..I can only hike at about 3 mph, and I'm still about 16 miles from the car. So I went ahead and pushed a button on my SPOT (Satellite POsition Tracker) unit, which then sends a pre-made email and text message to Jeannie and Greg (my big brother) that "something happened but I'm ok, and I'm going to be late, don't call anybody". At least I THOUGHT that was the message it was sending. Not on this day. You see, I pushed the wrong button and sent a slightly different message (one that I don't even remember making...this was all done on my SPOT web-page maybe around 10 years ago), that "something happened but I'm ok, but could use some help". And on top of that slightly different message, due to the nature of the particular button I pushed the SPOT unit does NOT go back into "Track" mode like I expected it to do (which is where it sends my position anywhere on the planet every 10 minutes which then updates on my public map page, which Jeannie and Greg could see and know that I'm still moving back towards my car). That would have worked just fine, even with the slightly different message. But NO...I was still getting kicked in the head by Karma (or maybe I'm kicking myself in the head?)...due to that button the SPOT continues to send that same message every 10 minutes, with NO location updates. So now they have no way to see that I'm actually moving towards my car. So as you can imagine, they are both a bit (or a lot) freaked out (SO VERY SORRY Greg and Jeannie!) At some point Jeannie finally calls the Sheriffs dept, they take all her info on me (who, where, what my car is, where it's parked, the lat/long of where my SPOT message shows) and they were about to send someone to look for me. Thankfully I had made WAY better time walking/coasting and I finally get to my car just about the time I was plannong on had nothing gone wrong. After every ride, when I get back to the car I push a different button and send the "I'm ok" message on my SPOT. In the following picture I'm headed up towards Big Pine (that is the mountain directly ahead, the trail/dirt road skirts the left side winding up the mountain). That's a nice little slide onto the road from our storm 2 weeks ago, 1st storm of the season.

So they both get the "I'm OK" message not long after she had called the Sherrif, so she calls them back and says it appears I'm back to my car (the message location shows that position too, so for the 1st time since I turned around she knows where I'm at). I think it's safe to say that Jeannie was pretty mad (to put it very very lightly). And to continue the drama, I'm way out of cell phone range, and after I load up my bike and start driving it's at least 15-20 minutes before I have any service and call home. She was NOT PLEASED. Yeah...it was a pretty hard ending to what started out as a great day. AND, I have a ripped off rear derailleur, AND likely need a new ring set up front (due to my 1st bad decision). The 2nd bad decision was sending a message that I don't even remember making, which did NOT say what I wanted it to say, and then to continue sending that message with no position updates. In this picture IK have stopped to try to repair my ripped off derailleur. Hindsight being 20-20, I sure wish I hadn't done that, and just started walking and coasting. Wasted time AND money is what it turned out to be.

Oddly enough, the derailleur-hanger didn't break when the unit was torn off the bike...so there is that. A teensy little silver lining. Microscopic even. Oh, and I'm ok...that's good too...or mabye not? MAYBE....Maybe if I had crashed, and lets-say had a broken femur (or something similar), and had actually needed a rescue, Jeannie wouldn't have been so mad (and Greg too, but he's 150 miles away so I'm not living in/with his glare and upsetness). You know it's a bad day when a broken femur would have been the better outcome. OK...just kidding there. Or not...(she was SOOOO MAD!) And my final picture is my broken bike parked at the sign to the 'other' wilderness on the other side of the road. Pretty cool...30' or so behind me is the Dick Smith Wilderness, and behind my bike is the San Rafael Wilderness. LOVE IT! Anyway, that's my story from last Saturday. I'm still sucking up and doing my best to be the loving husband who screwed up...seems to be working. But I also realize that there will likely be no statue of limitations on this one...it might very well come back to haunt me over and over again in the coming years. Wish me luck!

Denver

So last week I was up in Denver for work. I was working at the Littleton Space Systems campus, which is south-west Denver. I've never been there before so jumped at the chance to spend a week there NOT in the middle of winter. Flew in early Monday, checked into the hotel, and was off like a shot for a hike. Did a measly 8 mile out and bike in the Mount Falcon Park (pretty much east Denver). The trail took me to the Walker Castle ruins. Never heard of that before? Me neither! Luckily for you, I have PICTURES (of course). LOTS and LOTS of pictures! (note that I put the explanation of each picture below it's picture. For whatever reason, since the Blogger site was re-done a while back making it infinently harder for me to add pictures and then go back and write what each is about, I also lost the ability to put in blank lines...as in to double-space below each bit about the picture above it, giving seperation, or to even seperate a huge paragraph into smaller paragraphs...now it's all just one huge paragraph unless I seperate it with a picture).

So this first shot is the Open Space sign with the map of the area. I'd never been down here before so thought it worthy (in case my phone "AllTrails" app failed me and I need to see a map to find my way back, figured I could zoom in on this picture if I really was stuck).

Self explanatory...the name of the park.

The view looking back from a ways up the trail. Nearly in the middle of the shot is the trailhead...a small square area of parked cars.

Not a lot of excitement on the way up to take pictures of...it was right at 4 miles to this sign, the Walker castle/house ruins.

The sign that explains everything...hope you can read it.

The south side of the ruins.

More of a south view.

Looking east from across the greatroom.

Working aorund the east side, now looking west. Two floors of fireplaces.

Looking west (using the wall to shield the sun).

Now on the north side looking south back across the greatroom which is further inside (the fenced area). That's all the pictures I'll post of the ruins...was that too much? My thoughts...can you imagien building this in 1905 I think it was? I'm 4 miles up a hiking trail...that's a LOT of rock they used...cement, everrything had to be hauled up (don't know of any roads, maybe there is something to the west of this that I don't know about). It was a MASSIVE castle/mansion...10 bedrooms. Just wow.

This nice corner-stone is just about all that remains of an attempt to build a summer home for the President of the US. The few remaining wall portions are beyond even bothering to take pictures of. This one with the block on it is the largest piece still standing.

This shot explains what the "Presidential Summer Home" block is all about.

This shot is looking East towards Denver, a view that WOULD have been there if the Presidents summer home had ever been completed and occupied.

This shot is looking north-west. That would be the continental divide off in the distance. I'm up to about 8000' or so here, there are portions over 12,000 over there. Snow stays on some of those year-round.

Almost hiked out, this is a view to the north of some of the red standstone formations that are all over the eastern side of the Rockies. Much like this is down around Colorado Springs (about 75 miles south of here). This is the last shot of my Monday hike. So my next (and last) hike was on Thursday. We finished all our work on Wednesday, Thurs was a contingency-day which we didn't need. What to do...change flights and go home a day early? Uhm...no. Stay and fly home as planned, and have a nice all-day hike on Thursday...that's what the Dr. ordered (the trip was planned from the very beginning for the entire week...why tempt fate? Maybe something horrible would have happened had we left a day early). SO this next hike was very close the Campus I was working at, it was just a few miles further down the road this trailhead was at in fact. The trail(s) were called "Two Brands" and "The Blackbear Trail". Two Brands takes me along the base of a short range of hills, then The Blackbear Trail takes it from there and crosses that hill/range, then another hill/range, and finally goes up into the mountains to the top of Plymouth Mt which is my turnaround point, 8 miles up/8 miles back.

This first pic is the trailhead map showing where the start is (red blog in upper right corner), the Two Brands trail curves around and runs down the map and goes on past The Blackbear Trail, which gues to the left of the map.

This is part of the trail switchbacking up the face of this short range. As I hike I'm always looking at the trail with an eye towards riding it on my mt bike (or gravel bike now that I have a good one). Oh...don't think I've mentioned that yet...about a month or so ago I bought a new Salsa Cutthroat, SUPER ULTRA MEGA Gravel bike. This bike has literally been designed from the ground up to do the Tour Divide race (follows the Continental Divide from Canada to Mexico, 2800 miles, over 150,000' of climbing). I've been fascinated with this race for years, following the SPOT tracks every year for a long time now. Well, I HOPE to pony-up at the start-line the year I retire. The race starts the first Friday in June every year (except last year). This year they had to cut out over 200 miles as the Canadian Border was still closed due to Covid...typically it starts up in Banff Alberta. So this year it started at the border, and was just under 2500 miles. Anyway, I truly hope to be there (wherever 'there' is) the First Friday of June, 2023. We shall see soon enough..it's coming FAST!

Another view of the east side, boy is this good mt biking! (a few bikes have already gone by me as I hike).

Here I've crossed over the top and am hiking generally east, tho this shot is facing mostly south. Off in the distance is the backside of the Space Systems campus that I worked at (the entrance is on the south side of the campus...most of the buildings aren't visible from this view).

Further down the little range, and also further south, you can see the back of the campus a bit better in this shot.

So here I'm all the way down and looking back at the small range I crossed over, this is a pan-shot so distorts it. You an see the trail I came down slanting down and to the left.

Here I've gone up/over the 2nd little range, and am looking northwest, There appears to be some kind of rather expensive housing area down here. HUGE plots of land, very unlike us middle-class people sharing fence-lines in tiny 1/8th or so acre lots. These people have MONEY. LOTS OF MONEY. (just my guess, you'll see a house or 2 a bit closer in a bit).

So this particular little range is a lot more rock than the other one. In fact this portion here is pretty much solid rock, with a rather narrow trail working it's way north and down. Tho this bit here is actually a bit uphill. So picture doing THIS on a bike! (there are bike-tracks all over this trail btw). I'd definetly be walking this part cuz I'M a HUGE chicken of scary stuff.

The rocky ledge-trail continues. I'd still be walking my bike. Wierdly, I'm not at all afraid on foot...but on a bike I'd better have been wearing the brown shorts is all I can say.

And even more, some even narrower. I should add that the fall to your death on the left isn't like 1000' or anything, just 50 or so. But I'm thinking that would still do it. It would certainly leave a mark!

So I"m off the scary rock part, heading towards the money. This first place, all I could think of is "lottery win house".

Here I'm looking south again at the back of the Campus. Some cool sandstone formations, very cool.

Here I'm looking back east at the range I just crossed over, and some of the sandstone formations in the little valley. Now the sun is better and you can see the red sandstone. And just to the right and above the left formation you can make out the rocky ledge-trail I came across.

So the trail winds near this fenceline. Seems Lockheed Martin owns all that land on the other side of the fence. They used to build Titan rockets here (Titan II's and III's and IV's). The II's were actually used as the booster for ICBM's back in the day. Then after newer rockets were made for the nukes, they found the II's were good for launching satellites with. Then by adding solid rocket motors the III's and IV's) they found the same rocket core could launch heavier stuff. They launched the II's till just after the year 2000 (I saw the last II go off of the pad I was soon to be working at on Vandenberg in 2003 the day I hired on). The III's were fraught with problems (like they would blow up along with the pad and whatever spacecraft they were carrying). SO with a bunch of improvements they became the Titan IV, and launched MANY MANY of our nations most important spacecraft for many years. I worked on the Titan IV pad for 3 years and helped with the VERY LAST Titan IV launch ever, that went to space in September 2005.

So now the trail winds by some of the Lottery Win houses. The fenceline is just off to my left.

Here I'm looking back east where I came from, past a few nice houses, the 2nd range I crossed, and beyond that the 1st range I crossed. The house in the foreground would be the one I would choose as our "Lottery Win" house. I can't guess how many acres of fenced in horse-pen-land, but on the left you can see a barn/horse-area that is probably good for maybe 10 to 20 horses (my guess). It's a pretty amazing property!

So HERE you can see the fenceline keeping us rif-raf hikers out of the expensive homes area on the left, and on the right the LM owned land fenceline...they are squeezing the trail into a rather narrow little corridor as it heads to the mountains to the west.

Now I"m looking north-west as the trail-corridor heads past the last house and into the hills. There are LOTS of bike tracks on this trail btw.

Looking back down the corridor, as I approach the last house on my left.

Here I've switchbacked up the first mountain and looking back where I came from...you can see the two fences. The pic is looking east, and you can see the two little ranges I've crossed to get here. The trail winds around that red-blob in the middle (that's all on LM owned land).

A little further up, zoomed in to look at the rich peoples houses and the two ranges I crossed to get here (the very first was much taller than the 2nd one). And that's downtown Denver way off in the distance, looking like it's sitting on top of the bluff just to the left of the middle of the pic.

Here I'm heading up into the mountains, I believe the one in the bright sun is where I'm headed (you can sort-of see a trail slanting across near it's top). But to get there I have a ways to go on this side, then cross down and over to that mountain and switchback up it.

Now I'm getting near the summit of this mountain, this is one of the swithbacks...it's a great trail for bikes I can tell you! Wish I was on mine!

Here I'm at my turn-around point. I gather there is a road of some sort off to my left, the trail heads that way. I'm pretty sure this peak is called "Plymouth Mountain". I'm now 8 miles from my car.

Heading back down, in this shot you can see over both ranges I crossed, and even the man-made lake I drove near to get to the trail-head. I believe I'm still about 3 miles from those expensive houses, you can sort of see that area just past the green of the mountain trees.

Here I'm looking mostly south at the LM campus, just a different perspective of it. That campus is HUGE!

A very similar shot to one I took on the way up as I approach "the narrows" of the trail. Here you can see the roof of the house furthest into the mountain, likely the most expensive (it seemed absolutly HUGE walking alongside the fence, private paved road, enormous tract of land). Must be nice.

Here's a closer view of the house I'd like to have if we hit a huge lottery win...the one with the huge pastures and barn. Wonder what a place like this goes for, with all the land in a rather selective neighborhood...nearest neighbors I'd say at least a quarter mile away.

Heading back up and across the rocky 2nd little range, just a different shot as I'm going a different direction. Wouldn't be too keen to be 'riding' this bit either.

And the last shot, as I near the top of the 2nd range. Didn't take many more after this, the few I did weren't post-worthy (the shade on the eastern side was pretty bad and nothing really came out)...it's now approaching 5pm, and I've been hiking since around 10am as I got a rather late start.