Month: June 2005

Now that Steve is 33 days into his trip, I’m sure that many of you are wondering how far he actually has ridden. Well, thanks to manual non-GPS latitude/longitude data and a little “rithmatic”, it’s pretty easy interesting to find out. Sparing you the boring math, unless you ask nicely, here are the numbers:

At the end of the day, Steve will be 244.877 miles south and 1012.820 miles east of where he started. If you took off in a plane from the beach in Bandon, Oregon and flew directly to my Grandparents’ house in Centennial, it would be 1042.002 miles. (give or take several miles, of course). This means that although Steve has seen some wonderful sights, he’ll have done about 900 miles of extra work so far.

So that’s all fine and dandy, but how far away from the end is he?

Well, if he sticks to the plan and ends in Virginia Beach, he needs to go 189.159 miles south and 1574.017 miles east. The oh so familiar “crow route” would be somewhere around 1585.342 miles.

See, at first you might have disagreed– “there’s not really many of us that want to know this“– but now that you know, wasn’t it fun? 🙂

No…not Neverland, but Nederland. Steph and I left Estes Park about 10:00 this morning and are enroute to Centennial. We were driving along a Colorado Scenic Byway, when I needed to use a restroom. Alas, go to the public library when none is available elsewhere! And, the temptation to send a quick posting to the website overcame me when I noticed their computer lab with free internet access!!

Just so ya’all know, Steve’s 51st birthday is tomorrow. It’ll be fun for him to celebrate his birthday with Steph and I, his parents John & Lois, sister Meri, and little niece Hailey. At this moment, Steve, Meri, and Hailey in her little Burley trailer are riding from Standley Lake to Centennial. John & Lois drove Meri and Hailey up to Standley Lake this morning and from what I understand will meet them along the way to retrieve Hailey since she’ll likely not be up for the entire ride.

So, from Nederland, have a great day! The mountains are gorgeous, the skies are blue with meandering puffy white clouds casting their shadows below. The streams are running rapidly with late snow melt from the upper elevations. Sunny, upper 60s, low humidity….can’t get better than this. We’ll keep praying for rain for here and the midwest though as we know it’s been awfully dry. The threat of wildfires is high in this region and back in the midwest we’re suffering from drought conditions. ‘Til later…..Diane

Steve made it WAY past Boulder today, and not really by his own choice. He finished at Standley Lake after an 86.9 mile ride from Estes Park. Not exactly the day one looks for after finishing Trail Ridge Road, but at least tomorrow’s ride into Denver should be a little easier.

He tried to find a place in Boulder and several hotels near there, but every place was booked for about 30 miles due to a softball tournament. When I talked to him, we both couldn’t understand why that many people would swarm to Boulder for a softball tournament, so I told him I’d try to find something.

Sure enough, Wednesday through Sunday is the 2005 Louisville Slugger Independence Day Softball Tournament. This tournament, besides the long name, brings hundreds of college softball coaches from around the country to scout for talent.

Hmm, seems to me that they’re in the right place at the wrong time, because…..

…..June in Colorado is Bike Month, not softball. I know, I know…perfect coincidence, but I’ll take it.

In other not-related to biking news, Shingo Tsubol, a journalist from Tokyo, may not have gotten the bike month message either, but that’s ok because he’s working on amazing feat of his own. (scroll down after the link to see the article). I told Steve to watch out for a long distance walker/hitchhiker, as they appear to be in the same area.

Ok, last and of course least, Steve confirmed (without my instigation strangely enough), that cyclists in Boulder seem to be slightly “full of themselves“. From talking with a friend in Ft. Collins, this seems to be common for Boulder, which is really unfortunate. Only about 1 in 10 cyclists that he met riding in the area would return his wave, although there were plenty of riders around, and cyclists going faster than Steve buzzed by him with no warning or acknowledgment.

Oh well, not everyone lives in reality yet.