A RIDE with a MISSION! June 27, 2020

We headed out for a another "ride around town" run but wanted to end up heading mostly south so of course we started by heading NORTH, LOL! We headed up the Pikes Peak Greenway to pick up the Cottonwood Creek Trail Junction, then headed up the the Vincent St. Path, which turns south and becomes Nevada Ave. This goes down a frontage road area and then a old asphalt trail on the northend of UCCS campus over to the University Shopping Center and again picking up the Greenway and head south over to Shooks Run Trail to have lunch at the Tasty Freeze Drive Inn, (established in 1955) a local 50's style drive in, alas no car hops but a great spread out for Covid-19 social distancing purposes patio area! The MISSION of this ride was two fold, 1. This was the last ride I needed to finish the "Vitural Terra Trike RIDERFEST Run", that has been held via STRAVA Terra Trike Club on the internet, you got points for each of 3 required rides by doing a photo shoot of your STRAVA Page showing the mileage and stats of your ride over a 3 month period. The chance to win a new TT or Greenspeed TRIKE!! The 2nd. was JUNE is Colorado Bike Month, we usually have a weeks worth of local area bicycling events going on but with Corona Virus outbreak the usual ending Bike To Work Day Breakfast Gathering Stations were cancelled and a program called, Bike to Biz COS #BiketoBizCOS was set up for us bike/trike riders to SUPPORT our local area (not national change) businesses! It covered the whole week and June 27 was at the end of the week so we did a local area eatery for lunch and sent in a photo to the site!

From the Tasty Freeze we headed south on Shooks Run Trail down to it's current end at Fountain Blvd. then headed up back streets over to pick up the Midland Trail and finally the Pine Street Trail back to the storage area and tuck away the trikes! 21 miles RT, HOT day, 90F+, partly cloudy no rain at all YEA. 

Doing an errand run!

After the "Tour Test" last week we've been kinda "kick'in back" haven't gotten back on the trikes but on Weds. we needed to run a errand or two and the weather was hot and dry so we decided to use the trikes instead of the truck! We walked over to the storage unit, (it SUCKS not to a house with attached garage), prepped the trikes and headed north on Fillmore St. via the Sidewalk as the traffic is crazy and INSANE on Fillmore St.!!! Lucky for us the sidewalk is good and rarely used by foot traffic so we had clear sailing up to the 1st. stop at T-mobile to pay our phone/internet bill!! Then as we headed up to Old Templeton Gap Rd. we only had to deal with 1 ped. and lucky for us we caught up to him and passed him in a parking lot of a tire place!

We then got to Templeton Gap Rd. and went over the Nancy Lewis Park to have our brown bag lunch, it was pretty full so we took the table in the SUN at the edge of the park, lot's of little unmasked kids running wild but we were pretty secluded from the germs of the munchkin's madness at the park! ;) We ate then headed out to pick up the Rock Island Trail up to Chelton Rd. We then headed south to pick up the Bijou St. Bike Lanes back into downtown Colorado Springs and hooked up with the Shooks Run Trail heading north. Pulled into The Good Neighbors Meeting House for the afternoon ICED tea and banana afternoon snack! :) We then headed to the Pikes Peak Greenway but headed south for a bit to the Fontenero St. Trail Head and circled back to head north on the Greenway. Turned East on Polk Dr. then North on Wood back to Fillmore and then back into the storage unit parking lot!! HOT, 90+, a bit breezy and SUNNY!!! :( 15 miles RT. for the day! :)

The Tour Test Ride

Since we decided to have low power and less costly rear wheel hub E-assist motors installed on our trikes, we've enjoyed testing it's capabilities and decided that we'd like to try "multi-day" touring again! The LAST tour we did was a weekender in 2011 we are now 9 years older and riding "trikes instead of bikes"! (see the last photo of us on our recumbent bicycles).

We are now 65 and not strong riders but do miss getting out on the road and seeing the sights! So we needed at Test Tour, we decided on riding 50 miles south of Co. Springs to Canon City and spend the night and the highway has some good hills and uphill grades to test out the loaded up E-Trikes. We made the ride in a little over 5 hours and enjoyed it!! Mid 80F's Sunny just a perfect day for a ride, the only BUMMER was the highway has now been graded with "wake up rumble strips" and some places aren't wide enough to stay off the highway and not run out of pavement!! The worse section was on the newer concrete sections into Penrose, CO. for our lunch break at the Coyote's Den, the rumble strips where now rumble PATCHES 5 ft. wide and 3 ft. long so we had to really slow down to try to avoid hitting them but some times we missed it was a PIA to say the least!

After a good lunch we finally got to CO. Hwy. 50 W. and headed into Canon City, arrived at our motel and unpacked, covered and locked up the trikes and call domino's pizza for dinner, watched movies till bed time. The next morning we stopped and had a croissant with egg and bacon and headed back to CO. Hwy. 50 heading E. this time, we found the uphill grades were LONGER and much more often on the way back and the 90F and HOT temps made the ride a bit tougher but we did ok. We found a tiny bit of shade and stopped and had a brown bag lunch, then headed up the road got into Colorado Springs about 4:30 PM. and headed to the storage unit to put away the trikes, walked the mile home, got a shower and headed out for a Mexican Dinner! :) 2 days of good riding and we LOVE how the E-assist made the ride SO much more easier! It's kinda cool to actually upshift gears while heading UP HILL!! :) The conclusion, YES, we are now capable of multi-day touring, now we just need a FUNDING source so we can afford to do more tours!! :) 

One of the many up hill grades on CO. Hwy. 115

Arrugh those damn rumble strips a very bad idea!

 

Sometimes things just don't work out!

Creek Side Trail just west of the skate board bowl in Manitou Springs, CO. (older ride photo)

LOL, we had a bit of a mess up on our last group ride, on Friday June 5th. we headed out to Goose Gossage Youth Sports Park to meet up with some fellow trikers and first we had a "seat" malfunction on the Hase tandem set up, somehow the seat bracket is BENT and it took us 30 min. to get it back into place, then the ride leader was late and then we spent 30 more minutes, getting the Hase tandem set up for different riders. We finally headed out going south on the Pikes Peak Greenway but by the time we got to the Popscycle Bridge the chain had come off the tandem 4 times so most headed back to the start, well JoLynn and I decided it was to nice a day to waste so we headed south and picked up the Pine St. Trail and headed for the Midland Trail over towards Manitou Springs. We'd been told for what seems like the 10th. time since the project upgrade to No Man's Land Intersection started 2 years ago that it's completed! Well they finally did complete the bike/ped underpass under Manitou Ave. so you don't have to risk your life trying to cross Colorado/Manitou Ave's. anymore which is GREAT but it's still not quite "finished".

The Midland Trail crosses Ridge Rd. and the concrete for the walk/trail hasn't been poured so you have to cycle-cross it up to the newly poured entry way to the underpass at the moment which is a PIA at the least. Still it's so nice to have the "connection between the Midland Trail out of  Co. Springs and the Creek side Trail in Manitou Springs actually FLOW together!! We headed into Manitou on the Creek side Trail and past the skate bowl park and to the park where the Manitou Springs swimming pool is, then over a little wooden bridge and at first we headed to a little Italian cafe but it was still only doing pick up orders and we didn't have the phone number so we settled for a sub at Subways! It was nice not to have to "brown bag" lunch for once. One day we hope Manitou Springs will finish concreting the trail along the dirt trail and all the way into the town. For now it ends on a back street which to follow then turn on "Lovers Lane", and head into down town. We headed back the same way so a RT of 21 miles, sunny and HOT 95F+! Hopefully the next ride will stay a bit more "groupish", LOL but we enjoyed the ride. Sorry no photos, my camera batteries died, rats!

Weds. June 3rd., 2020 First "Group Ride" in the current COVID-19 Virus era!

Rodger send out an e-mail asking if anyone wanted to do a "Social Spacing" and Masked Group Ride and I RSVP'ed and we meet up at the new Indian Motorcycle Dealer that use to be Zio's Italian Restaurant. We had a group of 5 riders and decided to head up the Cottonwood Creek Trail to check out the new "extension" of the trail from Research Blvd. to Powers Blvd. We had 4 tadpole trikes and a delta trike and headed up the concrete path towards Cottonwood Creek Recreation Area and Park. It's a constant uphill grade heading east and with a couple of steeper grades in places so Corrie who is a handicapped rider and on the heavier Hase Delta trike, only did about half and decided to turn around as it was a bit much for 1st. real ride of the season so Rodger went with her and that left myself, Will and Larry to head up the trail. It was a sunny, hot day with just enough breeze to be pleasant!

We rode the trail all the way to the new extensions end point, (ie: end of the concrete, it keeps going but turns into a "single track" dirt trail). We headed back to the Rec. Area/Park to a restroom and snack break. The ride back west is FUN, it's now a constant down hill grade so you get to fly! The new extension really adds some miles to the overall trail length and has enough uphill grades to be a good challenge if you ride for "fitness", (LOL, not me I ride cause I just LOVE to ride). Got back to the Pikes Peak Greenway and headed to the storage unit, managed the 1 mile walk back to the apartment before it finally clouded up and we had a 1 hr. rain. It sure felt great to ride in a group again, it's been a long time! Yes, we kept our, Proper Social Distance Spacing", wore masks and still had a great Group Ride! :) 24 miles RT, Sunny and HOT 85F+. :)