September 19 & 20, 2022- As the song says, SUMMER is "Slip, Sliding Away"!! :(

 The last few weeks have been hot here in So. CO. but Weds. and Thursday, (today) it's gray, chilly, breezy with either drizzle or rain! :( Our last rides were as usual, a combo of recreation and transportation in nature. On Monday the 19th., we headed out and just did a multi-trail ride around the area. On Tuesday the 20th., We did our Food ride and then after putting the cold goods in the fridge, we headed out to our usual brown bag lunch spot at the North Nevada Ave. Panera Bread for unsweetened iced tea to go with the PBJ's, LOL! ;) Ok, I failed, I wimped out, yes, I bought a brownie, gulity as charged! ;) Jo even ate a 1/4 of it and we scraped off all the powdered sugar on 1/2 of the top. It, of course, was a bit on the "over sweet" side but it was good!! :) Sometimes you just have to give into the crave as with Jo being a Type II diabetic, we don't normally eat any premade sweets. MODERATION is the best we can do, after all, we are HUMAN!! It sucks sometimes to see others gouging on multi-sweets and we can't get Panera Bread to make ANYTHING that's sugar FREE! :( Yes, we've begged nicely to their corporate offices, and they have turned a deaf ear to us! RATS.

Ok, LOL, we are back on the wagon, I guess we need a diabetics version of AA, yes, I'm JoLynn Ondo and I am a diabetic! Ok, at least at my (BJ) last test Iam, (Thank GOD), not a diabetic but I "follow" Jo's diabetic food plan (diet is a NO NO word in our house!!) so I have the same cravings, etc. SUGAR is addictive, we use Stevia Natural sugar free sweetener, but I will admit it's NOT the same level of intenseness that SUGAR has on your body!!! Still, it's way better than ANY of the other artificial sweeteners we've tried, as Stevia at least doesn't have the "nasty after taste" the rest of the sweeteners do, JMHO.!!  

Back to the rides, sorry about the rave! The ride on the 20th. the sun was intense, but you could still feel the "very slight chill" of the breeze letting you know that "FALL" is coming in fast! The last gasp of summer, letting you know how much we are going to miss the HEAT! :( Still an awesome day for a ride of any kind, even if it starts out as an errand! 17 miles of smiles, finally getting back to the apartment by late afternoon, trikes and trailer put away and awaiting the "cold front" for Wednesday and Thursday. At least Friday and the Weekend look good but we have "evening time" events so no long rides, RATS! 

  

September 2022-Back to normal with a lot of "transportation rides"

 Well since our ride to try out Glamping, it's been back to normal, just area rec. rides with a lot of "transportation" type rides. We did a Food Ride on Weds. then Thursday, we had lots of errands to ride too, CU, Post Office, Drug Store, T-Mobile store (phone and internet bill), then we wanted to head up the Rock Island Trail up to Constitution Ave. and go to Panera Bread for lunch. I need to get to a Goodwill Retail Store and buy some semi-dress clothes as we we invited to the Widefield High School Class of 1972 50th. Reunion on the 25th. I am retired so I never needed "dress clothes", LOL!  Well, our plans were foiled by the big, thick, black CLOUDS coming over Pikes Peak and the foothills at a very quick pace!! We decided to call it a day and managed to get back to the apartment before the storms! ;) Today is Friday Sept. 16 and we plan on heading out and giving it another try today!! :) The ride will be straight north on the Rock Island Trail then heading over to Constitution Ave. and into the 1st. and Main Center complex to hopefully "find" a new Panera Bread for lunch, then back across Constitution Ave. down the road to the Goodwill Retail Center! The weather is supposed to be better today but with So. Colorado it's always "bi-polar" weather, LOL! They say it will start a bit of a warming trend, which will be nice, we prefer the HEAT to the COLD anyday! Still you can feel Fall is in the air, the mountains have started their yearly seasonal color change of the Aspens, so sad, summer takes so long to get here then goes by so fast! :( Hope you getting great weather and lot's of riding in! BJ and Jo :)

September 6 & 7 2022-We took a overnight ride to do our first "Glamping Campout" in Monument, CO.

 As usual our out of State vacation plans died off due to lack of FUNDS! :( We decided we'd do a overnight "staycation" and ride the New Santa Fe Trail up to Monument, CO. They don't have any motels in Monument, but we found a "Glamping Campground", which was set up for Luxury Camping, fully equipped wall tents, electric fireplace, personal portable hot tub and Queen size bed, LOL, our level of "roughing it"! ;) We've rode the New Santa Fe Trail up to Ice Lake on the USAF Academy a few times over the years but never rode it all the way to Monument. It's all dirt/gravel with some rocks and a few short but steep, slick uphill inclines. 

The ride up to Ice Lake went like normal, I had to help Jo get over a couple of the hills but no big deal. From Ice Lake up to the North "trail gate" was a LOT tougher, the inclines were steeper and slicker and sometimes the erosion logs (to slow down rainwater on the downhill) stuck up higher and made it hard to get over! This is supposed to be a graded dirt trail, but some bozo laid down piles of small, sharp black rocks which made a very bumpy ride with our non-suspension trikes!! :( Between the USAF Academy North Trail Gate and all the way to Monument we had to deal with more of the sharp black rocks, laided across the trail and lots of 2 to 3 in. deep SAND, which would just stop us dead in our tracks even on the flat parts of the trail, it was miserable, then add the 90+ F heat and very little shade made it a real PITA!! We made it to the Baptist Rd. Trailhead it had a restroom and shade on one side of the building, so we ate our brown bag lunch and took a break! :) Then fought our way into the town of Monument. Finally on pavement, we made our way over several more hills to the "Glamping Campground". It was quite and not quite a fancy as the promo photos but very comfortable, we unpacked, everything was there, sweet! We were too tried to ride back to town for dinner so we had a pizza delivered, LOL, ;) We ate dinner using the rocking chairs on the tents deck, this tent has full electric so we had lights and just vege'd out watching the stars come out and the moon rise, then headed for bed! Glamping is cool, here's a link to the Glamping Campground: Monument Glamping 

Here are two links to video's covering part 1 and 2 of our ride up to Monument Glamping Campground on the New Santa Fe Trail: 

On Sept. 7th. we headed back to Co. Springs but decided to use Hwy. 105 and Hwy 83 to Powers Blvd, then south on Woodman Ave. to pick up the Cottonwood Creek Trail back to home. Well Hwy. 105 was terrible, lot's of morning traffic and NO shoulders on 90% of it so we had lot's of "HATE" from car drivers, they need to learn to share the road as it's the only way to get to Co. Springs if you don't want to use the trail!!! :( Hwy. 83 was better at least it had a "just wide enough shoulder in most places! At first Powers Blvd. was great with wide shoulders although the traffic was insane even on a weekday! Then we hit several construction zones which took away the shoulder so more "HATE" came our way. Same on Woodman Ave but they finally had a wide sidewalk that got us to the trail, YEA!! 90+ F again. LOL, here's a sign you want to see after hours of riding up steep hills! 

Cottonwood Creek Trail over to the Pikes Peak Greenway and back to apartment!