{"id":8103,"date":"2014-06-01T21:39:09","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T03:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/?p=8103"},"modified":"2014-06-01T21:45:09","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T03:45:09","slug":"first-ride-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/2014\/06\/first-ride-year\/","title":{"rendered":"First Ride of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent years, I try my best to save my first bike ride of the year for June. It’s not that I’m anti-riding. It’s just that I’m even more pro skiing. Back in my mountain bike racing days when I lived on the Front Range, I would rarely go more than two days in a row without riding my bike- even through ski season. In fact, on weekends, I would head to the mountains early to go make some turns, and then head back down to ride my bike in the afternoon. Such was life as a biker, and I frankly got burnt out. Too much training and not enough “just-for-pure-enjoyment” kind of riding. Thankfully, I never let skiing get to that point. And,now, I’m merely taking every advantage that I can of the fact that I live in a ski<\/em> town. <\/p>\n

But, Saturday, I had to work in the morning. And when I was done, I just had to be outside. The electric green that was spreading throughout the valley surrounded by mountains towering in white was just far too inviting to remain closed indoors. So, I decided it was time to ride my bike.<\/p>\n

\"10297757_866317983382784_2809664130524499731_n\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The day before, I’d anticipated this, and tried my best to get my bike in working order. With two flat tubeless tires, I headed down to our local Crested Butte Sports<\/a> to get a refill of Stan’s goop. But, the seal in the rear tire didn’t work. So, I had to throw a tube in it temporarily.<\/p>\n

This is when the universe turned on me, determined to to everything to dissuade me from riding my bike. First, I had to deal with the wire bead on my tire – better for sealing without a tube, but horrible to get off the rim. I broke a tire lever doing that and had to go around searching for Frank’s set. Once I got the tire off, I began to put a tube in, only to find out that that the tube’s valve was broken. So, I tried a different tube. That tube’s valve was broken too? I know how to change a friggin’ tire! Why is this so hard?<\/em> How could it be possible that the valve was broken on TWO tubes. NO- it wasn’t. My bike pump<\/em> was actually broken. No air was coming out of the presta connection. So, I dug the hand pump out of my Camelbak and began using that to pre-fill the tube a bit, only to find that the tube I was using had a hole. So, then I threw the other tube back in and yanked the tire back over the rim- a process that involved much grimacing and occasional cursing. Meanwhile, a thunderstorm encroached and started raging full force as I finished pumping up the last bits of air in my tire. I almost gave up. The thunderstorm nearly did me in. But, as I sat there cleaning up my Stan’s goop mess and equipment strewn everywhere with a slight pout on my face, the sun began to peek out again. I sucked it up, got my gear together, and decided to try splitting out for a quick ride despite foreboding weather. But, then I did it- one last twist to the day’s luck. I locked myself out of our apartment. I had everything I needed except for my gloves. Ah, screw it. Who really needs them anyways?<\/em> <\/p>\n

The universe did what it could, but in the end, it could not deter me from my bike ride. And it was well-worth it. Here’s a few pics of my first ride of the year.
\n\"mountain<\/p>\n

We aren’t done skiing yet. But, there will certainly be much more riding to come \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent years, I try my best to save my first bike ride of the year for June. It’s not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking","category-crested-butte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8103"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8113,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8103\/revisions\/8113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}