Category Archives: friends

bikes, friends, GPS, MTB, roadtrip, travel, USA

No headless chicken & Fruita riding redeems itself

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After a nice leisurely start to Saturday we headed off down the freeway to Fruita to check out the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival – but mainly because it was on the way to more riding & the sun was out.  There was a big car show on part of the main street – a lot of very shiny American classics & hot rods.  Many, many beautiful cars; in amongst all the American muscle there some nice examples of Austin Healeys & Volkswagens.  Some in the family may appreciate this picture, it had two big recliners in the back instead of a bench & also a suped-up 8 Track player.

Most of the festivities were at the other end of main street, so we checked them out briefly. I was hugely disappointed that I didn’t see someone wandering around aimlessly in a large headless-chicken suit. There were, however, some show chickens – very odd seeing chickens dressed up in little costumes! Of course, it wouldn’t be a small town around these parts without a statue welded up out of miscellaneous items.

Feeling a bit peckish, we found a park on a map & headed out there to eat our grain. We stumbled across a couple of games of little league baseball so amused ourselves briefly trying to work out what was happening – but being baseball, not much was happening.

North out of Fruita are some riding trails at the end of 18 Road & the base of the Bookcliffs (the longest range running east to west apparently in the USA). A sidenote on the road names around here. The north-south roads out in the country (mostly, you get some in town) are numbered for the number of miles from the Utah border. Hence, 18 Road – things get more interesting with the roads in between the whole miles; you end up with things like 33 1/2 Rd or 15 3/10 Rd – as if you could have a part road. Then the east-west roads are letttered from A up from some base line. So we had to take N 3/10 Rd to get to the trails. I was following a Cayenne with bikes on the top, if I had have been a bit closer I would have seen the Oregon plates & not followed. After a wrong turn & back track we were all bumping up the most corrugated road I’ve been on – it went for miles & was just awful.

On the upside, the guy in the Cayenne was actually from Boulder, CO & I had a riding buddy to show me around & take photos. I had originally planned to ride up the road from the trail head & come down on progressively harder trails (Kessel Run, Chutes & Ladders, Zippity Do Da). Miles had limited time as he & his girlfriend were off to Moab, so we did Zippity first. After cruising up the road there was a bit of climbig to get west & on to another ridge. It’s a great name for this trail as there are plenty of whoop-de-dos to swoop down & then get up the other side. It was a bit of a change riding with someone much fitter than me, but I coped & the trail wasn’t too technical. It flowed really well, there were great views & some nasty pinch climbs to keep me on my toes.

There was some gorgeous ridge riding (copped a gale on this edge) & at places one had to be pretty careful to make a turn & not go flying off.

We got back to the car to find Valerie had gone off on her own little ride & Diyora (Miles’s girlfriend) wasn’t back from her ride. So we headed up Kessel Run & found Valerie, but not Diyora. At the top we split & Miles went back to the car & I continued on Chutes & Ladders on the east side of the area. This riding was quite different, a little techy at the start & then it opened up in to big meadows. With the views & all the different shades of green, grey & purple it was beautiful.

Back at the car, exchanging details & intentions to meet again in Moab (where we’re going today!!!) & later in Bend, Oregon we said goodbyes & I headed back up the road to get a few extra miles in. The beginner level Kessel Run is great fun – not much pedalling involved, it swoops & ducks & dives & has a real flow to it. A most excellent way to end the day somewhat tired. For only just over two hours of riding I managed to get some good climbing in & some fantastic trails.

family, friends, history, roadtrip, travel, USA

Family Stories

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Another unseasonably rainy day here in Montana, a good opportunity to do some laundry & get a haircut while the car is being checked out – got to love those Check Engine lights. Apparently a Check “Check Engine Light” Light would have been redundant, as for some reason the engine is misfiring a little. No big deal, at least I hope so, & I suppose if the car had to be in the shop for a day it’s good that it happened here in Billings where we can get chores done.

I was surprised to see a oil refinery in the middle of fields beside I-90 last night, apparently Montana is one of the bigger oil producing states in the country. Also, we saw three big fuselages (I assume of 737s en route to/from Seattle) on railcars last night as we pulled in to town. That’s something I’ve never seen before.

So with the gloomy weather & uncertainty while waiting for the car verdict, I was pleased to see a very sweet post from Megan this morning. She even managed to get a nice picture of Finn & me the morning we left.

I think I’d be hassled if I didn’t also mention the amusing photo of me & her early one morning twenty-five odd years ago. But if you want to see that you’ll have to go to Megan’s page & read the entry – she takes better photos than me & writes a whole lot less wordily.

Update – after occupying ourselves in Billings all day, we got the car back.  It was just a timing issue – so with new plugs & leads the engine is firing as it should.  Also took the opportunity to patch a small hole in the exhaust & replace a CV boot – car is now much quieter.  Nice to get all this out of the way on another very rainy day.  JR’s was a great workshop, a self-proclaimed Subaru guru (that rhymes nicely) & JR did everything possible to get us back on the road that day & gave us tips as to where to stay next along the I-90.

The persistent rain continued as we travelled south-east towards Wyoming.  Pleasingly, the battle site of Little Bighorn (somewhere I never thought I’d ever go) was a short hop from the interstate.  We managed to get there just before the Visitor Center closed & had a look around before braving the wind & rain to look over the area of Custer’s Last Stand.  I think that battle sites are best viewed when the weather is so bleak – it doesn’t come close to the horrors that must have happened there, but it does turn it in to something less than a walk in the park.

I was surprised to learn that the battle was in June 1876, for some reason I expected it to be earlier than that.  The Lakota & Cheyenne managed to comprehensively win this famous battle, but lost the war.  As we continued towards our overnight stop of Sheridan, the miles & miles of beautiful rolling countryside continued – we began to understand why the local tribes fought so hard to keep their nomadic way of life, it really is a spectacular area – even if it was raining a lot.

Already, this short distance in to Wyoming everything is much more western – the main street looks fantastic, we shall have to explore it in the morning before heading to South Dakota.

around home, Canada, family, friends, roadtrip, travel

On the Road

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My last couple of days in Canmore were spent organising, packing, sorting out car things in Calgary, a short trip to Banff so Valerie could see the Banff Springs Hotel.


& spending time with friends.  I even got to go on my first bike ride with Finn in (literal) tow.  Granted, it was only along the riverside & pretty flat – but after this winter, it’s always nice to be on the bike.  For the last game of Settlers for a while I managed to dish out a good thrashing, while drinking the last of the Amarula & fittingly toasting Adrian & Carmen’s baby news.

With a great all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ meal & some amusing farewell gifts (those purple tassles are going to look great on my handlebars), goodbyes were said without any tears being shed.

So this morning, with the car packed up (there is a surprising amount of space left to fill) we hit the road & drove south.

on the Cowboy Trail.

Stopping for lunch in Turner Valley we managed to avoid this place:

I enjoyed driving further south through the foothills, it was a nice change from huge mountains or prairies.  At times it felt a bit like driving at home – rolling country, similar road surface, cloudy, a bit of livestock around & not much traffic.

We took a little detour west towards Crowsnest Pass as I was keen to check out the Frank Slide.  I had been hearing about this slide off & on in various conversations for the last year.  Early one morning in 1903, while the town of Frank was sleeping Turtle Mountain pretty much collapsed.  30 million cubic metres of limestone fell & slid down over the river & up the other side of the valley three kilometres.  Part of the town was swept away & about a hundred people were killed.  Driving through on the highway, we were staggered by the size of some of the boulders & how far they had traveled, in some places the rock is thirty metres deep!  It was all quite astonishing.

We continued south to Waterton Lakes National Park.  They’ve had an incredible amount of snow this winter & there are still two metre high drifts around parts of town.  We rolled up to the Parks information center just as it was closing & I was surprised to meet Dan closing up, I met Dan a few months ago on the avalanche course I did.  With promises to come back in the morning for tips where to go the next morning, he sent us off looking for somewhere to stay in the mostly closed-until-summer little town.

Distance driven: 409 km
Gas Price: 125.9 (Canmore)
Best meal: Alberta Beef Burger & Yam Fries

around home, Canada, family, friends, snow

Snow, a visitor & last ski

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For my last day of work at Lafarge, I got the hardest commute I’ve had yet.  When I got up on Friday morning I quite surprised to see that a foot of snow had dumped overnight.  My car looked like this:

The roads hadn’t been ploughed, so it was a slow & tricky drive in to work.  The day warmed quickly & in the afternoon most of the snow had melted off.  Friday was a nice day at work, a good lunch with the maintenance staff, a lovely card, lots of gifts & plenty of well-wishes.

My last ski at Sunshine was Saturday morning – it was nice & warm & very empty.  Unfortunately, the runs were still pretty icy by the time I left.  Still, I have good memories of my skiing improving by orders of magnitude there & I’ve forgotten just how many times I went this season – definitely got my money’s worth from the season pass.

After what can be considered a sleep-in on Sunday morning, I hiked off to Calgary (it’s been a while, thankfully) to pick-up (my aunt) Valerie from the airport.  Air Canada, true to form, had managed to put her bag on a later Vancouver-Calgary flight; hence, we waited around for another hour.  It’s really nice after a year here to have a visitor & not having to poach other people’s visitors.  Various road-trip planning discussions ensued – we still have a bit to organise.

With all the snow that’s been around, Lake Louise is staying open an extra week.  In an act of generosity/scheming-to-poach-Sunshine-passholders-for-next-winter, all North American resort season passes are good this week.  Today Valerie & I headed out to Louise with Megan, Alex & Finn at a very reasonable hour.  The sun was out in the morning & gradually melted some of the ice off the runs at the top of the hill.  We took turns minding Finn as we went up & explored a little.  We weren’t up for anything extreme, but had a most enjoyable time skiing around on various amounts of slushy snow.  It was quite different to what I’m used to, but all good fun.  Rock stars that we are, Alex & I posed for photos with Asian tourists/sightseers at the top of the gondola – we must have looked the part.  It was nice skiing somewhere different with big views out over the Bow Valley to Lake Louise & Mt Temple.

We popped over to Lake Louise so Valerie could walk on a lake for a little while.