I'm a chronic helmet loser and this seems like a two-blog post kind of night.

Hello friends! I have lots of pictures for you guys today. I left Ken's house in Nederland at around 10:30 today. Ken, who's quite the athlete, offered to ride out to Ward with me for his first exercise on his road bike all year. We set out and had a particularly strenuous climb up. The weight of my gear kept my pace a lot slower than his (or maybe he's just a faster rider, but you'll never catch me admitting that), but we had a great time. His company made the ride a lot more bearable. Thanks, Ken!



You're famous, Ken!


In Ward, I met a lovely group of cyclists inculding a great man named Nate who saved me from going a long way off of my route. It turns out that Nate lives in Estes Park, which was my destination goal for the day. After we chatted for a while, Nate offered to let me stay in his home for the night. That took the gigantic burden of finding somewhere to sleep for the night off of my shoulders and made the ride to Estes Park a little bit easier.





Regardless, the ride from Ward to Estes Park kicked my butt. There were constant elevation changes from 7,500 feet all the way up to 9,000 feet. Here are some pictures from today:








The crowning achievement of my life: riding up this hill.



I hope you enjoyed my bike poetically lounging in some of the shots. I don't have anyone riding with me so it makes me feel like I have a friend if I have to situate it in pictures :(. Today's ride was absolutely beautiful. You miss out on the thousands of feet I climbed to get shots like this though, so you better appreciate them!

In reference to the title of this post, I've lost my helmet three separate times now. Once while leaving Bob's house; he yelled at me from the down the street and I went back to get it. Once while I was walking my bike up Coal Creek Canyon Road; I had clipped it onto my bike and it must have fallen off at some point because a trucker stopped to tell me that he saw it on the side of the road a mile back. Finally, I lost it for good last night. At some point between meeting Ken in the park in Nederland and leaving with him, it just flew away from me. Thankfully, Ken had an extra helmet that he gave me for the rest of my ride. I'll remind you that it's only day 3 so I'm going to try to keep better track of this one.

Tomorrow I have the most intense climb of my journey: from my current elevation at 7,500 feet in Estes Park to 12,000+ feet on Trail Ride Road through Rocky Mountain National Park. So far, the altitude adjustment has been fine, but I expect that to change tomorrow. It's a 26 mile climb to the top, where snow banks line the road and it gets to around 40 degrees during the day. I'm hoping to make it to a youth hostel in Grand Lake that Nate and his wife Karen told me about at dinner earlier tonight, but we'll see how the climb treats me. I don't expect to have much, if any, service in Rocky Mountain National Park so there may not be any posts for the next day or two. Just assume that I froze to death (not serious, Mom and Dad).

I'm going to type up my next post now and get that one out too. I hope you enjoyed the pictures!