Earache

The food, although tainted with diesel and probably toxic, tasted pretty good. We had the cheeseburgers and fries with a side of chips and salsa.... (Food pics for @Pedro )

Being Easter Sunday, most places were closed for the holiday, but we found an old bar that was open with a limited menu. Dunno about eating in a place that's using old diesel oil drums as a bar though....

Sign on the bridge said "No stopping on bridge" so we did. Fuck'em - we'll do as we please. Didn't you see the truck? This here is "Murica !

Manmade hill of gold mine tailings - freakin' huuuge...

We passed through some old gold mining sites - which were posted as no trespassing, so we didn't. Would love to go down there though.....

Tried to get some decent pics of the snowy mountains in the distance, but it was an uncharacteristically cloudy day so they don't show up very well....

Hammered down the road for a while and stopped for a pee break (as you do). Ice fishermen were loving the warmer weather. I know the ice is really thick, but I still wouldn't walk out there on it...even with my svelte, lithe and somewhat waif-like profile....

Ok, technically the 2nd ride, but this was the first one that actually went anywhere. A little 375 mile jaunt with my bud Phil on his GS. We met up at a fuel station in southern Colorado as Phil lives about 75 miles away from me. Saw @Tym 's truck there. "Murica dammit".

Statewide Mask mandate has been lifted for our county and all is pretty much back to normal for us. More urban parts of the State still have some restrictions, but none out here in the boonies.

Shit, I've been there so it has to be relatively famous.

Shoveling snow and chipping away at the ice underneath in an effort to clear the driveway. Imagine the fun!

It's getting out of our county that's the problem - side roads are still snow packed after getting about 10" on Monday. BUT - it's warm today and expected to be decent the next couple of days, so we might be able to get out on bikes. But we still can't really plan on anything. So if we can get out, we might do a 2-3 day ride or something. But it'll be very last minute.

You successfully used tools? I thought I felt the Earth shake a bit....

Well, it is fun, so there's that....

It kinda does - same type of sandy soil anyway.

Yeah, but we have less than zero traffic out here...

Ya also gotta remember that the distances in the USA are a bit greater than what you're used to. 350 miles won't get me outta the state of Colorado. Many times the next town that has fuel might be 200+ miles away so you pretty much have to do longer distances. It's different but it is fun.

Every time I post a ride report or trip plans here, someone says the same thing; "that's too many miles, too long of a day, etc". No training or anything involved, it's just the way that we travel. We are used to it. Our trips are for riding, not eating, stopping, etc. Not everyone's cup of tea, I understand. Check out last summer's trip: 4,000+ miles in 8 days. Loads of fun!

Usually around 11-12 hours per day. I like to try to leave each day around 6 AM and stop by 6 PM. Sometimes goes longer than that but not by design; we just bite off more miles than we can chew sometimes.

Welp, we expected that this might happen..... Canceling our trip in April due to too much snow on the ground and more expected soon. Might do a smaller trip a little later...like late May?.

This place is fantastic for riding in the three months of riding weather that we have, rest of the year, not so much. Come over anytime, we love to show people around.

"The Shining" was partially written and inspired by Stephen King's stay at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado - just up the road from my house a bit. He stayed there through one of our snow storms and got the idea for the book. See: https://www.stanleyhotel.com/ . They have ghost tours and stuff like that there. I've posted some pics of the Stanley in some of my ride reports. From Wikipedia: In 1974, during their brief residency in Boulder, Colorado, horror writer Stephen King and his wife Tabitha spent one night at the Stanley Hotel.[9] The visit is known entirely through interviews given by King in which he presents differing narratives of the experience. At the time of his visit, King was writing a book with the working title Darkshine set in an amusement park, but was not satisfied with the setting. According to George Beahm's Stephen King Companion, "on the advisement of locals who suggested a resort hotel located in Estes Park, an hour's drive away to the north, Stephen and Tabitha King found themselves checking in at the Stanley Hotel just as its other guests were checking out, because the hotel was shutting down for the winter season. After checking in and after Tabitha went to bed, King roamed the halls and went down to the hotel bar, where drinks were served by a bartender named Grady. As he returned to his room, numbered 217, his imagination was fired up by the hotel's remote location, its grand size, and its eerie desolation. And when King went into the bathroom and pulled back the pink curtain for the tub, which had claw feet, he thought, 'What if somebody died here? At that moment, I knew I had a book.'"[10] In a 1977 interview by the Literary Guild, King recounted "While we were living [in Boulder] we heard about this terrific old mountain resort hotel and decided to give it a try. But when we arrived, they were just getting ready to close for the season, and we found ourselves the only guests in the place—with all those long, empty corridors." King and his wife were served dinner in an empty dining room accompanied by canned orchestral music: "Except for our table all the chairs were up on the tables. So the music is echoing down the hall, and, I mean, it was like God had put me there to hear that and see those things. And by the time I went to bed that night, I had the whole book [The Shining] in my mind."[11] In another retelling, King said "I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire-hose. I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in a chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of The Shining firmly set in my mind."[12] The Shining was published in 1977 and became the third great success of King's career after Carrie and 'Salem's Lot. The primary setting is an isolated Colorado resort named the Overlook Hotel which closes for the winter. In the front matter of the book, King tactfully states "Some of the most beautiful resort hotels in the world are located in Colorado, but the hotel in these pages is based on none of them. The Overlook and the people associated with it exist wholly in the author's imagination."[13]

I'd vote for that. But someone would slip, get hurt and then sue the school. So we shovel it.

It'll just be a memory in another month or so. Then off on some good bike trips with loads of biking photos.

It's looks like a bbq grill in this pic. I expected to see some steaks in it.