Ride the Rockies Memories - 2010

As I was building this slide show, I kept thinking it was for the 2007 Ride the Rockies, even though both commemorative jerseys clearly state 2010. I couldn't figure out why I kept trying to use 2007 on everything I did. Looking back though my training journals, I realized why I was hung up on the 2007 Frisco loop.

Lizard has relatives living in the towns where the tour traversed. We made arrangements to stay with someone in each town instead of camping. We also were looking at homes while training, and if we found one, it would have been our first non-apartment home as a married couple. Pretty big step!

Two years earlier, Lizard had been paying $400 a month in rent for a garden level bachelor's apartment. I was paying nearly double that for a tiny third floor gem with a loft, which I absolutely loved and which Lizard occupied with me after we married. To look at homes in our combined price range, before the economy tanked, that were complete junk and totally trashed for double what we were paying for my apartment eventually ended our home search for another year. Of all the homes we toured, the one we liked best was a quarter of a million dollars (which sounded like SO much money back then!!!), and it needed a new roof, new plumbing and new fixtures before it would even be lived in. Our dreams were shattered.

The 2007 Ride the Rockies route was announced the day we looked at 20 hopeless homes. It was the first time we didn't wait up for the 2 a.m. announcement. I dreamed a clockwise Steamboat Springs loop, and as my ultra slow MacIntosh computer loaded the route map at 6 a.m., Steamboat Springs slowly came into view! I had dreamed the route, just in the wrong direction! Lizard said that meant we were supposed to ride!

2007 was the last year for mail-in registrations for Ride the Rockies, and I don't have a photo of whatever I did to make my envelope super fancy. We lost another dream when we learned on March 12 we had not been drawn.

Apparently, I never let go of the 2007 route. We still haven't been able to do a comparable route, 13 years later. It's a route I will continue hoping will be repeated sometime in the future.

We didn't get drawn for the 2008 Ride the Rockies, our first electronic registration. We really liked the route that year, too. The RtR website got hacked at 2 a.m. when the 2009 route was released, but we were able to look up the Glenwood Springs in the Denver Post. There were only three mountain passes, so we decided to sit that one out.

The 2010 Ride the Rockies was the 25th anniversary of the ride, and oh, how we loved the route. We learned the secret to getting drawn electronically... make a charitable donation to Denver Post Community Foundation. We've done it every year we've applied since then, and we never missed out until this year.

This year, we couldn't have participated in Ride the Rockies due to Lizard's health issues. It would have been the 35th anniversary of the ride. Now, the very same route is being offered next year because this year's ride couldn't happen.

I am SO glad we MIGHT be able to try again next year!!!

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