Section 4 Silverthorne, CO to Platoro, CO - D19

06/28 Day 19 Colorado  Kremmling. Silverthorne, Frisco, Breckenridge (67 miles)

We continued on with fast highway, into Silverthorne.  Along the way we met an Austin Texas to Colorado transplant named Pat.  Pat very kindly agreed to go back to Ute Pass and give a look for Sharetha.  He called me later that he’d had no luck.  Letting go…metaphors….

In Silverthorn I called home and told Jeff of Sharetha's demise.  He was as sympathetic as a Texas man's man could be under the circumstances.  Back to the route.

Had a good lunch at a small sandwich shop but felt really trashed with only 50 miles done so far. I could not wait to get to Breckenridge. 

We rode dirt from Silverthorne, to Frisco, looping around the Dillon Reservoir.  Pat had told us to be on the lookout for an osprey nest atop of a telephone pole along the route.  We did find it and there was someone home; a great photo op. 

Ospry in nest at Dillon Reservoir

It was a bit of a circuitous route through Frisco but we eventually got onto a fantastic bike path that went to Breckenridge.  Colorado has miles of bike-only paths that Texans envy. 

Old 10-ton commuter bikes whizzed past us.  Even a guy hauling his child in a burley flew by.  What was the problem?  Why were we so slow?  I changed the view of the GPS – 9000 ft.  Oh.  Apparently, it is one thing to climb to/past that altitude then descend and quite another for a sustained effort.  Well it was only going to get harder as the days went by.  As my paddling partner John Maika would say about an uncomfortable backside, “You just have to get used to it”. 

Woulda, shoulda, coulda.  We could have done things differently in Breckenridge.  In hindsight as racers, we should have re-supplied, gotten a good meal and kept going since there was still daylight; perhaps camping on the edge of town.  But we just felt whipped and knew that a 2500ft climb was waiting for us just outside of town.  The draw of a bed was just too strong. 

What we did was subject ourselves to rather dim-witted, completely unconcerned college kids who saw everyone as tourists.  What we wanted was a hotel room.  All we could get was information on vacation condos (like on the 3^rd floor with no elevator condos).  It took a valuable forever but we finally scored a room not too far off the main street where the laundry just happened to be next door to the room.  A meal was found (Eric’s) as well as a French bakery (Lafrancaise) and groceries.  And our near constant racer companions were found as well.  The boys Will and Reinhold were in a pub so we stopped to chat.  They were going to continue on.  We’d see later that the S. Africans had stayed in town also. 

That night we pulled out the maps and made plans for the next couple of days noting the monster climbs we would have for the next week.