Day Sixty Six: Gunnison to Montrose
Distance: 65 mi.
9AM: Back to the trail after a slothlike multi-course breakfast at the Alpine Inn. We’ve climbed to an altitude where we don’t need to worry about brutal mid-day heat any longer; besides, we needed the sleep.
Today’s ride winds sup more tiresome than we had intended: we spend the day braving steep elevation gains and plummeting drops through four moutain passes.
We take a pit stop in the Curecanti National Recreation Area; a tourism service worker tells us we’re his second customers of the day. He barrages Lizzie with information about local trails and off-road adventures, shuffling half a dozen brochures at her; she declines with a laugh but he keeps bringing them to her anyways, says “I like giving people my brochures.” Everything about the tidy man is curious, and we spend longer than intended enraptured in his slow drawl deep voice description of trails and local scenery. You know the feeling, when someone speaks and your hair stands on end…
Race down switchback after switchback next to the Gunnison River. The fun stops when a major construction scene emerges on Route 50. Traffic controller tells me to bike on the shoulder; but it’s unclear how exactly to do that, the road is in an incoherent craggy condition, and hydraulic cranes move to and fro on swiveling and reversing machines; I smirk and say “do I wait until you build me a shoulder first?” I bob and bump up chunks of rock and tar, moving slower than I’ve ever moved on vehicle in all my life.
All in all we climb another 4,000 feet throughout the day. The final passage into Montrose is a 15 mile descent, the wind is decent and we make it in excellent time. We’re in town by 6PM to meet Amanda, our warm showers host near Uncompahgre Street; Amanda lives on a mountain outside town but Invested in a house downtown as a crash pad for her two boys to use; we retreat to the carpeted basement which will be our domicile and drink a beer with Amanda before she is beckoned to her other house by her sick partner. As we see Amanda off we meet Ian outside, who offers us leftover grapes and salmon, curious combination yet both items are delectable. Delicious as it was I wouldn’t go out of your way to assemble this meal unless preceded by nine hours of mountain biking.
Ian joins us for a venture into town, but his favorite restaurant is closed so we eat dinner at a Brewery. I eat chili and a cobb salad; I stand behind these two dishes as the best choices in a hitherto unvisited pub.
A few Mexicans cover rock songs on the porch, some Smashing Pumpkins along with a few mid 90's “alternative’ songs you hear on the radio but can never really place. Soon we’ve back in Amanda’s crash pad and fast asleep.
