Bicycle Tour of Colorado -2011 (post)

Some photos from the ride thru the Colorado Rockies in July, 2011:

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Day 2 was epic. Cold hard rain during the night, and not looking good at all in the morning. Trail Ridge Road was closed due to snow, but we started riding anyway, hoping it would be opened later in the morning.
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Day 2: A pretty morning at first, but chilly and wintry. These first twenty-five miles on Trail Ridge Road climb from ~7000 ft elevation in camp to 12,100 ft at the pass. Here we’re just a few miles into the climb. Looks like there's some foul weather brewing up higher, and that's where we're headed.
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And sure enough, the closer we got to the 12,100 ft pass, the nastier the conditions:

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In camp at the end of the day 2. Finally dried off andthawed out. Still cold and wintry:
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Better weather arrived on Day 3. Ahhh ... now it's starting to feel like a vacation:
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That's the Arapahoe Basin ski Area down there on the left: the highest lift-served skiable terrain in the U.S.
Each evening a tent-city pops up at the local high school. A different town and school each day. Here are some shots of riders settled in. Most have mastered the art of living in comfort with nothing but two duffel bags and a bicycle.
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Some people just can't travel without their luxury SUV:
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And some people opt for the luxury of indoor camping: sleeping in the high school gyms.

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Speaking of luxury ...
A few caterers accompany the tour, moving their operations from site to site, setting up and breaking down each day.
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Each evening, hundreds of cell phones are desperate for a place to plug in, like animals that need to find watering holes. Here's a trailer with some receptacles, and the lucky phones that were able to find it.
A group of about twenty high school kids from Wisconsin hired on to set up and take down tents each day. They worked pretty hard, but what a fantastic summer job: travelling through Colorado with a group of buddies, and parents completely out of the picture.
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