Bryan Alders: Let's Roll

Here we have the town of Como, CO postal service vehicle. More on this and some of Colorado's best singletrack later.

Last weekend, yesterday, which seems like a week ago, marked one of my only weekends off from racing in quite some time and quite possibly for some time. I worked all weekend. Oh well.
Ryan "The Grinch" Lynch as we pre-ride in Aspen.

I'm sort of in this take time off the bike stage between the end of mountain bike season and the beginning of collegiate mountain bike season. It seems like time off just means racing on weekends with no riding in between. I keep finding reasons that I really should race.

Two weekends ago I raced in Eldora I wasn't going to but figured I'd give it a try because I did so well in Aspen the previous week. I did the worst warm up for short track ever and ended up just having to suffer it out to get 5th place. The XC went a little better but I only managed a 9th. I guess I 'm still really learning what works and what doesn't.

I wasn't going to race this weekend but found out I'm only 20 points behind 4th place podium spot for the entire Mountain States Cup. This basically means if I show up and do decent, I can get some cash money. Probably not much considering it mountain biking, but worth a try.

Conveniently collegiate season starts the weekend after next and races continue every weekend through Nationals on October 27-28. Wow! Anyway I kind of wish I had a coach to lay out what I need to do to peak then but I think I'll be figuring most of it out on my own and hope for the best.

Well there's the bike talk. Today marked the first day of school. Classes were good but I'm definitely getting a little tired of this school thing. They tell me it's worth it though so I'll be toughing it out for the next one and a half years.

I'm probably done working at Full Cycle because my schedule just doesn't work well with having a job but I guess that's alright considering how much other stuff seems to be going on right now.

CU cycling is keeping me really busy. I'm trying to make things perfect and flow really well this semester. It's taking/going to take some work. I wish we could actually get some money from CU to help things along. I can't believe they give so much to football and so little to the club sports teams. If anyone has some extra cash sitting around, send it this way. As much as I hate to say it money would solve some problems here.

The following pictures mark my most recent rides on some of Colorado's best singletrack. It's good to get out of Boulder and ride in other places. When we think about it, some of the best singletrack in the country, singletrack that other people plan their whole vacations around, is only within just over an hours drive from Boulder. I felt the need to explore it.

An ode to singletrack:

The top of Georgia Pass on the Colorado Trail.

Jon and James diggin' deep

Could we want anything more as mountain bikers than singletrack cut flawlessly through aspens?

Collin on the bridge. Blake, they're working on making it 6ft wide instead of a foot and a half so you can ride it next time. I tried to ask them to raise the creek there too so it's only a 2 inch drop if you fall off instead of 7 inches but they said it would be to difficult or something.

Collin pretending that the ride is super easy and that I didn't just put the hurt on. I think he needs to work on his acting skills.

Jacob's acting isn't much better.

If we could see Jon's face it might look similar to Collin's and Jacob's

Matt just took the caboose to the top.

If you ride doesn't have a high mountain stream crossing it's not complete.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out "Mohawk Matt" is crazy, and he did this 4.5 hour epic on a rigid singlespeed...

... complete with pink fork.

As you can tell from Matt's attire/bike, he's a pretty serious guy. The pink helmet is what really screams one badass mother f*%#er.

We rolled into Como, CO about halfway into this ride. There's not much here except this grocery store/souvenir shop/post office/ drug store/ house.

I try endlessly to explain to Jon the word finesse. Apparently when you're 6-foot something huge this word has a different meaning because he choose to flat...

...and flat again...

...and one more time for good measure.

When you run out of tubes there is only one option. INSTA PATCH! Step six said something along the lines of make as much fun of the idiot that just flatted for the 3rd time because he's "special" (we'll use "special" to keep thing PC). Here we have proof.