Hangin' with Mr. Cope tonight. After dinner I had a front row seat to an Ozzy Osborne jam session with Cope as the lead rocker/dancer in his bedroom. He's quite the character.

The 3 day bike race was an experience for sure. It still feels like I just finished, even though the last stage was on Tuesday. This week has just flown by. Although maybe I feel like I just finished because Ed VanDeventer and I tried to summit La Plata peak today, via the east ride. Ed has a book on all the 14ers in CO and the description of this east route stating that it's "not nearly as hard as it's reputation depicts" and also mentioning a class 3 climb, was somewhat mis-leading. We arrived at the trailhead at about 6am and got to stepping right away. After about 2 hours through the woods and up a ridge with a river rambling below, we emerged from the forest and out onto a field of massive granite boulders. Trying to remember the words from the guide book, we entertained a couple of different routes, but straight up the loose rocks was what we ended up going for. We would later re-read and find out that this was in fact the correct route. A very strenuous hour later, we had scrambled up about 2400 feet of loose rock and boulders somehow avoiding starting a rock slide onto each other. I'll use the terms adjectives "technical" and "craggy" to describe the rest of the route, NOT class 3. There were definitely some Don't Look Down moments getting as far as we did.

Anyway, by about noon we had gotten worked, and I had to be back in Breck by 330 so we bailed down the west face which had an even more sketchy, loose rock/boulder descent. Further study of some forums by Ed revealed that it takes most people that try this route about 10 hours to summit. Evidently Ed and I tried the even more difficult way of attempting to stay on the ridge most of the way. We gave it 6 hours of our best, then a little over two to get down from where we were. We'll be back...

So anyway, back to the bike race. Impressive field of riders. 20 countries represented and a lot of Canucks. Apparenlty that speaks to the quality of trails in and around Summit county, which really were incredible. Day two was by far the most fun. Muddy as all hell with rain 100% of the day. Didn't even realize it was so cold until I was finished. My support crew of Mom, Michele, Heather, Drew and Cope were bar none the best, greeting me at every aid station they could get to. Thanks to you all!

Michele and I stopped by the Coors Brewery on the way to Denver this past Thursday, the massive copper mash tun's were impressive. Somehow that whole plant is over 5 miles long, crazy.

Soul-journ resumes to the north very soon, probably Monday I head for Wyoming and the Grand Tetons.