Green Mountain

Green Mountain is a treeless mound on west side of Denver that has several miles of well-worn trails sliced into its grassy face. Despite its being somewhat closer to home than other Front Range trails, we hadn't ridden there yet, so on the 26th of January when most other local trails were snowy and muddy we gave it a go. The trail climbed steeply for the first couple of miles, something our winter-weak legs didn't appreciate. Once on top, the views of Denver to the east were expansive, but were still just views of huge, smoggy metropolis. The mountains to the west looked nice. There was some fast, loose, and rocky downhill that was fun, but other users ascending forced us to keep our speed reasonable. We try very hard to be respectful of other users, which means riding at a reasonable pace rather than an insane one.

Here's a link to the route, mapped on my Garmin GPS.

So, Green Mountain: we logged a few miles and had some fun. The trails were primarily populated by fast cross-country racer-types out logging miles on their plastic Specialized 29er hardtails loudly discussing which category they'd race in this year. There were some ordinary folks, too. I even saw a guy pushing a Huffy across a small gully and up a short hill. The wide-openness of the mound was interesting, but overall I didn't find it as enjoyable as some of the other places we often ride. I didn't remember my camera, but Abbey had her phone.

Another Nickel

I'll cover a couple of weeks with this post. We've been at least as busy as usual and our cycling adventures have taken a lower priority than work, school, holidays, and music practice.

After a bitterly cold week in Kansas over the Christmas holiday, and then a few miserable days with a terrible cold, Cindy and I celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary with an afternoon ride with the kids on the Highline Canal Trail. It was finally warm enough that we could get out for a ride without coming home with frost bite -- or bike frost. Q and I rode the big black tandem and the girls rode their one-person mountain bikes. There was still plenty of snow and ice on the trail, so we had to bundle up to be comfortable.        

This ride was also significant because it was to be the last outing for Abbey's lime green Chameleon. We set her up with the Chameleon in the fall of 2010 when she was several inches shorter than she is now. It's been a great bike for her, but as much as she liked it, she was getting too big for it.

I'd been thinking that the most cost-effective option was for me to find a new (or even used) frame from the same manufacturer (Santa Cruz) so that all of the existing parts could simply be swapped from her current frame to the new and larger frame, but I was wrestling with the cost. I also really wanted to put her on a dual suspension bike; the Chameleon was a hard tail. And then, this fall, Santa Cruz discontinued the Nickel (which is the bike I ride) and the frames were selling selling for half price. There's just no way I was going to get a better deal than that, so I ordered it. It took a couple of weeks for me to find time to get everything swapped over, and there were a couple of minor complications (like the hydraulic brake line being to short and the headset not being entirely compatible), but we addressed them and now it's done. And the Cannondale MT800 tandem and the Santa Cruz Chameleon frame are now for sale:

Anyway, here they are, the girl and her bike on a warm afternoon in January:

We took it out for a short test over the weekend. January 20, 2013. Mom was on a plane on the way home from a week in Michigan, so the kids and I went without her to ride a few laps around the Mesa Rim Loop in the Hidden Mesa Open Space near Castle Rock. The sun was out, but the air was cold and the wind brisk. We didn't dress warmly enough, but we survived and I think we had fun. The trail was mostly flat and easy, but had a few fun spots on the rocks.