Friday, July 27, 2007

Help Save the Continental Divide Trail for Mountain Bikers



While I was watching the Tour de France and drinking coffee this morning I noticed an article in the Rocky Mountain News – "Parts of the Continental Divide Trail may be banned to bikers".
Basically, there is an effort through a USFS Proposed Directive to exclude mountain biking as a non-motorized use on the Continental Divide Trail. This is unfortunate and frustrating. It seems that cyclists are always having to fight for the right to be an accepted, non-motorized user group. I have ridden a few sections of the Continental Divide trail on my bike. Every time, it was a very enjoyable and unique experience. See below for a map of my favorite section from Copper Mountain to Searle and Kokomo Passes.


If you have ridden sections of the Continental Divide trail and feel compelled to comment to the Forest Service, please submit a letter through the IMBA (International Mountain Bike Association) website: http://www.imba.com/news/action_alerts/07_07/07_03_divide_trail.html


What is the Continental Divide? If you’ve ever been to Colorado you probably have a picture of yourself as a kid sitting in front of the Continental Divide sign on some mountain pass…


Now for the geography of the Continental Divide:
A continental divide is an elevated natural boundary that separates water that flows into either the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean. The "Great Divide", one of four in North America, runs from Alaska through Canada and the coterminous United States to northwestern South America.



More Continental Divide resources:


Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_divide


About Geography - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_divide


Continental Divide Trail Alliance - http://www.cdtrail.org/

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

1,000 Saturdays

We’ve decided to give our trip a subtitle – 1,000 Saturdays. The idea came from a random conversation with our friends in Vail. We were all hanging out on a Thursday night and one of our friends said "I feel like tomorrow is Saturday". I smiled and added "Now everyday is Saturday for us". And so it goes…

We have been busy in the first couple of weeks of being jobless. It seems that much of our time has been spent cleaning, sorting and organizing. We underestimated the amount of "stuff" we needed to store in Denver. It’s amazing how much two people can acquire over 12 years of being together. There have many more trips to Goodwill than expected. At times it has been difficult to decide what to keep since we will be gone for 2+ years. You really begin to realize what you "need" to live.

The transition to the Bicycle Geography life has been interesting. You would think that being footloose would be a piece of cake. For the most part, it’s been great but we’re still working from a plan and sticking to a schedule. Most recently, we’ve been working on routes in New Zealand and Australia and we’re in the process of procuring a solar panel to run our electronics. Most importantly, the bikes are almost complete and we’re looking forward to going on some mini-tours before we leave in September.

And yes, we’ve been getting out on our bikes. It’s hard to top the riding in Eagle County, but we have been enjoying the urban trails in Denver. The singlespeeds have been out quite a few times in Bear Creek Lake Park – a nice oasis on the west side of Denver.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

One Less Car - People Who Ride

We recently received an order of t-shirts from some cool, grassroots bike people. We wanted to get a few shirts to give out to family and friends. We also wanted to find a t-shirt company that wasn't just your typical "mass production" outfit. Chris happened to find this great website called One Less Car . Problem solved. One Less Car makes t-shirts and stickers and promotes the use of bicycles as "a truly practical transport option in place of the car". Thanks to Cole for working with us to create some really cool shirts. They will definitely be part of the kit on our trip.



ps - if you're interested in a shirt, drop us a line at bicyclegeography@yahoo.com

-LK