If I have one little gripe about our new hometown — and granted, I feel so lucky to be here it seems ridiculously whiny to even mention it at all — it’s that the road riding opportunities are limited.  

The town is too small to get many miles from riding the city streets and the county roads heading out of town quickly turn to gravel.  That leaves the three highways that cross through town as the only options for local road routes.  And while I’ve ridden in plenty of traffic in Houston, riding on city streets with in-town traffic going 40 mph seems way less intimidating than riding on the shoulder of a highway with traffic going 70 mph.

As a result, I hadn’t been on my road bike since we moved.  To be honest, the mountain bike trails and gravel roads around here are so good and so numerous that I hadn’t missed it much but I was starting to crave that smooth, fast feeling of the road.  That and the fact that I needed to take it easy on my hand after stacking things up on a rocky drop off and nearly ripping off my pinky fingernail from the cuticle end (don’t worry, no pics).

The least trafficked, best shouldered road in the area is highway 285 south over Poncha Pass.  It’s a scenic, 12-mile climb from Salida that takes you up to just over 9,000 feet, fairly mellow as Colorado mountain passes go.  I planned to ride up the pass, descend the other side to the tiny town of Villa Grove then turn around and come back over the pass for a round trip of 52 miles.  In Houston, that would be a “medium” day on the bike but with two climbs of Poncha Pass I wasn’t sure what to expect from bike or body.  Well, as soon as I hit the slopes of the pass I realized the bike was woefully over geared and the body wasn’t all that happy about it.  The problem was, I was on a bike built to go fast on the flat to rolling terrain of Texas. 

I made it to the top but it was a painfully slow process, alternating between sitting and standing and nearly coming to a complete stop multiple times.  Once on top there was no way I was going to descend the other side just to have to claw my way back up again so discretion being the greater part of valor, I tucked tail, turned around and headed home.  Clearly if I want to ride my road bike in Colorado, I need gearing more terrain appropriate for my new environs.  

So as of this week I went from my flat lander 11×23 cassette (left) to a more mountain friendly 11×29 (right). 

The 39-tooth small ring in the front has got to go too.  I’ve ordered a compact 36 tooth and once I get that installed, I will be mounting another assault on Poncha Pass as well as some of the other paved roads around here.

The day wasn’t a complete loss though because wherever you go around here there are always great views available to take your mind off whatever pain you’re putting yourself through.

Mt. Ouray

Mt. Shavano from the south

Sangre de Cristos