Fort-2-Fort Century

Howard went and did it again -- exhausted himself, wasted a perfectly good Saturday, and added 100 miles to his tally of miles bicycled in Year 2006.

He's now just about 50 miles short of 7,000 for the year. And that's as of today, which only has a few scant minutes remaining, by the way. "Tomorrow's another day," as the sage from GWtW reminds us with every repeat on TBS.

Click on the image above to go to a map of the route taken by Howard on Gmaps Pedometer, an interactive site which will allow you to zoom, pan about, and examine the elevation changes climbed throughout the 100-mile route from his hometown of Fort Collins (darn it! he gave it away!) to Fort Morgan via Highway 14 and New Raymer.

The ride took five hours, four minutes, and forty seconds in actual ride time, which works out to just a fuzz -- a negligible fuzz if you ask Howard -- below 20 mph. Yes, Howard was flying, and not usually wind-aided, I might add. Though the wind was out of the north-northeast, and Howard's route was pretty emphatically east, the wind was still a factor. It always is on bikes.

At mile 30, the road took a turn for the worst -- directly into the wind -- and it also decided to turn upwards for two annoying miles. This convinced Howard to change course -- instead of riding east continuously to Sterling, he would turn right after New Raymer and head south to Fort Morgan with the wind as an ally rather than a nemesis.

Fifty miles after making the momentous decision, Howard turned right. And it worked. But before he could reap the benefit of his genius, he first had to ride those 50 miles with the wind off his left shoulder.

And before that, he had to stop at Mile 50 and pull about 30 stickers and thorns out of his front and rear tires -- both very flat tires. Seems he struck the motherlode of penetrating prickers. Fortunately, he brought two (2) extra tire tubes with him, so did not have to try and patch all those penetrations.

Meeting Mrs. Howard in Fort Morgan, they feasted on Subway Italian BMTs before heading back to Fort Collins via automotive transport.

The ride back took about 90 minutes.

I tell ya, bicycling can be fun and healthful, but if you need to get home fast in an attempt to save something of a weekend evening, nothing beats a hydrocarbon-spewing global-climate-changing smog monster.

Just don't ever remind me that I said that!