Today I did something out of the ordinary — I rode my mountain bike. And in an even more startling departure from the norm, I rode it in Cheyenne Mountain State Park.
What can I tell you? I was sick of my usual rides and got all Monty Python on my bad self (“And now for something completely different. …”).
It feels wrong to write about this place again, because this park continues to be largely undiscovered. In two and a half hours of riding I encountered two hikers, four mountain bikers and one extremely hard individual who was running the trails with a large rucksack and ski poles. It ain’t exactly I-25 at rush hour, is what I’m sayin’ here.
My outing took in Zook Loop, Sundance, Talon, North and South Talon and Blackmer Loop, and oh, man, was it ever fun, despite my minimal and rusty skills. I may not be the world’s worst mountain biker, but will do until he (or she) shows up.
I middle-ringed pretty much everything until machismo proved to be stupidissimo — a guy with the right legs and medical plan can ride quite a few of these trails on a cyclo-cross bike — and then I became one with the Tao of the Little Ring. Nobody’s watching, so there was no one to impress.
My park pass ($6 at the gate) is good until noon tomorrow, so I may just dash out there again. After all, I only heard the one rattlesnake, and the bears, bobcats and mountain lions apparently are on vacation.
Mad Blog Media 
Man, you need to come to Durango, where the women are burly, the roads are scary, and the trails are un-fking believable! And yes, the sheep around here are scared, but for different reasons. People not from here seem to have forgotten that this IS the mountain biking capitol of the World. Moab sucks…
BombTown ain’t bad from a singletrack perspective, so there is less incentive to toss all the stuff in the dino juice burner and trudge off to those world class capitals of bicycling. But I’d be curious to see Cheyenne Mtn. now that the Cold War is over. Can you ride down into the mountain and watch Dr. Strangelove in action?
Nah, you ain’t even close to being the worst mountain bike rider in the world — and I’ve got the scars and hardware to prove it!
In other mountain biking news…one of the guys in the Tour Divide died from a collision with an automobile yesterday.