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I don’t know how else to describe today’s bike ride. It started from one Mc Donald’s along I-25 near Dacono, CO, and ended at another Mc Donald’s in Brush, CO, after 83 miles. I called this pilgrimage since I can’t find many good reasons to ride this route - yet this is my fourth time in four years (not counting last year). This is a ride from nowhere to nowhere along nowhere. There is nothing spectacular or scenic along this route, but this lets me get some flat miles.

When I say flat, it feels really really flat along the route. Technically it is a descent - we lost about 800 ft across 83 miles, but at mile 70, I was willing to argue that the earth is flat, and that we’re going to fall off the earth if we ride past Brush. When I made this remark to my bike buddies, I was not trying to be funny. At mile 70, things appear different, the left brain stops working - almost.

Actually there is one good reason for making this ride. My long-time bike friend, Scott Bisbee, has a friend that lives in Brush, and this ride gives Scott to meet his friend, and for others to get some flat miles along the way. Scott is the one who motivated me to ride seriously in 2003, and I try to join him on this epic trip every year.

The ride was very pleasant till about 1pm, but then it started getting warmer (must have been over 90F), and I did not enjoy riding at that temperature on a hot (and flat) pavement with no shade at all. It looks like I am developing some kind of intolerance towards summer heat.

Based on Sanjay’s suggestion, we took some back roads for some distance, and some of those were really really straight, like some engineer was trying to prove how straight and flat he could build a road! On a flat featureless terrain, these straight roads felt illusory. Apart from the odometer and the tires spinning on the pavement, there was nothing to tell that we were moving.

Despite the heat ordeal from the 70th mile onwards, this was a worthy ride. Getting flat miles where I live by is not very easy, and this pilgrimage helped reach a total of 1430 miles so far this year.