Colorado Trail Race

I wanted to do a long cross country bike road tour this summer from Colorado to Pittsburgh for the pinball world championships PAPA 14 on Aug. 11-14  2011.  I had previously rode from Breckenridge,CO. to Amarillo TX. in March of 2009 for the Texas Pinball Festival... trying to make it to Dallas.  The weather and time (I would of missed the festival) stopped me from getting to my original destination Dallas. My pinball buddies DNO, Gooch, and Steve ended up picking me up in Amarillo.  I really enjoyed my time out there alone on the road even though some of it was super tough with the crazy wind.  At the beginning of the 2011 mtn bike race season I spent my usual time training/riding with my friend/buddy James Lindenblatt.  He always had talked about the Colorado Trail Race (CTR) and how it was maybe the ultimate race/test in mtn bike touring.  We had done lots of 24 mtn bike races including Montezuma's Revenge in 2005 for him and 2006 for me.  I decided that to reach Pittsburgh in a timely manner I would need at least 3 weeks and also a week to spend in Pittsburgh to play pinball and hang out fixing games at the barn in Normalville, PA at Ron Shuster's home. So that is a month off of work.  Also it was the middle of the summer in the middle of the USA. That meant hot humid days which I am really not fond of living up at 9000ft in Breckenridge all summer with 70-80 degree days and little to no humdity.  So I changed my original plan and decided to do the CTR. This was the end of May 2011.