Change in plans

I'm writing this from back in Boulder.

This post might be kind of personal, so feel free to skip. TL;DR: trip plans are going to change pretty dramatically; the idea of riding on busy roads for many hundreds of miles is particularly unappealing.

Two things happened.

First, on Monday, my grandmother Maggie got hit by a car, while crossing a road in her powered wheelchair. She's in the hospital now with many broken bones, including spinal injuries and a broken pelvis. She's 93, and it's not clear what's going to happen, but it's not good. That's obviously been on my mind and was on my mind when I left on Tuesday for Pueblo. I initially thought, "what would Maggie want me to do?" and probably the answer is "go have adventures." She's lived a very adventure-filled life and she has always always encouraged me to do the same. This was where my head was at on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

But then I started riding on Wednesday and things went downhill quickly. I expected the first few miles out of Pueblo to be tough -- riding out of a city is nearly always bad -- and it was roughly what I expected, a moderately busy road with moderate traffic and mostly polite drivers. It wasn't great, by any means, but it wasn't terrifying.

But then the route turned onto Highway 50 and things got very bad, very quickly. Highway 50 has a speed limit of 65 which of course means everyone's going 80 (and why not, it's straight, and there isn't tons of traffic). But about a quarter of a mile after turning onto 50, there was a railroad overpass which left absolutely no shoulder for, I dunno, 30 yards? I was unwilling to risk cars passing me there so I ended up turning around and walking back to the turn onto 50. I found what looked like an alternate, less-traveled route that paralleled 50 for a while, and decided to take it to see what happened. Short story: it worked great for a while, but then the route I expected to take back to 50 turned out to be, well, non-existent. There was a gate, but it was locked, and there wasn't really a road. This part of the ride was fairly pleasant though -- not much traffic, 4 lanes but "bikes may take full lane" signs, etc. However I had to backtrack a few miles because I realized I had passed the point where there would be a reasonable road back to my actual route.

So: back on 50, beyond the underpass of death, which my detour had at least got me around. Mostly 50 had an okay shoulder, but riding with trucks passing you at 80 miles an hour sucks, to say the least. There were a few sections where the guardrail cut off all of the shoulder except about a foot; I hurried through these parts (after checking there was nobody behind me as far as I could see), which was terrifying. 

So as I was riding on Hwy 50, I was thinking "okay, this is awful, but maybe once I turn onto the state route, it'll be okay". Unfortunately, it was not okay. I had one of the closest passes of my life from an 18-wheeler (it felt like inches, maybe it was a foot). Every sound of a car behind me filled me with adrenaline; every time I saw a car coming I tensed that I'd hear a car behind me and they'd pass each other right where I was with no room for me. I rode off the road a few times when this seemed inevitable. I couldn't stop thinking about how pathetic my little blinky light and brightly-colored helmet would seem if I got hit by a semi.

Finally I got to a town with a convenience store and a park. I got a Coke and some candy (truly one of the great joys of bike touring), and the guy behind the counter said, "hey, be safe out there, this road is dangerous and there are lots of big trucks."

I'd been telling myself for 30 miles, "if this doesn't get better, I'm going to turn around. I don't want to die out here." I called Lindsey and she was incredibly supportive and rational and basically said, dude, you are under no obligation here.

So, short story, I turned around and rode back to Pueblo. And at no point riding back did I regret it. I realized that the last time I did a bicycle tour on the road, I was 17, and my risk tolerance and my awareness of risk was much much much different, and also that was over 30 years ago, when there was less traffic, no cell phones, etc. My ideas about road touring (and road riding generally) were either antiquated or comically misinformed by my riding here in the bubble of Boulder, where every road has a shoulder and nearly every driver is also a cyclist.

The combination of my grandmother's accident and the thought of doing literally hundreds of miles in conditions like this make me think that re-thinking this summer's adventure is necessary. I'm not sure yet what exactly I'm going to do -- it might not look like a summer-long expedition, it may be more improvisational, no idea. It will probably involve a trip back east to see my folks sooner than I expected. I'm disappointed but I'm not questioning this decision, and there is tons of room for adventure still.