Still reeling from one of the most intense lower body workout weeks I’ve had since I quit distance running over 7 years ago, I decided to skip speedskating today and go for a short ride instead.

I headed up Baseline Road into the foothills. I have never been past the first big overlook on that road, and ended up following it to the end, which is at a cool little residential area on a dirt road. I took the loop through there and it turned back onto the pavement. A short while later there was a sign that said Highway 72. I didn’t realize it would be so far, but this bumpy dirt road, which I had no business being on with a sport bike, went on for miles around a reservoir, over the river, and through the woods.

When I finally came to Highway 72, I headed up towards Nederland, and stopped for a while at the junction of 72 and 119. Highway 119 is the Peak-To-Peak proper, and runs basically from I-70 to Estes Park through some of the most beautiful scenery in Colorado. The Peak-To-Peak Highway is an extremely common weekend run for motorcyclists, and is full of twists and turns, not to mention several “Motorcyclists Exercise Extreme Caution” signs.

Traffic was extremely light until a few miles outside Estes Park, and there were portions of the highway where I knew I was pushing the limits of my own riding skill, but the CB-1 was yearning for more. There wasn’t a single instant where I felt the tires give, and I never came within 2k RPM of redline. It was an exhilerating ride, that’s for sure.

I stopped in Estes Park for a late lunch at my favorite local establishment, The Other Side Restaurant. After watching the ducks dance and scarfing down an elk burger, I filled up the trusty steed and headed down Big Thompson Canyon towards Loveland on Highway 34. I was hoping to be ahead of traffic, but that wasn’t to be the case, and it was a slow ride behind a long line of traffic. I pulled over at CR 27 and headed up to Carter Lake, and hugged the foothills all the way back towards Boulder.

There’s a long stretch of CR 24, about two miles long, flat, with no turnouts, very few driveways, and hardly ever any traffic or police patrols. I used to take this route to work when I lived in FoCo and worked at Amgen in Boulder. The stretch ends with three really nasty, hairpin S-turns, but for that two miles, it might as well be a drag strip.

So, I punched it.

I hadn’t taken the CB-1 above freeway speed yet, but with two miles to burn up, I couldn’t resist. The beautiful thing about an inline four is that it’s very responsive at high RPM. A steady twist of the wrist, and the speedometer just kept climbing and climbing. I hit 105 miles per hour in what felt like the blink of an eye. That’s 154 feet per second, which eats up pavement like mad. 105 is where I chickened out, although I had about another half mile before the S-turns.

The CB-1′s speedometer pegs out at 115 mph, but the odometer had over a thousand RPM left to roll up, so I’m sure 115 isn’t the end of the line for the CB-1.

The bike ran great, wasn’t rough at all, the new front tire performed as advertised, and the 170 mile circuit was a blast.

Get on your bikes and ride, and enjoy the open road, folks!

Quandary Peak, above Breckenridge, CO.

Taken from a pond to the west of Sprague Lake, off the trail. Did some mountain figure skating on this pond, on this day, in this weather. Absolutely beautiful.

I wrote this in April 2009, right after my trip to Australia. I may have scribbled it out on the plane, actually, can’t remember. While there were a lot of things I saw in Australia that I would never want to see exist in my own country, there were definitely a few things I learned that would be worth applying here.

1. Superannuation funds. In America, we would call this “privatized Social Security accounts.” Remember those, and the huge uproar that idea created a couple years ago? Well, in Australia, they got smart about four decades ago and realized that their public retirement system would eventually go bankrupt, so they privatized it. All wage earning employees have 9% of their pay diverted (Social Security in America right now is 6.2% by the employee, plus another 6.2% by the employer). In Australia, the employer doesn’t have a matching contribution, so therefore they can afford to pay the employee more directly. This system rocks. The monies are remitted by the employer to the trustee of the employee’s Superfund account, which the employee sets up themselves. Upon retirement, they can take distributions, kind of like an IRA. It’s a brilliant system compared to our crapshoot.
2. Mass transit rocks. Not everybody needs a car. Personally, I have come to believe that motorcycles and bicycles are the future of auto technology in America, decades after the rest of the world figures it out.
3. Driver licensing in Australia requires 150 hours of documented training. I have ALWAYS believed that, in America, getting a driver’s license should be as difficult to get as a pilot’s license.
4. Be friendly. Help strangers. Don’t be a prick. Know your neighbors.
5. If a building actually has WINDOWS THAT OPEN, then you can turn OFF the freakin’ air conditioner, save power off the grid, reduce fossil fuel use, and reduce carbon footprint.
6. Hostels are awesome. Why don’t we have many of these in America?
7. Your house doesn’t need 5 extra rooms that you never use. Most Aussies in the city that own their own home have a house not much bigger than a 3-bedroom apartment. In the inner city, one bedroom and studios are the norm to OWN. I’ve known this for a long time, due to my own living preferences, but seeing other people do it on a mass scale was awesome.
8. People need to quit their bitching. Live life. Have more fun. Do what they can and let go of what they can’t. I’ve heard my entire life the stereotype that Australians are lazy. The truth is quite contrary. Most of the Australians I met worked to live, rather than living to work, like many Americans do. They relish their time off, and get their work done and go home to their families, friends, and fun.
9. Pennies. Who needs ‘em? In Australia, all purchases are rounded up or down to the nearest nickel.
10. Two thirds of all Americans are overweight. Not so in Australia. Australians aren’t addicted to Coke and fries, like we are (they might, however, have the best BBQ in the world). Fast food joints aren’t even as prolific in Sydney as they are in small towns across America that I’ve been to. Even in the CBD, I had to hoof it over a kilometer just to get to a McDonald’s. In reality, it was kind of nice.

Typing this up is making me want to go back as soon as I can. And honestly, that probably won’t be soon enough.