Backcountry Adventure on Pearl Pass

Photos and words by Samer Khodor

Day 1:  Marble to Crested Butte

Like most rides in Colorado, there’s no warm up. The trails start by going straight uphill. And the 4×4 road leaving the small mountain town of Marble toward Crested Butte was no different. Except that it was steeper than most with some grades over 20%! It felt more difficult than I recalled from my first time riding it in 2007 and I had apparently forgotten the road climbed 800 feet in the first mile!  As my legs and body ached I began to wonder if we should have driven to Crested Butte and saved our legs for the challenge of Pearl Pass the following day. Of course I did not reveal these weak unBelgian thoughts to my poker-faced riding buddies: Sean Malone, Jeff Sillik, Nick Sherwood, and Andrew Sterner.

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#Topobunny debut + Boulder Cup

Our much maligned, much loved, much misunderstood, much understood CX.1 team kits arrived on Friday, just in time to debut at Boulder Cup on Saturday. w00ts! Instead of doing our first CX race of the year the normal way (drive there, warm up on rollers, race, drive home), we decided to ride 40 miles to the race course, race, and ride 40 miles home. That’s a Rodeo style day of CX racing.Continue reading

MFS + Rodeo SPEED team

One of the funny things about the cycling “world” is that you never know who you are going to run into and what will come of it. While out spectating at the Monarch Pass stage of Pro Cycling Challenge this year we ran into Emiliano and Daniel from Manual For Speed  doing what they do: Shooting pics and generally bemoaning the lack of good coffee available on an 11,000′ Colorado mountain pass. We got to talking and they mentioned that they wanted to put together a street painting team for the Denver stage of the race but still hadn’t nailed it all down. Street painting team? That sounded like something Rodeo would enjoy, so we volunteered and got to work planning.Continue reading

Rodeo Denver + Elevation Cycles: We’re a thing!

rodeo_elevation

Rodeo Labs knows no boundaries, ’cause it’s mostly a state of mind. But if it has a physical center, it has to be somewhere in Denver. And one place Rodeo Denver frequently finds itself is at the counter and on the couches of Elevation Cycles Denver. The weekly Rodeo Lunchride starts there. At least three of the Rapha Gentlemen’s Race bikes received loving, last-minute service there. And the guys at Elevation went all in (and up) to help the Chill Climb.Continue reading

Mount Evans B-Cycle Testing

In three short days, on Saturday August 9th, a number of Rodeoers will embark on a uniquely strange adventure. We will, as an informal group of team mates and friends from around the Front Range, attempt an assault on Mount Evans aboard 3 speed city bikes.The ride has been dubbed the Mount Evans Chill Climb. The route will entail the final twelve to fourteen miles from Echo Lake Lodge to the summit of the mountain at 14,265′ (4,348 m). It is the highest paved road in America. It won’t be a race, it won’t be a time trial, it’ll just be a fun way to test ourselves and have a good time with friends. No official support will be provided, no roads will be closed. We’re just going on a ride together. Riders should keep in mind that the road is fully open to traffic and obey all traffic laws.

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Finding, Respecting, and Surpassing Limits. CB40 MTB Race

This whole Trail Donkey project has been quite a romp, as I babbled on about in my last writeup on the subject. Now that we’ve ridden the spit out of the rigs, we have a fair amount of confidence in their abilities to convey us, under our own power, just about anywhere we point them. Beyond the typical dirt riding they’ve been seeing, Chris Magnotta notably rode his to 3rd place at the Deer Trail State Champ Road race here in Colorado. The only thing he changed from dirt spec to road spec was the tires. Chris is a bit of a monster rider anyway so we can’t go and say that a Donkey gave him magical powers, but we do think it is satisfying it’s original mission to be “one bike to rule them all”. We aren’t really kidding ourselves, we don’t think that a glorified cyclocross bike RULES other specialized road or mountain bikes in their respective disciplines, but it does road ride better than an MTB, and it does MTB better than a road bike, so we will be generous and playfully allow ourselves to keep using the title, tongue in cheek. Come at us, haters!

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Rodeo Rally Series: May

The planning for the May Rodeo Rally began serendipitously back in January, when, as you might recall, I took advantage of a warm winter Colorado day and set out on a solo dirt adventure south of Denver. The beautiful route and photos must of stuck in the craw of one Matt Deviney to such a degree that he worked tirelessly on finding a way back to Denver so as to avoid the treacherous no-shoulder/pucker-inducing-death-ride segment of Santa Fe north of Sedalia, between the small town of Louviers and Titan Road. We both recon’d different routes over the ensuing months, but neither could completely pre-ride the route and were skeptical we could find a better way back to Denver.

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The Story of Traildonkey

make them hurt

Traildonkey.

We all laughed when the name popped out of my mouth over a morning coffee. I was describing to Chris and Peder that I wanted to build a new cyclocross bike. My 2001 Bianchi Axis, though still a worthy steed, is showing signs of age. It still gets the job done in a standard cyclocross race, but over the last year I’ve been taking the bike places it just wasn’t built to go, and it’s struggled to keep up with my demands. I am, to a fault, loyal to my beat up old warhorse bikes. My stable includes a 2001 Yeti AS-R MTB, the 2001 Bianchi Axis, and my 2007 Felt FA road bike. I recently added the Cannondale SuperSix (which I won), but it is the exception to my miserly bike ownership. When I was a bit younger (and single) I wanted bikes that were the lightest, fastest things out there, but now I’m more pragmatic about the hardware and the true performance gains it affords. Only when I come to the end of what I think one of my bikes can do do I start looking around for a new bike.

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