Day 2 - On A Train

15:30
On the California Zephyr to California.
Well, it’s been an interesting couple of days. First off, I had to delay my departure by a day. I was going to leave Boulder on May 10, but I had too many details to finish up. Mostly, it was moving my stuff into storage. In conjunction with the bicycle trip, I’ve also moved out of my current living situation. I was able to store my stuff at Naropa until I get back. So, I’m essentially homeless! Not sure what I’m going to do when I get back as far as housing.
I hit the road yesterday, May 11. My itinerary was to cycle from Boulder to Idaho Springs, CO. I didn’t get very far. I started up Canyon road to Nederland. There was a light drizzle in Boulder that got progressively worse the higher I climbed. By the time I reached to Boulder Falls (about half-way to Ned), it was a full-blown hail/snow storm. I was getting soaked and frozen, despite my rain gear, winter gloves & booties. The climb was also taking a toll—a week off the bike had me hurtin’. I was able to flag a ride the rest of the way to Nederland. I sat in a café, and watched as the snow continued to come down and pile up. It didn’t look good. I was able to catch a free shuttle bus to Central City (the Gillpen “Connector”).
Things didn’t look any better in Black Hawk or Central City. I was soaked, frozen, and the sleet/snow/hail continued to come down. Not a good start. In addition to first-day jitters, I was getting freaked out by the overall weather situation. How was I going to continue in this kind of weather, and I hadn’t even crossed the continental divide yet—the worst could very well be yet to come! I have to admit the thought of scrapping the whole tour crossed my mind. It’s one thing to contemplate the possibility of bad weather, it’s quite another to be stuck miles from home in a snowstorm. I eventually thought of a solution.
I’ve decided to essentially reverse my route. Instead of riding out to California, then taking the train back to Boulder, I’m taking the train out to California and riding back to Boulder. It will be the same trip, just from West to East instead of East to West. Fortunately, there was no problem exchanging my train ticket. So here I am, on the train, somewhere in Wyoming (the train had to take a detour from its normal route West through the Rockies because of a rock-slide). I’ll be in Emeryville, CA sometime tomorrow evening. I’m thinking about riding the PCH down to Santa Cruz before I head back along the Western Express to Colorado. Hopefully, this way, I can avoid the bad weather at higher elevations, and by the time I get back to Colorado it should be much nicer.