Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. 👊

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. -- Neale Donald Walsch


The journey on the bike today was fairly crazy.  It started at the bottom of a fairly decent hill... and ended there.. 5 hours and 49 minutes later.  After traversing 27 miles and climbing 3800 feet.

A post shared by James Radtke (@rideandabide) on

Note to self:  You should start/end at the TOP of a hill.  If you spend a few hours climbing, by the time you're ready for the downhill I am too wiped out to really enjoy it.


Unfortunately I had run out of steam about 2-1/2 hours in to the adventure.  I was just on the verge of cramping and really had very little "pep" left in my legs.  But, we pressed on.  A short while later we encountered a highway that the trail system seemed to straddle and I tried to "bow out" gracefully.  It was getting dark and I was pretty much shot.  My cohort wasn't having any of that.. so... we pressed on... and climbed more.  The view at the top was absolutely amazing.
A post shared by James Radtke (@rideandabide) on


As you can see from the photo, however.. the sun was starting to set.  Shortly after that shot was taken is when things got interesting.

"There's no such thing as a '10 mile downhill'" 
James Radtke, 2017

As we started to descend, I realized it was really going to be a challenge.  There were short downhill sections... followed by short climbs.  If I was not already wiped, this would not have been a problem, but it was slow going on ANY uphill section :-(

Then it got dark... realllll dark.  I (apparently) have a fairly decent ability to see in low-light so the darkness was not a huge issue.  But, if you've ever ridden a canyon/mountain you realize that though you are technically a mile from something, it really means you're about 3 or 4 miles from that thing because of all the switchbacks, etc... and that thing happened to be our vehicle.  To add to the fun, the temps started dropping quickly.  Another hour of walking/riding/striding in the dark and we made it back to the car.

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