Sunday 9/17: Garden City, KS to Colorado Springs, CO
Sunday September 17th
Stage 9: Garden City, KS to Colorado Springs, CO
273 Miles
Sorry to repeat myself, but it was another successful day for Jonas and Sal. After being on the trailer for 2 days and changing bikes, this is now 6 days in a row that we’ve finished the whole day. Life is good. Our finish was in front of the Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Museum in Colorado Springs.
The scene at today’s finish
Here is a nice little treat! An interactive video recorded by one of the Sweep Trucks tracking their location with some photos and videos along the way. It gives a nice earth map view of the route.
Tomorrow. Let’s talk about tomorrow for a minute. Tomorrow is a big day - One of the biggest days of the whole trip. Tomorrow is a day that we’ve had on our radar ever since we learned about the route for this year’s race. Sorry to beat this point to death, but the riders have spend a LOT of time thinking about and preparing for tomorrow.
The route tomorrow takes us from Colorado Springs, CO to Montrose, CO over 246.9 Miles. We don’t talk about elevation much, but tomorrow we start from 5905 ft. and end at 5805 ft. Not a lot of change, right? Those numbers leave out that the riders will spend the first half of the day climbing Skyline Drive to Monarch Pass, with a max elevation of 11,1136 ft, then spend the second half of the day descending again, over narrow twisty roads.
Throw in there that the riders will also get to cross the Royal Gorge Bridge, which is a wooden plank bridge that is the highest suspension bridge in America (955 feet). This bridge is not usually open to motor vehicles, but we’ve received special permission for the race. Cannonball is giving riders an option to skip the bridge if they’re afraid of heights. It’s going to be a memorable day, for sure.
Stay tuned - I think we’ll have a lot of great pictures and stories tomorrow!