Journey Home and a Close Call

I have one more chapter from our mountain trip. After my icy bike ride that I wrote about two days ago, we headed eastward, generally toward home, with plans for one more stop along the way.

Believe it or not, as we drove home, we suffered *another* flat tire. We'd had our original flat tire fixed in a small town, and the Runner had taken off the spare and put the original tire back onto the LabMobile because the original was a better tire than the spare.

We drove this route...(photo from www.theroamingboomers.com)

No guard rails, no shoulder, and a huge drop-off to one side (photo from John Prichard's Flickr Photostream).

Fortunately, our front tire blowout didn't happen until about 5 minutes after we'd driven this stretch of road. We'd made it out of the intense mountains and were on a flatter section of highway. Whew. We both were terrified when we realized how close we'd come to having a blowout in a very dangerous place where going off the road would have been fatal.

After the Runner changed the tire and we got moving again, we made it to a great campsite. We arrived late, after dark, and the Perseid Meteor Showers were in full swing. We ate a quick dinner and then zipped into our sleeping bags to watch the shooting stars in the cold mountain air. It was spectacular!

The next morning, I rode a favorite section of trail, under threatening but not yet storming skies.

It was glorious. I love the buttery consistency of this trail and the endless views.

I did continue my sprint training (ha!) as I eventually had to outrace the storms back to camp. That was the theme of this trip - I was constantly just barely ahead of big storms during my bike rides! The next view was looking behind me as the storms were catching up.

In the multiple LabMobile wheel changes he'd done during this trip, the Runner had tweaked his back so we spent the rest of the day lazing around camp, hoping that his back spasms would ease. This was the view in one direction from camp.

And, this was my girl near sunset.

It was so beautiful. Shyla and R remind us every single day to "See Beautiful", and it's hard not to when we're living our dream in the Rocky Mountains. (Hint - Notice Shyla's tag in the next photo).

After a day of total relaxation, we were both feeling good enough to travel the rest of the way home. It had been a memorable journey, full of wild mountain weather, close calls, and glorious beauty. We feel so lucky to call this place our home.