I had never been much into the mtbr.com message boards before I moved to Boulder. However, relocating to a new place required a new effort to find trails to ride and people to ride with. Plus, Jesper is having a techy influence on me. So, we both browse around the various boards from time to time. For those of you not familiar with it, mtbr.com is a mountain bike website with all kinds of information about bikes; bike parts, trails and many different message boards to share information with and ask questions of other mountain bikers. Jesper posts as “ssperl” and I post as “IttyBittyBetty”. We’ve used the regional board for our area, Colorado Front Range, to find several group rides.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across an unusual post entitled “Second Annual Bean FeSSt October 9th”. I almost ignored it, as the title didn’t make any sense to me. However, upon opening the message, it was an announcement for a group singlespeed ride followed by Mexican food. Mountain biking and Mexican food go great together, in that order, so I was glad I had checked it out. Jesper and I immediately signed up to go.

The ride was to be held in the Buffalo Creek area in the Pike National Forest, located south and west of Boulder. We had ridden in this general area in July on our geared bikes. Back in Ohio and North Carolina, we rode our singlespeeds almost exclusively. However, the trails out here on the Front Range are steep, rocky and involve massively long climbs, so we have been riding our geared, full suspension bikes quite a bit. As we’ve acclimated to all the climbing and the altitude in the Front Range, we’ve been taking our singlespeeds out more and more on some short rides. By October, we felt we were ready to tackle some longer rides on the singlespeeds and hoped this little festival would be a first start. Besides, it looked to be a great way to meet other singlespeeders.

For those of you who are not mountain bikers, singlespeeds are bikes with only one gear (just what it sounds like). Typical mountain bikes have three chainrings up front and a mess of cogs in the back, giving them up to 27 gears to help adjust for varying terrain, leg fatigue, steepness, trail conditions, you name it. On a singlespeed bike, when the trail goes up in steepness, you, the rider, have to push harder to maintain speed because there is no “easier” gear to shift into. Singlespeeds are also typically hard tails, not full suspension bikes. I’ll save the lesson on this difference for another write up, but suffice it to say, a hard tail is not as forgiving on rocky trails. The bottom line is that singlespeeding is hard. Why, you might ask, would anyone want to make riding harder? That’s what makes singlespeeders an interesting lot.

The weather in the Front Range this time of the year is all over the map. It can switch from hot and sunny to cold and rainy/snowy and then back again in a few days. As the weekend approached, it looked like the weather was going to do just that, with the ride landing smack-dab in the middle of the cold part of the pattern. Saturday, the 8th, was a picture perfect day - sunny and almost 80 degrees. The forecast called for snow by Sunday night. On the message board Saturday evening, people wondered who would actually show up the next day. Being from Cleveland, a little rain and cold temperatures were certainly not going to keep me away. As an added incentive to attend, a new local bike shop (Alpha Bicycle Company) raffled up a singlespeed frame to one of the participating riders. Very nice!

Sunday morning dawned chilly and drizzly. We loaded up the Durango with bike gear and the portable cooler/grill combo that I had purchased just for this kind of a ride. Inside the cooler were about 20 chicken thighs marinating in a Mexican ancho chili concoction I had whipped up and 2 six-packs of Singletrack Ale.

After driving through some rain, we arrived at the trailhead at 10:00 am to a decent crowd of riders. I was quite happy to see two other women with singlespeeds!! I think I can count all the female singlespeeders I have seen on both hands, so having three of us in one place was phenomenal. As usual, it took awhile to get the group together and ready to ride. Finally, after we were all starting to get pretty cold in the 45 degree temps, we took off at about 10:45. Seventeen singlespeeders (OK - 16 singlespeeders and one guy on a geared bike, but we promised not to pick on him since he IS building a singlespeed bike and he promised not to shift).

We started out with heavy skies but no actual precipitation. We rode on the Shinglemill Trail to a portion of the Colorado Trail. These trails are usually very crowded on the weekends, but we practically had them to ourselves this day. The route then took us up and down the Green Mountain Trail - there seem to be a lot of Green Mountains in Colorado. After Green Mountain, we hopped on a forest road for a bit to get to the climb up Gashouse Trail. After the long climb, we turned onto Baldy Trail. At the bottom, the group hit the dirt road again for a little bit and then headed onto Morrison Creek Trail. Morrison Creek Trail dumped us back onto Shinglemill Trail, which we rode back to the cars. The total was almost 19 miles with about 2 hours of actual riding time.

I was riding along and having fun, so I wasn’t keeping track of where we were during the ride. We stopped a lot to regroup and to snap some pictures. What I remember were long climbs and flowy downhills. Some portions of the ride took us through a spooky burn area from a major forest fire ten years ago. About halfway into the ride, the temperature started to drop and it began a light steady rain. Someone with a thermostat on his bike computer reported that it was 39 degrees… brrrr. Everybody donned more clothes and jackets, except Jeny. She was only wearing shorts, a short sleeved shirt and arm warmers! Must be that she was generating a tremendous amount of heat maintaining an insanely fast pace in a huge gear (32×17). This girl was silly FAST.

We returned to the trailhead to a cold, gentle rain. All the riders quickly went into their cars to change into dry clothes; the Durango was already getting warm, thanks to Jesper starting the car and getting the heat going right away. After we had changed, everyone stood around in the rain debating whether we should tough it out and stay or pack it up and head over to Bucksnort’s for some food. Although no formal decision was made, people started unloading food and beer from their cars. So we were staying. Someone had set up a pop-up tarp and the rest of the group got busy attaching a couple additional tarps to it to make it bigger. We had to watch the rain building up on the tarp, as it would lower the ceiling and occasionally cause a breach of running, cold water. Parts of our little shanty-town were so low that I was the only one who could walk under it without stooping.

We hooked up the grill and started cooking the chicken. Paul got his Coleman stove and tortilla cooker going. One of the John’s brought out the mini-keg of home brew. Mateo produced pot full of hot and very tasty tamales. Bowls of chips, homemade refried beans, salsa and guacamole were served up. We crammed all the riders plus a couple of spouses and a few kids underneath the tarps while the rain seemed to get harder and colder. The food was great and the conversation was even better. After a couple of hours, everyone had eaten enough. We were also pretty chilled, so it was time to tear down the shanty town and head out.

Despite the bad weather, or because of it, we had a great time. Moreover, we met some really nice people who also happen to be wacky enough to ride singlespeeds, even in near freezing rain. We are starting to feel right at home out here!