The night that Brendan and I found ourselves in a motel, recovering from Brendan’s near death…I was trolling around on the internet and saw a message from an old college friend on Facebook. It was Kristin Schirmuhly and she was living in Denver. When Brendan and I had left Joey and Alices’s in Wisconsin, we just assumed that we’d be on our own until Jackson Hole. Here was(by the miracle of technology) an old friend offering up a place to crash. We made our way down through Fort Collins via our amazing stay at the Mishuaka Inn and took a ride through Estes Park on Trail Ridge Road.

This road winds up and down through the Rockies and provides some of the most spectacular views from elevation in the lower 48. Warned beforehand that we should stay out of the park after the mid-afternoon because of bad storms that happen almost every day, we promptly woke up late and shoved off at 4PM. Fast forward to 7:30PM and we were up on top of the world looking down over the Rockie Mountians. We also happend to be looking over the huge storm that was gathering beneath us.

It was taking position right over our route and was getting worse every minute. As we reached the rain, I thought if we were traveling at 60mph that we had a decent chance to dash right through the storm and arrive at Kristen’s just fine. Two things got in the way of that.

1) You can’t travel at 60mph coming down out of the mountains in a storm
2) It was a huge storm that seemed to be placed entirely over our route to Denver

Brendan is a champion. I had seen glimpses of this when we did a 10 hour drive from Delaware to Albany a year ago. What that ride didn’t have though, was the extreme cold of torrential rain at elevation. As we pulled into a gas station about two hours into the rain riding, I got off my bike…assuming that without any rain gear, Brendan would want to take a break and warm up inside. As I approached him, he looked at me with steely eyes that questioned my presence. When I suggested a break, he placed the gas hose back in it’s cradle with shaking hands and said, “no way…we’re going”.

We finally descended out of the mountains and into Denver. The feeling of warm dry air was palpable as we rushed toward the city. Drenched like a couple of sewer rats, we pulled into the driveway where we were supposed to meet a bunch of Kristen’s friends at a dinner party. Walking into that group of people and their house is something I will never forget. Both of us dripping water and Brendan visibly shaking from head to toe. We very quickly turned their living room into a storage locker for our gear as Brendan made a mad dash to the shower and I started in on all the delicious food they had waiting for us.

Thanks to Kristen and her friends…you saved our rain soaked asses!