2020 Virtual RAGBRAI Day 3

By Day 3 of this virtual RAGBRAI I'd learned that Strava's new route planning tools were pretty great, so when I planned a route for today I looked for more trails that had a lot of cyclist traffic. That led me to notice the Big Dry Creek Trail in Broomfield, which I had been past many times but never ridden. I'd just need to ride southeast down the 36 Bikeway to Big Dry Creek before turning northeast then north along I-25 as the first part of today's 54-mile counterclockwise loop.

Big Dry Creek isn't dry. The trail alongside it heading northeast was super nice, though, plenty wide, paved, and fast.

The trail brought me parallel to I-25 and all of its associated noise. That's Amazon's distribution center on the other side.

If I were on RAGBRAI in Iowa today, one of the highlights would have been crossing I-35 about halfway between Fort Dodge and Iowa Falls. ("Crossing the equator," as some folks call it.) This view of crossing over the Northwest Parkway will have to substitute.

It's too brown and not green enough to fool people into thinking this is Iowa, but there's nothing unfamiliar to RAGBRAI about a long straight stretch of two-lane blacktop.

Womp womp. I played with fire a mile or two back, choosing to ride across some wild grasses to move from a bike trail to the road. I must have picked up a thorn or something else spiky because my rear tire was flat soon after. This is my first RAGBRAI flat after 5 trips across Iowa without one, so maybe I was due. I had all the tools and parts I needed and was back on the road about 20 minutes later.

The LoBo Trail between Longmont and Boulder (Get it? LoBo?) is another well-maintained, crushed gravel trail that's easy to ride on a road bike. It's a nice break from the traffic you'd normally have to deal with on the Diagonal Highway.

One of the things I really like about where I live is the mix of built, wild, and agricultural settings. There's a city of 100,000+ between where I'm standing and those mountains, but you'd never know it from this spot.

Louisville has blocked off some of its streets to allow for more outdoor dining. In a way, it had a RAGBRAI overnight town kind of feeling to it, minus the crowds of thousands of people, of course.

The coal miner statue in Louisville isn't taking any chances with the virus, even if he never goes inside.