My last day in Colorado..

..started in Colorado Springs:

What a dump huh? Did the trick tho I suppose..

Right after I took that photo I shared this awkward moment with what appeared to be a transient worker. It was right as I looked up from my screen about to turn and head towards the parking lot. He looked up at me from pushing a smoking pile of dust with his broom. He was white, about my age, build and WAY scragglier that I could ever possibly hope to look. A sure sign of one too many poor decisions he had made along the way. Then here he was sweeping, looking at my dumbass taking photos for the fuck of it with my expensive camera and wearing a stupid ass heavily zippered Rag and Bone Jacket. It's just one of those moments where you walk away from feeling kinda guilty, wiping the sweat from your brow and thinking: PHEW, glad things never came down to that! Right then, now where in god's name can I find myself a decent chai tea and croissant around this lousy shit hole?! Yeah, gotta love those first world problems ;-)

From there I went to check out Pike's Peak (check THIS shit out!) but it was a bust since it was so fucked up outside that they closed the last section off. I only made it up to 13 of the 19 miles so I had to settle for 11,400 feet instead of the 14,100 summit. Here's what it looked like at mile marker 13:

Fuck that noise! It was like 20 degrees, snowing and the wind chill was like -6 or something. As soon as I stepped out of the car a gust of wind and snow hit me in the face and blew me back. As if it wasn't bad enough that breathing felt funny. I took off a few minutes later bummed that I couldn't make it to the summit. It was still pretty rad going from 60 degrees to below zero and snowing but I really wish I could've seen the top on a nicer day..

Something about Colorado Spings rubbed me the wrong way so I took off. I tried getting in touch with Eric from Ground Up to no avail. I was thinking of checking out the velodrome but I had a limited amount of time so I bailed and headed up to Denver. Had I known Pike's Peak was going to be a bust I surely would've driven up to Boulder to check out the shops there instead. Next time I suppose..

Denver had some pretty sweet shops and I got to BS with some of the guys there which was cool. One of them recommended that I head over to check out the Serotta fitting machine at this high end only shop:

Def very gnar. While the geeky part of me can kinda get into it, it's not long until the side of me that DESPISES seeing shit like that in a bike shop usually takes over. I mean, you only get one of those to sell bikes to uber rich people and well.. that's about it. I mean, fine, if you race, then I'm sure it's excellent. It's just that when I look at something like that I can't help but think it's just another way for high end bike retailers to jerk rich people's egos off..

My irritation at the machine might partially explain how I accidentally knocked over a bunch of brand new Cyfax frames- OOPS! Holy shit did I feel bad about that!! I was mostly pissed at myself after having been to countless shops, shows and peoples places, I'd never even come close to doing something like that before. Tho to my credit, they had three super sick high end frames sitting loose on a coffee table ON TOP OF RANDOM UNEVEN STACKS OF MAGAZINES. I mean, who does that?! A light fart would've knocked them over they were so precariously positioned. I've seen more care put into displaying Surley's than those fucking things. Fortunately nothing bad happened to any of em and I was able to walk away without having to carry one out over my shoulder. Which is a really good thing because while I can't explain it.. I really can't fucking stand Cyfax. I'm not sure what it is because they def are sick frames. Maybe it's the name, I don't know. Maybe it's because like nearly all high end carbon fiber frame manufacturers, their shit just ends up looking identical to one and other. While some do stand out more than others, they seem to have this look like they all came out of the same cauldron of gobbly goop as the next random one. I mean, talk about being bored to tears! Ehh, anyways, I think it's just a bad case of B I K E R A C I S M honestly :-P

After my little mishap, I rolled over to Pearl Velo since I'd heard the neighborhood was pretty cool as well:

 Tyler had a pretty sweet shop and some nice stuff inside. I was digging on this old Mercier he had:

Check out that decal!

He also gave me a copy of COG magazine which I hadn't seen in a while and can I just say, best cover yet:

What makes it is the little caption:

(Baby - You're like an outlaw, everbodies chasing you..)

So true! Cute chicks on bikes are HIGHLY sought after by pretty much everyone on two wheels, hehe..

Afterwords I went to check out the two huge vintage stores I had seen down the block. But not before perving on this Corvette:

Oh and I saw this Bradley GT earlier as well: 

ANYways, the first store (2nd one was kinda weird) had a SICK amount of old toys and SUPER creeky floors. It wasn't until I was about to leave when I saw this separate room full of old WWII stuff. Which is usually where you find some really cool shit. Little did I know I would find myself face to face with something I'd been searching high and low for about 15 years. At first it was the old mine detector kit that caught my eye:

Until of course I looked down and saw it, the 1965 issue of Life Magazine I thought I'd never find:

FUCK YESSSS!!!

Can I tell you I damn near soiled myself I was so shocked/stoked! I'd combed through countless bins of LIFE magazines over the years looking for that particular issue and there it was all of a sudden staring me right in the face. Best of all is that there were a bunch more in the bin from that era as well :-D

Okay, so at this point you're probably like, who the fuck cares?! Well, if you're a fan of Larry Burrows you'd probably be just as stoked as me. These issues have a whole slew of some of his most famous images from the Vietnam war. Photos that I'd only seen in books bearing his name. It's just rad to now own a bunch of the magazines they were originally published in. Here's a few spreads:

I'll post the rest of those articles on my flickr eventually so whoever's interested can give em a read. But yeah, super stoked on that find! Much more so than this Spinergy Rev X front wheel and small gaggle of cranks I'd found while in Aspen the week before:

Anyone happen to have a Campy C Record road crank arm in 167.5mm I can use to match the drive side pictured with??

Oh shit- right, I never mentioned that little side trip. Probably because there really is nothing worth mentioning when it comes to Aspen. Sure it's a lovely resort town but it's also like, soho in the mountains with all the crazy high end shops. I only went since Glenwood Springs seemed to be a bit of a bore (cue Doc Holiday's 'grave' aka memorial since they don't actually know where he's buried). Anyways, this snap kinda sums Aspen up:

Yup, rich people over compensation for something they're severely lacking in otherwise..

Fortunately there was the pretty high end bike shop that had some stuff they had no use for that I was able to walk away with for a song (RevX/cranks). Along with some SUPER scary shit:

EEK right?!

Tho they did have this SWEET Somec Roadie that was all original for the most part and DA7400 for $750!:

Would've bought the fucking thing myself if I had the money to burn. Totally my size!

I think the one redeeming thing about Aspen was this small restaurant called Little Annie's where I enjoyed THE tastiest chicken fried chicken, mashed taters & gravy EVER:

YUM!

They also had the cutest little lesbian chick working there. Which I undoubtingly creeped the hell out of when I asked her if she knew of any spooky abandoned type places I could take photos at. Showing her my huge black camera didn't help to ease the queer look she was giving me. Turned out there was some ghost town not far away but it seemed a bit too touristy for my taste. I ended up heading back to Rifle afterwords. But not before ogling this sweet mountain:

Right then, I'm pretty sure that's all I've got left from my Colorado trip. LOTS more snaps on my flickr as per usual..

Also, get ready to dig deep into your pockets cause I'm going to be listing a bunch of gnarly shit on the bay tomorrow!

My last day in Colorado..