The Derp Search. Trail Donkeys with Peder

“It’s just a recovery ride”

These are probably the most mis-used words in cycling, they are around here with the Denver Rodeo crew anyway. Yesterday’s ride was supposed to be a pleasant spin to see if “the sensations are good”, but it didn’t take long for Peder and myself to get bored and start looking for silly things to do. Every time we passed a dirt offshoot of the road we’d yell “singletrack!” and see if the trail went anywhere. Most didn’t but some did, and we hit the derping payload when we took a turn onto the North Table mountain trail system. Yes, we were on our road bikes, but more and more that makes our dirt rides more fun and we were up for the challenge of seeing where our wheels would take us.

It is truly days like these that cycling becomes more than working out, or training, or transportation, or PRs. On days like yesterday cycling becomes a platform for friendship and adventure. It reverses the aging process and makes you whoop out loud and feel like a kid again. This is what Rodeo is about. It’s about ignoring boundaries or plans or route selections and just letting the bike go where it wants to take you. Rides like this don’t happen very often, often time, jobs, and responsibilities take priority, but on special days everything lines up just so, and the search for derps and woots takes over.

Images tell stories better than I can write them, so here is a video and a photo essay of the day.