Pikes Peak Greenway – Colorado Springs

We took off for Colorado as we do every few summers to escape the heat at home. We decided to first go to Colorado Springs as we’d only passed through before and never spent any time there. Doing a little research prior it looked like they had a nice trail system. This vacation also became a brewery tour. On the way to Colorado we stopped in Dodge City, KS and had a beverage at the new Dodge City Brewery.
In Colorado Springs we stayed at the Comfort Inn North which was right about where the Pikes Peak Greenway and the New Santa Fe Regional Trail meet. Together these trails/paths run across town North to South. The trail is literally right out the hotels back door. Awesome!
Day one in Colorado Springs we headed south which is the Pikes Peak Greenway. We rode it to the south end of town and then headed back north stopping downtown to check out a couple breweries (Fieldhouse & Phantom Ranch), eat lunch and explore.

As for the bike I took as I know some will wonder…
I was getting ready to put the bike I usually take on trips (my old Specialized hybrid) in to the truck to leave and noticed the rear wheel was out of true and then found a broken spoke. I didn’t have a replacement spoke and didn’t want to wait around home for a bike shop to open or have to deal with it out of town, so I just grabbed the only other bike I have that has multiple gears which was this mutant. I was really pleased with how well it did considering it’s a cheap bike that I’ve hacked and welded on. About a week prior I had to replace the 7 speed freewheel on the bike as the old one fell apart. My bike shop gave me a used one which just happen to have the big jump to the 1st gear which I believe Shimano calls the Mega Range Super Low and what I call the “bail out” gear. Being only a 7 speed this really came in handy later in the trip when we did some climbing.

On to the video and photos…

The first video is of our travel day, the second is the ride.

The first 6 photos are from our travel day.