Today a ride from Westminster to the Colorado state capitol and back. This was the first ride since I replaced the back wheel, tires and rear brake.

It was a nice easy ride and definitely shows the contrast between loaded touring and unloaded riding. The bike handled well overall. When I brought it to the bike shop, I knew the rear tire was worn and the left pedal likely missing a bearing. They informed me they had also found nine small cracks near the eyelets. So what to do to replace the rear wheel? Fortunately I had a spare 48-spoke wheel I had built up and sent to my mother.

Why the spare wheel? On previous trips I had issues with Phil Woods hubs. They are bomb-proof and ride very well. However, on four occasions (New Zealand 2002, Thailand 2007, Canada 2016, Wyoming 2016) the internal pawls got stuck and the hub would spin freely in both directions. After this happened to my twice on my pan-American ride I had replaced one of those two failures with a different brand of hub. The other hub failure was with this bicycle and had been replaced with a Phil Woods hub under warranty. So even though it hadn’t failed again I was always slightly cautious and decided to get a spare wheel. In this case it wasn’t the hub that failed but the rim – but this still helped.

Early morning in Northglenn. You can see the city below as I cycle down. Most of my route was on three different bike trails: the Niver, South Platte and Cherry Creek trails. These all went well and were easy cycling. Only the very last bit in downtown Denver and the start were on roads.

The Platte River. I left the river behind in Big Spring, Nebraska.

Cherry Creek Trail. This short section has a separate walkway for pedestrians and this side is only roller blades and bicycles. There were plenty of bikes on the trail including some e-Bikes that quickly zoomed past.

Obligatory photo of the capitol. This also shows several things I updated here:

• The brim around the helmet is new. Blue was no longer available, so white this time.
• The handlebar bag. The old one snapped inside and zippers were starting to fade.
• The rear wheel
• The front and rear tires
• The rear brake

Still on the list are my pedals which are ordered and weren’t yet available when I picked up the bike. However, otherwise everything rides well. I will also sort through my gear and add some items (e.g. wool hat and mittens that were mailed away) and drop some items (e.g. some clothes) to adjust my load.

Bike with the indian statue.

Otherwise I am still on intermission until end of this week. We had a Celebration of Life for my father which went well. It was also nice to see family/friends. A few more things to do and then get ready and get back on the road. I have updated the map of states and moved Helena from the “not ridden” to the “not planned” category. The time I have left gives me a choice to either go towards Helena or towards the Salem/Olympia and unless forest fires change things would prefer to go to the Pacific coast. I also switched Salem Oregon from “not planned” to “not ridden”.