Tuesday April 27^th, The Great Divide Lodge, Breckenridge, Colorado

Following a recommendation from our hotel receptionist, dinner last night was in the South Park Bowl in Fairplay. That is to say we had dinner in a bowling alley. During a local league game, with loud piped rock music in the background. And the strange thing was, it was really good fun. The place gets its name because Fairplay is in the South Park Basin in Colorado where the animated TV series is based. The manager was a New Yorker and a real hustler. He had more or less talked us into sharing a rack of barbecued beef ribs before we sat down. Basically this meant we each got half of one side of a cow to eat. I thought he looked Irish ( the manager not the cow) but Mike said he didn’t have enough hair (he has some theory that all Irish people are hairy) and said he was Italian. I wanted to settle it but saying “ I think you’re Irish but my friend says your bald so you must be Italian “ didn’t really appeal. . So we’ll never know. The ribs were great and we had cherry pie afterward ,also excellent. The people taking part in the bowling, including Seamus Bertorelli, looked like they were having a great time.

I noticed last night that something strange is happening to my speech pattern again . I have dropped the over- English “spiffing” “ “cracking “ etc. and have turned into Del Boy Trotter, greeting every offer or arrival of food with “lovely jubbly!”. Why? The waitresses look at me as if I’m deranged, which possibly I am. Maybe it’s a result of being at altitude.

We didn’t set out this morning till eight o’ clock because we wanted it to warm up a bit. It was still below zero when we set off but we were well wrapped up and it was a bright sunny day. We had 11 miles up to the top of Hoosier Pass and then the 12 screaming miles down. I had a problem almost immediately in that I found that I could hardly see. This has been developing over the last few days. It’s either the sun, the glare of the snow or just being at high altitude. Whatever it is , my eyes were very red and sore and seeing was becoming more and more difficult. I had something a bit like this in the Pyrenees a few years ago and had bought prescription sunglasses to counter-act it but they proved to be ineffective. In the end I managed by wearing two pairs of Mike’s sunglasses at the same time. Not ideal but it worked. If you take into account that Mike is slightly hard of hearing, we were probably not the best prepared pair of cyclists going up Hoosier Pass. The main climb is about 4 miles and it took us just under an hour. Again it was long and gradual rather than a steep roller-coaster and I found it reasonably ok. The views on the way up are wonderful but the summit is a bit of a let-down. It’s on a bend in the road which stops you getting a really good view in any direction. Hoosier Pass is on the Continental divide which means that water on one side flows into the Atlantic and on the other into the Pacific. Mike suggested a simple biological experiment to see if this was true but I did not think this appropriate.

The first five miles downhill were every bit as bad as I feared and probably the scariest cycling I’ve ever done. Really steep, hair pin bends, the prospect of ice on the road and signs everywhere saying “Beware Falling Rocks”. Lovely Jubbly!

It gets easier after the first five and the rest of the ride into Breckenridge is actually quite pleasant. You cannot really say the same of the place itself. It’s a very well to do skiing resort with lots of shopping malls, bijou little shops and restaurants all done up in fake Wild West timber facades. A pretty hellish sort of place actually though fortunately its now out of season and fairly quiet . When we asked the chap in the tourist office for somewhere decent to eat, not a fast-food place, he replied “Breckenridge doesn’t have fast-food places” . He pointed us towards the Breckenridge Brewing Corporation which was reasonable enough although our rather surly waitress clearly thought we were a bit infra dig. Hadn’t she ever seen anyone wearing a balaclava, a baseball cap and two pairs of dark glasses before?

We’re staying in the Great Divide Lodge, very swanky but reasonably priced as it’s out of season. The receptionist who turns out be from Shrewsbury seemed none too pleased when we identified her as English. She dropped her American accent but has probably added ten dollars to the bill.

This afternoon I went out and bought what I hope is the solution to my eye problem. A really neat pair of Polaroid sunglasses that you can wear over ordinary prescription glasses. I look a bit like a white Ray Charles but I can live with that.

Dinner was roast chicken, mashed potato and corn in a gloomy basement diner, watching Arizona v Colorado in Baseball. That’s if you looked straight ahead. To your right it was LAD v NYM and to your left it was SD v FLA. Don’t ask me.

A nightcap in Brogan and Burke’s bar, full of Breckenridge’s bright young things, and then back to the hotel where I am now going to spend some time in front of a mirror singing Hit the Road Jack.