He stayed in Abiquiu last night - last year he flew through town... possibly holding his breath the whole way because that is where he got food poisoning the prior year.  Maybe he didn't want to touch the phone to make a call in?  Or maybe he fell asleep during his "TV party"!

what do you suppose Justin Simoni is up to now?

Looks like he camped in front of the Regina, NM fire station... pulling in at 11pm last night.   Maybe they have an outside water tap?   Not much else in that town.  Post office is located in the gas station.   Tough for him to have to take the fire detour...and miss Brazos Ridge.   Makes it impossible to level the race not only between different years but between racers in the same year! 

Cricket Butler and Stephen Huddle are heading into the Flathead!

Check again on Deejay!  Looks like his spot is working again...

Glad to see Deejay still in it!  Looking forward to more of his MTBcasts.   His call in where he talks about the descent into Salida: "two wheels sliding ...while...in the aerobars position - sketch-o-rama..."  really brought the TD back for me...  (and for some strange reason, makes me want to race it again .)   

Dave, When are you headed back out there? What is it like watching after doing it?

Wil

Dave, When are you headed back out there? What is it like watching

Dave, When are you headed back out there? What is it like watching after doing it?

Wil

Wil, Ive been watching a bit and reading here.  Finally loaded all the mtb casts on my ipod and listen to them while driving at work yesterday.  Bittersweet with great memories and seeing others doing what I loved so much last year. Reroutes throw me off and perhaps fore shadow the race may neverbe the same again.  Tour Divide another canary killed inside the global weirding coal mine.  And then last night hopped on the TD race bike and peddaled into Montpelier to havea beer with Lexi. A beautiful vermont dirt road night with lunar moths flashing in front of my light with the river below and Camels Hump above.  She is heading out to Brush Mt Lodge tomorrow for the anviversary.  She hasnt been able to watch this year.  Heads up to the first racer thatcomes in on weds/thurs: there will be tears.  Hopefully Kirsten can work her angel magic.

Harder than watching the race is knowing the difference between me last year and thisx year.  There was allthe expected post race experiences and all then all the expected stages of grief.  Now I am in this weird "think I'm gonna get hit by a car" funk . . . then flipping back i.to all the earlier stages except (what seems so easy and sweet now) the stage of denial.  What really hit home was seeing you out on your 100 km ride in tbe snow last february. . . so pumped!  That was me last year!  Insane motivation!  Now all that is morphed into something else. . .needs to be explored on another adventure.  Thought it might be CTR but now I realize I must slay this border to border ride on dirt in my home state before going out in the world again.

Watching the local Denver weather and they are saying lots of snow in the high country. Here's a link for cdot cameras, which are located on the highways, but can still check. The camera in Jefferson (285) is about 5 miles from the Como Depot so I would say Boreas pass got some snow last night and probably still snowing on top.
http://www.cotrip.org/device.htm

All the best to the racers,

Woody
 

 Wow! is that snow on the edge of the road by the Dillon Reservoir?  and Frisco too?  Climax camera looks slippery!  Tough conditions to be out riding all day.  Throw some food on the fire and stay warm racers!  

in VERMONT this project was a baby of Dave Blumenthal's.  Check out his PBwiki here: http://xvtmbr.pbworks.com/w/page/334617/FrontPage
There are many options in this state... but so far nothing (vertical) has been linked and biked in one swoop.  There is an existing East - West cross Vermont Trail but the dirt is entirely rail trail or dirt road.... and the paved road parts are a bit nasty.  http://www.crossvermont.org/index.php
The statewide mt bike organization also once shared  a goal of a N-S trail, but nothing ever mapped.  I heard someone is writing a story this year on riding the length of the state (200miles) on single track (mostly)... but not sure if she will be sharing the gpx of that adventure.  My goal this year was to link as much single track together with a bunch of class 4 (unmaintained dirt) and other dirt roads in a fashion somewhat resembling Tour Divide style bikepacking; and ride it.

Justin Simoni has entered the single track connector to the base of Galton Pass!   Will he camp out or try to make it through the hike-a-bike section before dark?

love those pictures, ahh-you had camp fires--I am jealous

I never planned to have campfires - but Pete Faeth convinced me otherwise... said it would helps to lift my spirits.  He was carrying a full bottle of white gas in one of his cages... crazy I thought but I wasn't about to second guess a former marine.  And he proved right... had some great times sitting around TD campfires drying my socks.    I hope Pete is having high spirits on his north-bound race this year.

This is a big change of pace - to be watching the the race unfold on the computer.  Cheers to all the racers dealing with all the snow and re-routes!  Really makes me wish I was out there again.  Here's some photos from last year to look at in between waiting for new posts to pop up.
https://picasaweb.google.com/parisbrestparis/TourDivideRace2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCMC1vfjPtofuUg

Prince Edward Island ( a couple weeks of the year anyway)  and then not quite Canadian (except in the blood) just 100 km south of Quebec in Vermont the rest of the year.  I've been trying to make the off road/ on dirt commute between the two on the Trans Canada Trail for a few years now with limited success.  https://picasaweb.google.com/parisbrestparis/TransCanadaTrail

Have you considered October or even November?     I am always looking to get out of Vermont after mid-October....

I can say I've never gone bike packing in my life .... And I look at the Divide race as something that I'd do for myself, not to finish first. If I happened to be first cool but that wouldn't be the goal. ..... I'd greatly appreciate any input -

  I just got stuck on the above quoted part of the OP... maybe I was too harsh... but harsh words are nothing compared to harsh mother nature.  At least with the words you're warm and dry and at home....   So if you take winning out of the equation - yeah - maybe - depending on who you are and what other experiences you have.  People HAVE done it... signed up and raced last minute.  Mat Arnold and Reuben Kline come to mind...

so...On the other hand....

I haven't classic nordic skied since 1981... and I signed up for the 104 mile Canadian Ski Marathon back in November - the race was held on February 12 &13.  I planned on getting 600 miles on skis before the race but we had nothing skiable until mid January.   With less than two months, I put 300 miles on my skis, learned how to wax, tried to learn how to ski and then showed up at the race.    It went fine - I finished in just under 20 hours.  Great training for a Tour Divide.   I know my technique sucked and it probably showed but I had fun  and nobody got hurt.  So take what I say with a grain of salt.... I'm just saying what I know...

There were some amazing, well trained cyclists who did not finish last year: Pete Faeth, Heather Dawe, Devian Gilbert, Phil Rad, and Mike Gibney come to mind.   All people who could have easily beat me.   In most races I am near the front, in the TD I was near the back.  Normally I can race faster than other people just by picking a better line; on the TD the 30 people ahead of me were ALL picking THE perfect line, the fastest line, the winning line... these people were all top notch riders, they had some miles under their belts.

No.

1) If you have to ask......  People have "walked on" and finished the race.   But these people show up with a pretty good resumes... and I'm not sure any of them would claim to have only "trained" 2 mos. 

2) If you think you could WIN - beating people who have been training for years...  You are either totally delusional about your abilities and what this race is about; or, you are in such awesome shape you should be participating in a race that has prize money.  The Tour de France or World Cyclocross Championship comes to mind.  (Please remember my advice when you become fully sponsored!)

3) This is a bikepacking race... which is slightly different from a mountain bike race.  You sleep on the ground, eat crappy food, try to locate  drinkable water, carry a whole bunch of crap,  and go days without bathing.  You are living outside where there is rain and snow and bears and lightening and mosquitoes.   You really need to try bikepacking before setting off on a 2745 mile bikepacking race.  Yes, it is fun... but it is also a serious ass-kicking, day after day. 

4) If it turns out your not prepared - because you didn't have time and miles to shake down your equipment, or you are not mentally prepared, or not physically fit enough; you could be placing a burden on others in the race or the race infrastructure itself.  Same goes for people who haven't saved enough money and plan to "dirt bag" the race.  Leaving lousy tips in restaurants or bike shops hurts everybody else in the race (and future races) that is counting on those services.   If you are too weak, or unaware of the camping etiquette, that requires you to pack in and pack out your trash - again it is a black eye for the event.

5) Patience.  If you don't have the patience to wait till next year you might not have the patience to make it to the end of that endless road far off on the edge of the horizon.  I spent one year training (coming from a long racing, camping, and randonneuring background.)  It was a great year - an endless amount of motivation to ride, saw some beautiful places I had never biked through in my state, and I learned a ton - especially from Dave B who was also training for 2010.  It turns out that one year we spent training together would be the last... and if I had to pick one year to know such an amazing person it would have been that last one.  The trips, the rides, the exploring, the equipment testing...we had a blast.   No need to rush.... go out and enjoy some rides.

HI Darren -

A scholarship fund is set up at the Green Mountain Club.  It can be donated to here:

https://secure3.convio.net/gmc/site/Donation2?1380.donation=form1&df_id=1380

Dave was a big hiker - having grown up hiking on the AT and later doing a through hike of the PCT.  He was on the board of the Green Mountain Club and a volunteer.  He illustrated their Long Trail Guide Book.

He was an amazing guy and an expert at so many things.  I still catch myself about to shoot Dave an email asking him some obscure question or looking for a technological answer on some outdoor related project - gps or sewing or stove construction or ski waxing.... ahhh - he is greatly missed.

He was also a great cyclist and was working with me on a border to border long distance Vermont bikepacking route.

check it out here:
 
http://xvtmbr.pbworks.com/w/page/334617/FrontPage

I am still looking for route ideas and I am hoping to find people to do a shakedown ride in 2011.

Keep on riding....

Dave Tremblay

Geocaching goes great with bikepacking.  I geocache almost exclusively by bike.  It often brings me to interesting out of the way places that I may not have stopped and appreciated otherwise.  Fellow bikepacker and Tour Divide racer daveB got me started geocaching on one of our first training rides together.  We both geocached  during the 2010 Tour Divide race although I only seriously looked for two and only found one because of the race situation.  I'm sure daveB found many more than me during the race but I will never really know how many.   I found geocache # GCVTKX outside Rawlins, WY  and saw daveB had found it as well.  It was before I knew what had happened to him - I wrote him a note even though he was ahead of me...  I think of it as my last communication with him.

It might be worth noting that only 5-10% of TD is on trail. So that route is pretty much a road route -- albeit on dirt/gravel.


I wonder if a neat, low-traffic backroads, dirt, gravel route could be strung across the continent E/W. ? Maybe one already is...


[/quote]

I considered doing the TD on my cross bike...  then thought I might switch to cross tires at some point in the race.   It never happened.  The route may be 75% on "roads" but these are rocky, bumpy, sandy, muddy, thorny, slippery roads. In many places I had to slow down to prevent ripping a tire or rolling off the road on the loose surface.  For a while I was calculating how much of the route could be done in a car vs a Ford F250 vs a 4-wheeler...  but I lost count....  I wouldn't do it without a mtn bike.

For a low traffic E-W route check out the Trans Canada Trail
http://www.tctrail.ca/tlocator/tlocator_en.html   

see photos from my trip Vermont to PEI here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/parisbrestparis/TCT2009?authkey=Gv1sRgCO65rO7ir7DIVg#

I just received my bags from Jeff this week.  They are beautiful.  He doesn't have time for email or forums.  If you leave a message he will call you back.  My impression is that he follows a California  business model that keeps stress from getting the upper hand.  It was a bit of a shock to my New England sensibilities but after I figured out it was just a cultural difference I found working with him quite refreshing.  Hang in there - he will deliver!

47?  47 is the oldest GD/TD racer?  That makes me feel old...racing age 48 this year.  Hmmm any one know when Blaine Nestor's birthday is?  Maybe I can smash his record....

How about a bike computer that has an odometer that can be "nudged" up or down to match the cue sheet?

( another studiozoic idea!)