"Spectacular Colorado blue skies, green hills and white high mountains were everywhere. But most notably, we cycled 40% gravel!* We must have ridden on every surface, rutted forest access roads descending from Red Feather Lakes, Smooth MgCl and Pot Holed MgCl roads in Larimer and Boulder Counties, dusty, deep gravel in Pawnee Grass Lands, and of course a few Bike Trails.

"Our team stopped in Livermore for celebratory Culver’s mini-martini’s, Jen and Rashid’s for pleasant charcuteries and pasta lunch, Easton Pizzeria for dinner, Lisa and John’s farm for second Mexican Dinner…finally Chez Grace for late night ramen, cereal and yogurt.

"With minor tweaks, we’ll probably ride same route next year…we’ll see."

* And starting this year Flèche riders get unpaved credit from RUSA, though Mike didn't know that before the ride.

"We had four of the original Wildcat-Ptarmigan members (Dustin, Vernon, Tom and Oksana) and filled our empty spot with Debbie because David Weigel couldn’t make it this year. It was a good team.

"We had lunch at the taco truck in Laporte and in a few minutes the only other Flèche team rolled in after coming down from Red Feather. We rode through Carr without stopping headed up to Wyoming, but stopped to use the spigot on the back of the church recreation center on the way back. Other than that, there are no services for the 80 miles between Laporte and Wellington.

"We finished with a tour of Broomfield which was quite nice. Good team, good Flèche.