Back in BC

Home again, home again as the saying goes. Crested Butte was a lot of fun. The art festival worked out really good and I made some money, yeah! Plenty of Okies and Texans to stimulate my economy this past weekend. It was also kinda fun to hang out in CB for two days and reflect on all its flavors. We usually don't come into town when we're there, prefering to stay at camp and ride, etc. The best pizza in CB is Secret Stash on Elk, and the atmosphere is awesome too. Just be prepared to wait a little while for your pie but it will be worth it, things move at a slower pace in CB which is a good thing.
Besides the art festival we did a couple of good rides, the 401 on Friday AM before we loaded in the show, always a fun ride and not too long 2.5 hours for us that day. The down hill was a blast, a little dusty though and the cabbage was high. Felt the altitude on the climb up from Schoffold though, which kinda suprised me, I leaned against my fair share of trees waiting to catch my breath. Monday we did one of my favorite rides in CB out Cement Creek Rd. Reno/Flag/Bear/Deadman. It's a long ride but so worth it with 3 of the most fun downhills around. You also get a lot less traffic on this trail as it's more of commitment to ride as it's out there and it's long. We camped above Cement Creek so we just rode from camp which was so nice, we got an early start and headed up the pass. The first part is dirt road so it's not bad, just steep in a few places. The rest of the ride is all ST and a lot of fun with challanges thrown in here and there. It finishes with a good DH with 15 switchbacks I think it is and they're all rutted and rooted and techy, your arms will flame by the end. We ran into a couple of guys from Europe at the top of Reno, one from Switzerland and one from Belgium. We gave them some beta on the ride and where to go. They dropped into the Flag DH behind us, a few miles later Craig and I stopped to take our pads off and they caught up to us with big smiles on their faces, they were loving it. Then the climbing began and we basically didn't seem them again. Craig and I are both decent climbers but these guys had some mutant Euro thing going on with the climbing. Anyway it was all fun and a good time.
The flies were awful and made camping kinda not so much fun as you couldn't get away from them unless you sat in the truck, never remember it being so bad before.
It was good to get away and do something different, ride something different. We didn't stop to take many pictures due to the flies, when you stopped you got swarmed and then bitten so we kept going for the most part.
It's good to be home now too and I'm looking forward to Monarch Crest over Labor Day!