Sunday, September 21, 2008

A quick trip to Colorado and back


Yes, I said a “quick trip“ and I meant it. Quick as in drive a 1000 miles to Fort Collins, Colorado, unload the trailer, and turn around and drive the 1000 miles back to Illinois.

After looking around for the cheapest trailer that we could rent and transport 3 bikes with, we have found the winner. The cost was $35 per day. We really wanted to get this done in two days. Since the trailer rental was closed on Sunday, Mike picked the trailer up before the place closed on Saturday. We weren’t planning on leaving until Sunday late morning, since Saturday evening we already had plans with our friends - our going away party.

Mike loaded the three bikes in to the trailer Saturday afternoon before we the party. It took hours since pitting the third bike was a bit tricky, the trailer wasn’t actually made for 3 bikes, only 2. It had only two wheel chocks so the third bike had to be secured without a wheel chock. The trailer was big and my XT was small, after a few tries Mike got it in there behind the other two bikes.



The ST3, Tiger and XT ready to move to Colorado

Figuring the tough job was already done, getting the three bikes to fit on the trailer, we went to the party. Sunday morning we were going to fill the trailer and truck up with more stuff and head out to Colorado. We wanted to be back in Chicagoland on Tuesday before 6PM to return the trailer. The trailer rental place was not charging us for Sunday since they were closed on Sunday and we originally wanted to rent the trailer on Monday and return it on Wednesday. We were hoping to return the trailer on Tuesday afternoon and only pay to use it two days.

The going away party was a lot of fun and we got home way later then we thought we would, which means we got up way later on Sunday morning then we hoped for.

We started loading up the truck and trailer at 9AM, trying to fill the entire floor area of the trailer and the back of Mike's 4Runner. This took longer then we anticipated and we were finally done in the late afternoon. We left Chicagoland at 5PM in the middle of rush hour.



A stop for some food before jumping on the interstate, we were packing the trailer since morning and haven't stopped to eat all day

We originally thought that we could drive straight through, one of us would drive and one would sleep, but we were both tired by midnight so we decided to pull over at a rest stop, move the stuff out of the back of the truck to the front of the truck, and get some sleep.

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