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This is a video from 2006 I did with some guys from Sport Touring.Net - 6 guys from Northern Colorado, some very experienced riders and a couple no so experienced. The ride organizer is an MSF instructor in Loveland and he took us up into the foothills and ran us through the paces of the twists and turns of Stove Prairie road, this was the first and only time I have been on this road and for the most part I liked it very much. It is just a long trip to get to it for me, involving riding up into Denver and through it to get to Loveland its hardly worth it when there are so many other great roads around here. You really need to take an entire day for a trip up there. I enjoyed it - I new 3 of the guys from other rides and 3 others I did not know, 4 of us went on ahead a faster pace and 2 lagged behind, falling back at the first sign of tight twisters. I was keeping pace in the rear with the faster guys and took notice of where the two behind me fell behind.

preview 2 passing another group

video preview One bike stays with us a bit

It got a bit confusing when we caught up to a large group of BMW riders and passed the lot of them, that is pretty much where I lost the other two riders behind me, not wanting to get left behind I stayed up with the faster guys. We rode the entire road and stopped at the end and waited for a good half an hour and decided to go back to the point where I remembered seeing them, there was no sign of either of them. So we went back another 5 minutes and decided they must have broke off and gone home, we remembered one of them saying they had to be back soon for domestic duties. So we turned around and completed our ride hoping to get a call on the cell phone when we able to get phone service again. (cell phones don't work in the foothills)

:media: Stove Prairie Road High Resolution Video

The video runs about 10 minutes 4 riders in our group and we passed a number of bmw riders along the way, music by Smashing Pumpkins. I may have posted this video last year but I could not find any refrence to it - it is one of my favorite rides I have done over the years. Once we stopped for lunch we called one of the guys who fell behind and he told us that the last guy (who I had never met before) overcooked a turn and went off the road, he was fine but his bike was damaged. We actually went right by them but since they were off in the tall grass we could not see them. Which is why we always ride with a sweeper so in case somthing like this happens there is somebody there to take care, they were able to get a tow truck out and haul the bike home in an hour. I was surprised we did not see them - If the new guy had not said he might turn back we would have scoured the area much deeper and found them - but since we thought he went ahead and left like said he might do we left it at that. Thank goodness for our sweeper!

THE MAP

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