Keystone is beautiful, which is not unexpected. I live on the edge of the Rockies so it’s a view that I am lucky enough to glimpse when I am in Calgary. But like every city, every mountain peak/sky/hill/resort has its own uniqueness and beauty.
The altitude thing that I mentioned in the previous post affected me almost immediately, which I didn’t recognize at first. It started with exhaustion. I attributed this to excessive travel with lots of early mornings. And, to combat this assumed travel exhaustion, I did what I normally do: went out to enjoy the location in some sort of active way. In this case, I thought it would be fantastic to ride a bike around Keystone.
It started off well. The air was fresh, the sun was warm, and I could hear the birds and animals chirping away in the trees. My biggest concern was preventing sunburn. This lasted for about 500m. After this, I felt like I was dragging a wagon full of rocks on a bike that weighed 50 lbs and wondered if I was even breathing oxygen. Still, I attributed this to being tired and decided to press on.
I was on a roadster. There were no plans to climb, off-road or do something adventurous like bike the Drop Zone. Instead, I slowly plodded along and enjoyed the trails and trees because I’m not sure that I could have physically done more; by this point, I felt like I was biking on the moon.
After an hour of riding, I still hadn’t made it to the lake (my goal), which was only 4-miles from the lodge. In my defence, I stopped periodically to take pictures and it seemed that around every corner I ran into someone that I hadn’t seen in months/years. Eventually, I decided that the journey was more interesting than the destination and enjoyed the scenery before calling it a day.
“Eventually, I decided that the journey was more interesting than the destination..” Wise words.