I thought that the members of this group would be interested in knowing that I
just completed this year's Ride the Rockies, one of Colorado's premier cycing
events, on my Greenspeed GTO. The ride encompassed 6 days of riding and 380
miles over 3 mountain passes: McClure Pass, 3-mile climb to 9,200 feet, Monarch
Pass, 9-mile climb to 11,600 feet, and Independence Pass, 20-mile climb to
12,100 feet, plus a 47-mile climb from Hotchkiss up to the north rim of the
Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The GTO performed flawlessly, and I actually
passed a lot of people on diamond-frame bikes going up the passes. They had to
balance their bikes, fight the wind and keep them going in a straight line at
low speeds - all I had to do was to concentrate on putting power to the cranks.

A number of people who were sneering at the trike at the beginning of the tour
ended up coming over a few days later and saying how impressed they were with
the GTO's performance, and more than a few wanted to know where they could go to
ride one. I was the only rider on RTR to ride a trike, and one of only a handful
of recumbents.

I am fortunate to live in Colorado and to be able to train in the mountains at
altitude. In fact, my last training ride for RTR was a 2-day, 160 mile ride from
Loveland to Estes Park and up and over Trail Ridge Road (at 12,360 feet, the
highest continuously paved road in the US) to Grand Lake - with a return via the
same route the next day. The total elevation gained on that ride was over 11,000
feet. The wind was blowing at 50 mph at the top of Trail Ridge Road, and my
friends on diamond frames had to walk their bikes because they were literally
being blown off the road. I was moving slowly, to be sure, but I was riding.

As we all know, all things in cycling are more about the motor than about the
bike - my GTO's only limitation is that the motor is 60 years old! Anyway, you
can tell anyone who asks, "How do those things do on hills?", that you can climb
anything on a Greenspeed that you can climb on a conventional bike, and you will
probably feel a lot more comfortable both during and after the experience.

My thanks to Greenspeed for building such a fantastic touring machine!