G.A.S.P.

(Great Adventures to Scenic Places)

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July 9, 1999

The next day (7-9) was a pleasant bicycling day despite two major climbs through mountain passes just before descending into Steamboat Springs. The ride downhill into Steamboat was both exhilarating and scary – seven miles of 7 to 7 ½ grades. I don’t like to go more than about 30 mph downhill, so I was on the brake most of the way down.

Steamboat Springs is now a summer resort as well as a winter (ski) resort offering golf courses, river rafting, balloon rides, etc. It shows in the price of everything from food to gas to lodging. I had already decided to stay in a motel in the hope of being able to transmit a lot of photos back to webmaster Becky over the Internet.

So I got a $49 motel room that turned out not even to have air conditioning. I never thought to ask about that in this day and age, and the desk clerk didn’t bother to tell me. I got into my room with all of my stuff off the bike and lugged up to the second floor, then decided to cool the place off. Hmm, couldn’t find any air conditioning controls. Hmm, the window was open behind the curtains. Hmm, Gary just got a bargain room in Steamboat Springs. I was able to spend some quality time on the computer, however. I downloaded photos from the camera and wrote E-mail messages to Becky with attached photos and photo explanations, as well as the third part of my journal. All went well until I tried to actually send them about 1:30 in the morning. I couldn’t get a connection on the Internet. I went to bed very frustrated with the electronic aspect of this journey. In the morning, I figured out what had gone wrong – my modem was dialing too fast for the local phone system. I knew there was a way to slow down the modem, but had to call my "provider" to find out the particulars. It turns out that you have to insert a comma between numbers (like between the 9 and the 1 and the 800). By the time I got this all set up, it was peak Internet time on Saturday morning and I still couldn’t get a connection. I left town in a very bad mood.