I spent the last two weeks living out of my best friend Macky’s 1995 Subaru. We traveled in style, four bikes on top, the back stuffed to exploding point with wheels and sweaty clothes and industrial sized containers of HEED. We camped in parking lots and made sandwiches on the hood of the car, relishing our freedom and unshoweredness and making wild plans to live this way permanently. Driving around the West racing bikes—that is, we decided, the life, and clearly the end goal of our expensive liberal arts educations.

First destination: beautiful Breckenridge, Colorado for the Breck Epic, a grueling 6-day stage race in which racers ride 250ish miles (more if you count getting lost) and climb 45,000 some vertical feet. I’m fudging the numbers but if you finish you get a belt buckle that says “Bad Motherfucker” so that’s all you really need to know.

Macky raced and Amy, Molly and I played support crew. In other words, we made sandwiches, gave massages, and wrestled a very whiny professional racer out of his sleeping bag at 6 AM. Not exactly a glamorous job, but in exchange for hanging out in Breck, one could do a lot worse. I spent the mornings riding up into the mountains, sucking in the cold, thin alpine air.  When I got as far as my Midwestern-trained lungs could handle, I turned around for a wicked fast descent. Breck has some seriously sexy singletrack.  I mean, these trails will seduce you.  Tight, rooty uphills. Swooping turns on loose gravel. Breathtaking descents through alpine meadows and across icy streams. Long climbs that take you above treeline, across snow fields and so close to the sun you could reach up and knock it down if you weren’t so tired from climbing 3,000 vertical feet. You will fall head over heels in love. You will also fall head over heels off your bike at least once. If not you probably aren’t having enough fun. These mountains are big kids and they play rough.