It all started at 5:30 a.m.—the fire alarm decided to “gently” wake us up with that classic low-battery chirp. Nothing like being roused by a dying smoke detector to jumpstart your day, right? After some hazy searching we found a spare battery in the closet (points to our rental host), fixed the issue, and tried to catch a few more Zs. That lasted about sixty seconds. I rolled over and said to Katie, “Hey, want to just get up and catch the sunrise?” Because apparently, we’re those people now. She agreed, and off we went to hike up Sugarloaf Mountain, conveniently just up the street.

And we’re off! Our grand nomadic experiment started with a bang in the technicolor wonderland of Crested Butte, Colorado. Honestly, if fall foliage could have a Super Bowl, this was it! The leaves were flexing harder than our glutes after a week of back-to-back rides.

So here we are, the first stop on this year-long adventure, right in the heart of Crested Butte, Colorado. What started as a simple plan to celebrate our friend Marcus’s 50th birthday for the weekend—soak in the fall colors, pretend we’re mountain biking legends, and hang out with some of our favorite people—quickly turned into a week-long escape to squeeze every last drop of Colorado before we move on to new horizons.

Are you sure? What the heck do we actually need to do to get this thing moving?