Jeff sez: If your ever get depressed, go for a bike tour. You meet the most wonderful people and it completely changes your outlook on life.

In Del Norte we met Alex Colville, 71 years old, who runs Casa de Madera Sports. Why does he go to work every day at 71 years old to bring in $20-$100 total sales? Only because he's helping people like us who pass through. It's an aid station disguised (thinly) as a business. He will top off your bottle of white gas. (Everybody else makes you buy a quart or a gallon.) He has one BOB trailer in stock, but has never sold one. He uses it for parts so that when somebody comes in with a problem with their trailer, he can send them right on their way. Then he gets the replacement parts from the BOB trailer people.

Alex has entertained visitors to Del Norte with woodcarving, photography, and as a climbing guide since the 1970's. He can talk your ear off, of course, but in a very nice way. He's still climbing! How many 71-year-olds are still climbing 5.8 and 5.10 routes? He says he put up a lot of fairly easy routes when he was in his 50's just so he'd have something to climb now. And he can still climb all but one of them.

Alex even provided a place for us to stay right at the foot of Indiana Pass, so we could get right up there and start climbing the pass in the morning, breaking up the climb.