 You see this? I finally got COVID. Going insane, I'm stuck in my house. I don't like quarantine. No, me gusta. And you know where I got COVID? From a nice old lady. That's right. I went over to her house last week to help her with the project. When I walked in the door, she said, oh, I have some allergies. It's nothing. And I trusted her. And then I got COVID. Boo. So the moral of this story is don't trust any old ladies who seem sweet because they might be harboring a deadly virus. Luckily, it's been very mild for me. I've had it for about five days now. Minor cold symptoms, little phlegm in the throat. I cough every now and then, little bit of boogies in the nose. That's it. And I'm very grateful because I know that COVID can hit some people very hard. I've been vaccinated and boosted and all that stuff. But this is a bummer. And the biggest bummer of all is that it's essentially shut down my life. I don't want to pass this on to anybody else. So I've just been hanging out by myself. And it's beautiful. It's like the most beautiful week of the year here in Boulder. I was supposed to spend Mother's Day with my mom. You all know what a mama's boy I am. That sucked. You know, you heard me in my last video talking about how excited I was to see Amelia after coming back from Mexico. I don't want to get her sick. So we've just been doing the FaceTime thing, which is fun, but it's not nearly as fun as seeing somebody in person. So let this be a lesson to you. If you're hanging out with somebody and they have cold symptoms, like their stuffy nose or something, wear a mask around them because you never know. And best case scenario is you're not gonna get very sick like me, but it will shut your life down. You know, if you're gonna be a good human and not go out and keep spreading the virus, you gotta stay home and do nothing and cancel all your fun events. Oh yeah, Amelia and I were gonna go to Moab this weekend and ride the white rim, but we're not gonna do that anymore because I can't sit next to her in a car for eight hours. Hello, is anybody out there? I've been talking to myself a lot lately and now I'm talking to you. Ooh, is it scary? I'll get there, I promise. I'll get there. We're getting closer. I'm going a little crazy, as you can see, at home all alone, but when life hands me lemonade, I mean, when life hands me lemons, I make lemonade. And in this case, I'm just gonna go do something that I love doing and that means sleeping under the stars and riding my bike. I picked out a local trail up here that has some camping access called the Serran St. Vrain. It's about 15 miles away, up a pretty steep mountain, past a cool little town called Jamestown. And I just wanna go just sleep in the woods. For me, nature is where I go to heal, to think, and to just feel good. And they do tell you when you do have COVID to not exert yourself physically because your body needs all its energy to fight off the virus. But in this case, I've been sitting around for five days and I just wanna get on my bike and go outside and yeah, so that's what I'm gonna do, a little backyard bike packing. Why don't you take a seat, Ryan? Don't mind if I do. Okay, so since this is a very quick trip, I'm not gonna bring all of the gear that I usually bring on a big bike packing trip. And I wanna do this and show you what I bring so you can say, hey, that looks pretty easy. I can go do an overnighter with my kids or with my wife or whatever and show you how accessible it is to get out of the house just for a night. So here we go. First up, the Nemo Dragonfly. What is the Nemo Dragonfly? It's a tent. Yeah, there's a tent inside of this thing. It's their new bike packing tent and I'm excited to try it out. I've never slept in this before. My new 20 degree quilt. Might get cold up there. It is the Rockies. My super lightweight thermal, thermal, thermal, thermal. A nice warm hat. Ole, a long sleeve night shirt. Long pants and my trusty puffy. How long can I spin like this? Nobody knows. Ah, there's something behind my ear. Oh, ha, look at that. It's my tiny Stary Pen. I'm gonna be camping next to a creek and obviously I need H2O. We all do. It's something humans need. Water, never leave home without it. Or at least have one of these. So if you do find water, you can purify it. Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk. 38 miles per burrito. Okay, we will put that to the test with this football-sized burrito. This is gonna be my dinner. And a drone for droning. Hello. And a GoPro for GoPro-ing. And my Mexican Lucha Libre mask to scare away any potential chupacabra sightings. Okay, so this is just really simple. And the main reason why I'm getting out there is because whenever I'm slightly depressed, bummed out, or stressed, or just not feeling right, as long as I'm doing something, I feel better. Especially if I'm doing something outside that involves moving my body, sleeping under the stars, just checking out Mother Nature, listening to birds, listening to the creek, water, whatever it is, it takes me out of my little pity party. It's really easy to get into a funk when you just sit in your house and you're just stewing while you're staring at the wall or you're watching stupid shows on Netflix. You know, that's fun for just a little bit, but for me, I get antsy and I wanna go do something. So, let's go do it. Biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, biddle, let's go guys, let's go, let's do this. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, here we go. It's time for adventure. You know what I love about panniers? They're way easier to pack than bike packing bags. You can just toss everything in. And I don't travel with panniers very often anymore, so it's kinda nice to break them back out. So close. I am bringing my Priority 600 because I'm gonna only ride in pavement. And I don't need my 600X. I've had this bike for four years. It's my everyday commuter. And of course it has pinion and gates. Oh yeah, one, two. Of course I'm gonna wear a helmet and my special good luck Amelia sunglasses. Let's do this. All the flat riding is over. From here on out, it's about 14 miles up. I'm gonna be gaining 3,500 feet of elevation. One of my favorite things about riding a bike in the springtime in Boulder are all the flowers. Are the buds. It smells so good. There's lilacs and all sorts of other stuff. The whole world smells like candy land. And I'm a fan. And I'm glad that my COVID hasn't killed my sense of smell. Hello dears. I see you hiding under the tree. That'll harder. Okay, okay, okay. Left hand, can you? Can you believe that this is my backyard? I love it. I love you Boulder. Look, a sign with tons of bullet holes in it. You know me. I'm not a big fan of just blowing the hell out of signs. This is James Town. It's a nice little Colorado mountain town. It's gotten a lot steeper since James Town. I'm having to work for it now. Petal, petal, petal baby. Petal power. You know, being on a bike simplifies everything. I haven't thought about COVID for the past two hours. All I've thought about are, you know, the beauty around me, the trees, the chipmunks I see scampering into the woods, the deer, my breath, the sound of the tires rolling on the pavement, all the simple things. All the things that are hard to hear when you're inside. I'm on dirt. I love dirt. And the trailhead is real close. I think I'm getting closer. Pretty much anywhere is good to go. This is beautiful. Look at these big old trees. Here we go. Clean water. No whammy's, no GRDEs. Ta-da. I'm excited so far about this tent. It's bigger, taller, and looks cool. Now that was a true test of whether or not my lungs are okay with COVID. Huh. I think I've told you this before, but I think food always tastes better when you're outside. Woo, woo, woo. But life is good. Life is really good. Even with COVID, life is good. And I'm so glad that I got out of the house today. Because the last, the previous seven days, I've been kind of grumpy, having a pity party. Meh, I got COVID. I can't see Amelia. And you know, not only not seeing Amelia, but I had to cancel two races. I couldn't see my mom on Mother's Day. There's been a lot. But I'm very grateful that I have a mild case. I know that this can be very serious. And some people have struggled with it and have serious side effects still today. And of course we all know that almost a million people have died just in the United States. So it's something to take seriously. And that's why I have isolated from people. You know, I don't wanna give this to anybody, especially not my mom or my grandma. And hopefully I test negative soon. So I can go hug and kiss Amelia. And you know, one of the interesting side effects, one of the positive aspects of getting COVID is that I've had a lot of time to sit in my room and reminisce about all the good things in life. And it's been a beautiful time to just sit and think about, you know, I'm gonna talk about Amelia again, how much I love her and how much I adore her and all the things that I respect about her. And you know, when you have so much time all day and night isolated, you know, you think of comforting thoughts. And so I've been thinking of Amelia a lot. And one of the big things is, the exciting things is the future, the future of with Amelia and what we're gonna build together, a beautiful life together and adventures and love and you know, who knows what. And so I've had a lot of time to plan life for the past seven days. There's no doubt about that. Ah, my arm is getting tired, holding this camera up. And this moon right now is incredible. Buenos noches. Well, good morning. I slept really well. And the most exciting thing last night was definitely the moon. It was just moving slowly across the sky, creating all these cool shadows in this forest right here. It was definitely worth the price of admission. Oh, yes. You beautiful piece of flat ground. What a great place to spend the night. I feel so much better. I really do. The sun is coming up right behind me and I'm gonna put the cameras away and just ride home. Thank you so much for joining me on this little mini adventure. Hopefully it gave you some ideas of how you can also just leave your house at 4 p.m. and go on a little overnight and come home the next morning. And man, just that little bit of time into the stars refreshed my soul. And please like and subscribe and do all that fun stuff that you do on YouTube. I would appreciate it. Have a good one. We'll see you next time.