Torie Giffin created a path to success as the owner of the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort through hard work, stamina, and a lot of support from friends. The path it took her to get there required many different steps, all connected, mainly through her love of the outdoors and, specifically, cycling.
Giffin explains that she has been putting on local bike rides for over 12 years in the Colorado Springs community. Before coming to the Springs in 2003, Giffin had worked at the Fox TV Station in Phoenix after starting a family (she has two sons and a daughter).
After settling into being a stay-at-home mom in the Springs, Giffin kept a connection to the local community by teaching spin classes at the Y and leading a local Mom Walking Club every Friday year-round for almost six years.
She also joined the Colorado Springs Cycling Club (CSCC), where she would lead Tuesday and Thursday rides. Giffins says CSCC really became one of her first families in the area. She would take her kids on the rides, sometimes all three at once, with one on the back of her bike and the other two in a Burley trailer that her mother (who Giffin credits as her champion) bought for her.
Becoming Re-immersed in Cycling on the Journey to the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort
Giffin said spinning was what got her back in cycling, especially when she became an instructor at the Y. “It was amazing because it was free childcare while I could bike and stay fit.”
Giffin sees herself as a community builder, whether it was moving to the area while not knowing anyone or starting a mom walking club (its name is Mommy Pickup Artists). Giffin says when she got out on her bike and started discovering Colorado Springs with the CSCC is when she really fell in love with the area.
Giffin’s career path in Colorado Springs prior to purchasing the Buffalo Lodge was as a marketing representative for Chick-Fil-A on Garden of the Gods Road. Giffin began leading free breakfast rides as part of her outreach for the company. People who completed the rides got a free chicken sandwich. This allowed her to help put on bigger events like the Patriot Festival and Ride for Heroes, which would serve her well in the many events she now helps host at Buffalo Lodge.
With Chick-Fil-A being a healthy, clean, and wholesome place, it spoke to Giffin’s approach of building community and connecting to the outdoors, all the while giving away free chicken. She did this with various trail-building groups including the Trails and Open Space Coalition, where they would do their annual trail-building as well as crew leader training, donating chicken to both. She was also able to organize the bike ride for Ride for Heroes, for the five years they did it through her Chick-fil-A outreach. They were able to raise more than $60,000 for the Peace Officers’ Memorial and the Firefighters’ Memorial, both of which are at Memorial Park. “But it was really neat how one person could come in and make a difference, with the power of free chicken.”
The Next Step on the Journey
The path of these events was the next step towards her eventual discovery and ownership of Buffalo Lodge, turning it into the Bicycle Resort. “I put on a Y Ride Rally every year and then even a Y-Tri.” Nic Ponsor, the owner of Criterium Bike Shop, came along and talked to her Y-team about how to train for a tri. “Nic’s this mega-Ironman triathlete. He spoke at that and then when I was putting on the Ride for Heroes, he would donate bikes so I could give them to kids.” Giffin says Ponsor even lent her $20,000 when she had the idea for the bicycle resort. “We’d had enough of a history from the Y to Chick-fil-A and Ride for Heroes.” But she says, when she needed to find people “that would believe in me and back me [in my dream], Nic Ponsor did that for me.”
Giffin says the inspiration for the Bicycle Resort actually came as a dream to her. “And I know that sounds hokey, but it really did. I’ve never had a dream before that was so vivid as a dream that I had over two nights back in 2015.”
Giffin says she could see the whole thing. “I saw what looked like a village for bicyclists…a community hub for cycling.” Her whole approach for the Bicycle Resort from its inception, she says, was “bikes, beer, bands, just congregating around a fire, listening to music, sharing beers and outdoor adventures.”
The inspiration for her Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort, she says, was Thunder Lodge in Buena Vista. The bike festival held there spanned 40 to 100 miles and went up through Redville, around Turquoise Lake, and along the Mineral Belt Trail. She says there was a family that lived on property in a two-story house and then there were 10 or 12 cabins. Their integration of people getting together and participating in a cycling event, almost as a lifestyle, inspired her.
To have that connection across the board with her guests and fellow riders was integral in the build and re-imagining of the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort. “It was about having that connection we would have sitting around talking about our day’s adventure … just that camaraderie you have around cycling. It doesn’t matter with your political or religious beliefs or anything … there’s a certain camaraderie around the love of cycling.”
When Giffin researched post-dream in 2015 on the internet, she saw that bicycle resorts were huge in Europe. “But they were really nowhere here in the US.” She says there were some hostels on the transcontinental bike route and the Whiteface Mountain Bike Retreat in Whitefish, Montana. “I became obsessed with this idea very quickly, ‘What would a bicycle resort look like? ‘ I had the idea and a kind of vision.”
“This community cares.”
Giffin says the community really turned out for her when she had her dream for the bicycle resort and then eventually bought it in 2016: “My dream came true. I got it.” At the same time though, she explains, an 18-year marriage had ended at the beginning of that turning point, and then her youngest son was diagnosed with brain cancer.
“So, I found myself in 2016 owning a 100-year-old rundown motel that I was trying to turn into a bicycle resort, and just barely getting my foothold on it two years in and really figuring out how to run it.” Like most locally run hotels in the Springs, “I didn’t know how I was going to operate and close from November to March that first year.”
Giffins says that people just started showing up to help her. “More than 50 people in the community showed up to help me clean up and open for the 2016 season, including the mayor of Manitou Springs (Ken Jaray) and his family as well as Laura Newman” (who used to be the Jaray’s chief of staff).” Newman also served as the GM for Cheyenne Mountain Resort and is Giffin’s neighbor. “She became one of my best champions just really rallying the community around me. Her son even works for me now.”
“…a crazy but incredible ride!”
Giffin says it has been an incredible ride, but very crazy. On the same day as the final court date of her divorce in 2019, she was on stage receiving an award as a Woman of Influence in the community.
“Some people say I have a lot of resilience. I think that’s coming from being the daughter of a young teenage mom who was also a single mom. My mom has been my rock for my whole life. My dad that raised me had a stroke and passed away early. But my mom has just always been that rock. She bought me the YMCA membership that got me started in my journey with the Y. She has always fueled my outdoor passion.”
Giffin also said her beloved grandmother, who passed away in 2021 at 97, was also an inspiration. She was able to become a cyclist again through adaptive biking with the family. “She hadn’t ridden a bike since her teen years riding to school. She became a bicyclist [with us] at 93 years old. And the last four years of her life [after Giffin bought the lodge], even though she was blind, had back problems and general nerve pain…she rode on the back of my mom’s recumbent tandem and was part of our bike team.
Torie Giffin’s entire life, especially the last 20 years, she explains, has led to her owning the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort and restoring it to some of its original glory. Whether it is leading bike rides, hosting, or just welcoming guests in, it has become her life’s passion. But the spark for its creation for her sprang out of a dream.
Continue to read about Torie Giffin’s journey in Part 2.
[…] a dream and realizing a dream are two different things. Creating the Buffalo Lodge Bicycle Resort required many puzzle pieces that were continually being put in […]