Cuddle Buddy

Oh ya, I forgot to mention that I had an awesome cuddle buddy when I was at my sisters. Her "fluffy" (VERY FAT!!) cat Sunni Lightfoot got tricked into sleeping with me the first night I was there. After that night, she decided I was a good sleeping buddy and she'd be on my bed long before I was ready to go to bed! That cat's got a motor on her that is REALLY loud! This weekend I figured out why snoring (within reason) people don't bother me and sometimes make me laugh and sleep really well. I slept with a big fat cat that purred really loudly right next to my ear for 6 years!! Not only does it not bother me, I sort of find it comforting. haha (Disclaimer: Sleeping in the same room as my mother is NOT snoring within reason. I can't sleep in that case!)

Suni Lightfoot, the "Fluffy" Cat

A Rainy Rainy Christmas

2 seconds after this picture Marshall fell over sideways and landed in the tree. There was some crying involved.

I headed out to Portland, OR for Christmas and the week before. I got out of Colorado JUST IN TIME! The day after I left, it snowed 2.5 feet and shut down the airport for a couple of days. All the while I was none the wiser galavanting around rainy Portland with my wonderful friend Molly. We had a ton of fun drinking beer, seeing the Nutcracker ballet, going hiking, and having Molly kick my butt in her spin class! She's a fitness instructor (in her spare time, haha) at a super nice gym in Portland, and I went to her spin class while I was there. I'll just say it ranks right up there with one of the hardest I've ever been to! It was good, though, afterwards I didn't feel quite as guilty about all of the wonderful dark ales that we drank!

On Friday I was off to Sweet Home (not Alabama), population not very many! My sister, her husband, son, cat, chinchilla, and 3 horses live on a 5 acre property outside of this small town in OR. They are crazy! She drives 45 minutes each way to vet school every day, and her husband drives 45 minutes to his job in the other direction each day just so they can have a house with enough room for the horses! It's a cute house, and it was actually kind of nice to be out in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone reception and what not.

We traveled to the Oregon coast and spent the day one of the days I was there. It was amazing, they sun was out and it was 55º the whole day. Sometimes the people on the OR coast don't see the sun for 3 months at a time in the winter. I'm pretty sure the sun had followed me from CO, since it was dumping snow here and not sunny! We had a fun day and saw a lot of sea lions. They are really load and smell pretty bad! My nephew is 16 months going on 3 years old. He's really tall and runs like he's known how to walk for longer than 2 months! He has the best smile I've ever seen a kid have, and he wears it most of the time!

Marshall was enamored with the sea lions

Fat, Smelly Sea Lions

Me and Dad in Newport

Tori, Dad, Marshall and Shane

Marshall on the $4000 rocking horse

The shop owner wouldn't stop bugging me to ride the horse and take a picture...Marshall fits much better!

Christmas was a nice relaxing day (in my pj's all day!!!). We cooked a bunch of food, way too much actually, and had a lot of fun opening all of Marshall's gifts because he thought my dad's tool box and tools were the coolest thing ever, not all of his MANY MANY toys, much to my sister's dismay!

Marshall had fun doing everything EXCEPT open all of his gifts!

I made it back to CO with my new bike (didn't have to pay to get it on the plane, either), and now I'm back in the swing of things trying to find a roommate since the one we were planning on bailed at the last minute today. Oh well, flaky people suck!

I hope that everyone had a very Merry Christmas and are enjoying the holidays! (I'll be enjoying them when they're done.) haha

The Verdict Is In

So, last night I went to my ex-boyfriend's company Christmas party with him. He didn't have a date and I'm way too nice so I said I'd go with him, mostly because it was at the Flagstaff House, haha. I've always wanted to eat there, but I've never wanted anyone I know to have to pay the bill because it's super expensive and I've heard that the service isn't great and the food is only okay. Well, I thought it was really amazing! I guess it could have been the 4 glasses and wine and a glass of champagne, but I don't think so. :) Of course, I have no idea how much any of it cost, because his company picked up the tab, but the food was awesome, the service was ridiculous (1 server: 2 of us!), and the view was breathtaking! All in all it was pretty fun, well except for the hangover this morning...Ughhh. Expensive hangovers are just as bad as cheap ones it seems!

New Ride

I normally commute to school on my road bike because I have an awesome office (doubled as my storage unit this summer!) that I can leave my bike in as I wouldn't really want to leave it locked up outside. My office is moving back over to engineering at the end of the month so I needed to sort out a better commuter bike that I don't mind riding through the winter muck and leaving locked up outside. I mentioned this to my friend Kevin on our way to Thursday Night Happy Hour Sushi, and he told me there is a bike that is just what I am looking for, a Specialized Langster. When I got home, I looked on Craigslist and Ebay, and there was 1 on each site just in my size! The Craigslist bike was in Portland, though. Good thing I'm going there next week! I emailed the guy selling the bike and told him I wanted it, and we made arrangements for my friend Molly to help me get it. Yea!!! I have a sweet bike to commute on now, or at least I will when I get back from Portland after Christmas. Check it out:

Oh ya, and I am DONE with my classes for the semester! My final presentation went fairly well yesterday, so now I am off the hook for a month at least!

1 holiday party down and 4 to go. I'm already holiday "festivitied" out! All I do is eat and eat and eat! I'm not a damn bear getting ready to hibernate for the winter! I think I'm heading out for a bike ride right now to justify (try to, rather) all of the food I ate last night!

The Snow is Melting

It's over 50º outside today, and the snow is melting! Last week I was happy for the snow, as my shoulder was still feeling pretty bum. It is feeling a lot better now, after several days of skate skiing and a great chiropractic visit last week! Yea!! Also, I got new lowers for my fork, so I should be getting my bike up and running again, just in time for my feeling better shoulder and the snow to melt!

I have really been enjoying skate skiing this year. I can see how people who are really good at it really enjoy it. Once you get into a good rhythm, it's very meditative. Granted, those moments for me are pretty few and far between the awkward, uncoordinated times, but I enjoy them all the same.

Funny thing, I ran into an ex-bf today, and he told me I looked stunning. Wow, you know, that made my day a little brighter! Now if only I could find a boy who thinks that while we're dating...not years after I break up with him! Hmmmmm....Oh well. :)

Expectations, Or Rather No Expectations

I had a really nice dinner with my friend Tawnya last night. She has been traveling since July of '05. Along the way she has met a lot of interesting people, some touched her heart more so than others, but ultimately, her travels have given her a lot of insight and clarity about life in general. One thing that we talked about last night was expectations. So many people depend heavily on expectations: expectations about what they think they should do , what they think other people should do, how they think things should go...In the end, when you have expectations, whether they're good or bad, thing usually fall short. We spent a lot of time talking about how if you don't have expectations for a situation or for people and you just go with it, in the end the outcome is generally a lot better because you haven't set it up to be something that it ultimately wasn't.

This is something that has taken me a really long time to understand and figure out, but I think that I've been a lot happier ever since I've tried to remember that developing expectations for something or someone only sets you up to be disappointed! Enjoy life for what it is, it's a lot more fun that way!

Well, anyway, we had a really nice dinner sharing a lot of ideas about a lot of things in life. Seeing the world through different eyes has really had a huge impact on Tawnya, and I'm glad I got to hear about her ideas and thoughts on life and the many different ways to live it!

This Week Really Sucks!

The right side, the bad side.

The left side, not as bad. :)

I can't even pretend like I'm having a good week. I killed all of my stem cells again. Yea. Start over and wait 5 weeks again. That's fun. Work sucks, pretty bad. It's a good thing I'm done at the end of December.

To top it all off (and it's only Wednesday!)... My separated shoulder still feels like crap, so I haven't gotten to ride for the past 3.5 weeks. Today I went to try to ride my bike, and it hurt, but I just didn't care, I'm going stir crazy sitting around. I was riding on the pump track at the Fix, and I kept thinking that it was really weird that it sounded like my tire was buzzing something when I would corner really hard. Every once in awhile the tire will buzz my foot in this situation, but that was not the case. I stopped and noticed that my wheel didn't look straight. Hmmm, the QR isn't broken, the dropouts look fine. What could the problem be. Then I looked farther up the fork, and it's EFFING BROKEN! I mean it's really cracked, and almost all the way through on both sides. That's brilliant. I'm pretty psyched about it. I'm glad I noticed and stopped riding before it broke through. Sorry, I'll try to cheer it up after today. :)

Off to Angel Fire...

for collegiate mountain bike nationals. Hopefully I'll post an update or two while I'm there. Keep your fingers crossed that the headline of the update is: CU crushes FLC in men and women's DH and MX, also beats them in XC and ST to take the overall Division I title! :)

Chance and the Universe

So, as I was leaving work today, I began to wonder why the Universe seems to make me "bump into" (not literally, of course) people on a fairly regular basis that I would actually rather not see all of the time. I wondered if it was dictated my similar schedules, but it doesn't seem so, or just plain random. Regardless of the causes, I was a little annoyed with the Universe for messing with me. Not 5 minutes later, I'm walking down the bike path and a girl says, "Is your name Neven?" I was a little taken aback, as I didn't recognize her at first, but then I realized that she was someone that I had gone to middle school with. It was good to see her, her husband, and her cute baby, so maybe that was my lesson about not getting annoyed with chance occurrences. You can't predict them, and I would have hated to miss out on running into her, just to not have to run into someone else.

Oh, and often on my way home, I pass this guy walking down the street that I live off of. He wears this hat, kind of one of those fishing hat things. Only, he wears it tilted back with the string cinched under his chin. EVERY time, I think, why is that guy wearing a bonnet?!? Then I get close enough to realize that it's just the fishing hat guy who must be worried that it's going to blow off of his head or something. It makes me laugh, though. :)

Wow, Thanks for Checking Back

So, I have been super slack with my updates, but it's really only because I have been SUPER busy, so I'll give the quick and dirty updates of what's been going on since I last posted. So, sorry for the long, wordy update, there are some pics and a video for your entertainment at the bottom.


Snowmass Nationals- The final Norba National race of the year. MX was disappointing. I qualified 3rd, and then crashed in the finals for 4th. 2nd podium at a national race, so that was good. I ended up 5th overall in the series. DH was slippery in the morning for qualies, and then we had the most fabulous hero dirt for finals. Lisa killed it and was on the podium, giving her 3rd overall for the National series. Jo Jo had a horrible mishap in practice and broke her ankle. She's had surgery and is healing quickly! Oh, yes, then there was the SRAM afterparty. Jeremiah Dylan Dean kept buying more and more and more drinks. We'll leave it at that. :)

SICK SICK SICK- I spent over a week as sick as I have been since I was a kid. That pretty much just sucked!

Keystone Race- I think this was the worst race that I had all year. The only consolation was that I didn't hurt myself. I ended up 2nd overall in the Mountain States Cup series, so that was pretty cool.

Back to grad school- I am very excited about grad school this time. I am doing some really cool research with some cool polymers and stem cells. I'll give a better update later on.

Start of the Collegiate Season- Beaver Meadows, one of my favorite courses. It is so much fun to ride this course. I had a few issues during my race run, including, but not limited to crashing several times and doing some sweet trials moves like track standing to wait for a Men's C rider to get out of my way at a crucially technical part of the track. Oh well, on a much better note. TJ killed it and showed FLC who's going to be on top of the podium at Nationals next month!

MX in Nathrop- CSM put on a race down in Nathrop on my favorite course ever. It was super gusty windy, but we all had a good time anyway. I got my first real win of the season, so that was fun!

Molly's Visit- Molly was in town for almost a week, and boy did we paint the town! The Sun's, sushi, CU Cycling party, hours of darts, lots of good food. Getting to hang out with Molly is too infrequent!

AND THEN...

Final D in Angel Fire- In a few words...Tons of fun, rain, sleet, snow, lots of mud, and quite a bit of drinking for all!

It was rainy and snowy for practice on Friday, but it was a lot of fun to ride the two courses. Saturday we woke up to 3-4" of snow on the top of the course. This made the upper section of the course not quite as fun, okay I'm lying, I was flipping miserable until I got out of the woods, then it was sliding festival 101. Beta course was a bit better. I learned a big lesson at this race. Don't mess with your equipment when it's not really broken. My shoes were soaking wet and miserable and I had another pair of brand new, never used (key here) shoes. I tossed my cleats on my shiny new shoes and headed down for my race run. Funny thing, I couldn't clip in. Hmmm, I ran to borrow Cody's allens and flip the cleats, even though I now they go either way. It didn't help. I did most of my race run not clipped in at all. Oh well, I guess this was the race to learn my lesson at. This just meant that the drinking started that much sooner! Oh and did we have a good time at the costume party!

Brian Buell killed it all day. He raced collegiate and got 2nd to Chris Heath. He also raced Pro Open and killed them all! Then he showed us all how to dance all night at the party.

Brian, Caroline, and me Having a Great Time at the Costume Party!

Hugs and Pictures, A Theme for the Night

Classic Caroline!

Phil as Matt Thompson, me as a Fairy, albeit a Drunk One, and TJ as Gangsta Cat in the Hat

Using My Sick Time at Work Legitimately! :(

Girls Who Play in the Dirt Clean Up Pretty Good, Too!

So, I have been sick, REALLY SICK since last Friday. Lisa, Tammy, and I had a great weekend of staying in the mountains and riding bikes all weekend planned. Well, they got to do all that and had a ton of fun. I got to get super acquainted with the bed in my new bedroom. I really don't have the patience for being sick. I've got stuff to do, you know? I think this might be my body's way of making me let my collar bone and shoulder heal from the crash a couple of week's ago. I think I did a number on it but just wouldn't admit it to myself because I wanted to race so badly at the Snowmass finals.

Anyway, I did join Lisa and Tammy for an exquisite dinner on Saturday night up in Beaver Creek. Great food and wine combined with awesome cool DH girl company made for a great evening! They had a lot of fun riding, too! I wish I could have joined them. :(

Vegas: Less Than 24 Hour Style

Some Good Pool Lounging Time

Emo Kevin Is Like a Cat...He really Doesn't Like the Water

You'd Think This Was at the End of the Night Considering None of Us Know What We're Doing!?!

Cathy and I had decided to make the 3 hour trip down to Vegas from Brianhead for a night after the race. Fisher, Kevin, and Caroline joined us for the adventure at the Luxor Hotel. It was great fun filled with sitting by the pool, getting dressed up, drinking too much wine, riding roller coasters, running around the strip, and overeating at the breakfast buffet. Vegas was complete sensory overload for me, so it was good to go just for the night and leave the next day!

Fisher's Hair Was Amazing!

Kevin Was Generally Mad As They Kept Putting Him "Timeout" Since He's Not 21 Yet

We Saw Some Amazing Mullets!

Fisher and Cathy Were Determined To Make Big Bucks on Video Poker...Didn't Happen

2:30 a.m. and Still Going Strong!

Brianhead: The Injury Report

Brianhead has it out for me, I've decided. Last year I dislocated my finger and didn't get to race.

Last Year's Trip to The Med Center's Pictures

This year I had a bad feeling driving up the canyon, but I thought I was just being paranoid. I got through DH practice on Thursday and breathed a sigh of relief. On to DS practice. The course was super fast on top, and I felt like I was riding really well. Joanna and I headed back up to the course for a few extra runs when most people had called it quit for the day. I came up a little short tripling some rollers before this dumb wedge jump, and I bought the superman ticket to the med center. I'm not quite sure what happened, but the next thing I knew I was flying a good ways through the air to a rough landing. I ended up sublexing my collarbone in the front by my neck, and I got some pretty good scrapes on my back, too. When I finally got up and started walking down the hill, I realized that my rear wheel was messed up, either from the crash or as the cause of the crash. Who knows? I ended up trying to race DS after skipping DH practice on Friday. I had been taking Vicodin for the pain, and that was a bad idea to try to race on. I rode horribly and qualified last. This meant that I had to race Melissa Buell first round. I rode a lot better on Saturday even though it hurt like hell, but it wasn't good enough to advance. Oh well. DH didn't happen at all. I can't pick up the front end of my DH bike, so I didn't think it would be wise to try to ride one of the most difficult courses of the year with little to no upper body strength. Also, I really want to do well in MX this weekend at the Snowmass National. Hopefully I'll heal up this week and be able to ride well this weekend at the National Finals.

It Was Cathy's Birthday so We Had a Little Wine To Celebrate

Fishie's Wine Must Have Gone Straight to His Head at 10,000 ft...Nice Hat!

The Best Monday and Tuesday of My Life

Ahhhh, Mud EVERYWHERE!!

Andre's Personal Slip and Slide

Pretending to Be Hippos in the Mud

We Even Got to Do a Little Rock Climbing

Our Fearless Leader

So, I have met some really great people from riding my bike, and two of those people are Cole and Darryl Bangert. I had the very lucky opportunity to go on a float trip with them last Monday and Tuesday. Cole and Darryl are river kids through and through, so it was awesome to get to spend some time with them. Lisa and I drove through the night from Winter Park and slept in the Starbucks parking lot in Rifle to be able to make it to the put in to meet up with Cole, Darryl, and Andre in time. 9:00 found us shoving off for two amazing days of no agendas, swimming, back flips, cliff jumping and mud baths. I havenÂ’t been on the river in awhile, so it was really nice to get to spend a couple of days soaking up the sun and spending time with 4 really amazing people. Thank you Cole and Darryl for making this trip happen. YouÂ’re the best!

Andre's First Time in a Kayak

Look Closely, There is A Bald Eagle on the Shore Eating a Fish

Perfect Cliff Jumping Location

I was Super Whimpy about Cliff Jumping!

Cole Will Do a Backflip Just About Anywhere!

Cole Will Turn Anything Into an Adventure!

A Split Second

Me and Lisa Counting Our Earnings for the Weekend...Lisa KILLED the Rest of the Pro Women's Field!

We had our regional race in Telluride two weekends ago. IÂ’ve never been to Telluride before so it was awesome just to be there. The course is a really cool course with just about everything to offer: jumps, off-camber wooded sections, a good drop, and super high speed stuff at the end. I struggled with the course on Friday, but I really started to have fun on Saturday. It was actually really nice just to have one event to concentrate on this weekend.

Nate Winning $5 From Forest

I spent the weekend with the WP boys, Cody, Nate, and Forest. They always make me laugh, especially when Forest gets rain water dumped all over him in the middle of the night, TWICE! He always seems to have the worst luck! They made the many hour car rides very entertaining, too!

Professional Rain Dodging: Cody and Nate Passing the Time on the Drive Home

And Nate Claims He Doesn't Like Tomatoes...I Don't Believe Him!

So, when it comes to race time, the DH boys are pretty used to finishing within the same second as 1,2, maybe 3 or 4 other guys. It rarely works out that way in our races. This weekend, however, I learned the value of pedaling as hard as you can everywhere you can. I was the lucky one who ended up placing higher in the same second race this weekend. It was extra beneficial because it ended up being the race for 3rd and 4th, the difference between getting some money and not! PEDAL HARD every time that you can!!

A Year Ago Today...

Beautiful Bridger---I Miss You!!

I said goodbye to one of the coolest dogs ever. Bridger was such a great buddy for the 4 short years that I had him. We found out last April that he had lymphosarcoma so we started doing chemotherapy right away. He tolerated it really well for May, June, and the beginning part of July, and then something changed, and his poor little kidneys just shut down.

Deciding that you have to put your pet to sleep is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do! I stayed at the vet hospital with him, pretty much sleeping in his kennel with him. He was just such a sweet dog that I didn't want to have to let him go. He loved everyone and pretty much every dog except for my aunt's annoying bishon (did I mention how smart he was??).

I can't believe that a year has gone by. It's amazing how many things can change in a year. I finally got all moved out of my house today. I guess it's a little fitting that I finally get moved out of the house that I have so many memories of Bridger and Einstein in today. I still have to clean the stupid thing, but my stuff is out. Finally.

New Sponsor!

Just wanted to spread the word about my newest sponsor:
Fortress

Check 'em out!

Oh ya, and doing 50 laps on the pump track makes your feet go numb! I had my picture in the Daily Camera (Boulder's newspaper) today riding the pump track at the Fix!

So Strong

So, today I headed up to DIA to meet my friend Kristen when she got off the CME shuttle from Aspen. A week ago today she compound fractured both her tibia and fibula in the middle of her shin in the MX race at Snowmass. Although I didn't see it when it happened, I almost made myself sick talking to her about the bone sticking out of her skin today. I can't even begin to tell you how amazing she is. She drove all the way up here from Austin, TX to do the race, and ended up spending the week in the hospital in Aspen, where she doesn't know a soul. She is such a vibrant, energetic person, she made friends in no time! I would have been scared out of my mind!! Luckily, there were cute EMT's to rescue her from the scene (or so she keeps telling me)! :) She got out of the shuttle van today pretty much rock star style on her crutches, even though this was her first day on them. For those of you who have never been on crutches before, they're not as easy as seasoned vets make them look! They require a pretty rough break in period that is often peppered with a desire to put your injured limb on the ground, due to habit, even though the throbbing pain is telling you otherwise!!

We spent about an hour and a half hanging out at one of the airport's super fine dining establishments. It was really good to get to hang out with her and spend a little bit of time with her before she headed back thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.spell.gifo TX. One of the girls that races with her knows someone who works for Frontier, so she got her hooked up with a sweet $25 buddy pass! She's got some healing a recovering to do, but I KNOW that she will be back out racing with us before no time because the girl LOVES to ride her bike!

Kdawg Rippin on Her Track in Austin

Get Well Kristen, I can't wait to ride with you again really soon!!

Clearly Out of Touch

Today USA Cycling announced their automatic invites to the World Championships in New Zealand next month. Without spending too much time looking at the list, it is quite evident that they are completely out of touch with gravity racing. People who are quite deserving of invitations like Lisa Myklak, Bobbi Watt, and Amelia Colasurdo are nowhere to be found when people who have simply attended a lot of the races got invitations. WTF?!?! I can't even speak to men's side of things. The two who got invitations seem justly deserving, but they can send many more than that and there are several very qualified guys who should be on the list. That's all I've got on this one. I'm still shaking my head in disbelief!

In An Instant

It's crazy how sometimes it seems like things take forever to change and other times it only takes an instant for everything to change.

This past weekend, my amazing friend Kristen drove up from Austin, TX to do the MX race at the Snowmass MSC race. She just started racing MX a year ago at Angel Fire, but she has been training her ass off all year, learning to dirt jump, and frequenting the local, state, and grand national BMX races in Texas. She has improved so much and has been riding really strong!

This weekend, we found ourselves riding a very technical MX track with a lot of tricky features on the course. Kristen qualified in 3rd out of 10 beginner/sport women, and easily made her way to the finals. She was riding really well, and had a 20 hour car ride to get here as motivation to do well. We spent a bit of time discussing tactics and focusing on her riding strengths. She got in the gate with a nothing but the "W" will do attitude! She got a great gate start and got over the first spiny-doubley-ditch thing and was riding really aggressively over the rollers into the first berm. She knew she couldn't get pushed wide on the first berm so she was holding her ground when she got tangled up with the girl next to her, and she went down hard, REALLY HARD! Within moments, people were yelling for the medical staff, so I knew it was really bad cuz she's one tough cookie.

Kristen is currently in the Aspen Hospital recovering from a surgery to put a titanium rod into her tibia. She broke both her tibia and fibula right in the middle of her shin. She also broke her ankle. The only thing that we have been able to piece together as to what happened was that she fell so hard and fast on her left side that she was never able to unclip and that the force of the bike and her body landing on her trapped leg is what could have broken her leg so badly! Her crank arm is bent in so far that the end of it hits about 1/2" into the chain stay. People who saw it happen say it was just awful when she tried to pick her leg up and it just dangled. I would have passed out on the spot, but Kristen is one strong woman! She won't be released from the hospital until Wednesday or Thursday, so I'll head back up to Aspen to pick her up and bring her to Denver so she can fly back to the Lone Star State and begin her recovery process. Pleas send any kind, healing thoughts her way. She is one cool girl, and I want to see her back out on the track as soon as she gets all healed up!

It was pretty hard to focus and want to race after that, as our final moto was only a few after the beginner sport women's. I really wanted to do well in the race, but after all of that, I lost a lot of motivation. I got a pretty good gate, but to keep up with Bobbi, I have to have a great gate. I knew that I wasn't going to catch her when I cased the shit out of the step down double. Oh well, next year, I guess. I ended up in 2nd. DH was okay. My qualifying run was pretty slow, as I crashed pretty hard in the water fall section, but it was pretty sweet that I got to go first in the finals and have a "dust free" run. I felt a little bit faster on the upper brake bumpy high speed section, but my lines in the woods were awful. I nailed the water fall, though. All of my fast Jr X buddies were up there watching and they said that I was by far the fastest girl through that section! Yea!! That makes me happy even though most of the rest of my run wasn't so hot. I took about 20 seconds off my qualifier and ended up in 3rd. My first Pro DH podium and only my 2nd DH podium ever, so I was pretty happy!

I left the race and went and spent a couple of hours with Kristen at the hospital. They had her pretty doped up on morphine, valium, and percoset. The awful part was that even with all of that, she was still in a lot of pain!

This weekend has really made me start to think about things a little bit differently. It only takes an instant for your life to drastically change.

Kristen---Get well and heal quickly girl!!

Total Pro Earnings So Far...

Angel Fire MX: $50
Nathrop DS: $60
Nathrop MX: $120
Deer Valley MX : $150
_____________________
Grand Mid Season Total: $380

I guess this means I'm not gonna quit my day job! haha

Well, it's almost enough to cover the $525 I had to put into my car on Tuesday. Ughhh!!!

No Gate Practice But Fun Riding At the BMX Track Anyway

Tonight they canceled gate practice at the BMX track because some wicked rain storms last weekend left the track in a little bit of a mucked up condition. (We thought it looked stellar compared to some of the MX tracks that we ride, but who are we to argue?) It was a lot of fun anyway. I got to spend the evening riding with Jared Graves and Justin Leov of the Factory Yeti team. They are both really smooth and fun to watch ride, but Jared especially was just killing it. He was pulling stuff out that I haven't seen anyone do there! It was awesome to watch. I finally bucked up and started jumping some of the stuff there. I guess I'm always too worried about getting a bunch of gates in to think about the rest of the track. Duhhh!

After 1.5 hours of riding, Jared, Justin, Tori (Justin's awesome girlfriend), and I just sat and talked and watched all of the little BMX rippers riding the track. The Yeti boys were telling me all about their urban DH race adventure in Portugal. It sounds crazy and completely amazing all at the same time. It's an invitation only, have almost everything paid for race. It sounds really cool!

So, almost every weekend I go to a DH race at some ski resort somewhere in the country. It's about a 5:1 or 6:1 guy to girl ratio at all of the races (at least with the actual racers). As a result I get to hang out with a lot of very talented and often very hot boys. I've grown to learn, unfortunately, that a lot of these boys place no value on a committed relationship with their girlfriend and have no qualms about hooking up with whatever cute girl might be at whatever race they are at. Not so much boyfriend quality, for sure. Tonight, though, hanging out with Jared and Justin restored my faith that not all DH boys are like that. Justin's awesome girlfriend is here visiting right now, and they are so cute together. He's clearly happy to have her here supporting his racing, and if you get Jared talking about his girlfriend, it's pretty evident that he is very proud of her, misses her, and cares a lot about her! I guess if you're on the road all summer long, it would be pretty easy to just hook up with whomever, whenever. It was nice to get to see first hand that that's not always the case.

Wow, sorry for the sidetracked relationship snipet, I'm sure that nobody cares to read about the morality or lack thereof of the boys on the DH racing scene! I had to get that off my chest, though, it's been bugging me for awhile!

Off to bed, and hopefully to sleep soon...Mtn Dew Amp energy drinks were 3 for $5 for the 16 oz cans. This seems like a really good deal, but man, I don't think I really need to drink 16 oz of energy drink, EVER! I'm not tired and it's 12:30...Ughhhhh! :)

Up, Down, and All Around

Nate Killed It in Semi-Pro

So, this weekend, I did my first NORBA National race as a pro. The MX race was pretty disappointing. It was held at the backup track for a local BMX track. The track was okay in that it was flat and uphill in sections. Only 5 girls showed up to race, too. Also a little disappointing! Well, I qualified 2nd, only 0.17 off of first. In the finals, I got the snap out of the gate, but then I didn’t ride very aggressively down the first straight and into the first berm. Riding like that was good enough for 2nd place, but it left a little to be desired, for sure. It was a good lesson for me. I will be riding much more aggressively this weekend for sure! Still, though, it was nice to almost be on top of the podium for my first NORBA National race. Nate had an awesome race, too. He ended up in 3rd for Semi-Pro men after some really aggressive and strong rounds. Nice work Nate!

My First Podium at a National Race

Well, DH didn’t go quite so well, that’s for sure! Friday I couldn’t get my shit together in my head and I didn’t get too much practice in, bad mistake. Saturday I broke my brake line near the top of my fist (and last) run. Going into race day, I felt about zero comfortable on the course. Actually, the only section that felt good was the rock garden. Sunday came, and I had planned to get a good practice run in before qualifying. However, we had a few hiccups getting out the door in the morning, and I wasn’t able to get a practice run in. Needless to say, my qualifying run was essentially my first look at the course since early on Friday. The course looked A LOT different. I took it pretty slow to look at stuff and ended up crashing a bunch in the lower switchbacky section. I was fine with that and was hoping to put together a much better race run. I stacked it pretty hard in one section near the top, but I got back on the bike and got going really quickly. Things were going really well after that until right before the lower “Spin Cycle” section. Right before the section starts, there is a steep shoot. I guess my bike decided to play lawn darts with me on this section. I ended up about 10 feet off of course on top of my head. Unfortunately, it was in a really steep section, and I couldn’t get my bike back on course. At one point I was so frustrated that I just sat down. It was such a bad place to try to get back on the course. Oh well, I guess I kept my never DNF’d from a race streak alive. Don’t get me wrong, if there had been any easier way down than just finishing the race, I would have taken it! So, anyway, I ended up next to last, I think. L Bummer. Better luck next time, I guess!

On the Road To Deer Valley

We set out from Cody’s house around 1:30 today and made good time on our way to SLC. We stopped to get some dinner at Little America. In all the years of driving past them many, mnay times growing up in Wyonimg, I’ve never been to one. I wasn’t missing anything! Dinner was peppered with the antics of Nate and Cody. I don’t have to do situps when I hang out with these two, I just laugh and laugh and it’s the best abs workout anyone could ask for! Cody entertained us by showing us that he could fit his whole water glass in his mouth, and Nate taught us not to lick electrical sockets! He said it’s almost as bad as eating tomatoes.

Cody Showing Us His Neat Parlor Trick

We had a little fun with Leonard, the dinosaur. We wanted to put him on the top of the truck and make him the new Team Totally Wired Cyclery mascot for the weekend.

Cody Spooing with Leonard

Cody Feeding Leonard

Ride ‘Em Cowboy!!

Ahhh, How Sweet