New Year's and the Aftermath

Well, I returned yesterday from a wonderful weekend in a tiny little place in Colorado called La Veta. Well, we were actually about 6 or 7 miles out in the middle of nowhere at my friend's parents place. It was so relaxing and serene, minus the million mile and hour wind. There was a lot of fun to be had in La Veta, though, don't get me wrong. The festivities included A LOT of fireworks, Jim, Jose, and a few others made it along for the trip as well. We got started at about 12:15 on Sunday and had a great day of poker, fireworks, brush fires, and general shenanigans! We had such a good day that we were all in bed by 9:30, over our hangovers by 4:00 a.m., and fully ready to go again by 9:30 the next morning! Monday brought more fun adventures as we did some hiking, "free style walking" (Matt's favorite), and bouldering in the mountains surrounding their beautiful house! Then some opted for naps as others challenged each other to a feisty game of Risk. Unfortunately, I had to return to the "real world" of work today, so some of us had to leave early and returned last night.

Today, I was excited to take advantage of our unseasonably warm weather, at least 55º, but in a sad attempt to continue learning new stuff at the Fix, my favorite local dirt jump spot, I got blown around so much, I had to leave. The wind started blowing about 20 mph with gusts up to 35 mph. Wind and dirt jumping do not make for a good, safe combo. I am trying to learn no footers on one of the jumps at the Fix, but just landing the jump without getting blown off of the bike was a challenge in and of itself today, so..maybee tomorrow.

On a better note, my super fast pro DH friend, Lisa, has been nursing a broken (shattered) wrist and then subsequent broken hand since August. Ultimately, this means that she hasn't gotten to do the thing she loves more than anything, RIDE HER BIKE, for a really long time. Well, she has been slowly coming out to the Fix and riding with us, mostly just methodically pumping the pump track, but on Saturday, we were treated to a site we haven't seen in far too long! Lisa managed to carefully, yetaggressivelyy, ride the mountain cross line with super style on Saturday. She was pumping the backside of the tables and beautifully manualing the rollers as if she hadn't been off of her bike AT ALL! It was awesome to watch, and hopefully inspiring to her, as her body continues to heal! We all can't wait until she is 100% again and ripping it up on the bike again!

Hopefully tomorrow won't be as windy. Wind sucks, pretty much. I've thought for a long time about when I might possibly think that it doesn't suck. I mean I have a pretty cool kite that I like to fly now and then, but if I never got to fly it again because there was never enough wind to do it, I wouldn't be too disappointed!