DJ Wonderland

5 days straight on the road...Ughhh! Today, however, we had a bit of a reprieve from the constant eastward driving. We ventured off the beaten path to a dirt jump spot that Steven knew about along the way. It was pretty much dirt jumping heaven on earth. It was better than Disneyland!! Steven, Matt, Jess, and I rode and Kevin took pictures for about 3 hours! It was awesome! The jumps were all perfectly groomed and the continuous jumping lines were longer than anything I had ever seen before. Everything just flowed. Thank you to the off the beaten path 20" kids for having such an amazing place to spend the afternoon.

DJ Wonderland

Kevin and his CRAZY hair

These Little Guys Were EVERYWHERE!

Steve Getting Some Good Hang Time

Angel Fire, Chicago, KS and MO x2

Angel Fire 4x

Angel Fire was the first MSC race for the season and my first race as Pro. I was very excited for the race as it was going to be my first DH race of the year and MX was sure to be fun, too. We got up Saturday and qualified for MX. It didn't go great, but not horrible either. We had DH practice for a few hours, and I was feeling pretty good on the course. MX finals were in the afternoon and the racing went pretty good. I pretty much had 3rd easily, but I decided I really wanted 2nd so I went for a pass in one of the mid course corners and it didn't go exactly as I planned, so...I ended up in 4th. Not too bad, I guess. It was still worth $50, a pretty good b-day present if I do say so. Sunday was DH. We qualified in the morning. That was pretty cool. It's nice to have a clear run in the morning before the race run to see the course one more time. I ended up going down in my qualifier so I had a pretty crap time. I was looking to make up some time in my race run. Well, a game of leap frog ensued on the course so I didn't end up having a good race. I took about 15 seconds off of my qualifying run even with the cluster on the course, so I would like to think that my run had the potential to be a lot faster. I guess we'll never know.

Maybe if I had Practiced a Little More Instead of Sitting Around I Would Have Done Better Than 4th!!

Kristen and Me After a Great Day of MX Racing (I know that I need a haircut! Thank you very much!)

First Pro Podium, Yea!!

Right after the DH race TJ and I left to go pick up the new Yeti trailer in Chicago. Yes, Chicago, IL. It's not the closest place to Angel Fire, NM, but we drove hard all night and got there by about 12:30 on Monday only to have to wait around till 6:30 for the trailer to get there. We tried to take a nap in the nice green grass in front of a church, but the local police didn't think that was a very good idea. They ran our id's and sent us on our merry way. We finally got the trailer and headed out of town. We drove to just outside of St. Lois and slept in the back of the trailer. I'm sure there will be a lot of naps and sleeping to be had back there this summer! It's a sweet new trailer and I'm glad I could help TJ out by going with him. It would have been a sucky drive alone, that's for sure!

About 1/2 way through KS, we met up with Steve, Matt, Kevin, and Jess and I jumped out of the Yeti trailer and headed back the same 500 or so miles we had just driven on our way to NJ and the US Open. The scenery looks pretty much the same whether you're going east or west! :) We drove to East St. Lois and got a cheap motel room for the night. Boy did that shower feel good!

The next day we got off to a sort of late start and made it to somewhere in PA, I think. 5 days in the car and 1000s of miles of driving sort of become a blur after awhile!

Another Awesome Weekend at the Bangert's

I felt really drained on Saturday after Friday's goodbyes with Kate and a solid week of training, but I went to our friend Cole's house with TJ and Jon on Saturday. That statement right there should simply read: "Guaranteed: Amazing people, great riding, and cool adventures!!" The Bangert's are truly some of the most amazing people I have ever met, and I feel very fortunate to spend time with them every time that I get to.

We got to Cole's house about 6:00 on Saturday just in time for some gate practice with the super talented Watt's. For me, gate practice never gets old. I have so much that I need to work on, I feel like I think about something new and hopefully better each time. After we did gates for a bit, we decided the trick jump was calling our names. The trick jump and I had a little fight and the dirt and my handlebars won!

The Fight that I Lost

The boys, however, were throwing down at their new game of Trick Jump High Jumping. The bar seemed high when they started out, but by the time the contest ended (because they ran out of daylight), I think the bar was up to 63 inches off the lip or something ridiculous like that!

Cole Easily Clearing With Style!

Jon Watt 2nd Only Because They Ran Out of Daylight

Your High Jump Winner

The Winning High Jump: 63". 1/4" Taller Than Bobbi Watt! :)

Also, a Happy Birthday to TJ today!

FMSC

So, the Friday Morning Shuttle Club was a little sparsely attended this morning, however, what we lacked in numbers we made up for in good, quality riding and filming. We did one run section by section so Kevin could get some footage of TJ for his upcoming MTB film. After that Kevin drove shuttles for us, and all I have to say is, we were crazy efficient in our trail time and shuttle turn around time! We got 3 shuttles in less than 45 minutes!! THANK YOU Kevin for driving us up the canyon for an hour of your morning! Heal quickly so you can ride with us again!

You Know You're Having a Good Day When...

-You get to work an hour late and nobody notices because there isn't anyone else there
either.
-You get to leave work at 2:30 to go ride your bike because nobody ever showed up to
work.
-You get your final back that you thought that you failed and you got a 98% (My
professor is CLEARLY smoking the crack pipe!)
-You get the 95% go ahead that you got back into grad school when you didn't think you
would find out for several more weeks!
-You get to go on an awesome XC on an amazingly nice day with your cool friend Eszter!

Awesome Use of a Sick Day at Work

So, I have generally decided that my sick days for work should be taken as "sick of work" days. As I generally don't get sick very often, and the people I work with keep the Dr's offices in the area in business, I feel pretty comfortable using my sick days when I am sick of being at work.

I decided that yesterday would be a good day for a sick day. Mike Howse had said he wanted to do shuttle runs at 10:00, and we were going to head down to Arvada for gate practice later in the afternoon.

Shuttle runs on Cactus Ridge were great for the first 5 minutes, then I crashed and subsequently broke my BFL Hayes brake lever off. Bummer. Unfortunately it was the rear brake. I tried to ride with just my front brake for a ways, but the steepness and looseness of the switchbacks decided otherwise. One more decently hard crash, and I was walking most of the rest of the way down. Oh well. At least I got a little bit of exercise out of it.

Gate practice was really good. I feel like my gates are getting faster and more consistent. I still need to have more power out of the gate though! I can't wait for the season, though. Hearing the gate cadence really gets my pulse going! It's gonna be a good season!

XC: I Love It, NO I Hate It, NO I Love It, Well, My Knee's Not Sure After Tonight!

TJ and I went out and rode Hall Ranch this evening. It's my favorite trail on the Front Range. It's got a super technical climb to a nice rolling and beautiful lollipop loop. On the way back from the loop you can get going pretty fast because it's nice and smooth with some fun berms and whatnot. The turn from the nice fun stuff to the climbing crap picked a fight with me tonight and it won, unfortunately. I went down pretty hard on my right knee and hip. Damn, if only I had my knee pads on, this would only be a mere bruise!

After a nice session in the hot tub, my knee looks a lot better, but it is pretty swollen and bruised. Bummer!

P-Track Fever

Heather has been wanting some help with her technical skills for MTBing. We had an awesome ride on Saturday at Hall and I think she made some huge improvements! Yesterday we decided to hit Kevin up for the use of his backyard pump track! I think Heather is really starting to get the hang of it. The pump track is not only an awesome workout, but it teaches you a lot of subtle things in not very long! Unfortunately Kevin didn't get to ride with us, as not only does he have the hiv again, but he has 2 cracked and 2 bruised ribs to go along with his incessant cough! Coughing with cracked ribs really sucks!

TJ thought it would be fun to race the wheelbarrow full of dirt on the pump track. It didn't go quite as he had planned.

TJ cleaning up his wheelbarrow adventure gone wrong

Kevin's p-track is a lot of fun, and it's only going to get better as some craziness for an inside track is also in the works!

Kevin, Jon, and TJ working hard on the new additions!

A Sigh of Relief!

It's been no secret all semester that I hate my Polymers class. The professor was a twit. He held a review session for the course on Thursday. He told us the exam would be about 1/2 open book and 1/2 closed book, the same as most of the exams and quizzes all semester. Well, he lied. He shows up for the final yesterday (late) with a bunch of Krispy Kreme donuts and a funny little laugh. He says he decided to change the format of the final. It'll all be closed book. (oh except for an extra credit problem, that was open book) Ughhhhh!! I really rely on the open book part of the exams to balance out my poor performance on the closed book sections. I knew I was in for trouble. I would have studied differently if I had known it would be all closed book! I had no idea for 2 pages worth of problems, not the best feeling in the world. I even had trouble just coming up with "something" to fill the spaces under the problems. On a good note, though, I think I NAILED the extra credit problem. hahaha Oh well. I had hoped for an A in the class to help my plight to get back into grad school, but that's not gonna happen! Oh well, I AM DONE WITH CLASSES!! Yea!

After my exam, Heather met up with me at my office, and we got to look through this really cool sun telescope. It had some hydrogen something another filter in it so you could see the sun's surface. It was pretty cool.

All I've really wanted to do for the past two weeks is ride my bike and I haven't been able to very much because of dumb school and work, so that was our next mission! We grabbed our bikes and some food at Tokyo Joes and headed to Hall Ranch. It is my favorite trail on the Front Range, and it didn't disappoint us yesterday! We decided to ride the easy trail on the North side so we'd have time to do the loop. Heather has an Organic Chem final tomorrow, so she needed to get back to study for that! We got a good lap out of the loop and had an awesome decent back to the car! The view from the top of the loop is absolutely amazing!

A few of the Usual Suspects and some Newbies made it out for Happy Hour at Hapa last night. Yummy sushi and awesome friends...What more can you ask for?

I'm sitting here with NO school work to make me feel guilty, and I'm not sure what to do with my time...So many options, so many bikes I can ride to so many cool places! Aaaah, I love summer break!

LET THE FUN BEGIN!

Bits and Pieces Tied Together By the String of Me

Sunday found us doing awesome shuttles on the Cactus Ridge trail. It is a trail close to Boulder that is actually worthy of a DH bike! It was so much fun. Lisa got to ride her new beautiful DH rig for the first time. I had an awesome first run and then had such bad arm pump the second run that I could barely hold on! I need to get the sorted out before Angel Fire, for sure. I also fell, apparently pretty hard on my right hip/leg/butt. I don't know, but it is super bruised and scraped, and it sucks to sit down. Oh well, all in a days work for doing DH runs, I guess.

School really sucks this week. I had a paper due today, a group project and presentation due on Thursday, and a final on Saturday. I'm really ready for this semester to be over.

I really like the Folsom Street Coffee Shop. It's by far the best coffee shop in Boulder. I just wish not so many other people think the same thing. It's a bummer to plan to study there and not be able to find a seat. Oh well. They give you a huge helping of yummy hummus with your bagel, all for $2. Good stuff.

So, I took a bit of a hiatus from the engineering building but have had two classes in there this semester. My observation: what happened to the cool kids? I mean my friends who are engineering majors are cool, but when I don't run into them...Eeeekk! Today, it was particularly apparent just how nerdy the engineering majors are. I remove myself from that classification. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't, but wow, some of these people are way out there.

Okay, and I saved the best for last. I got an email from my awesome friend Kristen (Kdog) who lives down in Austin today. I met her last year at the Angel Fire MX. She was a beginner woman just starting out. I gave her some pointers on her gate start, and we hit it off. We exchanged emails and have been in touch ever since. I got to visit her when I was in Austin last fall. She turned what otherwise could have been a weekend full of nothing but drinking and football into an amazing weekend that included riding their awesome MX track. She showed up to get me Sunday morning with an extra bike, helmet, pads, and even a sweet T-shirt for me from the shop she works at. We had an awesome breakfast and then were off to the track.

Yummy Mexican breakfast in Austin with Zach and Kristen

Me (in all my borrowed gear) and Kristen

She had been riding a ton and improving her skills like crazy since the last time I had seen her. It was so much fun riding with her and seeing how much she had improved!

Their gate might be hand held and homemade but this is a little gem in the middle of Texas!

Well, today, she sent me a picture of her riding and their local BMX track, and all I have to say is...Beginner/Sport ladies, you better watch out because Kristen is coming to Angel Fire, and she's going to kick all of your asses! Check her out!

Kdog KILLING it at the BMX track in Austin