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

Flying High In the Skies Over Boulder, CO

Gunbarrel Dirt Jumps

How could I forget to mention my super flying adventure with Jeffrey last Thursday?! Jeff got his pilot's license a few months ago and has been terrorizing the birds in the sky ever since. He took me up flying last Thursday and it was, well, an adventure. I totally trust that he knows what he is doing, so I really wasn't that nervous about going with him, even though I had heard some horror stories about a rough landing up in the Fort with his friend Keith Jackson! Jeff was explaining the ins and outs of the controls to me and even let me fly for a bit. Things were going great until Jeff decided to do a 200 foot stall without warning me. He may have had to go to the Dr. to have his ear drums checked out after that one! I was screaming like a little baby! I think that I would have been fine if I had been given a little bit of a warning about the little maneuver!

Jeff Making Sure the Plane won't Fall Apart While We're Flying

Alot to Look At

The Fearless Pilot

I Actually Did Really Enjoy the Adventure

Don't Watch Sad Movies if You're Having a Rough Day

Watched Million Dollar Baby tonight. Good movie. Bad idea. Moral of the story...If you're already sad, watch a happy movie.

Amazing Weekend in the Mountains

This weekend was filled with riding, riding, and more riding! It started with my Sick of Work day and a $5 lift ticket at Keystone on Friday. Kevin and I went up for the day, and even though we only got 3 runs in before the lightening started, I had a good day. I feel like I learn something new about my riding or my bike every time I ride it. I don't know if Kevin had quite as much fun as I did, but it was a good day of riding for me.

Saturday, we moved the show to Winter Park and added another cast member, Lisa Myklak. We rode DH at the resort in the morning and then we met up with Cody, Forest, Wade, Robbie Bourdon, and a couple of the Kona groms to ride out at the Hut. I really enjoy riding out there. It has really good energy.

After some good burgers and a mint chocolate chip milk shake in Empire, we were on our way to the Bangert's in Twin Lakes to meet up with the Morewood crew and a whole cast of crazy fast DHers! We awoke Sunday morning with so many options of fun things to do for the day. A few people decided to head to Vail for some DH runs, and the rest of us decided to do an awesome shuttled XC run. Steve let me use his Turner 6 Pack, as I hadn't brought an XC bike with me. Robin and Geritt drove shuttles for us so we could do one of the coolest, okay, maybe THE coolest XC ride I've ever done. They dropped us at the top of one of the beautiful peaks near their house. The top section was Choose Your Own Adventure over the steep terrain with no trails. After a little ways we linked up with the trail. I've never thought I was scared of heights before, but that part of the trail just about made me change my mind. It was only about a foot wide in spots and off-camber with a nice steep drop off next to it. It made me a little nervous for sure! After that craziness, we got to descend for a long time on a beautiful winding, twisting trail. There were several downed trees that put my subpar bunny hopping skills to the test! The trail winds around and drops out right at the lake. All I can say, is wow, well, and THANK YOU to the Bangert's for being so amazing and sharing their awesome trail with us!!

After some much needed lunch, we picked teams and played some very serious pro basketball. Okay, so maybe it was actually pro (downhillers trying pretty hard to play) basketball. Darryl and Robin were definitely the ringers for the b-ball tourney!! They made us all look bad! The team mechanics, Andre and Rusty, both had a rough go and sprained their ankles pretty badly. Luckily, those were the only injuries in the serious competition! Darryl kept trying to get us to go on a "real" cross country ride with him, but we were all too tired. I'm not sure where he gets all of his energy from! Lisa and I made it home around 9:00 after some stellar driving from Lisa and Molly (oh, and no stupid I-70 Sunday summer traffic!!). I was ready for bed, that's for sure!

Cole showing us his skills while Darryl towers over Tracy

1 day of work this week! Nice. Off to Deer Valley with Cody and Nate on Wednesday. I'm really looking forward to the DH track. I didn't race it last year, so I'm very excited to finally get to ride it, not just hike it!! MX is at a BMX track south of Salt Lake city. I'm trying not to complain about it, cuz everyone else is doing enough of that for everyone. I'm just happy that I've been riding out at the BMX track quite a bit lately. It'll be fun no matter how bad NORBA tries to make it!!