Getting my Butt Kicked

So, there is still snow lingering around and keeping the MTB trails nice and wet and muddy...not the most ideal situation for me to ride my brand new BEAUTIFUL bike! So, I decided to go get my butt kicked by the road girls, and so we headed up, up , and more uphill! :) I did sufficiently get my butt handed to me, but it was good. We got a great 2.5 hour ride in before the wind set in. Now I'm hacking up a lung, but my legs are good and tired, so...Mission Accomplished! :) Hopefully the dirt will be dry soon!

Snowy Weekend

Chris is starting feel very American...haha. NOT!! :)

So, I guess the snow wasn't entirely a bad thing...the snowboarding at Vail and today at Eldora was really fun, and since there was still white stuff all over the ground, I wasn't tempted to keep riding my old XC bike and not stay inside and build my new bikes!

Such a fun, sunny day at Eldora!

Our living room/dining room has been turned into a makeshift bike shop!

I am the slowest bike builder on the planet, as it turns out! The XC bike (Black Beauty) is done, and I'm started in on the 4x bike (Hubba Bubba) now. Hopefully my Crank Brothers stuff will show up soon, so I can get the DH bike built, too! Chris and James have been helping me get the bikes together, so I really appreciate that, otherwise I'm sure the XC bike wouldnd't even be done yet! :)

Chris helping me out! Thankfully!

Black Beauty...READY and waiting for the snow to melt!!

Pink Panther...Work in Progress!

Quite the Day

So, on Wednesday night when they were predicting 12-18 inches of MORE new snow at Vail for Thursday, I sort of invited myself along with Akira and Chris to go snowboarding on Thursday. I would have to buy (gag!!) a lift ticket at Vail, so I was definitely counting on a BIG day. Chris got me a "buddy" pass for $81 (ouch!). We headed up and out the the China/Ghengis Bowls. Wow, 2nd day back on the board this season and LOTS of heavy powder made for a pretty challenging and a bit frustrating day for me. Luckily, Akira is an amzing snowboarding coach and gave me a couple of tips that really helped me after a few super frustrating runs with lots of tumbles and nearly choking on the dense powder that ended up in my mouth and down my throat! In the end, it was a great day that left me completely knackerd and quite certain that I would be unable to do another run down the mountain! We headed home on completely shit roads and rendevoused at the Southern Sun (which was still had a wait list even though there was at least 14 inches of snow on the ground in Boulder!!!) for dinner. Then we headed over to Mike and Kimmie's house for a little hot tubbing. A couple of beers persuaded us all to do completely ridiculous things (tree hugging, somersaults, cartwheels, attempted leap frogging, snow angels, and the nestea plung)e in the snow before jumping back into the hot tub for tingling and warmth! A crazy day, but an epic and memorable one for sure! :)

Looking out my window with the sun shining on the enourmous amount of snow in the yard right now is quite beautiful, but since I've got three new bike frames, that will hopefully be built up soon, sitting in the living room, I'd be happy if it all melted and dried up much sooner than later! :)

Christmas in March!!

My new Ellsworth DH (Dare) and 4x (modified Moment) frames arrived yesterday as well as my new Fox forks for the season! Then today, my XC bike (Epiphany) showed up!!!! It is almost a bit ridiculous in my kitchen right now. I'll post some pics once the bikes get all built up!

It's time for a Yeti bike sale! 303, 4x, DJ, and a "vintage" ASX!! :)

Moab Goodness

The crew at the Lookout on Porcupine: Chris Peterson, Abby, me, James, Chris Baddick

Chris making good use of his play bike!

Chris, James, and I packed up my car and headed out to Moab round 6:00 last Friday. We made excellent time to Moab only to have to drive around for over an hour to try and find somewhere to camp...Ugghhh!!! We ended up camping in the Poison Spider trailhead parking lot. It was flat and quite, all that I needed for a good night's sleep! :)

So tired we didn't care that our campsite was a parking lot!

We had big plans for Saturday...DESCENDING!!! Andy broke his wrist racing on the road, so he was kind enough to shuttle 5 of us up to the top of the Kokopelli trail on the La Sal Mtn Loop. This translated into negligible climbing and some amazing descending for several hours! I can't think of a much better way to spend the day! :) We did have to trudge through some snow at the beginning, but it was well worth it in the end! GREAT DAY #1 of riding! (Plus there was an amazing sunset to top the day off!)

Andy aka Virginia Slim: Our broken but awesome shuttle driver!

Off to a great start...haha.
Abby and I trudging through the snow on the Kokopelli Trail.

This Part of the rail had recently burned.
With the snow, it was pretty surreal to ride through.

This is DEFINITELY going to be the new hotness for '09:
Sleeveless jersey with arm warmers!!

Desert sunsets are amazing!!

On Sunday we headed over to Amasa Back for more fun in the desert. Unfortunately James took a pretty scary digger right at the beginning of the ride, giving me a pretty big scare! He headed back to out campsite to take it easy for the day and the rest of us head off to enjoy the riding and the scenery! Again, we were not disappointed! Unfortunately our day was a little hampered by a nasty sand storm for a few hours. The sand tried its hardest to put a damper on our fantastic squash curry dinner, but Chris' cooking is just too good. Score: Chris' cooking - 1 sand storm - 0!

Chris up to his normal antics on Amasa Back

On Sunday, we headed up to the Sovereign Trail on our way out of town. This trail is a lot of fun, and a lot of work at the same time! I like it because it makes me really work on my uphill technical skills, which, quite honestly, suck! I made some progress yesterday, though, so that was good. The boys were riding really well all day. I think we all must have been tired, as we took almost no pictures on this ride. :( Oh well, sometimes you just gotta pedal!

We enjoyed a few tasty beverages at the campsite :)

Since we had such a good weekend with only minor injuries and no broken bikes, we obviously needed something to go wrong on the way home! Well, I guess it didn't really go wrong, but the further we got into Colorado, the more signs we saw for I-70 being closed...what?!?! Vail pass got completely slammed with snow and they ended up closing the pass. Boo!! We holed up in a Mexican restaurant for a bit and had some nachos before heading out and getting to Vail just as they were opening up the pass. The roads sucked over the pass, but Chris kept my mind off the sketchy roads with some German quizzing and tutoring!

So, all in all, it was a GREAT weekend of riding in the desert. I love Moab!

Good Thing for Bikes and Bowling

The Fix St. Patty's Day jump jam

Other than some great bike riding, DJ Jam at the Fix on Tuesday and a great ride at Hall with Sabrina on Wednesday, and the World Championship of Sucky Bowlers on Wednesday, this week has sort of sucked, so I'm pretty darn happy that I love to ride bikes, otherwise it would have really sucked! :)

James' favorite camera face :)

Fun at the pump track

Chris brought their lab's fancy camera to the Fix for the jump jam and we had fun playing around with taking some photos, and then he spent a lot of time fixing stuff up in photoshop. There were some rippers in attendance at the jam. Backflips seemed to be the flavor of the day!

Chris and James getting their pump on

Sabrina and I headed up to Hall for a mid morning ride on Wednesday. Hall is one of my favorite trails on the front range, so it was really nice to be able to ride it without a 100 other people all trying to come uphill when we just wanted to pin it on the way down! It was a great ride, and I think I've found my new favorite XC riding partner!

The view at the top of Hall is pretty nice with Long's Peak behind us

Sabrina gives the thumbs down to "French" Bread Pizza!!

We had to get the World Championships of Sucky Bowlers in last night before she left for team training camp in NV, and boy did we make the most of it! The first round saw Tasso as the only competitor to break 100, but by the second round we were all nearly professionals... hahahahahahaha! Just kidding!

Joey's got mad bowling skills!

Evan's gnarly scar from wrecking his wrist!

We still sucked! I bowled a 122, which tied Scott for the win in game two. Awesome! Actually, though, I think that was one of the highest scores I've ever gotten! Joey won "best" form for the night, and Evan took the cake for highest score bowling with his opposite hand since his hand is still healing up from some broken, bone necrosis, crazy surgery nastiness!

Buffalos All Around for the Weekend

The Buffalo Creek Crew

On Saturday I spent the day officiating at our home road race (Bikes and Buffaloes Crit) which was SOOO much fun! (dripping with sarcasm!) I'm officially (haha) retiring from being an official at this point. I just wanted to get a lot of experience with it and help out with the collegiate stuff, but I'd much rather be on the other side of the fence...RACING! Anyway, it was a good day for CU Cycling with several wins and a lot of good perfomances. Unfortunately there were a lot of crashing mishaps on the course, including Andy breaking his wrist and Chris blowing 6/16 carbon spokes out of the rear wheel on the bike he was borrowing...CRAZY!! Luckily, he only got a really sore and a bit scraped up knee out of it.

Chris never has any fun at all, ever! :)

This trail doesn't have much in the way of technical, but the boys made the most of what there is, riding the section at least a couple of times!

Much more fun, for me at least, was headind down to the Buffalo Springs Trail system down near Pine, CO. We loaded up James' car with 5 bikes and eager MTBers and headed off. We had a beautiful day of riding with some really fun descents and some amazing views. (I'm not going to mention the uphill suffering that I endured to enjoy the descents, as I easily made the ride last at least 50% longer than it should have with my slow climbing! Ugghhhh, not sure why I've been feeling so shitty riding lately, when I was feeling really good a couple of weeks ago!) Anyway, we had a great time riding without any incidences (which is good because prior to this Chris and I had something bad happen every time we rode together!). Yea for warm weather, sunshine, beautiful CO, and great friends to ride with!

Fine cornering form on his gigantic 29er, fully equipped for extra gangliness

Peter is obviously The Chief of Police...the Fashion Police, that is!

Time for a Change

I'm very excited to say that I am taking a 3 month hiatus from grad school this summer...TO RACE MY BIKES!! I can't wait. I've never been able to fully concentrate on bike racing, as I've always had the trying to be a smart kid thing lingering in the background when I'm trying to focus on racing in the summer. Last summer was crazy, I'd pull a couple of all nighters at school then get on a plane and fly to Europe and then expect to be able to ride my bike well when all my body wanted to do was sleep! That was probably not the smartest thing I've ever done, but oh well, things will be different this summer! I'm heading over to Europe in May and will stay over there until the beginning of July!

Another big change for me this year is a new bike sponsor!! I've been super happy with my Yeti's for the past 6 years, but it was time for a change, and I can't be happier! This year I'll be racing aboard either an Ellsworth Moment or a Specialist, depending on the track, for 4x and a Dare for DH. I am going to be racing as part of the Project Pink endeavor. This is a super cool project where Ellsworth donates $50 to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for every bike they sell in the sweet anodized pink version. Check out the sweet jersey design:



My version of the jersey will be a DH style jersey, of course, but it'll be the same basic design. Tony and Paul over at Ellsworth are great! I'm very excited about this season and about the endless possibilities aboard my new pink bikes that should be arriving very soon!

Day 1 Back on the Slopes

The Roomies: Akira, Chris, Me, and James

I have awesome roommates who all love to ride bikes and play in the snow. Today is the first day this season that I've been able to go snowboarding (while painstakingly watching them rack up 20-40 days each on the slopes). I had to get a refund on my original ski pass this year as the broken ankle put a big damper on things! Eldora sells their next year's passes in the spring and then you can use them for the rest of the current season. I picked my 09-10 pass up today and the four of us headed up to Eldora for one of the best days of pretty much perfect courduroy that I've ever had.

Akira and James ready to grab first chair, okay it was second, but close enough!

Now a lot of people will tell you that you can't have a great day on the slopes if it hasn't snowed in quite awhile, but I disagree. Don't get me wrong, I love a powder day as much as the next person, but short of those days, my favorite days at a resort are lovely courduroy, and today we had not only that, but we had the slopes almost to ourselves. First tracks, then second and third before anyone else figured it out! :)

Me and Akira looking down into Ned/Barker Res

What a great day to make it back to slip sliding around on the white stuff!

In an Instant

Cooper Giving Phil Some Lovin'

My friend Phil was in a really bad motocross accident last Thursday. Basically, the wind caught him over some jump and caused things to go wrong, really, really wrong. When he landed, his hand blew off of the throttle and he hit his handle bars with his throat/trachea. This impact tore something in his trachea and his chest cavity began filling with air with every breathe that he took. Eventually his lungs collapsed. Luckily someone saw him crash and got to him immediately. They called 911 and there was an ambulance there within 20 minutes. They got him all packed up and shipped off to the hospital within about 2 minutes. The EMT had to take drastic measures and essentially stab him in the chest to release the air pocket that was building up in his chest from the torn trachea. They have told him that he was probably within 10 minutes of not making it. Scary!!

He is still in the ICU, intubated with a ventilator helping him breathe. They're not sure when they'll be able to remove it because of all of the trauma to his throat area. Anyway, the hospital is super cool and they allow dogs, even in the ICU!! So, Phil LOVES his dog more than life, so his girlfriend called and asked if I could bring Cooper up with me when I came up to visit Phil today. Although Cooper was a little bit confused by all of the tubes, wires, and noises surrounding Phil, Phil was obviously glad to have his baby there for a visit, even if it was only for a little while!

Send your healing thought Phil's way as he continues to heal up!!

Day One: The Fun Mobile

You need a BIG truck if you have this many toys!!

So, we loaded up Melissa's truck with all of the fun toys and headed out for a day of adventures. We started off at the Hawes Trail for a little MTB action. This trail was awesome! It had a little of everything, rolling single track, a few climbs, and some techy descents.

Looking out from close to the top of our MTB ride

The ankle was bothering me a little bit after the BMX track last night, but I think it was bothering my confidence more than anything. Oh well, I'm sure it'll be back to normal soon. :)

The view at the turnaround point

The desert "forest"...I LOVE Saguaro Cacti! The Sonoran Desert is such an amazing place!!

After a good sunny MTB ride, we grabbed some food and then headed out to do the same moto ride that we did last year. I really like this ride, it has amazing scenery, and it was good to see if I was riding more aggresively than I was last year...and I think I did! It took us less time to ride the same amount that we did last year! :) When we were eating lunch, we googled the suset time for today...6:35. We got back to the truck at 6:29. Awesome, only 6 minutes of wasted daylight today! Day 1 at Camp Buhly: SUCCESS! :)

We weren't having any fun...at all! hahahaha

Tomorrow we're headingup to Sedona for some more XC and then a little R&R, including a much needed massage! I can't wait.