Breath of Fresh Air

Sweet wall ride that I fell off of the day before... :(

August has been a pretty rough month for me due to not getting selected for the World's team, not getting a research grant I was really counting on, a trip to the hospital to make sure my head is okay after landing on it hard whilst racing, and a lot of really complicated emotional stuff. This past weekend was the breath of fresh that I have needed for quite some time!

Tammy KILLED it all weekend!

After canceling my ticket to Australia which was supposed to leave on Friday night, I suddenly had the weekend free and decided to head out to Grand Junction to participate in the Slope Sistair III slopestyle and jump jam weekend. I wasn't able to get out there until Saturday morning, but as soon as I got there, I could tell the vibe in the air was great! There were some amazing freeride superstars there like Darcy Turenne, Tammy Donahugh, Stephanie Nychka, and Katie Hayes. Needless to say I was a little bit intimidated, but I was ready to be motivated to get back into dirt jumping and inspired by the talent and experience around me! I was not disappointed! All weekend, all of the girls were great! We all encouraged each other and pushed each other to learn new stuff or pull old trick out and dust them off!

Me and Darcy hammin' it up!

I'm so glad I made the 4 hour drive out there, even if it was only for 2 days. It was definitely worth it! Thanks to all of the girls for the encouragement, laughs, and fun!

Hanging out at the Ranch after the comps

Jackie at Freeride Foundation has a much better write up of the weekend than I have provided...check it out! :)

Check It

I did an interview with Susan Greenwood...UK's Guradian Writer/Rider Extrordinare! It's on her blog, PedalFeet. Check it out. She's hilarious and gets to go on loads of bike related adventures for work! :) Oh ya, google her name, she did a sweet ride across America tour a few years back as well!

Change of Plans

So, USA Cycling decided they would only be taking the current and former World Champions to World Champs in Australia this year. Big time bummer for me, especially since I already had a ticket to go. :( I don't understand their logic sometimes, but that's a topic for another time. I'm tired of talking about it at the moment! haha

ANYWAY, by not going to Australia on Friday, I now have this coming up weekend free, and there is a sweet riding/comp weekend going down at the Ranch in Grand Junction. It's the Slopestyle Sistair weekend. I've never done a slopestyle event and haven't really been spending a lot of time on the dirt jumps lately, but what the hell! It's gonna be a fun race with a sweet lineup of girls to ride with all weekend!

Super Yellowstone National Park Roadtrip Adventure

At Mammoth in front of the terraces

Wow, what a trip! I can honestly say that last week was one of the BEST weeks, traveling with a wonderful person, I've had in a really long time! Chris and I had one fun filled adventure traveling through WY/Yellowstone National Park/MT!

Chris on (well off of) the Popo Agie Trail in Sinks Canyon, WY

Popo Agie Falls

On Monday we headed out pretty early and made our way to Lander, WY where we pulled the bikes out and did a nice little XC ride up to the Popo Agie Falls in Sinks Canyon. It was a really nice break on our way to Jackson Hole.

Just outside Dubois, WY

The Grand Tetons (with an anvil cloud)

From Lander, we headed up through Dubois and over the Jackson Hole. The drive from Dubois to Jackson is amazingly beautiful! I LOVE the Grand Tetons!! We stayed with my long time friend Brian Lenz in Jackson and enjoyed some pub food and some good beer before crashing at his super spacious studio apartment.

Ferrin's Trail with the Grands in the background...amazing!!

Classic :) On our way back from the Ferrin's Trail in Jackson

We got up on Tuesday and after a filling brekkie at Jedediah's, we headed up Cache Creek to do a little riding on Snow King Mountain. We hit up a trail called Ferrin's which had a good grade for climbing and a super fun descent from the top! The only bad part of the ride was me getting stung in the face by some bug on the road on the way back! It hurt when it happened, but the aftermath for the following three days is what really sucked! My eye got so swollen it looked like Chris had punched me. haha After our daily dose of single track, we got going and headed up to through Grand Teton National Park and into Yellowstone National Park.

Swollen left eye...thanks for punching me Chris! haha

Thermophilic bacteria and sulphur create the vibrant colors

Our first stop was at West Thumb. We got out to stretch our legs a little bit and get Chris introduced to some of the cool geothermal activity in the park. Also...we learned about how crowded Yellowstone can be and how the hoards of tourists can be a little overwhelming!

Natural Bridge in YNP

Flip Flop Scrambling

I think we might have been the "attraction" for them

After that, we stopped at the Natural Bridge. I don't think most people visit this pretty cool rock formation, as it's a bit "off the road". We rode our bikes out there and hiked around a bit. After that, we decided to head up to Norris to see if we could find camping. Everyone said you had to have reservations, but we drove up at 7:30 and found a spot, no problem! Chris whipped up a wonderful dinner (as usual!) and we enjoyed the $2.99 German Chocolate Cake that we bought on special in Jackson for desert. We had some noisy and very fat neighbors that were traveling with 8 little dogs. They were strange, to say the least! The coolest part about this night, though was that we were awoken in the middle of the night to a symphony of wolves howling! It was really coo, and slightly eerie to hear them. It was almost as if two different groups of them were talking to each other! I guess if you don't get to see the wolves...getting to hear them singing a tune is the next best thing!

The Artist's Paint Pot area

Wednesday morning we headed down to the Artist's Paint Pots. We got there pretty early and the road from Norris to Madison was closed beyond this turn off, so as a result, we had the place nearly to ourselves. There is an amazing boiling mud pot here that is very cool and pictures can't do justice to!

Chris' sweet find!

Chris had spotted something cool along the river on our way there, so on the way back, we stopped off and checked out a really neat thermal feature that we were able to walk through the river and right up to. I'm not sure this is how they intend for you to enjoy this feature of the park, but we thought it was great! From there, we headed up to Mammoth, on the north side of the park. There are some hot springs that you're allowed to sit in just north of town. The Boiling River dumps into the very chilly Gallatin River creating some of the best hot springs I've ever been to! After soaking ourselves to prune status, we checked out the terraces that Mammoth is famous for. They are very surreal, with some having amazing colors and others being "dried up" and looking like ice sculptures.

This canyon, near Tower, is pretty spectacular

Lower Falls of Yellowstone Canyon, 309 feet high

From there we headed back south along the west side of the park, stopping to enjoy different sites along the way. We stopped off to check out the Upper and Lower Falls. These are both pretty spectacular water falls with the lower one being 300+ feet high. We took the 328 metal stairs route down the the lower vantage point to enjoy the view. We definitely broke a sweat as we hiked out! After that we were lucky enough to see a grizzly bear cub! The poor thing was being harassed by tourons left and right. We weren't able to grab a photo, unfortunately, but I've never seen a bear in the park before, so Chris was pretty lucky to have gotten to see one! From there, we enjoyed a few more mud pot/sulphur cauldron sites along the way to Old Faithful.

Old Faithful is a bit of a Superhighway in Yellowstone. I think it's one of the most famous sites to see whilst there, albeit not the coolest, in my opinion, but regardless, I think it's a must see, if you're there! We got there about 45 minutes before the next geyser was set to go off, so we joined the throngs of people sitting around waiting for the show. Chris got some good pics of the action, and before the show was over, we bailed to avoid the mass chaos of people! We concluded our Yellowstone tour and headed out of the park to West Yellowstone to camp for the evening. On our way out of the park, we also were lucky enough to see a bald eagle chilling near the river. All in all, Chris got to see (and hear) a lot of cool stuff that most people are never lucky enough to see, and I think we were able to enjoy a few of the many beautiful sites in the park mostly sans super-crowds!

Old Faithful

We stayed just north of West for the night and got up and headed to the bike shop in town to get some beta on where some good rides might be. We headed out of town towards ID and drove to the top of the pass. From here we jumped on the Continental Divide Trail and started climbing. The trail was a bit rough due to heavy horse traffic (apparently whilst muddy!)

FUN, FUN trail riding in West Yellowstone

We didn't really know where we were going or wanting to go, but we just kept climbing through beautiful high alpine meadows full of amazing wild flowers. At one point, another trail crossed our path so we jumped on it and it started descending on a super fun and challenging trail. We ran into a dude ranch group on horses and found out we could keep descending on fun trails all the way back to the highway! It was so much fun and all we had to do was climb back up the pass on the road to get back to the car. All in a days work of chasing single track adventures! :) On to Butte, MT to visit my sister.

Butte, is apparently one of the oldest towns in the west, with its roots in mining. There have been several open pit mines in Butte with the most famous (and disastrous) one being the Berkley mine. They have made a complete mess of the hillside in Butte and depending on how things progress are slated to contaminate a whole watershed with heavy metals withing the next 10 years! Not so cool! It was really nice to catch up with my sister and her family. My nephew is so cute! I don't get to see him nearly enough!

We headed down to my cousin's in Bozeman to do a bit more fun single track hunting. Julie took us out to the Leverage trail south of town and put the hurt on! Well, it put the hurt on me anyway. Chris has a stout 37-32 on his bike right now, and he pedaled up the hill seemingly effortlessly, whilst I was in the back wheezing like a fat kid with asthma in my granny ring! :( Once we got to the top, though, it was well worth it! The descent on that trail was super fun, flowy and fast!

To finish out the grand tour, we stopped in Laurel, MT to have lunch with my Grandma and then headed down to Powell, WY to visit my parents for the night. They made us a nice steak dinner to cap off Chris' Wild West Adventure! The ride home was full of construction, speeding tickets and tears, so 6 outta 7 nearly perfect days made up the best week I've had in a long, long time! Thanks for being so fun to travel with Chris!

I think Chris had fun seeing the MT/WY sites and getting ride in new places.

Yellowstone National Park Road Trippin'

Chris and I are headed out on a super Yellowstone National Park adventure on Monday. He's trying to fit as much fun as he can in before he heads back to the UK in the middle of September.

First we're heading up to Jackson Hole to visit my friend Brian, then up to Yellowstone for a couple of days. From there we're planning to get some good XC riding done in West Yellowstone, MT before heading up to visit my sister in Butte, MT (maybe a stop off at Lewis and Clark Caverns...still TBD). After the quick visit with my sister and family, we'll head down to Bozeman, MT to do some riding and stay with my cousin. We'll make a quick stop off to say hi to my Grandma en route to my parents house in WY for a day and then the painful drive back home from there. It'll be a whirlwind trip with loads of scenery, hopefully some great riding and some quick visits to the fam. Should be fun! :) Hopefully we'll have some good picture updates along the way. Chris has become a bit of a professional panoramic view photographer!

Snowmass MSC race

Getting the scoop on the fast lines from Jared

I headed down to the Snowmass MSC race on Friday morning. On the way out of town, I managed to meet up with my friends Michael and James Ontiveros and ended up "kidnapping" Michael for the ride to Aspen. I haven't seen him in way too long, as he's been solving crazy math problems at NYU for his final year of school! :) It was really good to catch up with him!

I got to the mountain in time to get in a DH run before 4x practice started. I felt really good on the bumpy loose course! 4x practice was awesome on my new hard tail!! I LOVE it! I spent a lot of time just doing gates and getting my snap timing back. It's felt a bit sluggish at the World Cups lately, but I think I got it all sorted on Friday!

Saturday morning saw a couple of good DH runs before 4x practice and qualies. The beginning of practice was great. I was hitting all of the lines that I wanted and getting all of the jumps very smoothly...it deteriorated as the two hours went on. :( Needless to say the end of practice was much more representative of my qualy run than the beginning, unfortunately. I qualified 3rd.

We had a little bit more practice time before racing that evening, and I got everything dialed in again and was ready to go! I really wanted the Colorado State Championships jersey! First round was me, Darian and Marty Renn, straight outta retirement! :) I was in lane 2 and got a pretty crappy gate, but I was still in the lead. Apparently I hit the double at the end of the 2nd straight with more speed than I had in practice, and I overshot it a bit (or so I'm told) and didn't quite make the miniature berm that I needed to be in. I guess I tried to turn anyway and ended up knifing my front wheel and planting my head firmly into the ground. I guess I got up and finished the race and then started walking back up the hill before I "came to". I don't remember all of that, it's just what everyone has told he happened. :( End of the night and weekend for me. 2nd concussion in as many weeks = not so good. Chris convinced me that it would probably be a good idea to go get checked out, since it is my brain we're talking about. Everything checked out ok, so that's good. I still have a headache today, but hopefully it'll all be ok soon!

In much better news, Chris is the Cat 1 19-29 Colorado State XC Champion, and James is the 19-29 Super D Colorado State Champion. I would've really liked to have made it 3 for 3 for State Champs jerseys at our house, but...I guess it wasn't in the cards. Oh well. I felt like I was riding really well all weekend, which I haven't felt for quite a while, so that's good for something, I suppose. Gonna take some time to relax and just train hard for the next couple of weeks before Australia! :)

Ahhhh, Boulder

Only in Boulder: The "You're Speeding" Reminder...On the Bike Path!!!

I've been away from Boulder for most of the summer, so I've forgotten a lot of funny and quirky things about Boulder that you probably don't see in too many other places! Boulder is a great place to live, in fact I'm not sure where else in the states I'd ever want to live. It's good to be home, but throughout my summer travels, I think that I've realized that once I finish my PhD (hopefully sooner than later!!!) it is probably time for me to move on from here. I'm not sure where to, as there are so many possibilities! :)

PT Cruisers SUCK!!

Like I said, PT Cruisers SUCK!!!

This is the third time that I've gotten stuck with a PT cruiser for my race rental vehicle. I hate them! This time it was extra sucky! We came back from practice on Friday and realized we had a flat tyre. Booo. It was just an inconvenience that I didn't want to deal with. Well, we got on getting the spare put on. Melissa was working on getting the lug nuts off, and suddenly one of them sheared off! Ugghhh. Someone had cross threaded it. At this point, some photog guy must have decided that we needed help, so he came over and finished off putting the spare on for us. He proceeded to shear off another lug nut, so at that point, we only had 3 left. Luckily, they were in a triangle pattern, so safer than all next to each other, I guess.

Well, I spent a long time on Saturday morning trying to get Thrifty in Canada to give us a different car and or get the situation fixed for us. They were of no help. All of the garages around were only open until noon on Saturday, but as it turns out, it didn't matter, as the parts that we needed were only available from a dealer...which are not open on Saturdays. Our friend fixed the flat for us, and we left the switching back process until Sunday morning.

SOOOO lucky they had this setup at their house!

Sunday morning comes along, and we're all super hung over and not looking forward to putting the newly repaired tyre back on. Luckily, our friends had another house guest, Sam, who was super psyched to help out. Sam took charge of getting the situation sorted. Well, turns out whoever the idiot was that put those wheels on before us had cross threaded most of the lug nuts. Same sheared off another. Now we were down to 40%. Not okay. Luckily (AGAIN) our friend Gab has a full on garage lift at their house. I came out of the house from getting packed and they had the whole PT Piece of Shit Cruiser up on the lift with the two front wheels completely dismantled. They were "borrowing" a stem/lug nut combo from the other wheel for the janky one. Well, lucky for us they're so car savy, and they got it all sorted and we were on our way to Burlington, VT for our flight, fully prepared to have it out with Thrifty once we got there.

Unfortunately, we had a bit of an epic journey back to the states! When we got to the border crossing, they decided to harass the hell out of us and keep us there for 45 minutes asking all sorts of questions about what we were doing in canada, how we were funding the trip, what we had to declare, etc... the ONLY things we had to declare were two chocolate bars that Melissa had bought, so we thought it was pretty strange that they were bugging us so much. They spent 15 minutes searching the car and then came in and asked loads of questions about what had happened to the car...the whole sheared off lug nuts/wheel problem.

I explained the whole situation to them and then they continued asking questions about whether the spare had been out of our possesion, where we had gotten it fixed, etc...In fact, they asked the same questions several times (a little slow on the uptake, I guess!). In the end, they finally let us go after giving us a lecture about it being unsafe to drive like that. Thanks, we already know that! ha In the end we got to the airport pretty late, but our flights were delayed anyway, so it was ok!

We couldn't figure out why they were bothering us so much, but after we left we decided that they must have thought we were trying to smuggle drugs across the border. Idiots! Wouldn't they figure that if we were going to try and do that we wouldn't rock up with missing lug nuts, no hub cap on the wheel, a spare tyre that was a bit dangly, and me with a lost driver's license?!?

In the end it was a pretty funny story, but during it all it was a huge hassle, and we were so lucky that our friends were so savy and got us all sorted. Otherwise we'd have been sitting in Bromont for who knows how long trying to get all of that sorted out!