Life in the Village

Secret Trail Group Ride with Jaymie's Amazing Friends

The Village

My great friend Jaymie Mart lives in a pretty darn cool place, Innerleithen, Scotland! I love, love, love getting to spend time with her there. It's a cute, quaint little village just south of Edinburgh that has amazing MTB trails all around it!

Sometimes Damion gets me confused with a lollipop...usually there is a camera involved when it happens!

Damion Smith made it round to the village because we're just too cool not to come hang out with on one of his only weekends off for the summer! :)

D teaching us some American Football drills...a bit pissed! haha

We had a great time riding bikes, learning to play hockey and shinty, reading from the good book, practicing American football drills, drinking with the local "famous" footballer, and generally getting up to a lot of ruckus!

Damion reading to us from the Good Book, Squash the O!

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Can't ask for a much better view than a full rainbow at the top of a grueling MTB climb in beautiful Scotland!!! Life is good!

After very little sleep and nearly 20 hours of traveling, I arrived in Edinburgh where Jaymie had arranged for her friend Andy to pick my up at the airport. I walked through the arrival door and found him stood there waiting for me with a sign with my name on it with the Dirt School logo. I couldn't stop laughing...even though I already knew that my bike had not arrived! I could tell from the first instant that Andy and I were going to get on well!

I filled out the missing bag info and we were on our way to Innerleithen. We arrived in the village after endless laughter and giggles all the way from Edinburgh and promptly went to the pub for some food. After a nice greasy fish and chips lunch, we headed to Alpine Bikes to see about borrowing a rental bike for the day. They hooked me up with a nice Trek and we were off. I had no idea that Andy was taking me on an epic adventure of a ride, but between my jet lag and not so quick climbing abilities, our ride ended up being 4 hours! I was beat, but even though we got hailed and rained hard on, I had a great time and was so glad that we'd managed to get a ride in straight off of the plane!!

Andy is a legend! He has more parlour bike tricks than anyone I know, and his patience with waiting for the slow girl abounds!! I'm pretty darn lucky that Jaymie has such amazing friends who are willing to spend the day entertaining a silly American girl they've never even met before! So, a big thanks to Andy for making sure my first day in Scotland was a really fantastic one. I can't wait for all of the adventures that are still to come...hopefully they will soon involve my own lovely pink Ellsworth Specialist, too!!

Jeff Co MTB Trails

Jeff Co. has long been lauded as one of the more forward thinking counties in Colorado with regard to MTB trail access...at least in comparison to Boulder Co.! Today I headed down to Golden, in Jeff Co., because I really wanted to rip down the Enchanted Forest trail. I mean, I was actually looking forward to the climb to get to the top to be able to enjoy the super fun descent down Enchanted Forest! Unfortunately they haven't quite gotten it figured out yet! They have unidirectional trail access on odd numbered days of the month (which I think is great), but they have it so you can only ride UP the Enchanted Forest trail. I seriously don't know anyone who wants to ride up that trail! Dumb, dumb, dumb!

Adventures with Mom

My Mom, an amazing lady

So, my Mom decided to come down and celebrate my birthday with me this week. It was going to be a quick trip, so I knew I had to plan to cram a lot in during a short amount of time, and we succeeded!

We got up early and headed to Lucile's for breakfast! I hadn't been there in WAY too long. After that, we spent a bit of time enjoying all of the flowers on Pearl St. before I decided it was time for a little exercise! I think my mom must think I'm always trying to kill her when she comes to visit as I always end up taking her on hikes that I don't think will be too bad and then they're always harder than I remember them being! My Mom is a trooper, though, after a few good rest breaks, we had a good hike enjoying the Boulder sun.

The storm that dumped some rain before our hike.

At the bottom of the 2nd Flatiron

After that, we headed to campus to go on a "Tree Walk" with the head CU groundskeeper. It was a lot of fun to get to hear what someone who has spent the last 25 years hanging out with the trees had to say about them. There are 5000 trees on campus with at least 50 different kinds! Who knew?!?

The second largest Redbud in CO

After that we headed out to fondue dinner, which is always fun. The only bad part is that you feel completely stuffed when you leave!

Stuffed but still found room for chocolate! :)

All in all, we had a great time in a short amount of visit time! Thanks for coming to visit Mom! :)

1st Pro Win!!!

Jackie, Me, and Cathy: 4x Podium

I have been racing at Nathrop for 7 years, and none have been as sweet as this year! There are two 4x tracks and a dual slalom track with one of the most beautiful racing backdrops in the world, Mt. Princeton.

Jamis, Blake, Petr, and Erik: The Men's podium as definitely hard fought!

I haven't been able to train as much as I normally do by this time of the season because of school, so I went to the race with very few expectations. Dual slalom was on Saturday, and 4x was on Sunday. Dual slalom went okay, I ended up 2nd. On Sunday, we got started with the new to the US format of 4x, and it was great!

Me and Erik with Mt. Princeton behind us

We all did 3 randomly seated qualifying rounds and then we raced the normal 4x rounds. I won one of the qualifying rounds and Jackie won two of them. Once we got to the finals, I was in lane two, but I got a great snap out of the gate and got the hole shot. Jackie made some good attempts at passing, but I was able to hold her off till the finish line for my first Pro win ever! :) Pretty psyched!

Smiles all around!

A Little Scare

So, I've had a cramp like pain in the top of my calf for a little over a month now. It didn't bother me at first since I get charlie horse cramps in my calves all of the time, but after quite some time I started to worry a little bit. When I was at the Doc to get some sleeping pills for my impending travels abroad, I casually mentioned it to the Doc, and she got a bit nervous and thought I should get an ultrasound to rule out Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT). I just got back, and it turns out there isn't DVT (thankfully!!!), but there is a small clot in one of the more superficial veins. Hopefully it's not much to worry about, will go away on its own, and at least explains why I've been having pain for the past month! Fingers crossed that it doesn't become a bigger problem than it is!

My Grandma Knows What's Up!

WAY better than an office chair!

Themes and Thoughts from today's ride:
1.) Endo to Elbow ):

It gets really flat really quickly once you leave the mountains!

2.) Sometimes you have to stop and smell the roses, even when there aren't any roses around.
3.) White Ranch is steep from the bottom lot, somehow I always seem to forget this!
4.) Rigid single speeders have at least 1 or 2 screws loose!

Said Utkatasana section

5.) There is a 100 ft. section on the Belcher Trail at White Ranch that should be called the Utkatasana (yoga: awkward pose) Trail. The section is flat, and still completely awkward and unridable to me! Ughhh!!!
6.) Any time spent on the bike, even if I'm feeling crappy, is better than even the best time working!

I really need to figure out why/how some days I feel absolutely great and other days I feel absolutely terrible!! Today was an absolutely terrible day, and I'd like have half a clue about why. Either way, even terrible days with bike rides are better than pretty great days without them!

One last thought...I spoke to my Grandmother today for Mother's Day, and she said something that really struck me. She told me to make sure to take advantage of every opportunity to travel and have as many fun adventures as I can as often as I can because you never know what's going to happen to you tomorrow! This is pretty much how I've chosen to live my life, but it was nice to hear it as wise advice from an amazing woman who has lived her life to the fullest and is 85 years old! Not to worry Grandma...I'll be going on as many adventures as I possibly can for the rest of my life!!! :)

I Like This Little Yoga Guy

Yoga has helped me keep my sanity in the past few months! I LOVE it!! :)

Wednesday Wedding!

Simple Beauty

Drinking out of the traditional Georgian Celebration Horn

My friend Tawnya decided that they should probably actually get married before they left for their honeymoon...so literally 3 hours before I took them to the bus stop to head to the airport for their honeymoon, they tied the knot! :)

The Beautiful Bride

It was super low key and lovely all at the same time. We headed up Flagstaff with flowers, a wedding cake, a marriage license, and the ceremonial Georgian Horn and champagne! We had a short little ceremony, signed the license, and then enjoyed the cake and champagne before rushing back to Boulder to get them to the bus!

Seriously, it was such a beautiful day to celebrate their love for each other. I'm so happy they wanted me to be a part of it all!

It's Official!!

Congrats Tawnya and Sasha!!