Sea Otter Day 1+: Anti Shotgun and Bob

We loaded up the Buell's trailer and Yukon and headed out to Cali bout 8:00 on Tuesday night. We were riding in style for sure. It makes a trip go a lot faster (even when it takes 27 hours), when you get to watch DVDs of your favorite bike vids and movies. It also turns the driver into the chauffeur as, no one was bothering to call "shot gun" on this trip!

We took a short break in Moab and then set our sites on the Monterey Bay. It is typically a 20 or so hour drive to Monterey from Boulder, Colorado, but for some reason, it took quite a bit longer than that...

Our first non-gas station stop was in Las Vegas for the coveted In-N-Out Burger stop. I had never been, so it was all the more important! We were all relatively inexperienced In-N-Out customers except for Kevin. He knew and the Ins and Outs like animal style, 4x4, Neapolitan shakes. =)

Virgin In-N-Out Celebration

Brian just Hanging Out

Once we left Vegas, we all started getting a little antsy to be there, but we had to remind ourselves that California is a big state. At one point Brian found an ant crawling on his arm, probably from the palm trees he was climbing in at In-and-Out. We decided to name our new friend Bob and made him our mascot for the trip. Bob would venture back and forth from the front to the back seat on people's arms and what not. We quite enjoyed the hilariousness of our new friend. At one point Kevin and I are sitting in the middle seat and I see him have a convulsive type fit where by he slaps the back of his neck. At first I don't think anything of it, but then I suddenly realized the implications of what has just happened...Kevin killed Bob. Although we were not able to locate the remains, so he technically could not be found guilty, it was quite apparent what had happened!

Bob Chillin' On the Orange Peel Before Kevin Brutally Murdered Him!!

So we were very close to Bakersfield, CA and very much enjoying the thought of being at Sea Otter in "not too long". All of the sudden, we were in stop and go traffic not making much forward progress at all. The friendly trucker with a CB next to us, we found out that the road ahead of us was closed and would be for several more hours, at least three. Apparently there were several accidents that had caused the road closures. We had the option to sit and wait or detour our way to nearly L.A. Being the ADD sorts that we are, we opted for the detour option. If we hadn't taken this detour, we wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate the beautiful windfarm that we had briefly seen and driven by on our way to the road closure. (I'm trying desperately to find some positive experience in our out of the way detour nearly to Hollywood!)

Lovely Wind Farm that We Would have Missed on the less than 27 hour Route

'06 Race Season Off to a Great Start!

Today got off to an early start, but it was well worth it. I rolled over and picked up Kevin at 6:00 in the a.m. to head down to Nathrop for the first race of the season. It was only a local spring series mountain cross race, but it was on my favorite course, and I have ridden in quite a bit this fall and winter, so I was pretty psyched to finally get to race it. It was really windy, which sucked, but there was a pretty good turn out anyway. I was pretty psyched to get to race Bobbi Watt. She is so fast! She was looking good in practice, but then decided not to race as she was still feeling run down from a cold and didn't want to get more sick for Sea Otter. Qualifying was really windy, so I couldn't hit a few things cleanly or some things really at all, but I was really pleased with my time. I was only 4 seconds off of the top pro guys, and the next closest girl was 4 seconds behind me, so that's always good! There were only two of us in the first moto, so I tried to go for everything and take a few chances since it didn't matter in the end, and I crashed. It was a pretty sweet crash at the end of the course. I felt like I was sliding down a playground slide into home base or something. It didn't hurt at all, but I was sure glad I had my elbow pads on! It ended up being a great day for me. I felt like I needed to prove something to someone, not sure who, my teammates, my friends, the other people I race, or maybe just myself. It's been a crazy and amazing off season filled with a lot of hard work, great times, and some really cool friends. I feel like I convinced myself, today, that I really have stepped my riding up, and I know that I'm ready to play!

An another cool note, check out my new helmet:

Thanks TJ, I love my new helmet!

My amazingly talented friend TJ has taken up a new hobby, airbrushing, (because being a pro gravity racer and full time college student doesn't require enough time!!), and he put my name on the back of my helmet for me. I am really psyched about it and think that it looks awesome! He has sweet plans for his helmet, fully custom and has spent many, many hours working on it. Unfortunately the Yeti Nazi =) grabbed too much of his time to build up their new race bikes this weekend, and he wasn't able to get his helmet finished for Sea Otter. However, his new factory team Yeti DJer is absolutely beautiful and soooo light! We all can't wait to see him tear it up on it this season!!

DH Morning Goodness

Wow, it's not even noon yet, and it's already been an AWESOME day! I hooked up with Howse and Kevin this morning round 7:00 to go do some DH shuttle runs on the Pipeline trail...It was my first day out on my new DH bike, and all I have to say is AWESOME! We each got 4 solid runs in, and I felt more and more comfortable on my bike with each run we took. I can't believe how many times I told Mike and Kevin, "Man, I would have been on the ground for sure on my old bike!" I've never been super psyched about racing DH before (just MX!!), but I think this year is going to be a different story!! Ahhhh yaaaa!!!!

Way better than the airport Super Shuttle!!

I LOVE my new bike!

First day out, and couldn't have asked for a better way to start the day!

Happy Friday!

Sea Otter Here We Come

Watch out girls!! If you haven't been practicing your slalom turns, prepare to get beat!! Libby, Lisa, and I knocked out several laps at the super slalom training course today. It was awesome. We went dirt jumping at Gunbarrel and then went and hit up the slalom track for some technical, punishing turns! I could tell a difference in my cornering just in the time that we were there. Such great practice and a good workout, too!

Lisa giving the clinic

Me actually loooking about where I should be

Libby ripping it up through the berms

Lisa, completely focused

Working hard to get my weight shifted before the next turn

If It's Meant to Be, It Will Be

I learned an important lesson today. If something is meant to be, it will be, all in good time. It might even be better than you could have ever imagined it to be, too. I have always wanted to be in complete control of what I'm doing and where I'm going. I'm learning, though, that sometimes you just have to relinquish that control and let things be. Most things work out in the end, even if it's not how you originally thought you wanted them to be. It's quite amazing, actually.

Molly's Whirlwind Visit

I haven't seen my wonderful friend Molly for quite a while. Last May she moved to Portland to attend the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. She just went to D.C. to visit a friend and she arranged her flight back home to have a 12 hour lay over in Denver. I picked her up at 7:00 and we were off. Molly and I spent a lot of time at the Sun's last year drinking good beer and chatting endlessly about who knows what. So, a visit to both of these establishments was in order. We started at the Mountain Sun where we had a ton of catching up to do. One of us would ramble on and on while the other ate and then we'd switch. Pretty much we came to the conclusion that we both love what we are learning in school, boys suck (okay, not all, but damn near), and it sucks that Portland is so far from Boulder!!!

Good times at the Mountain Sun!

After a few beers at the Sun, we made our way to Hapa's happy hour to have some late night sushi and tasty rice beer. (Good beer is the theme for the evening if you haven't picked up on that yet!) Well, we got lost in conversation again and finally realized that they would probably like us to leave. It was only 12:30. Perfect. Just enough time to get to the Southern Sun before they close! Again, we stayed until the really wanted us to leave. 6 hours of conversation later, we still hadn't told each other all of the stories we had intended to, but at least we were caught up in the major events of each other's lives. 3 hours of sleep later and we were up driving to the bus stop for Molly's journey back to the airport and the end of her 12 hour lay over.

Man, it was good to see Molly. I really miss her. She is such a wonderful, amazing person. I often call her Wonder Molly, for two reasons, she's pretty damn wonderful, and she did the marathon portion of an Ironman triathlon in a Wonder Woman costume!

Wonder Molly

Awesome!!!

Neverending Day of Sleep

So, Friday I "call in sick" because I want to go snowboarding with my friend Kristin. Well, I end up not being able to find my wallet, so I can't go snowboarding. I decide to go back to bed and don't wake up until 12:30 or 1:00 in the afternoon. I get up, have some lunch, think about going on a road ride because it's such a beautiful day...I go back down to my room and feel a little sleepy, so I decide to take a little nap before I go on a ride. Well, my little nap turned into sleeping session #3. I slept from 2:00 until 5:30 or 6:00. I got up went to Kate's to watch a movie and then came directly home and went to bed just after 11:00. One might think I would have had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep with as much sleep as I had gotten earlier in the day, but I didn't. I fell right asleep and didn't wake up until my alarm went off at 7:30 Saturday morning. I think my body was trying to tell me something!! Taking full time grad classes, working full time, and trying to maintain some sort of training schedule has really been doing me in. I'm glad it's spring break this week, and that May 6th isn't too far away!!

Let it Melt, Let it Melt, Let it Melt!!!

Monday night trainer session part deux (hopefully the last!) took place last night. Lisa decided to take a rest day (smart girl) so TJ and I hammered out 1.5 hours while watching Earthed 2. It wasn't too bad, but I'm about maxed out on my trainer time punch card!

Well, in celebration of the snow (hahaha) and to mix stuff up a bit, I was going to meet up with my friend Kevin to do some skate skiing this morning, but when I went to get out of bed, I about fell over I was so dizzy. I sprained my ankle yesterday morning walking to the bus (not even extreme walking! I'm just clumsy!), and it hurts a lot more today than it did yesterday, but I don't think that's why I was so dizzy. Who knows. Anyway, I called Kevin to cancel. I think he was relieved, as he told me that he had a fever yesterday afternoon and still wasn't feeling so hot. I went back to bed for a couple more hours of sleep. I decided to just come to work even though I don't really feel any better! I'll go to class, meet with the graduate committee chair about getting back into the chemical engineering PhD program, and then go home!! Gotta save up the sick days for "sick of work" days! =)

The sun was out and trying to melt all of this crap snow earlier. I don't know where it went! This is the pile of snow outside of my office. Hopefully it's all gone soon! It at least needs to be gone and nice out by next week so those of us who don't get to go somewhere cool for spring break can ride our bikes and have a good time stuck here in Boulder!

Happy Tuesday!

Playing in the Mud is Fun and Fear is a Strange Thing

I woke up to snow on the ground and falling out of the sky this morning thinking I wasn't going to get to ride my bike. Wrong. Got a call from Rudy to go do some muddy slalom turns. At first I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. I bundled up, threw my bike in the back of his truck, and we were off. It was so much fun!!! It really wasn't very cold out at all, and the snowflakes falling were at least silver dollar sized! After about 45 minutes, it stopped snowing and the sun came out for just a little bit. The snow was subliming in the field across from the slalom track and it looked like a scene from Lord of the Rings. It was really an amazing sight!

I went to the show V for Vendetta with Lisa and Heather tonight. It was really good. It really made me think about a lot of things. I'm sure there were a lot of different things that you could have taken away from the movie, but I think the thing it made me think about the most, was fear. I've had a lot of experiences in the last year and a half that have made me not be afraid of a lot of things. I don't want to say that I'm not afraid of anything because, that would just be a lie, but I haven't really been afraid of very many things lately. While I was watching the movie tonight it struck me that there is one thing that I am really afraid of (no, there weren't any snakes in the movie, so I guess it would be more fair to say two things, but...snakes have been so long standing in that category that they don't really count anymore.) Anyway, it's pretty intense when you realize that there is something that big that really makes you scared. Go see the movie and see what it makes you think about.

Please make the snow stop!! My poor DJer is frozen to the top of my car!! I swear I would never let her sleep outside in the snow normally, but the damn lock on my bike rack was frozen when I got home! =(

Good Day of Riding Before the Bad Weather Got Here

I haven't been to the jumps out at Gunbarrel in awhile. I met Lisa out there this morning, and it was a lot of fun! I tried a couple of new lines, and it was fun to jump some new stuff. It's been a little while since I've jumped anything new. After about 1.5 hours at Gunbarrel, I headed in to the Fix for some more jumping. I love that place!!

I got there just in time for the gun show! hahaha Bill TeSelle spent the entire day (shirtless when it was nice) moving and shortening the first jump in one of the lines there in an attempt to make a medium sized line. That kid doesn't know how to take a day off! I know I appreciate all of the work that he puts into that place, though! I had an awesome session there. I feel like I am finally getting my flow back on the One Hit Wonder. It has been gone for quite awhile. Also, the Fix juniors were having a skills session with Lee and Bobbi Kae, so I jumped in on a few passes at working on manualing through the small triple. Well, I got it, sort of. I ended up looping out and landing on my head in a fairly graceful fashion. It was good though, now I know how far back my weight needs to be to keep my front wheel up that long. I also started hitting the 4th jump in the Kneecap line a lot more consistently. I really like the 3rd and 4th jumps in that line. Next mission, the 5th jump. It looks tricky when the cool kids do it all stylie!

We watched the cold front move in over the mountains the whole time I was at the Fix. It's pretty crazy to be enjoying a 50º day watching the 25º storm roll in for several hours. Luckily, the storm held off till we got done tearing down all of the race venue stuff for the CU crit today. It would have really sucked to tear all of that stuff down in the freezing rain!

Well, I am working on a design for a new tattoo. I have invested a lot of time on the design in my head, now I just need to get a good rough "sketch" of it together. Oh ya, and a bunch of money to get it done. Looks like it might be next fall before that happens. Oh well, then I'll definitely be sure I want it.

It's raining and trying to snow right now. =( Ahhhh, spring time in Colorado...