2008

2008 has been a good year. I owe a lot to my wonderful wife for letting me ride so much. I have made many new friends and ridden many new trails. Thanks to all of you for making my 2008 riding year great.

Here are some of the data I have been keeping.

2475.7 miles
148,006 calories burned
157 rides
232.54 hours of riding
52.3 max speed
12600 ft highest elevation
0 ft lowest elevation

Definitely more Mountain Bike miles than Road miles this year. Escpecially more Single Speed miles. I rode the Single Speed more this year than ever before.

Hope

As some of you, I received my Leadville Trail 100 entry form in the mail. I tried to get in 2 years ago and was unsuccessful. Last year I was successful. I hope this year I will be fortunate to be on the starting line August 15, 2009 ready to better my 2008 time and get that 9 hour buckle. As with any lottery system, hopefully luck will fall my way.

Until then. Here is the nightly dinner.

Oh, the snow was hard and crusty today. We did make it up farther on this trail until it petered out into nothing.

New Bike

There are not too many things I remember from being young. Especially when I was 2 years old. I do remember my first bike. Do you?

I am sure my mother has pictures but what I remember was this "HUGE" red bike under the Christmas tree. It looked sort of like this.

But this one had hard solid plastic-tires. No way to inflate them. You thought your rigid single speed was stiff. No comparison. Absolutely no give going off a curb. I loved that bike and rode the wheels off it. Only years later did I realize that the "HUGE" bike had 12" tires. I must have been really small, because that bike was tiny. One of my favorite things to do with it was ride it at my Grandpa's house in Nevada. He would let the irrigation water out and I would get up speed and ride through the driveway with my feet up spraying water everywhere.

After I rode the wheels off that bike my parents got my this indestructible bike.

I thought I had the coolest Huffy bike with my yellow mag wheels and yellow pads. I built more wooden jumps and crashed this bike more than any other bike I've owned. When all my friends bikes would break or they would bend a rim, Not me. This bike was tough. In fact I took it everywhere. As a kid my parents would take us camping most every weekend. I would find any trail I could and ride it. Sometimes even exploring pushing my bike up long trails or dirt roads that I couldn't ride up, just to ride down.

The Mountain Bike scene started to appear and I bought a 10 speed Regal Mountain Bike. Man now I had some gears to do some climbing. After riding this bike for a couple years, mountain bikes were increasing in technology and I needed something new. This was basically a road frame with larger tires.

I was really into riding and I need something more durable, The Specialized Rockhopper Comp. I couldn't find a good picture of my bike so here is one that is similar to what I had.

I remember my Dad saying I could buy a car for the amount I was spending on this bike. I said "Dad, I know." He understood a little bit after riding it and seeing how smoothly it worked and how easy the "SIS" shifting worked. The best part of this bike was 21 speeds. 21 can you believe that. I could seriously climb a wall with a small chain ring. I looked for anything and everything to climb. The Specialized Ground Control tires were amazing. This bike was solid and I rode it everywhere. One small issue. The salesperson convince my to buy a 21" because I was still going to grow. I was 15 and I still am the same size.

I kept that bike for a good eight years and got a lot of good riding out of it. I was tired of riding rigid so I went into Frank's Bikes and purchased a Gary Fisher Sugar 4. Once again couldn't find a good picture.

This bike really was a good transition into the full suspension world. It was a short travel bike that held up well. My only complaint was there was no way to adjust the suspension. It was fast and I really learned how to see a trail differently and became a much better rider. I even was able to podium at the 5 mile pass race twice.

A good opportunity can my way to purchase almost a one of a kind bike made by ScottUSA, the Strike. It was never sold in the US, but was really big in Europe. It has been the best bike I have owned and ridden.

I added a Gary Fisher Rig to my family a year or two ago. It has been a good purchase. Kind of reminds me of riding the Huffy again but with much bigger wheels.

Oh by the way, the shop called and my new swing arm is in and the Strike is ready.

Time to grip it and rip it!

Snow Shoe Saturday

Bella and I took a little snow shoe trip Saturday morning. It was a nice balmy 11F. We took some different trails we normally do not take. Here are some pics.

Bella tried to blaze the trail following some deer tracks, but turned and waited for me to catch up and take the lead.

I forgot about this section of trail. It is another nice trail in the maples and oaks twisting around the hillside.

Bella blazing trail. See the little small legs.

Bella loves snow.

Climbing up to Red Knoll. Looks like the deer got here before I did.

West Mountain from Red Knoll.

View from Red Knoll towards Timpanogos.

Steep climb up to Lookout Point. Once again, deer were here before me.

View from Lookout Point.

Operation Christmas Pie

Well Phatty Patty, I have outsmarted the off-season plan you had for me. I love Christmas treats. So far I have eaten the following Christmas treats:

1-Fudge
2-Toffee
3-Caramels
4-Frosted Sugar Cookies
5-Candy Cane Pie
6-French Silk Pie
7-Pumpkin Pie
8-Apple Pie
9-Pecan Pie
10-Whipping Cream
11-Ice Cream
12-Chocolate Pie
13-Eggnog

I am sure there are a few more, but you get the point. Now I have not been shy about eating the above items. I am not going to lie. I have not one had one slice/piece/helping or whatever you may call it. I have had multiple helpings. Currently Fudge and Candy Cane pie are my desserts of choice, followed by the Caramels. This is only because I have polished my favorite Christmas dessert, the frosted sugar cookie.

I, like Dug love the icing/frosting on top. I can't just eat just one cookie. Once your taste buds get wind of the flavor of icing/frosting I usually go through 3-4 cookies. And when I make them I am not stingy with the icing/frosting. I pack it on thick.

Anyway my point is, I was 146 lbs going into the Christmas holiday. Now I am 144 lbs.

So my plan to snowshoe and ride my trainer is working! In fact, during my Spinerval Hill Climb workout today, I think I lost the equivalent of 5 pieces of pie in sweat.

First Snow Shoe

The "Big Storm" that was supposed to come on Christmas Day never made it to South Utah County until late Christmas Night. This morning the lower foothills were ready for fresh tracks. I bet you are wondering why I don't snow shoe in higher elevation. Well let me tell you.

1-I don't have a whole lot of time and the foothills are 3 min. from my house.

2-I use most of my "hall passes" for riding bikes in warmer weather.

3-I usually go by myself, so I stay close and low in case there are problems

The snowplows for some reason have a good sense of humor. Most of the time we do not see them on our road. They did come surprisingly this morning, and made quite the wall of snow on both sides of the road with their single file plowing. Basically if you have a little car there was now way you could go anywhere without encountering a wall of snow somewhere. There was one end of the road that was completely blocked. I decided to do my good deed for the day and I hit it with my truck and then gunned it. All 4 of my wheels started throwing so much snow I couldn't see out my side windows.

At last I made it to the trail head. The snow was deep, but I was hoping for deeper snow. I found it farther out on the trail.

Here is some of the local wildlife. Later in the winter there usually is an Elk herd that hangs out up here. I didn't see them today.

Here is the road I have to hike up to get to the good part of the trail.

At last the start of the single track and more fresh tracks for me!

A little farther up the trail, right before dropping down in the the "Oak Forest."

I love looking back at the "tracks" in the snow.
This is the most fun part of the trail for me. I love being inside all the trees with the tight trail twisting and traversing the mountain. Here the snow was deep. It was coming up to mid-thigh in some parts. The picture below isn't that good, but you can see a little bit how the trail twists through the "oak forest."

Here is a small video clip of the trail. So quiet and peaceful.

I have a miniature Australian Shepherd named "Bella" and she loves to go out in the snow with me.

She is always so excited to go out. Her only problem is that her legs are not very long. She follows along in my tracks jumping from hole to hole. Or if the snow is fluffy enough she plows through it.

We usually go as long as she can before her fur gets too full of snowballs making it hard for her to run/walk. Because it is so cold now, she is a little fluffier than normal to keep warm.

We went a long time today until she got too tired. Here she is going down hill toward the end of our hike. She really doesn't like going down steep hills. But she is determined.

View to the valley below from the foothills.

Almost fixed

ScottUSA called me on Friday last week. They found me a new swing arm. The new swing arm is polished aluminum like the first one I had. I am just waiting for the swing arm to be shipped to me. Scott has been really good to work with.

More Snow

More snow and it is still coming down. I hope it gets deep so I can snowshoe in the foothills around my house. Here is a view of my truck getting buried, or which will be buried by the time I leave work. You should have seen all the rear wheel drive BMW's, Lexus's that couldn't climb Orem Center Street this morning. They caused even the front wheel drive cars to slide out because they stopped traffic.

I am not sure why, but one of the most beautiful things to me is a nice "Blue Bird" day right after a storm. Here is a pic of one of the mountains from my front yard yesterday.

Can you name that peak?

Winter is here

My wife is from the Monterey Bay area in California. Many times we have traveled out there for a vacation and I love to ride out there. We like to escape there because the weather is usually the same there all the time, hardly ever changing from 60F. We are not the only ones experiencing cold and snow now. This picture is from across the road of Laguna Seca where the Sea Otter Classic is held. My friends who usually ride all year round (snow is not common at all) have to take a break right now. As I stare out my window at the frozen landscape and the 18F, I don't feel bad.

Snow

Today it took me 1:15 to get to work in Orem. On days that look like this...

I am glad I have tires like this on my truck.

I also am glad I am not doing this.

I hope the snow finally gets deep enough in the South Utah County foothills to snowshoe. Yes I realized I can travel up to higher elevations to get deeper snow, but it is all about time. Since I live so close to the mountains I can't beat driving under 5 minutes to snowshoe. I picked mine up at Costco. Go get a pair.

Computer Registration

Most of the time I like computer registration. It is fast, convenient, and easy. Except when there is a limited amount of registration space. Such has been my experience trying to get tickets for the World Series 2 years ago when the Colorado Rockies were in it. I had 6 computers going in various locations trying to get tickets. I didn't even get close to starting the process. A couple weeks ago I was trying to help my wife buy Wicked tickets online. We were able to get to the checkout point but then their servers couldn't process the transaction fast enough, and your tickets were gone.

Last week I tried to get in to the Death Ride. The last two years I have gotten in just fine and it was a lottery system. (I will recount my Death Ride experiences in later posts) This year they changed the process to. first come first screwed, sorry serve.

Registration opened at 11am. 30 minutes later I finally was able to get past the payoff screen and then this came up.

Wicked

Racers Cycle Service pulled off the swing arm to my Scott Strike very quickly. Now I am sending it up to ScottUSA in Ogden. Here are some better pics of the crack.

One more ride and I probably could have taken the swing arm off myself since it would have been totally separated. Taking the arm off is not an easy process. I was there one time when we took the swing arm off in the shop. There are parts of bike repair that sometimes you would rather not know happen. Like 3 people holding/supporting the bike, hammers, etc. I will relate this story in an upcoming post.

I missed a possible ride today in the Timp Foothills because my wife decided it was a good idea to get up at 4am this morning. She left with some friends so go stand in line up in Salt Lake somewhere to try and buy Wicked tickets. With her gone from the house it was my responsibility to get the kids ready for school and watch our littlest one. She thought she would be back around 9am but that didn't happen. Tickets were being sold at 7am and she was there looking like she was going snowboarding ready to wait with friends. After assessing the situation and how many people were in the line they switched to another place to purchase the tickets at 10am and were 4th in line. Anyway to make a long story short her returning at 9am so I could go to work turned out into her returning at 12:30pm. (kind of like the "we had a flat" or "took a wrong turn" issue) She DID get tickets and no I don't want to know how much she spent on them unless I need more bike gear and need some leverage. Also no, I am not planning on attending. I gladly will watch the kids while she goes with friends.

Why drive to work if it takes 25 min. to get there and I can do most stuff from the blackberry? So I took the day off and am spending it with my wife, kids, etc. on this last day before the storm comes.

I won't lie, a lunch ride would be awesome like the other day in the 3 photos below that Brad took.

Shammy Time above

Riding Dirty above

Today would look much the same except for less winter clothing would be needed since it is warmer today. I was a little overdressed.
We descended down "Ireland" and it was in great condition. You could totally rail into the corners and lean and have no worry of you tire sliding out. Very, very fast. I love going downhill fast.

Injury in the family

Well I have done it again. After my mud ride I quickly hosed off the mud from my bike in the dark. Last Saturday I got out the bike stand, bucket of warm water, and cleaning supplies and started to thoroughly clean my bike. I wiped down the fork, carbon fiber front triangle, etc. and then I got to the drive train. It was then I noticed this.

A crack! Are you serious! Again! In the same place! As you can tell I was a little upset.

This is my second swing arm on this bike. Before I had a nice shiny aluminium swing arm below. Here are the picks from the time that one cracked.

The wonderful guys at ScottUSA hooked me up with my current anodized black swing arm.

For those of you who don't know, my Scott Strike has never been sold here in the USA. Even though ScottUSA has the name "USA" in it, not until recently have they come back to the USA to sell bikes. They sold them here in the 90's and left to focus on the European market, and 2-3 years ago they re-opened the USA market.

Anyway, as you can guess getting help for a bike that was not sold here is not easy. The anodized black swing arm was shipped over from Switzerland to me. And luckily the whole process didn't take only but about 3 weeks.

So my good friend Racer is pulling apart my bike again so we can send the black swing arm back to ScottUSA, who will find me a new one. I hope it works since this bike is back from 2003, and I really, really like how it rides. It is the fastest thing I have ridden and it feels so right.

I was curious the other day how much the bike weighs. So I got out my Wii fit, weighed myself and then held the bike and weighed myself again. I was pleasantly surprised it weighs 24.8 lbs.

Now 24.8 lbs for a 4" travel full-suspension bike isn't that great when there are 21-22 lbs bikes out there now. But rewind the clock back to 2003 when this bike came out. Pretty darn good.

Anyway, I am optimistic that the guys at ScottUSA can find a new one. I really hope they can. I really like this bike and want to continue to ride it, hopefully at Leadville again next year. I need to better my 11:42/2hr nap time (a story for another post).

You may want these

Lunch ride today 11:45am from the range shooting parking lot in Orem. The temp is not that warm. You may want to bring a pair of these.

http://www.trails-edge.com/retail/te_shirts/amfbikemits.htm