Consistent Weather brings Consistent Riding

There's been a fair amount of riding this week.  Starting with the dusty short track race last Tuesday...I've ridden a couple of new trails.  Here's a shot of me super-focused in the roller section.  I don't think you can see my single speed nemesis on the Langster in this one.

I actually placed pretty well considering I haven't done any serious racing in a long time.  17th out of 50 racers. I definitely think some of that had to do with a really solid start position.  This week I got caught up in the middle of the pack and by the time the first 30 guys get stretched out onto the single track the top racers have already probably got a couple of minutes on you.  But more on this week's race a little later.

The day after the short track J and I went out to Red Mountain which is a natural area about 45 minutes north, right at the Wyoming border.  Now...a few mountain bikers mentioned Sandstone when we first got here and J talked to a park ranger that was surprised that no one had mentioned Red Mountain (which directly borders Sandstone).  Well...we found out why.  Red Mountain was kind of miserable.  The trail was either horse-width loose double track or really grainy riverbed.  There was one short section of nice buff interesting trail but it did not make up for the rest of the garbage.  Now, I could have been a little down on the place because I was sluggish from the previous day's race...but I don't think so.

So, no riding Thursday but I played a lot of polo on Friday.  2 1/2 hours of 2 on 2.  The weather was perfect and we played a LOT of polo.  With only 4 people on the court, you get a lot of play time in.  All that did was set me up to again be sluggish when scouting out some new trail the next day. 

On Saturday we went into Wyoming to check out Curt Gowdy State Park.  It's a little over an hour away and has got some really cool trail features.  I think we only saw about half of the trails, and by the time we figured out the map, we had already run the race course in reverse.  There were some really cool rock sections and "play areas" to be explored.  It's nice to have some Porcupine Rim style stuff so close.  Now, it's not as epic or nearly as technical as Porcupine but it's definitely got some cool features worth checking out.  I think it makes it a great spot for a wide mix of skill levels.

So...back to Tuesday and back to the short track.  I was feeling pretty sluggish all day, but I decided to suck it up and head out to the short track anyway.  Last week I got a really good position on the start line but this week was a little different.  As we all piled onto the start, I was somewhere in the middle of a huge pack.  There's a picture of the start group (64 racers) to the right.  I took my time and pretty much decided just to tempo the race...until the end of lap 2.  That's when the Langster reared his head again. He passed me at the end of lap 2 and I managed to stick on his for the rest of the race but I couldn't get the pass on him...not this week.  But, rest assured...I'll be eating my Wheaties and will be primed for next week.  I've been riding the hardtail for the last two weeks, and it's been fine but I think it's time to bring out the big dog.  The FSR should be able to squash all the little annoying bumps on the course and rail the corners.  Here's a sweet shot of me powering one of the climbs.

My First Race at 5,000 ft...

Tuesday afternoon, 6:20pm, 65 degrees and sunny.  I roll over to the start line and get ready to tackle 4 laps of the short track course with 50 other riders...yes 50...and this is only the sport category.

Somehow I managed to put myself near the front of the pack for the start.  Here I am, coming off of some epic cold...with my only serious efforts being sprints on the polo court and I am in the first row of riders.  I already felt a little overwhelmed because I thought we would only be putting in 3 laps...but I had just heard the announcement of 4 laps.  I look over my shoulder to see if I can sneak my way back a little bit, but no dice.  My bed was already made, I just had to suck it up.  

I knew being near the front would pay dividends for the upcoming "pump track" section early in the course but I really didn't want to have to mix it up 9 wide going into the first corner.  Thankfully, the start was pretty tame, no wrecks that I could see but someone did bobble the first serious rise about 5-6 riders in and everyone else was pretty much doomed to do a quick hike up that section.  It actually worked out pretty well for forcing people into some single file action since there was some super-tight single track up ahead.  

The rest of the race was pretty standard stuff.  Tight twisty sections, short climbs, several open spots for passing.  The course was very dry which led to some sketchy corners and a LOT of dust.  The 15-minute bike ride home included much hacking, coughing and sneezing.  

One minor achievement...I didn't get beat by the guy on the Langster...(yeah, the track bike).  It was pretty close though.  He bobbled one of the last corners pretty bad and almost racked himself.  It looked like he was going to jump right back on without losing any ground...but it became clear that he was going to need a moment to compose himself.  It took that opportunity to pass him on the inside.  I mean, it wasn't a full on track bike, he did have some riser bars on it!  He rode the fuck out of that thing though...basically his two primary weapons were 1) locking up the rear wheel and 2) an excellent inside dab.  

If I can stop blowing dust out of my nose by next Tuesday...maybe I'll do it again.  Right now...I am just going to find some food and maybe do some arts and crafts.  But first I need a damn shower!

Here's a short video of the Beginner Men start.  50 Racers there too!

Kokopelli Trail Recap: Game On!

We loaded up Wednesday morning and set out for Fruita.  It took us a little while to get the truck and car packed but we had it all dialed and we were ready to roll.

My 11-year-old Honda Toting Four Bikes Like a Boss!

When we rolled into Fruita, Don, Richard, Kyle, Fenton and Nick were itching to squeeze in a ride.  Don and Steve still had to pickup their rental bikes and Kyle had to assemble his IF.  Unfortunately, the airline lost Fenton's bike and he rode the backup hardtail.  Fenton's bike did eventually show up in the wee hours of the night.

Nick and Richard's Preride and 18 Road Trails

Fenton Assembling the Yeti Thursday AM.

With all of the riding ahead of us, Steve, Johanna and I grabbed an early Mexican dinner and did some last minute food shopping for the trip.  The rest of the crew got some delicious pie at Hot Tomato.

Overall it was an amazing trip. The original plan was shuffled a bit when we couldn't figure out a reasonable shuttle system or route for the 35 mile climb and we decided to just skip ahead to Porcupine Rim.  Porcupine was amazing and I don't think anyone regretted that decision.  On the third day we broke down camp and did some local riding in Fruita...which was pretty lame compared to dropping 4000' over 14 mi the previous day. In hindsight, maybe a short ride at Slickrock would have been the way to go...but it is what it is.

View From Campsite Number 1

Campsite 2

Just One of the Stellar Views Along the Way

We Got Pretty Good at Packing the Truck by the end.

Kokopelli Trail Recap: Pregame

Well, Steve found the highlight of his trip to be a few days before the serious riding even started.  I booked a New Belgium Brewery Tour for Myself, Steve, Don, Johanna, Richard and Nick.  Johanna actually wasn't feeling well and Nick wasn't in town yet so our crew of four hopped on bikes and rode over to the brewery.  The weather was perfect for a bike ride and an afternoon of drinking beer.  The tour itself was kind of lackluster due to our less than stellar tour guide, but, the beer was good...(except for that last brew we sampled Le Terroir I think) .

Anyway...we had an interesting afternoon after the tour but instead of boring you with my story...I'll just let the following picture speak for itself.

Kokopelli Trail: Fruita to Moab: Prep

We've got a bunch of friends coming in from VA next week to do a huge MTB ride from Fruita , Colorado to Moab, Utah.  It's going to be 3 days of epic mountain biking.  With a big weekend on the horizon, we've been laying low this weekend.  We are making some final bike preparations and working out the final details of the plan.

Each day is going to be broken up into two ride sections.  The entire Kokopelli trail is about 142 miles...but we aren't actually going to do all of it.  Our 3-day itinerary starts with the first 40ish miles, then we'll shuttle to the halfway point for the start of day 2 and pretty much ride the rest of the trail on the second and third days.

People will start showing up next Saturday and we actually hit the trail on Thursday.  I am sure a lot will be happening before we even hit the first mile of trail so stay tuned.  There's a plan for the New Belgium Brewery tour and even some talk of skiing.  Who knows what else is in store.

Most Excellent Weekend

I got to experience a few "firsts" this weekend. First time at 9,000 ft (outside of an aircraft), first time on showshoes and first time on cross country skis.

There really isn't much need to pick up a winter sport in Virginia. East coast snow has never been great and it's typically warm enough in Charlottesville to ride consistently 11 months out of the year. Sure, a few of our freinds head over to West VA for cross country skiing or get passes to Wintergreen but I never bothered. Now that we are in Colorado where you can go from spring to winter in just 60 miles...it's time to branch out.

A few weeks ago J and I were invited to spend a weekend in a yurt in Colorado State Forest State Park (the dumbest park name ever) so we decided, "why not?" Never Summer Nordic has a network of yurts throughout the park. We stayed at the Medicine Bow Yurt, elevation: 9,000 ft.

We skied the .4 miles uphill into the yurt on Friday afternoon and spent the weekend snowshoeing, skiing and eating. The accommodations are somewhere between primitive camping and cramped motel. I know that doesn't really sound appealing but it was actually pretty nice.

Medicine Bow Yurt, Outside

Trail from yurt back to cars

Inside of yurt

The yurt had a propane stove and was furnished with 3 double/twin bunk beds. Technically it could sleep 9 but anymore than 6 adults would get pretty crowded. There's also a small wood stove that heats the yurt up pretty well.

Here are a few more pictures of the epic views we had the pleasure of taking in.

Looking off the deck at dusk

About 20 minutes uphill from the yurt

Trail leading up from the yurt

View from the deck

Travis, Sarah and Wynona

First Month in FoCo

Well, we've been here almost 5 weeks and are getting settled in nicely. All of the boxes are unpacked, all of the bikes are built and we can get around town pretty well. I was sick for a good part of January but Johanna was able to take advantage of some of the warmer days and hit some of the trails around town.

The drive from Virginia had its ups and downs. We started off on a Thursday evening headed to West Virginia. We had the birds and our luggage packed into the Honda. Everything was great until about 30 miles from our destination. Snow started to come down and we found ourselves driving through the mountains of W Va in the dark, in the snow. Not fun, but we made it. The next morning we made our way to Chicago. Traffic was fine, but we had a little bit more weather to contend with on the way. Nothing like we had yet to see, but still very annoying.

We stayed in Chicago from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon and spent some really good time with my sister-in-law and brother. We ate, chilled out, visited a Whole Foods the size of a small airport and even helped them prep for their adopted greyhounds they were expecting in a couple of weeks. It was nice to just chill and recover from two days of snowy travel.

On Sunday we had a short leg to Grinnell, Iowa to visit some old Charlottesville friends and of course on Monday morning we wake up to more snow. We had 460 miles of driving to do to cover most of Iowa and Nebraska to get to North Platte. We faced some really rough weather all the way through Iowa and well into Nebraska. This was the second snow front that we were driving through.

We made it safely to North Platte (which is kind of a hole) stayed the night in a Motel and were off to Fort Collins the next day. The weather was much nicer and we had a short (~240 mile) leg into Wyoming and down into Colorado.

It would still be a couple of days before our stuff would show up but at least we were off the road.

Most days there's some Charlottesville Tea in the tea pot and the wood stove is roaring in the sunroom. We've had our mix of weather with high's near 0 and some nice 55 degree days as well. Getting around by bike in this town is awesome (which was a great excuse to buy another bike) but I can report more on that later.

So, next time...maybe a tour of our house, a recap of my latest bike project, and some of the other things we've been getting into over the last 5 weeks.

Distorted Sense of Scale

We've been doing a lot lately. A move across the country brings a lot of things with it. We decided to sell our house in Charlottesville, so that included a lot of updating and refreshing. Fresh paint in every room, new floor in the kitchen and bathroom, appliances, landscaping, chimney re-pointing, light plumbing, plaster patching, etc... If nothing else, it's really given us a sense of what we can do and maybe even more important, how long it takes to do things.

So, on top of refurbishing and selling the house, we've been doing a lot of purging. Donating surplus clothes, selling bikes, going through reams and reams of paper, trashing old bike parts. It's a lot of work but it's been great to have a little more breathing room in the house. It's amazing how much crap one can accumulate in a few years.

So, on top of the purging, cleaning and selling, there's the moving. We are headed to Fort Collins, CO, 1,600 miles from our current home of Charlottesville, VA; And even with all of the cleaning, trashing and donating, we still have a LOT of stuff. Clothes, tools, bikes, furniture, poker table, paintball gear, more bikes.

In order to keep things a little easier we decided to go with a mover. We will pack everything and they will load-transport-unload. Sounds pretty simple right? well, not really. There's still the research. Apparently there's a lot of potential to get very screwed. My sister-in-law turned me on to www.movingscam.com. There's some great information on the homework that you should do before, during and after choosing a mover.

There's a few other things we've been squeezing between the packing, selling and moving...like two full time jobs and the holidays. The latest thing we decided to do was to drive a 16' truck into New York City. Why? you ask...well, to give our bed away of course! We figure we'll avoid the expense and trouble of moving our bed to Colorado by giving it to Jo's folks. They are long overdue for a decent guest bed so we figured it was a perfect fit...we would just rent a truck, load our bed and drive it up to Manhattan. I mean how bad could it be? It's just one more thing right? I don't think we would even consider trying to pull this off any other year. It would be "too much". But we had a ton of stuff that had to get done, so you switch modes and get it done. The bed was just one more thing...so we did it.

I am looking forward to switching back out of this mode, playing more paintball and bike polo but for now it is what it is and it's nice to know what we are capable of.

Annual Lawn Mower Face-Off

I never winterize my lawn mower. It's probably because I am lazy. I know that I should drain or use all of the gas and bring it inside but I never do. It just sits outside over the winter (sometimes under a tarp) and come spring when the grass start growing again I have to square off against the mower. The mower usually ends up purring nicely but not without a fight. Sometimes the fuel has moisture in it, sometimes the carb is dirty, sometimes I need to replace the cable and sometimes I just have to evict the ants that have decided to take up residence. I can't wait to see what it is this year.

Current Project: I'm a Lawn Guy

Yeah, it's been a while. I have been trying to think of what is worthwhile content for this blog. I am not interested in telling everyone what I am doing all of the time and I am sure most people don't care how many people I shot at the last paintball practice. Besides...you can keep up with my paintball activities at blogspot.rcarmy.com. So, I was thinking what's worth posting. What do I do consistently that's going to give me content for this thing? Projects & Hobbies. I am a collector of hobbies and I am always getting into a new project. The current project is the lawn.

For the record, I am really only looking to be a "casual" lawn junkie. I want to do the least amount of work for the most amount of benefit. It's surprisingly difficult to find clear and concise lawn care information online. I think it's because it's quite geographically dependent. I managed to find some good information at www.southernstates.com. They have a 10-step lawn care program that's quite informative without trying to sell a particular suite of products.

The first step for me was to rent an aerator and pull thousands of little plugs out of my lawn. Just getting the aerator to and from the rental place was a process all its own. I won't go into the details there.

The latest step was the soil test. I took about a dozen plugs of soil and had them sent off to the Virginia Tech Soil Lab. It was $15 through Southern States. Here are the results of the soil test.

It's a pretty thorough report. It gives a breakdown of all of the relevant nutrients in the soil and recommendations for quantity and composition of fertilizers. It even recommends a fertilizer schedule.

The next post will have some pics of the current lawn...stay tuned.