Randomness

These are some pics from last nights drive. It's such a beautiful drive up to Leadville. This is the Continental Divide just south of Leadville. Somewhere out there is the Holy Cross Wilderness area and then the Mount Massive wilderness area is just south of that. We skirted around both of those areas via Halfmoon Creek Road. As always, I saw plenty of mule deer (easily in the hundreds, many elk, and I'm sure I missed several of the allusive Bighorns as normal).



This is just as you're dropping down into Johnson Village which consists of a KOA, a bar, a gas station and about 10 white water rafting companies. In the summer...that bar is CRAZY at night as most good river guides worth their own spit drink their earnings each day. And quickly. Those guys/gals party hard. This is Mount Princeton.


This is further away from JV. My windshield has seen better days.

Tennessee Night Jam

Race #2 in the Leadville series was last night at Ski Cooper on the killer nordic trails. The course was supposed to be about 10 miles. The conditions were excellent. The snow was much more hard packed but there were still some soft areas that made riding difficult. I think it was in the low 20's when we started.

I thought the start went well. It was quite obvious to me that I am still suffering from training like a 13 year old these last 2 weeks. I want to be fast again but I've been training harder than I did when I was racing in my 20's and it's having a lot of negative impact. I had not been on a bike since my botched workout on Wednesday night (where I finally summarized that doing my hard workouts every other day had done so much damage).

About halfway through the race I got the worst cramp I've ever had. It was down near my appendix and it hurt to pedal and it hurt to breathe. I tried to deal with it but I ended up having to get off and walk on a flat road. It went away and I started riding again but it came although not quite as bad this time.

The finish last night was pretty much tailor made for me and I felt super both times we went up it. Longer gradual climb on pavement. When I hit that I could see 4-6 riders strung out in front of me and I picked off 2 of them but I'm not happy at all that I let the others have a pass. I did not sleep well last night. I'm not mad. I still had a really good time despite the cramp and the cold. I'm just disappointed in myself. I'm really gonna be bummed if it equals a result out of the top 10.

It's been pretty darn nice in the afternoons up here this week so I've been riding my bike to work. It's still been in tle low 20's in the morning but my ride is so short and it's so nice to not drive the big Jeep. I continue to struggle with my XT disc brakes. On the colder mornings they just freeze up right when you hit them ang the pistons don't retract. I have to take them apart and work on them and then they're good to go until the next morning. I've given some thought to going with mechanical discs this year but I think I wanna try Avid's hydraulics first. I really like the way the hydros feel.

I'm heading to Leadville tomorrow night for the second race in their winter series. Tomorrow we are supposed to be racing on nordic ski trails at night and it should be fun. I am not going to race the Orbea tomorrow b/c of the issues I'm having with the brakes. It's hard enough riding in the snow and I just don't need any more resistance. I built up my SS 26er with gears again and am going to be riding that. This week has been the first time I've ridden a 26er in probably a year.

I've been training way too hard and I'm overcooked. Apparently I can't train like I did when I was 25. Things were going captain crazy well a few weeks ago and then suddenly they came halting to a stop. I haven't done anything for the majority of the week. Tomorrow night I'll either be recovered and things will go well or I'll blow sky high. We'll see. This is the first time I've trained for XC type fitness in almost what? 8 years? Things were really coming around quickly and I decided that if 2 workouts a week were producing then surely 3 would do even more. Rookie move. It's kinda fun to be getting back into the mentality that I want to ride as aggressively as I used to. Only now...there's no anger and I think it's gonna actually allow me to be even tougher despite being older.

Freed dog to....any home

Any backyard, junkyard, sideyard, whatever. I'd tell the SOB to take it to the streets and stand there with a thumb out but he can't even do that. He just got back from going outside where he took a huge dump. Not even 5 minutes later, he leaves another massive pile on my clothes. I wont mention any names here but someone (not me) stepped in a piece of it. Evidently the laws of physics (kinetic energy) came into play as it rolled off the offending jeans and made it's way to the carpet. Beautiful way to start the day. I may slather him in BBQ sauce tonight and tie him up for the mountain lions. Probably wouldn't work either. I'm sure the collar would break and he find his way up onto the deck and drop a deuce.

Ruh Roh

We usually walk the dogs every evening. Tonight we were on our walk and we're coming down 24. For those that aren't in town and haven't been here: 24 is the only artery that runs through town. It's 4 lanes and in the evenings it's quite busy with everyone coming back from working in the Springs. We're on the sidewalk and walking against traffic when Bodhi's collar breaks (it's a metal prong collar and it looks like 2 of the prongs separated) and he's off like a prom dress. It was right in front of Sonic and, while their food is subpar, they have great grass that the pups love to roll around in. Luckily, he ran around in said grass but I freaked as cars were cruising by at 35. He would dash to the edge of the sidewalk, inches from traffic and I'd scream and then he'd bound back into the grass. At one point I dove but just missed. Next, Heather dove and.....not so much. As frantic as I was about him getting hit, I tried to fake being nice and get him to come to me but he wasn't havin' it. This lasted for at least 5 minutes. It was probably very entertaining for the people stuffing greasy burgers down their trap. Fortunately, one generous soul got out of her car in the drive thru and brought something (I think it was french fries) and the fat man came a runnin' right to her. She got hold of him as he wolfed down food. Not sure what to think about the collar. I've used the same style of collar on Dharma for 7 years now and never had any issue. Her's is actually difficult to get on if you don't know what you're doing. Thankfully, Bodhi is not a dark spot on the road. Instead...he just got done eating potting soil and now he's on the couch farting.

Vantastic

The good news is it looks like I found a guy that's willing to trade me a pretty clean 85 GL. He's up near Pocatello, Idaho. I'll get more pics/video of the motor and interior tomorrow. The bad news is that I may pass on this one. The GL is just a straight up van and I really want a Weekender edition at the very least.
Heather was not too happy about me looking for a Vanagon in the first place. However...she has suddenly warmed up to the idea (that's not the same as giving in...she said so). With our lifestyle, I think the Vanagon has a lot of positives to it. The Jeep has been good but it's just more than we need and camping would be really fun in the van and it'd be nice to have the extra room as Bodhi is gonna take up some space. I realize that getting an older vehicle is a bit of a gamble. I guess I'm looking at it like I know that and that even a new vehicle can have issues (albeit not as likely).
There are so many great places to camp up here that it would be nice to be able to just get in and go. I think we'd go a lot more too if everything was already pretty much loaded for an overnighter or long weekend. We're close to that now with my Jeep but we still have to get everything out of the camping corner of the garage and then there's barely room for Dharma. Sometimes I put stuff on the roof but it's a problem when those afternoon storms pop up in the summer.

Bodhi likes ears and cleaning ears with his tongue and really getting down in there and extracting all the wax he can find. He will sit there and clean out Dharma's ears for up to 15 minutes. It's quite a sight. Then again I've actually found him inside the dirty fireplace snacking on coal too. He's a royal pain.

Here's the latest mutt stats:

Dharma: soon to be 7 years old and right at 50 pounds (been rockin' that girlish figure for years)
Bodhi: right at 5.5 months now and a whopping 44 pounds!!