Keystone's last weekend :(

We headed out to Keystone today for the last Saturday of the season, it actually closes on Monday....fingers are crossed that they extend their season a little longer. It was a perfect day, great riding, awesome people to hang out with and more importantly no one got hurt. Unfortunately, Cynthia lost her brand new goggles out on Helter/Skelter...I think that was the only major carnage of the whole day, except for a few flats that Cynthia & Dave had.

We all rode together on the 1st run but decided to split up in smaller groups to maximize our time, I find that a group of 4 riders is the perfect size group. So Cynthia & Dave went off together and me, Dan, Ken & Dave did some runs together.

Cynthia rode the bridges on Paid in Full which is a huge accomplishment! And she cleaned the Cowboy Up rock garden twice! Way to go! So much progression in just 3 weeks! After falling so hard and getting such a massive bruise on her side last week I knew it would be so good for her to hit the rock garden again and clean it. I think she said she cried because she was so happy! Totally awesome and I'm so proud of her!

Dan on the 2nd rock drop on Skelter


Dave on the same rock drop on Skelter


Ken on the airplane jump off of Jam Rock


Dan on the airplane jump off of Jam Rock


Me on the corkscrew on East Forest




Chuck on the corkscrew


Double click on the picture below to see all of then


We're sleeping in tomorrow (actually Dan is sleeping on the couch right now) and probably doing a ride out at Golden Gate National Forest and then heading over to Dave's house for a BBQ and to meet Cynthia's sister. Nothing better than riding and then hanging out with friends :)

On a side note....Dan told me that J Lo rented a bike from UBikes last week. Maybe there will be some pics of her cruising around Boulder in an upcoming US Magazine :)

-Kim

It's gonna be a good day!

The weather for Keystone tomorrow looks good :)

Saturday
Partly sunny. A 10 percent chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs 67 to 77.

Crowds will be low because of the Sol Vista G3 race going on, meaning all the racer boys will be elsewhere!

-Kim

Why are Thursday's so great?

Because I can have a cocktail after work :)

I don't drink during the week because it makes it really really really really hard for me to wake up in the morning but since I drive in on Friday's I can sleep in and have a drink after work. Kinda funny because back in Michigan, I drank every night. I would drive to work, ride a trail after work for about 2 hrs, go to the restaurant/bar with everyone and drink, get home about 2, sleep for a few hours and repeat. My diet consisted of coffee, peanut butter (had to get my protein somewhere), Diet Coke, Sour Patch Kids and beer....I was skinny but not very healthy.

When we move to Boulder my commute will be all on bike paths and only take 15 minutes, it will be harder to refrain from the cocktails after work, especially since we'll be within walking distance to all the bars and restaurants. Gotta get my cruiser up and running so we'll be able to cruise everywhere :)

I'm meeting with our new landlord to sign the rental agreement and nail down a move in date tomorrow. We're hoping for Sept 20th so we can have some time to get the old place cleaned up. I'm also hoping to convince her to rip up the carpet in the kitchen (of all places....gross!) and put in something else. Who puts carpet in the kitchen?!

My friend Tracy is off to Whistler today! Have fun Tracy & Jason!!! I can't wait to see all their pictures. Dan and I are planning a trip out there next August and I'm just dying to see what all the hype is all about!

Dan and I are going to Keystone on Saturday to get some DH in before they close for the season. Unfortunately he has to work on Monday :( but we'll get a nice ride in on Sunday after we sleep in. And maybe I'll ride down to U Bikes on Monday and meet him for his ride home, or maybe I'll just be lazy!

Cheers, Kim

Keystone on Saturday

We headed up to Keystone on Saturday. I finally got to meet Carey, who I met through my blog. She's an amazing technical rider.....she nailed the switchback first time on Helter! I'm looking forward to many more riding days with her!

Cary on the Helter switchback


Dan had no problem with the switchback either


Carey on the entry of Skelter


Craig on the entry of Skelter



Unfortunately the clouds rolled in around 2 and there were rumors the lifts were going to get shut down while we were having lunch so we hurried up to get back out there. Things started off good, then Cynthia crashed pretty hard in the rockgarden on Cowboy Up...she took a pretty hard fall on the rocks but was okay to push on. We hit TNT and after Fuzzy Bunny, we stopped to regroup and 2 guys came up and asked if we were riding with a girl in a red and black jersey, which was Carey. They said she took a really hard fall off the ladder bridge midway down TNT. They said she seemed okay but was sitting down trying to figure out what had happened. Cynthia stopped and helped her and her husband Craig immediately started riding back up to see what had happened. When they got back down to us, she wasn't doing too good...she took the fall straght to her chin. She had memory loss and was really dizzy so I told the rest of the people we were with to ride on and I would stay and get her down. I wanted to get down to the lifts and have the patrol come get her but she said she could at least ride the access road down. We got her down and had her checked out by the medics, they were confident that she didn't need to go to the emergency room but they told her to take it easy and that she would have to be woken up every couple of hours just in case....lucky her :(

Here's the damage



Unfortunately we didn't really get to ride with Cynthia and Dave since they ran late in the morning and got there after us but we got to hang out with them for a bit after we were done riding. Dave made it down the triple step on Wild Thing and Cynthia rolled the big rock after the triple step! Nice job!

I think we'll be up there again next weekend, Dan's brother has the condo and will be up there for the Sol Vista G3 race and our friend Aaron will be up there as well for the Winter Park race. So why not stay up there all weekend and ride Keystone :)

More pics here



-Kim

Someone Please Pinch Me!

Ever since we found out that Dan would be working at University Bikes in Boulder we had our hearts set on finding a place to rent in Boulder instead of way out in Lafayette where we currently are. We know we can't afford to buy in Boulder so we decided to NOT continue our search to buy a house where we could afford it.

It's been tough and we've come to the realization the finding what we want, a 2 bedroom house with a fenced yard and a garage that it pet friendly is hard. These places are few and far between in our price range and go quickly when they come up. I look diligently at Craigslist, I check it about every 1/2 hour for new listings and I subscribed to the Daily Camera's email alert for rentals in Boulder.

We both got frustrated and finally decided last night that Dan's commute in wasn't all that bad and I've been dealing with it this long, so what's wrong with just staying put. Fine....we both decided.

When I got to work this morning there was an email alert from the Daily Camera about a new house listing that had EVERYTHING we were looking for and it was in our price range. I immediately called and apologized when the woman answered when I realized how early it was...she didn't care at all, I told her I was just so excited I didn't even check to see what time it was. She told me where it was and we set up an appointment to see it at noon. After doing a mapquest on it, I realized it was literally just blocks away from UBikes and called Dan to see if he could sneak out for a few to go see if with me....he said for this, no problem.

So...things could not have gone more perfectly! She didn't want students renting it so she was more than pleased that we're both working folks. She was even more pleased that we didn't mind that it was an older house with "character" and not the most pleasant looking inside. It has a huge bedroom, a smaller bedroom, a bathroom...no tub but I can deal, a huge garage for storage and an even bigger backyard. It's at the base of the foothills and we have absolutely stunning views from the backyard....there's even a fire pit :)

She actually asked us how she could get us to rent the place!!!! Turns out that her tenant isn't out until mid September and she wants to fix some things after he's gone and wouldn't be able to rent it out until Oct....well, that was just perfect for us since our lease isn't up until the end of September! Please pinch me!!! She even said we could install a doggie door in the back door since Patch loves his so much.

So....we got the place!!!! I can't believe the luck and I can't believe how perfect it worked out and how perfect this place is for us. Dan is literally blocks away from UBikes, probably like a 2 minute bike ride and I'm about 15 minutes away from work and I can take the Boulder Creek Path all the way there!!! We can walk to downtown for dinner and we won't be far away from our friends anymore....I couldn't be happier.

I'm still in disbelief!

I need some champagne....TGIF!!!!! WHOOOOO HOOOOOO!!!!

-Kim

Meet Buck

He comes around our office once a week to sit by our window under the tree's.

He then takes a pee


And walks off like nothing ever happened


I think he enjoys all the attention he gets....

-Kim

What happens after 36 hrs of rain?

The clouds lift

And then you see all the snow.....in August!!!!




This equates to a lazy weekend with sleeping in to almost noon everyday and staying off the bikes and lots of running....man I'm SORE! And Dan's parents are in town so we had/have other things to do....

-Kim

Tracy's 30th Bday Party

Tracy's 30th birthday is Sunday 8/17 but Jason decided to get everyone together for a BBQ party on Friday...unfortunately it was rainy so the BBQ didn't really happen but we partied inside instead!

It was a great night, lots of wine was consumed, lots a laughing and lots of fun!

We got Tracy a gag gift....a pretty pink cane that Dan wrapped completely in pink ribbon, guess all those years of wrapping bars with bar tape finally paid off :)


More pics here


It's now Saturday and it's still raining....kinda nice and relaxing. Dan's parents are in town so we may be hanging with them tonight, they drove their new Hummer up from Michigan yesterday and are super excited about showing it off, guess it's their new baby :)

-Kim

Wishing for better weather

This is the forcast for Keystone this weekend :(

Aug 15 Showers
Rain and snow showers likely. Some thunder is also possible. Cloudy, with a high near 61. East wind 6 to 9 mph becoming south. Chance of precipitation is 60%. 58 to 62 35 to 39

Saturday
Aug 16 Showers
Rain and snow showers likely, becoming all rain after 11am. Some thunder is also possible. Cloudy, with a high near 64. South southeast wind between 10 and 13 mph becoming calm. Chance of precipitation is 70%. 60 to 65 35 to 39

Sunday
Aug 17 Showers
Rain and snow showers likely before 11am, then a chance of rain showers. Some thunder is also possible. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 70. Calm wind becoming north northeast around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.

We had a string of really dry conditions up there in June & July then bam....the afternoon showers started happening and the lift closures for the new gondola, it's kinda been a bad season for DH....good thing our XC has been pretty epic.

Maybe we'll go shopping for a new couch this weekend!

-Kim

Feeling a little homesick

Ahhhh....the campfire on a nice Michigan summer night.

I don't know if it's the bday thing and being away from my family but I'm really really missing home lately. I miss the twisty singletrack, I miss riding my singlespeed, I miss my friends and I miss my family. We ususally are home this time of year riding and drinking and just hanging out by the lake but for some reason we postponed our trip home for Christmas.

I know we have it good out here in Colorado, the trails are epic, the weather is killer but I still miss Michigan...I try to think about the traffic and the humid weather and the lack of jobs there right now but I want to be home.

I miss driving to Canada to hit Blue Mountain or Bromont....I miss the North Country Trail.....I miss Poto....one thing I don't miss is poison ivy which I used to get every single summer, maybe I should just think about poison ivy and that will make me not want to be home.

One of my favorite pics of my friend Adam


I miss the parties....the crazy crazy parties.....


-Kim

You know what sucks!?

Working on your bday :(

I thought going away for the weekend and riding with friends would do the trick but getting up and working on your actual bday is depressing.....even if I had an absolute BLAST this weekend....even though I'm a grumpy morning person and it's still morning and I'm still grumpy.....I think I'm going to be grumpy all day now :(

-Kim

South Boundary Trail 8/10/08

On Sunday, we all got up early to hit the South Boundary Trail, Cynthia & Tracy got up extra early to drop a car off in Taos. All I've got to say is this is an amazing trail...I think it's about 26 miles long (give or take a few miles) and the majority of the trail is all DH. I think we climbed for about an hour right at the beginning and the majority of the trail was an amazingly fun descent with the most technical sections at the end. There were a few short, not steep climbs throughout but they were so short I can't even remember them and the descending on this trail cancels out any climbing in your head :) And we missed all the rain!

I can't wait to get back there and explore the other trails New Mexico has to offer!

Here are the pics


-Kim

Angel Fire DH 8/09/08

Cynthia, Dave, Tracy, Dan and myself headed out the New Mexico on Friday to check out the trails. We decided to ride the DH trails at Angel Fire on Saturday, unfortunately we only got 3 runs in before the rain clouds set in and the thunder and lightening started up. The 3 runs we got in were awesome though, we started out easy with Duke, then the World Cup DH trail then Boogie to Ollie. We wanted to hit Maverick and Peppercorn before the days end but the weather had other ideas.

Dave officially announced that he's hooked :)

Here are a the only pics I took all day.


-Kim

Last Short Track of 2008 & Cynthia's Crit Party

Cynthia had her crit party last night and it rained :( First time it rained in about 2 months and it had to rain last night. It was still fun and we stayed way too late. We even met a couple people that used to live in Michigan!

Dan looked tasty in his Maxxis skin suit


The girls looked hot in their pink mini's and Dave's first batch of beer was delicious!

Jeny I hope Tonka is okay :(

My pics of the evening


Here's an awesome shot of Dan taken by Jesper


And one of the girls taken by Jesper


And one of Cynthia taken by Jesper


Jesper pics are here...I only wish I could take pictures like he does! He's amazing!


Good times!

-Kim

Congrats to Dan II

The newest employee here :) Right now he's the Warranty Manager but bigger and better things may soon be in his future there.

Now we HAVE to move closer to Boulder. We're actually looking at a place this afternoon in Gunbarrel....maybe Dan's lucky streak will continue and the place will be super cool and we'll get it!

-Kim

Congrats to Dan!

He got a new job :)

Thanks to Jason for putting the wheels in motion!

Soon I can tell all where he'll be.....

-Kim

Searle Pass - Sunday 8/3/08

Ummmm...who had the brilliant idea of getting up at the crack of dawn to go ride for 5hrs where you can barely breathe? Cynthia??? Good idea girl!

Cynthia, Jeny and myself met up at Cooper for an awesome ride in the mountains. I have to admit, I have never ridden up a pass before and I was a little nervous about the climbs but luckily the climbs never got too steep and unbearable. I also had never met Jeny before but I've heard great things about her from Cynthia....one being that she's smokin' fast. OMG, I don't think I've ever ridden with a fast chica like her before....that being said, most of the shots I got of her were of her behind and of her waaaaay ahead of us.

The trail was AMAZINGLY beautiful! Wild flowers everywhere, the singletrack stayed singletrack and it flowed in and out of old spooky forests. When we got out of the tree line it started hailing on us and the wind picked up and Jeny saw some lightening and the thunder rolled a few times but we pressed on to make it to the top. I could hardly keep my wheel pointed straight at that point and had to stop bunches just to catch my breath and the trail did get steep and rocky near the top, rocky enough that I walked a lot. I think because of the altitude I was second guessing myself and in turn chickened out on a few things but oh well...I guess I'll have to go back and ride it again.

Jeny actually broker her front shifter cable right off on a nasty root climb. None of us had zip ties or any kind of tape but we were going to sacrifice a tube to tie it up but Jeny wanted to try and strap her handlebar light to it and it worked pretty good. And even with a broken front shifter she managed to kick butt!

I think the ride time was around 5hrs, don't know the altitude gain or mileage...that's Cynthia's department :) I do know that we were stuck in traffic for over 3hrs on I-70 trying to get home. Thanks to a couple Agave Martini's at the Rio afterwards....the trauma of the drive home melted away!

Here are the pics from the ride, click on the picture below for the entire album

Searle Pass

I realized a few things on this ride, I'm not that technical of a climber, I do not see the "lines" on climbs the first time around so I usually end up doing it over and over until I get it, I under estimate myself and when I approach something that looks hard I immediately think I can't do it but when I look back at it I realize I can so I usually end up doing it over....I'm going to start calling myself the "Do Over Queen". I'm way more comfortable descending than I am with climbing which is a completely different aspect of riding for me, I'll try way more stuff on descents than I will on climbs and I don't know when the shift actually happened. But I'm not going to argue with myself about it :)

-Kim

West Mag - Solo Ride

Dan had to work on Saturday (and he has to work tomorrow) so I decided to go up to West Mag for a solo ride in the cooler temps. It's been a long time since I rode by myself and I didn't know what to think of it. But as soon as I got started I was enjoying myself on the twisty singletrack, exploring trails I've never been on before. My goal was to ride some familar stuff and then just go on trails to see where they went. It was nice, I doubled back a few times but then got distracted a bunch and put together a nice 2.5 hr ride.

Twisty trails


I found some stuff to play on


Thunder started rumbling and the sky was getting a little darker so I started heading back to the trailhead. I got back, got the bike on the car, got cleaned up and was just getting in the car when the skies opened up and it started raining....haven't seen rain in a while so I just sat there a listened to it.

Then I noticed the temp gauge and I didn't want to leave :)


This is the temp when I pulled up in our driveway, almost 10 degree's cooler than yesterday :)


Tomorrow I'm up bright and early to meet at Cynthia's house for a ride up Searle Pass in Copper.

-Kim

Friday Scorcher

I think it was 104 on Friday, could have been hotter. When we went to the store the car temp gauge said it was 122 on the hot asphalt :0 That's insane!

We wanted to hit up Crankworx today to see the Slopestyle event so we woke up a little early to get a ride in before heading up. We opted for Walker since it's close and we hadn't been there together yet. Much to my surprise, I left my camera at home...darn it, so no pictures. We got to the trailhead at around 10:30 and it was already in the 90's but luckily it was pretty windy. Dan cleared a tricky rock section on the climb up if you go counter-clockwise. I've never cleared it and I don't think I could muscle my way up it after watching him...but he was stocked he finally did it. I wasn't feeling so hot after our pizza dinner the night before, for some reason it just didn't agree with me. I was a little unsure if I would be able to keep my food down or if I'd even have the energy to ride but once we got started, I felt good...a little lazy but good. And I think all the sweating I did helped work out the yuckiness I was feeling.

After our ride, we headed home to unload and pick up the dog to make our way up to Winter Park. We were all looking forward to going up and seeing some huge tricks and we were looking forward to the cooler temps. Unfortunately, as soon as we got on the on ramp we saw the traffic...bumper to bumper on 70 :( People were actually backing their way down the on ramp but we decided to see if it would lighten up a little further up, but it didn't and we couldn't see the end to it. We decided to get off at the next exit and head somewhere else to get the dog out.

Up to Golden Gate we headed but halfway up we started complaining about the $5 we would have to pay to let the dog run around for 30 minutes....it was still hot up there and he wouldn't last long. Then we realized that we hadn't dropped off our rent check and their office would be closed all weekend...ggggrrrr! Another attempt at fun failed! So we made a u-turn and headed home....dropped the rent check off and came home to cleaned up. After that, we didn't want to be in the car anymore so we decided to stay home and relax.

A couple hours later, Dan actually decided to shave his legs for the first time ever....I think it was the heat and boredom but he was all for it! After about an 1hour of fighting with all his leg hair he now has nice smooth sexy legs :) I never noticed how nicely defined his legs are...mmmmmmm yummy......and I never thought I'd like a guy with smooth shaved legs but I do! I couldn't stop touching them the rest of the night ;)

-Kim