Picture Rock should be called Enough with the Rocks Already!

We finally got to ride Picture Rock yesterday, we rode Heil to Wild Turkey to Picture Rock, turned around before the parking lot in Lyons and rode back up Picture Rock to Wild Turkey, finished the rest of Wild Turkey and headed back down.




My brain hurt from hitting the inside of my skull and my hands could barely hold onto my bars anymore. Heil is a bumpy ride and on the HT it's way worse. The first part of Picture Rock off of Wild Turkey is more of the same but once you pass the Silo's it's smooth singletrack. The climb back up Picture Rock is a nice climb consistent climb with small moves up and over rocks that got the heart pumping and by the end of the ride I was pretty much toast. We finished off the ride in the freezing rain.

So glad we got out before the weather turned sour later that night.

Sunday is going to be a lazy day with just a long hike with the dog and MAYBE a short run if we get completely bored out of our minds.

-Kim

Employment! Finally!

Dan is now employed at this shop in Boulder, less than 2 miles away from where we live!

Congrats and I'm sure he's so excited to have something other than chores and errands to do with his day :)

Fingers crossed that he gets weekends off!!!

-Kim

Rockin' the Rocks

Soooo...did I mention before that I love my new 29er?

My nemises conquered!!!


Absolutely and totally the best bike I've ridden in a long time...go figure. I still can't believe I actually like riding a hardtail!!! Granted, I can't descend the rocks as fast but I can still do it....actually better than on my 6.6!!!

I'm so excited about the riding season this year that I can barely contain myself!!!

Let the games begin!! Well, we still have some months of winter to get thru but I just can't wait!!!

More pics here
>

Jeny you were so right about a 29er hardtail being the best bike to ever ride!! I can't wait to get out there with you!!!

-Kim

January and riding in shorts!

Yep! That's right, it's January and we were riding in shorts yesterday! We chose Devil's Backbone because it's usually the driest during the winter and it was. It was my 2nd ride on the 29er and she didn't disappoint me. We started at the Coyote Ridge trailhead and rode the Blue Sky/Coyote Ridge area, the Coyote Ridge trail starts with a loose rocky climb that dumps into a ledgy descent...the 29er handled the ledges with no problemo.

The rest of the trail was smooth and fast and fun but we still had the ledges to get back up....and the 29er kicked butt on them! I was shocked and amazed that I actually was able to get the bike up and over them....absolutely shocked! Sorry, no pics...I think it would make Dan melt if he actually took some pictures ;)

Yeeehaaaw! It's going to be a good year!


A few more pics here


-Kim

Lazy Saturday with many activities thrown in

Saturday morning found us lounging around, drinking coffee and eating breakfast burrito's. We didn't have a clue what we wanted to do that day and we didn't really feel like doing anything.

After a while, the boy started getting annoying so we decided to take him out for a hike. It was so nice outside that the short 1/2 hour hike turned into an over an hour hike with a very tired doggie dog!

While we were out walking we decided to go on a run and then get Dan's new fixie out for a spin. Yay! It's still in the "final touch" stage but it's going to be a pretty kick butt theme bike! While we were running, Dan mentioned how all he had to do to turn my bike into a fixie is switch the rear hub around...oh dear! I agreed but I really nervous!

Getting on the bike with moving cranks was pretty weird and then accidentally trying to coast when you can't is also a weird feeling but I was pretty amazed at how in control you are of your speed. I didn't once panic and use my brakes (we haven't taken them off yet but I'm sure they'll be off after a week or so of riding it). First lesson was skid stopping, at first I was clueless and thought I'd never get it but after trying it a few times and getting comfortable getting my weight totally over me bars and getting my legs completely up against the bars it was pretty easy to lock your legs and force the rear wheel to skid. I was so STOKED!!!!

Then we hit the hills and I found that it's really easy to control your speed by back pedaling....it was actually really cool being able to slow down that way!

Now I need to learn to track stand. Not there yet, as soon as I stop my first instinct is to put my foot down instead of trying to balance my pedals out. It's pretty tricky making sure your pedals are parallel to the ground and it's a weird feeling pushing back and forth on your pedals while trying to balance....it'll take a long time to get it.

I'm going to keep it a fixie this week and see how I like it. I'm fearing my legs being incredibly sore come next Friday!

Later that night we went to a little shin dig bday party for a friend :)


More pics of the bday event here:


Sunday Sunday Sunday......we're riding!!!! Yay! And them barbecuing some brats!!!! Gotta love the 60 degree weather we're having in January!!!

Friday Happy Hour

We had happy hour at our friends Chuck & Niina's house...they actually cooked dinner! Pretty Fancy :)

And we tried a new to us stout from Oskar Blues....the Ten FIDY


It poured much like motor oil!

Here's the write up about it from the Oskar Blues website:
Ten FIDY Imperial Stout - Now (11-21-07) available in cans, our winter seasonal beer is immensely viscous and loaded with neck-deep flavors of chocolate, malt, coffee, cocoa and oats.

It's the beer equivalent of decadently rich milkshake made with malted-milk balls and Heaven’s best chocolate ice cream. Ten FIDY is about 10% ABV and is made with enormous amounts of two-row malts, chocolate malts, roasted barley, flaked oats and hops. Its huge-but-comforting flavors hide a whopping 98 IBUs that are deftly tucked underneath the beer’s mountains of malty goodness.

Ten FIDY is the ultimate Rocky Mountain winter warmer, and further proof of the creative muscle of our beloved brewing staff. Look for fourpacks of Ten FIDY in select beer stores in Colorado. Out of state? We hope to send a few cases to a few of our other states in early '08.

Here's a sampling of the mighty praise heaped on Ten FIDY:

* "The Beer of the Year" – The Denver Post
* "100 Rating" – Ratebeer.com
* "A-Rating" – Beeradvocate.com
* "This one puts the ‘A’ in ‘Holy Crap!’" -- Beer Advocate Magazine
* "The biggest, baddest, boldest beer in a can." -- Celebrator Beer News
* "A freaking gentle-giant masterpiece and the world's richest canned beer." - Us

-Kim

Another Jeep!

Dan sold our '99 Volvo last Friday and we were going to only have 1 car for a while and see how it worked out. I still commute to work everyday and so will he once he starts working again and it would force me to ride in even when the weather sucks.

Dan showed up at my work on Wednesday with a surprise for me....




He bought a '95 Jeep Cherokee Unlimited. It's a pretty sweet car and he got an amazing deal on it. He bought it from some girl who just wanted to unload it, it didn't start but from what she told Dan, he knew it was the alternator. So, the day after looking at it the first time he went and bought an alternator and replaced it and the thing started right up! Kicker is he talked the girl down from $1200 to $800 and when the girls neighbor saw Dan working on it, he came outside and told him that he'd give him $50 if he bought it because he was so sick of having the thing sitting out in front of his house! So, he bought the Jeep for $800, put $100 into with the alternator and got $50 from the neighbor...total money spent on the Jeep was $850!

Not bad for a 2nd beater car with AWD!

Pretty good score if you ask me :)

Oh and the girl had 4 wheels sitting in her garage that he ex-boyfriend bought and never put on. She wanted them out of her garage too so she just gave them to us! Dan said they're probably worth about $350 each!

Happy Hour

In an attempt to save some money, instead of going to the bar for Friday Happy Hour we started having HH at home. First happy hour was at Megan's house, after that it was at our house....after everyone got home from their Christmas vacations.

Mom, I made your cosmo recipe...albeit a little more on the strong side than you made it but that's my curse. I can't make a weak drink :(

We're all toasting to you, mom!



Dan got all the pizza's during the day and rushed out and got a set of martini glasses when I realized that we didn't have any! What a great guy :)

-Kim

**Note...judging from the pictures, it looks like I have DD's...I did not get a boob job! It's just the sweater rising up on me :)

Zoom Zoom!

That's all I can say about the 29er! It's so fast and I can't believe how fast this bike accelerates! Absolutely amazing! What's weird is I test rode a Hi-Fi 29er over the summer and hated the way it rode, it was so bouncy I couldn't hold onto the bars. We didn't play with the suspension all too much so that could have been a factor. The Salsa is so smooth and I think the carbon seatstays help a ton. I just wish it had a Fox fork instead of the Reba fork...not that big of a fan of the Reba's.

I'll have to get used to the hardtail factor and train myself to get waaaaay back on the saddle on tricky descents but being able to go fast again is so much fun! Yippee!

I was even able to drop Dan :) But he promptly dropped me on the descent.

This is how how he felt when he finally caught up to me....


Unfortunately, after the ride I got a nasty tummy ache and was couch bound the rest of the evening :( Must have been the cosmo's from the night before...my stomach doesn't like cointreau and it always seems to rot the day after.

Fires in Boulder

Photo credit: Mark Leffingwell
Fire engulfs a house near Foothills Parkway and Nebo Road north of Boulder, Colorado January 07, 2009. CAMERA/Mark Leffingwell



Photo Credit: Paul Aiken
A home in the path of Wednesday's grass fire burns north of the city of Boulder. Photo by Paul Aiken

The first story here

Pretty scary stuff! I got a text from Dan around 3pm yesterday asking if I'd heard about the fires just 3 miles north of our house and I hadn't. One of my co-workers busted out of the office an hour earlier, I had no clue at the time why. He lives up Lee Hill Road and his family was being evacuated! Fortunately, his house is fine and they were able to finally go home late this afternoon.

Luckily, Carey and Craig and their doggies and house are safe as well.

I rode home last night and could smell the fire in the air but couldn't see anything. You could hear and see all the helicopters flying above the fire from our house. This morning on Patch's walk, it smelled like one big campfire.

Luckily, most people have been able to go back home.

I can't imagine what the summer is going to be like if we're already having fires in January.

-Kim

Peanut Butter & Cake Frosting

Dan and I were lying in bed last night trying to ignore the "all-night smoking binge party" our college neighbors were having right outside our bedroom window until 2am :( Nice!

Anyway, I was trying to think of things that I liked more than Dan and only 2 things popped into my head...doesn't really mean that I like them more than Dan, they are just what popped into my head.

The first one was peanut butter. Not the organic, you have to store in the refrigerator and stir before eating kind of peanut butter but Jiffy....Creamy Jiffy to be exact. I love Jiffy and I'm not afraid to admit it! I love a heaping spoonful of Jiffy.

The second one was cake frosting, Betty Crocker whipped butter cream cake frosting to be exact! Absolutely love this stuff and I'll eat it straight out of the tub with a spoon until my stomach hurts, which doesn't take much. I did sit on my parents couch over Christmas with a tub of leftover butter cream cake frosting and a spoon and ate a whole bunch of it! I even had homemade frosted cookies that my mom had made in my hand and was putting more frosting on them.

Maybe that's why I gained 5lbs over the holiday.....but totally worth it ;)




......why the heck can't I post pics rig now.....so frustrating!!!!!

-Kim

3000 miles, 38 hrs of driving and 5 lbs later

We're back from Christmas time with our families. We hung out with our friends, hung out with our families, made some plans and ate way too much food! Every single part of the 10 days we spent at home was so enjoyable. We ran everyday and sat on the couch and rested and soaked in the down time.

I haven't had 10 days off like that in so long. Usually when we go home it's in the summertime and every ounce of free time is spent on the bikes. This time, every ounce was either spent on the couch or in bed....loved it!

Hopefully we've planted some seeds, some plans have been made and come August....we may be back there for good! Our dreams of owning a house on a lake may actually come true! The housing market is so low that we can get into a brand new 2500 sq ft house on a lake if we really wanted to, an opportunity like that is hard to pass up.

I know we're crazy for wanting to leave Colorado, the weather is fantastic, the riding is epic and we've made some great friends. But it's just not home and we are realizing that our families are the most important thing in our lives and they won't be with us forever and we need to soak up all the time we can get with them and buy our dream house and maybe start our own family...eventually.....maybe....maybe.

We need to look to the future and set our plans into motion and enjoy every ounce of Colorado that we can.

But for now, we're here and who knows, the small (I mean super teeny tiny) seed that we planted may not work out. After all, the economy is crap in Michigan and the jobs are hard to come by.

-Kim