Tuesday Night Girls Ride-Betasso

18 girls showed up, 7 of us braved the bike path up Canyon and rode the connector trail on up to meet the rest of the girls @ Betasso.


Here are the 7 that rode up the connector trail (note Jen's riding her singlespeed!)


We had a little trouble before we even got to the connector trail

But between Tracy and Jen for her powerlink, Renee's chain was fixed in no time!

Here's the rest of the group




And now for some riding!








All smiles at the end


Once again, Liz get the best arms of the night award!


And Zena gets the best expression of the night award!


More pics are linked here

Don't be fooled

He may be cute

But this is his favorite thing to do


She's welcome anytime because this is all she does


And Patch, he's just an angel


Our doggy sitting is done and now it's time to catch up on our riding!

This Saturday is date day @ Keystone! We're riding with Cynthia & Dave and Jason & Tracy! Can't wait to get on the DH bike....surprisingly it's only the 2nd time on it this year so far.

-Kim

Yo Bear!

Dan: "Get off your bike now!"

Kim: "Okay, why?"

Dan: "Bear!!!!"

Kim: wide eyed, looking straight up the trail and all she see's is a black mass running into the woods.

Kim: "What do we do now?"

Dan: "We ride really fast and make lots of noise" Dan based this theory on watching Man vs. Wild and Bear Grylls saying to talk loudly when a bear is near...Bear always said "Yo Bear". So thank you Mr. Grylls for the good advice :)

So there we were riding Sourdough back from Brainard in the rain, just seen a bear and yelling and talking loudly down the trail, I think I started singing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall at one point. I kept looking back imagining a big bear running down the trail towards us with it's hot breath pouring out it's nose.

Apparently, the bear (on all 4's was about 3 1/2" to 4" tall) was just walking down the trail right in front of Dan. Dan was ready to pick his bike up over his head and start yelling if the bear started coming towards us. I was just worried that we saw the cub and momma bear was soon to follow but no other bear ran out. On our way down the trail we did see lots of bear poop all over the trail, kinda like the bear was just walking along the trail. Yikes! Sorta an eventful day!

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pics of the bear but I seem to recall reaching for my camera when Dan told me a bear was in front of him but then I started to get scared.

It did rain and it did thunder but it never really rained that hard and we only got cold when we started our descent to the trailhead. But more importantly we didn't get mauled by a bear. We did see another couple riding up from the trailhead and warned them that we did see a bear and they should probably ride closer together and make their presence known by talking loudly....hopefully they won't be on the news tonight!







More pics here

-Kim

4th of July Ride

We headed out to Sourdough (Camp Dick side) on the 4th for a ride with Tracy & Jason, our original plan was to ride Sourdough to Little Raven to South St Vrain back to Sourdough but when we got to the road near Brainard, we decided to just turn around and head back down Sourdough since it was already late and we had to get home to let Hailey out.

I think this area is one of my favorite places to ride in the front range, the trail is technical and challenging but not deathly hard and it's all in the tree's.














More pics here

Tracy's pics here

-Kim

Ok...enough!

After almost a month off of commuting, I think I'm rested enough to start up again. Before I decided to take a brief hiatus, I was having trouble recovering from weekday rides. My legs would hurt all week (I mean hurt to the touch and just completely fatigued) and I could not get enough sleep, commuting in was taking a toll on my pleasure riding and that can't happen during the summer! I decided to change my work schedule to come in later so I could sleep in a little longer and I'm going to have to get some good recovery drink for rides during the week.

But after filling up to Volvo today and it costing $60....how can I not ride in? Our gas bill went from $180 on average to about $450 with both of us driving in! That's absolutely ridiculous! We're not struggling to make ends meet and could get by just fine with both of us driving in because our drives to work aren't that far.....it's the principal of paying that much for gas! I just can't justify it.

I knew this week we'd both have to continue to drive in with the whole dog sitting gig but starting Monday....I'm back in the saddle again :) Maybe it's time to see a nutritionist to help me with my eating or lack there of eating. I just can't seem to eat enough to sustain all the stuff I do, you'd think I'd be like 90lbs or something.

Maybe I'll even look into riding the bus when I'm tired and don't want to drive but I think the last time I looked at the route I could take, it would take over 1 hour to get to work and that's silly when it takes me about 40-45 min to ride in and 20-25minutes to drive in. Kinda makes me miss living in Chicago, not having a car and taking the train in when I didn't feel like riding.


-Kim

Dog days of summer

We're watching Dan's brothers 2 dogs this whole week, we actually got them last Thursday and will have them until Sunday. Needless to say, we didn't do any riding this weekend. It was actually good for me in a way, I got a ton of stuff done around the house that I've been neglecting and I was able to clean up our "office" and hook up our new printer.

I've gotten a lot of running miles in already since Petey is an awesome running partner. Dan & I ran with him for an hour on Saturday and I ran with him for an hour on Sunday and woke up early today to run him before going to work.

Here's a great shot of Petey after hiking in the winter


Here's Petey & Patch before the hike started


We did have a doggie playdate/bbq on Saturday with Tracy & Jason and their dog Penny, she's such a cutie! And after about 45 minutes she warmed up to Patch & Petey and they all played nice. Unfotunately, we had to lock Hailey in another room because she'd growl and snap at Penny if Penny got too close to her....guess the old bitch isn't very tolerant of puppies.

Here's a pic of Penny I got off of Tracy's picture site. Unfortunately the camera didn't come out at all that evening.


It's going to be a week of non-riding for me but I'll be getting up early everyday to run Petey. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze a couple of lunch road rides in on Tues and Thurs since we're alternating days of going home for lunch to let Hailey out. We do have some long rides planned for the weekend, we're thinking the dogs will be okay being left alone by that time and we'll be able to finally escape on the bikes!

-Kim

Thursday Night Date Night Ride

No one else could ride with us tonight, Cynthia was resting after killin' it in short track yesterday and is doing a 42 mile ride of Friday, Tracy had a meeting to go to and Jen & Jesper are on vacation so we decided to have an impromptu date night ride by ourselves.

We didn't want to go far so I picked Dan up at his shop and we headed out to ride Betasso. We parked at the Justice Center @ 6th and Canyon so we could ride up the Boulder Creek Path to hit the connector trail on our way up to Betasso. I absolutely HATE the beginning of this climb! You're anerobic immediately, it's so steep, rocky and loose....even walking up it makes me want to pass out and puke but after that it's all good :) And the descent down is way too fun to pass up.

This is what I usually end up seeing of Dan when we ride.





But I like this side as well :)



On a slightly odd note, we came around a corner and saw this deer off to the side of the trail. We thought she was just chilling but she didn't move at all, then we noticed she was squatting, then we realized she was peeing. I had no idea that deer squatted to pee like a dog. Learned something new today I guess!

-Kim

Thank god tomorrow's Friday!