Mountain Pornography

Posting some more pictures of the Sawtooths because they were so breathtaking. These shots were taken while riding down Fourth of July Road outside of Stanley, Idaho.

Shepherd Camp with Hobbled Horses

Fire Damage from 2007

More Fire Damage from 2007

Stole this solo-bike-in-photograph staging from Jill Homer.

Weekend Update

Hello out there in the blogosphere! Kate and I have been busy working and commuting from Bridger (Jon) to Boise (Kate) during the last week. We spent last weekend in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho with our nephew, a bunch of mountain biker/hiker friends from Boise, and six dogs. The cabin was south of Stanley, Idaho, on a ridge just a few hundred yards above the Salmon River; breathtaking.

Saturday there was hiking or biking for everyone, and rumor has it there was also a bit of swimming for Troy. Kate went to mountain biking camp in Ketchum, Idaho on Saturday and the rest of the boys rode the Sawtooth Mountains. The ride really took the wind out of my sail. After not having ridden in a month, I really bit off more than I could chew. We rode all 19 miles of the Fisher Creek loop from 6700 ft to 8200 ft. It was brutal for me, but worth every minute of it to check out the scenery.

On Sunday, some of us decided to ride from the 4th of July Creek Road, elevation 8720 ft. We had to work with the Forest Service guys to clear some trees from the road to make our way to the trail head.

Jon, Kate, Troy, KJ, and Ryan
(not pictured: Molly, Erin, Jim, and the dogs)

We eventually had to turn back because there was way too much snow. What an experience!


The following week, we headed back to Montana separately. On Wednesday, Troy and I made the drive in 11 hours and Kate made it in 10 hours on Thursday. It sure is nice to be here on the ranch. Upon our arrival, we found that someone out there ordered a nice gift for the residents of rural southern Montana.


Thanks, we enjoyed it here in the Clark's Fork Valley.

You Go Girl!

Limits I say..... You've got to set limits on the things you do, when you can. I don't have a parking pass for the BSU campus so my limit has been set by default. I ride my bike to school, I'm limited from parking a car on campus.

This morning it is cold, bitter cold, and Kate was on her bike early heading to work. The paper said this:

Weather
Boise, ID
Currently 8 degrees F, sunny

Almost makes you want to ride or walk to work doesn't it? Luckily, we live close enough to our daily grind to ride a bike. It really does feel good to do it, and no it's not just a hippie thing!

Sorry, Guys

Image courtesy of http://www.ec.gc.ca/EnviroZine/images/Issue57/BeaufortSea_l.jpg

I started to get dressed this morning fully intending to ride my bike to work. Jon asked what the temperature was and I repeated what I heard on our local NPR station this morning. "Nine degrees, with a wind chill of -10." He told me I should drive my truck to work, that I had to set some limits. Perhaps.

When I think about whether I can ride my bike in frigid temperatures, I think about Jill Homer, the Alaska journalist who is training for the human-powered Iditarod race, a multi-day event in which she will bike across the Alaska wilderness in sub-zero temperatures. She chronicles her training in her blog Arctic Glass. Her reasons for riding are different than mine, but an inspiration nonetheless. When I fret about my 1.5 mile commute, I check Jill's blog to see that she rode 22 miles yesterday in 28 degree temperatures.

I console myself with the reminder that driving to work will give me the opportunity to sherpa home the large garbage bag full of empty plastic bottles I have collected at work so they can be recycled.

How to Help Slow Global Warming

Riding your bike to work or school, even when it is only 20 degrees F outside and the streets and sidewalks are covered with snow pack and ice is one way.

I wrote in this post about Boise bicycle commuters and my own limitations. Since then, I have taken to the streets on my bike, weather be damned! Unfortunately, the two days on which I have ridden my bike to work so far have been 1) during a snowstorm and 2) immediately after a series of snow days when the temperature was forecasted at 14 but fortunately climbed to 20.

I just kept telling myself to think of the polar bears and their melting ice sheets!

Honestly, it's not too terrible. Here is what I was wearing today:

winter biking tights
jeans
wool socks
cotton short-sleeved t-shirt
polypropylene long-sleeved shirt
cashmere scarf
my very toasty North Face jacket with quilted liner
polypropylene skull cap
wool took hat
bicycle helmet
biking gloves

By the time I arrived at work, my core body was overly warm, but my finger, toes, and face were very cold. I could have used my face mask (couldn't find it this morning) and some additional protection for my hands and feet.

Shiver Me Timbers

Some Boiseans are serious about bicycle commuting. On a morning a few days ago, I sat in my truck at a traffic light on a snow-covered road with two bicyclists while the flakes rained down. Jon is no exception. He is committed to continue biking to school year-round and this is his get-up for riding in 19 degree temperatures. My heart swells with pride for him, but sinks just a little as I slide into the driver's seat of my truck. I'm still acclimating.

An Inconvenient Truth, Indeed

Last night, Jon and I went to the Egyptian Theater in downtown Boise to watch Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. Not seeing the irony at first, I wanted to drive to the theater. I had ridden my bike into downtown and back twice already for a total of eight miles. I was coming down with a cold. I had been to the gym and was tired, sore. It was supposed to rain that evening. This time of year, the temperature drops into the 40s and 50s after dark--our ride home would be cold and possibly wet. Can you hear the whine?

Jon convinced me to pull up my bootstraps and get on the bike. I conceded that driving to see this movie about global climate change due to carbon emissions would be like sticking a thumb in Al Gore's eye. And that would hurt.

Within the first few minutes of the film, I realized something very important. I didn't know what global warming was, or rather, I didn't know how it worked. Nor did I understand precisely how or why the glaciers and polar ice caps were melting. I knew that global warming was bad and that CO2 emissions are a major contributing factor. I could make a general correlation but didn't understand the science behind it. I won't go into it here, just see the movie. It does an excellent job of making this erudite science accessible to the lay person.

One of the boons of moving to Boise has been our ability to commute by bicycle to 90% of any place we might need to go. The only time I need to get in the car is to go to Target, Costco, or to do a major grocery shop. Even Office Depot is downtown; yesterday Jon made me stop and buy a ream of paper and cart it home on my bike. Oh the humanity!

Back in Raleigh, I often spent up to two hours in the car on my daily commute to and from work. Now I spend 25 minutes on my bike, roundtrip. People in Boise take their bicycling and bicycle commuting seriously and it is not uncommon to see entire families riding around town. Bicycles with kid trailers are exceedingly common, as are tandem and triple parent/kid bikes. I would consider bicycle commuting to be the single most effective change I have made in addressing global climate change, but it is just not possible for everyone, just like it wasn't an option for me until recently.

Our favorite activity tracking website mycyclinglog.com has added a carbon dioxide offset calculator. Since moving to Boise on August 1st, I have saved .07 tons or 140 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions by commuting just 105 miles on the bike! That is only a savings of about $25 in gasoline, but the reality is that our overall gasoline consumption has gone down considerably (several hundred dollars per month) because everything is so much closer in Boise. Even when we do drive, nothing is very far.

For those of you that can't commute by bicycle, there are so many other options available to help offset carbon emissions and save energy. See the movie, check out the website, switch to fluorescent light bulbs, adjust your thermostat, reduce your waste, reuse things, recycle everything you can, compost, replace your bottled water consumption with filtered tap water, grow some food, eat food grown locally.

And because I know how much people like pictures, here is one for you. It has nothing to do with global warming but is just a darn cute picture of my brother and my nephew.

Happy 4th of July!

Yesterday marked 231 years since the United States of America declared Independence from the United Kingdom, congrats to all for staying free! Most Americans celebrate with a leisurely day of rest, beer, barbecues, and the evening fireworks. Kate spent the early part of the week in Florida with friends, remembering the life of another friend who was abruptly taken from this world. I know they didn't have a festive time, rather it was probably a healing time. I was up early because there was a bike ride in Cary. I rode the fastest ride in my brief cycling history. I kept up with the leaders until they decided to run a red light to lose the main pack, so much for the cyclist's etiquette or safety! My race stats can be found by clicking on the picture below.

Saturday Morning Spin

We packed it in early last night because we both had early morning plans. My plans involved me, the road, my bike, and some friends to share the time. The plan was to ride out of Blue Jay County Park around 8am. The calls for morning rain had subsided by the time I got around to looking at the news.

Check out the links below to see the details from our ride. Click the MotionBased logo to see all the GPS data or just check out the route on Bikely.


Thanks for the ride!

Being Me

Blood, Sweat, and Gears pictures are posted. As we were climing a fairly large hill on "Big Hill Road" during the race we encountered the Bird's Eye photographer. This is my picture. Obviously I was posing, check out some of the other people at this point in the race.

Pain, Ache, and Humility

Saturday was a great day to ride a bicycle in North Carolina. Check out my ride info, provided by Garmin at Motionbased.com. The ride was perfect, neither of us had a mechanical failure! According to my GPS it took me 6 hours and 13 minutes to complete the ride, but it stops tracking time while I'm at rest breaks. The race clock showed 6 hours 38 minutes when I crossed the line. The ascents were torture, keeping me climbing for 2 hours and 38 minutes.
Blood Sweat and Gears 2007


Full Race results for Blood, Sweat, and Gears 2007 can be found @ Race Management Systems.

The professional photos should be posted on the Bird's Eye website. (I was bib #189. John (aka "InfinityMan") and Drew can post their number in the comments if they'd like.) I'll post some of my pictures in our photo repository.

Weekend Punishment

Saturday is going a pretty hard day out on the road. John and I are heading to Boone, NC for a nice century ride.

"Blood Sweat and Gears"

Nice ring to it eh? Yep, it's going to be brutal with over 12000 feet of climbing. I'm actually going to be prepared for this one though, unlike the Foothills Classic back in April. I wasn't physically prepared, nor was my equipment up to snuff. This ride should be much better thanks to my new 11-27 cassette. Combined with the 50-34 compact crankset I'll have an excellent climbing setup when it comes to gearing, and I think I'm in much better shape now. The two other century rides I've completed were on a much flatter course. My pace was 20.5 mph for the Raven Rock Ramble, and for the ride last Friday I was alone and averaged 18.5 mph. I'm hoping to finish Saturday on the inside of 6 hours, which translates to just about 16.5 mph.

This is going to be the perfect place to break in my new training tool. Have I mentioned how lucky I am to have married such a wonderful person? After hemming and hawing about what I wanted for our anniversary I finally decided to pick a GPS to use while cycling. My tool of choice is the Garmin Edge 305. This is the coolest thing EVER! It will do just about everything, except the riding. I cannot wait to see what my heartrate averages over Snake Mountain and its 18-20% grade!

Two Pros in Two Days.... Come On!!!!

How long has it been since you’ve been schooled? I don’t mean the kind of educational experience that you seek out to enhance your intelligence. Nope, I don’t mean that type of schooling. I mean the raw, nasty, get worn out, broke down, beat up, life education kind of schooling. I meant to go for a hard road bike ride on Tuesday and a nice jaunt on the mountain bike last night with some friends. I got to the parking lot a bit early as usual and waited for the crowd to gather. My buddy Tom pulled a few minutes before 5pm and a couple of minutes later these 3 guys come swooping out of the woods, looking quite fresh I might say. We were off without much conversation and within minutes I knew I hadn’t showed up for a ride, my gut sank as the realization came over me like a dense fog takes over an early morning valley. I had to concentrate on the ride and try my best not to get dropped. The realization of my impending bonk came at about 14 miles into our ride, it was coming and it wasn’t going to be pretty. After the keeping up with the 23mph smoke-fest I endured Tuesday night, this was going be my Wednesday night fate. Then it happened… pssssssssssssssssss Tom flatted. It couldn’t have happened at a better time because my tilt light was getting ready to shine brightly. It was a great time for a flat: I had a hole in my spare tube, both rubber cement tubes were dry, after catching the speedsters to get another tube and getting back to Tom we found the stem had fallen out of that tube also! Tom started walking, I sprinted back to the truck so he wouldn’t have to walk to as far.
Tuesday night’s smoking fast pace was thanks to a pro rider named Chris…Thanks
The Wednesday ride-athon was compliments of the super duo of Will and Don, following closely behind was me, Tom, and then Dave. Thanks for showing me 2 Raleigh trails I didn’t know existed, I’ll definitely be back!

First Blood

Ron picked up his new roadbike yesterday after several hours of deliberation at the local Performance shop so we decided to break it in today. He settled on the Schwin Fastback Pro, a very well equipped bike with the full Ultegra kit.

There was just a bit of carnage out there, just a bit. Ron and bike are fine. Take a look at the other pics.

Spectator Injury Update

It did hit the news today, and luckily the guy survived. Here is the link for the story out of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
I'm sorry he won't be riding a bicycle again, but glad he lived.

Road Trip Report

Thursday afternoon John and I left Raleigh on eastbound I-40 on our 1st annual Tour De Georgia Road Trip. I was thrilled at the thought of having no particular schedule, riding the circle, and of course seeing "The Pros." It was 1:40 pm when we got on the road and weatherwise it looked like we were in for a perfect weekend. After a few pits stops and about 4 1/2 hours in the truck we found ourselves in Hayesville, NC (on the north shore of Lake Chatuge). After taking a few minutes to eat BBQ we finished our day at the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds campground. By design we were camping at the start/finish of the Saturday morning ride. Camp set-up and a couple of beers capped off what had been a great day of driving and hanging out.
Morning came early, and cold. It was 40 degrees at 6:50am. Our ride began at 8:00 am on a very sunny Saturday morning, a bit cold for a road ride but we managed. The 36 mile route for the Circle the Bald was perfect. Check out the elevation profile here, it was tough with one section rated at about 24% grade. It's not the 3 miles of punishing climbing (peaking at 27%) that the Brasstown Bald held in store for the Pros later in the day, but it was enough for John and me.
After the ride we cleaned up and hit Hardees for lunch prior to hiking up Brasstown in search of the perfect venue. We found it about 200 yards before the 27% grade, or The Wall. Walking was torture, absolute torture. I think it would have been less painful to attempt riding up the course, maybe next year!

Anyhow here are some pictures of the big guys. Don't forget to check out the rest of them on our photo repository.

I can't imagine the physical pain this sign brings for the riders


The man from Montana, Levi Leipenheimer! King of the Mountains indeed!


George working it!


Missed the good pic of Tom :(


Tyler, not lookin so fresh after this stage.


QuickStep rider.


BMC rider


CSC rider


The only crappy part of the trip was dealing with the sobering reality of life. On our way down Brasstown we saw way too many riders riding way to fast for the conditions. There were so many bicycles, vehicles, and thousands of people walking down the mountain. I guess it was inevitable. There was a crash, and it was a bad one. We were probably 2 minutes behind this crash and luckily for the victim there was already a doctor onsite and within another minute or so there were 2 docs working on him. I gave up a heavy shirt to try and keep the dude warm and cover some of the fluids that should've been internal. Two doctors began chest compressions and rescue breathing, the scene was organized chaos for a few seconds but we finally managed to get some riders to head back up and get the rescue truck for this guy. It was not a good sight, I'm hopeful he made it off the mountain alive but I'm not sure if he did.
Keep your feet in the pedals, watch for the other guys, ride safe, and most importantly always within your limits.

Georgia on My Mind

The Tour De Georgia is going on right now. Today is Stage 3, Rome to Chattanooga. Friday’s stage is supposed to be a downright killer, and I’m going to see it! ROAD TRIP, ah yea… Thursday after John gets off work we are loading up the Burb and heading to good ole Georgia for a couple of days of camping, riding, and race watching. I’ve already booked the campsite and registered for a “challenging 36 mile ride” around Brasstown Bald.

Brasstown Bald is billed as one of the hardest climbs on any tour in the United States. I can’t wait to give it a shot. From what I’ve been able to read about the race we should be able to ride our bikes to the top of the mountain (should be a wicked climb). At the summit there is a “bike-check” run by a local church available for 5 bucks. We’ll check our bikes and find a good spot to view the carnage of the climb. I’ll do my best to get some photos.

For all you cyclists out there, grab a mirror real quick so you can how green you are with envy!

Style Points.

This is a picture from the EMS race last weekend. I wish I was completely in the air in this picture.

Holy Sheepsh*t Batman!

Today was a heck of a day, I just got home from a mountain bike race in Garner, NC. It was a benefit race for the Garner Volunteer EMS, they need a new ambulance. The race was coined a “4-hour Endurance Race”. To the true “endurance racers” this was not an endurance event. For me, it was definitely all about endurance. Typically my friends and I will ride in the afternoons after the workday has ended, hard work and a lot of fun for an hour. We might get 8 miles on a good day, 12 if we do a warm-up ride on the Umstead trails.
There was no warm-up for this ride, the solo males started at exactly 11:00. The endurance portion of the race began very quickly for me as my first 4.5 mile loop seemed exceedingly long. We were followed by the solo male single-speed dudes. The 1st place guy single-speed and solo male guys did 9 laps to take the win.
I had a mechanical on every lap, it was horrible to dismount then have to remount and begin the torture of peddling again. It is always so much easier if you never stop peddling. It was my seat moving (I like my seat, but not in that way!), my seat-post dropping, or dealing with chain-suck. At first I was disappointed but I think the rest stops for to fix the bike were helpful by the time I hit my 5th and 6th lap. I finished 6 laps in 3 hours and 48 minutes. Pretty good time for me, 27.5 miles @ a pace of 7.24 mph is probably the longest and fastest I've ever ridden on a mountain bike. I can’t wait to see what my average pace is when this season winds down.
I shouldn’t have stayed out so late last night, but I couldn’t miss the Hank CD release party. Maybe I rode fast because I was still burning last night's race fuel! :)~

Catch ya’ll later, and…

Thanks for reading!

Tour De US

We returned to NC from our whirlwind tour of the US. Well, I guess it wasn't really a tour of the US since we only went to Montana and California. The vacation was nice, it's always great to be with family. We accomplished many things on the vacation and have done a bunch of stuff since we got home Sunday. The vacation highlights include visits with family, yoga, snowboarding, massage, home cooked meals, beers, a car wreck (or scuff), an emergency Vet visit, real estate inspection, hiking, a tad of urban biking, excruciating airport layovers, and coming home to T-dog and all of our friends. We'll try to blog about the stuff we've done on the homefront soon. The vacation was great.


The property in Montana, homestead for my family.


View of the Beartooth Mountain range. If you look closely you can make out the ski runs of Red Lodge Mountain resort.


"Men in Trees"
Big Trees in Big Basin California. Alec and I hanging out in a Coastal Redwood.


Sandy, one of the newest Raleigh Firefighters. We are so proud of her, talk about huge accomplishments.


Kate doing Yoga, Tucker's version of "downward dog".