Sundance

Dave says: It was a fun weekend driving down to Sundance on Friday after work to preride the course. We camped a couple miles above the resort in an area where there was still snow on the ground. Here's the crazy part, we actually slept in the back of the Civic with the seats folded, the air mattress blown up, and our feet sticking down to the end of the trunk. We brought a tent, but believe it or not this was actually more comfortable. As for my race, it was a throw down from the beginning with the same guys who I had raced the previous Wednesday in Draper. The course was super fast and in excellent condition. Sundance has always been one of my favorite venues. Fourth was another good consistent result as I moved up a place from last week. It was fun to hang out with the Kuhl/Scott Team under the giant team tent post race. Also, Alisha impressed everyone this weekend with a great win and pulled together a strong comeback on the final climb after a rough crash. Nice!

Alisha says: This was technically my first real mountain bike race and I was pretty apprehensive about it. I debated back and forth on weather to do it or not even after preriding the course the day before. The race was mostly fun except for the two crashes that I had. Once I just kind of tipped over but the second one I was going a little to fast down a hill into a switch back for my comfort level when I hit some rocks wrong and went crashing over the front of my bike to the ground (I now have a few scratches and a huge purple bruise on my quad muscle). I jumped back on my bike and continued to ride on. From the beginning I duked out the race with one other girl from my category. I would pass her on the uphills and then she would pass me on the downhills. Luckily for me the race ended on a uphill. I had to work to catch her but as I cruised by for the win she said "@#$% you can climb." It was a fun time but I don't think I am converted to mountain biking quite yet.

5 Spot

Tonight was the rescheduled Draper race that had been postponed due to the Memorial Day rain and had been cut to a mere two laps. At under two hours, this meant that the race would go like a sprint from the beginning. Typical Dave-Style racing meant I was on winner Mitchell Peterson's wheel right from the go and tried to ride at a pace above my ability level for as long as possible. The best part of the race was some seriously tight singletrack downhill through a dense forest. After a lot of ups and downs in my racing this season, it was good to have a predictable race where the people that should have beaten me did and the people that shouldn't have didn't. The bike rode perfect and fifth was alright for me this week.

Rainy Day BBQ

We woke up on Memorial Day to the sound of rain. It had been pouring all night and Dave's mountain bike race was rescheduled. However, this gave us a chance to fix up the free BBQ grill that we got off the internet. We had to take it apart into several pieces to fit it into the Civic, but when we had it all put together, sanded, and painted it actually looked pretty good. Then, it was time for a trip to the Meat Aisle at Wal-Mart where we got turkey burgers, turkey dogs, a propane tank, and some super high quality 99 cent grill tools to match our ultra-nice grill. After riding the trainer bikes inside while watching Tour de France DVD's, the rain had finally stopped and we busted out the grill for some sweet cooking action. Dave showed his bbq skills by burning the hair off his hand while attempting to get the automatic ignition to work. Too bad we don't have a picture of the fireball to post!

Before:

After:

Double Deuces

Yesterday Dave and I did the Garden Creek Gap Road race in Idaho. The course was a 25 mile loop with a sweet 3+ mile climb through the gap, and the finish was at the top of the hill. Dave's race was 2 loops while I only had to do one. It was a bit on the cold and windy side and there even was some rain towards the end of the race. We both had a fun time and both finished 2nd. With Dave's 2nd place finish he now has enough points to be upgraded to a CAT 3. A little over a month ago we also did East Canyon Road race where Dave finished 3rd and I came away with the "W" which was pretty exciting.

Gardening

We finished putting in our garden last night as the sun was setting. Here's our two rows of tomatoes and a third row where we planted peas and beans. Just around the corner to the right are two circles of zucchini and squash seeds. This is our first attempt at growing anything so we're hoping that at least some of our plants survive. Our only living house plant is a plastic fern that I bought Alisha as a joke. Parker, Christine, and Kaylee all joined us last night as Christine is starting summer school at the U. Hopefully we'll have some cute pictures of Kaylee to post next week.
















In other news, the MTB race at Soldier Hollow went from good to bad to worse as I started in the lead (as shown from this pic at the start) only to fall apart. I had the stomach flu at the beginning of last week but had made a bit of a recovery. Unfortunately, a few hard laps in the heat twisted my stomach inside out. The best part of the day was hanging out with the team at Brian Tolbert's little chateau on the river at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. It was a fun BBQ even though we got worked in a fierce game of badminton.

Buckskin Slot Canyon

Saturday turned out to be quite the adventure as we tackled Buckskin, the "world's best slot canyon" with Dave's parents. The 21 mile hike was almost entirely in the bottom of a deep, narrow gorge and the scenery was amazing. The trip began with a camp out at the trail head about 40 miles outside Kanab on Friday night followed by an early morning start on Saturday at the crack of dawn.

We had been through some cool slot canyons before, but nothing compared to Buckskin's eleven hours in a canyon so deep that we rarely saw the sun. Water-carved formations disfigured the sandstone walls while logs jammed thirty or forty feet above the canyon bottom provided a glimpse of what the canyon might look like during a rainstorm. The hike out was up another slot canyon, Paria, which eventually widened into a desert wash. By the end, we were dragging and both ran out of water, but Dave's parents were still spry.

Best Race...Ever!

Wow, my first post on the brand new blog gets to be about my best finish ever (2nd of 18) in the pro category. After a strong start to the season at the Rampage followed by a not so great DNF at Cholla, I was hoping to bring my A game to 5 Mile. As always, I go too hard from the gun, but it was nice to pull away from the field for a bit and not eat dust at the start line. A few miles in, I looked over my shoulder and Bart Gillespie was on my wheel. I hung with him until the back part of the first lap where I managed to nail a rock with my back wheel in a gravel-filled wash and go down. I guess that's the price of trying to ride above your ability level since Bart is pretty amazing. Fortunately, nothing was broken and I got back on track pretty quick.

Coming through into the final lap Alisha yelled that someone was behind me and I looked over my shoulder to see Alex Grant less than a minute behind and ready to crush me. Good thing I had a little gas left in the tank (probably from being hopped up on power gels) and widened the gap on the last lap. Gillespie ran away with the "W" by ten minutes and I got Grant by 3 minutes for second. It was a good day for the Kuhl/Scott team with podium finishes for several riders and KDay taking 5th in pro. Thanks to Alisha for taking her whole Saturday to hand me bottles and sit out in the sun and dust. Also, she's taking pretty good care of me since my knee has swollen up from my crash and I've been hobbling around all day. Looks like it may be a couple days before I'm back in the saddle, but I can't complain since it wasn't until a few hours after the race that it stiffened up.