Happy New Years to everyone...anyone want to guess what my most important resolution is? I think that's getting back to blogging every day. It also might be to not crash into any
more fences after this afternoon's bike ride but I digress. I'll have a bigger 2008 wrapup/2009 plan coming soon but for now you can checkout our year on
Marni's blog. At least with my slacking the past couple months I have a lot of good stories saved up for rainy days and I can promise 2009 is going to be even more interesting.
The holidays were mostly quite relaxing, exciting at times (frozen pipe!) and fattening as usual. We went to St.Louis for Christmas and my mom has more tasty snacks in her house than any person, EVER. If I lived at home I'd have to retitle this blog "Fat Cyclist 2." A lot of coffee was consumed and I was summarily beaten in Scrabble and perhaps came out even at rummy. A tough trip for the RC and SC :)
The cousins (Teddy and Turbo) had a grand old time playing all week and suckering the humans out of food. Not the cupcake however. They are really cute together but at least for me it confirmed that I'd just prefer to own one dog myself. 140lbs of golden retriever is a lot of energy and fur.
Presents were exceptional, both given and received but that's always the case with my family. I recieved too much to list but I'll be well outfitted and clothed for the next year for sure.
My wonderful wifey got me a new bike frame with a little help from
Mr.Nice and the folks at
Vassago. I'll be building up my new Jabberwocky ASAP. I'd have started assembling today but I lack a couple crucial tools to prep the headset and BB for installation. Wifey got quite a haul of her own including her own climbing gear some TwinSexy clothing and a new pink Chris King headset. Bling!
I also got a really cool shadow box from my in laws to celebrate my CTR ride this year and I'm really stoked to finally have that stuff displayed in the house.
Climbing has pretty quickly become one of my favorite cross training activities and with my week in Missouri primarily a rest week combined with the fact that Marni and I were sick and the weather was generally very wet and nasty made the gym the best option for keeping from exploding from food intake. What's up Doc?
Sister came out to climb with us one day and did very well. She has been accepted to 6 out of 6 law schools she's heard back from so far too! Looks like I'll finally have my own personal legal counsel in a few years.
I got my butt kicked by some new routes and was ultimately denied a clean climb of the 5.12- I was working. Nevertheless it was a lot of fun pulling plastic in Missouri. Upper Limits is a decent gym for the midwest.
Marni continued to round out her climbing and is getting really good. This was a fun and odd 5.8 with some really goofy hand/foot matches and counter pressure moves.
My buddy from high school Michael Spear came out to climb with us too and we met a few of his nice new friends.
My dad, who is deathly afraid of heights, even came out for 2 sessions :)
And my mom also came for 2 sessions and is really good! She's never climbed before and made it up several 5.7s. Now we just need to get her to take the belay class and keep going!
Marni looking cute again :)
All too soon our visit had to end, even with staying an extra day so we could see my dad again and go out for pizza at Dewey's. At least this time I got to see my buddy Chad and his fiance plus some of my other high school friends. Marni and I played Rock Band with my little brother on Christmas but he had to leave the next day to visit Dallas. Speaking of that, my dad is highly likely to be moving to Dallas for a job very soon. If any of my blog readers know the area, in terms of cycling/running, or just in terms of good high schools and safe places to live, please let me know or leave a comment. I'm sure he'd appreciate some additional perspective.
Yesterday we spent the day in the car, making a "gas only" run from STL back to Colorado. Under 12 hours door to door but Marni, Turbo and I were still wiped and ready to be out of the car by the time we got home. I did manage to read
Jill's awesome new book Ghost Trails while Marni took the wheel for a few hours. If you've yet to read it, you're missing out and if you're already an ultra athlete, you'll connect even more with the stories. The fact that I know a bunch of the people in the book made me laugh that much harder in quite a few places :)
Today I did manage to go pick up my new fork for the Vassago. I'll be running the On One carbon fork to start out with and I'll take a look at the new Niner fork when it's released. As soon as I get the frame prepped tomorrow or Saturday I'll start assembly. I should have enough parts to get it rolling ASAP although I've got several full online shopping carts to replace stuff I'll be raiding from other bikes. Tonight I've got dinner with a friend and his new girlfriend and tomorrow it's supposed to be in the 60s(!) so outdoor riding and climbing are on the agenda.
2008 was quite the year and 2009 lays fresh in front of me, excitement bubbles strongly beneath the surface. T-16 days until my first race of the year!
Today's plans just got upgraded! Pugsley is giggling in the garage.
Today started out really great, got worse all day then gradually improved by the evening. At least it was really productive despite being stressful until dinner and the sweetest move ever, Vertical Limit. Tomorrow is another day. I did put Cliffhanger on my Netflix cue...just in case there are any more bad days lurking :)
No I'm not going to Everest, don't worry everyone. I just didn't have a good picture and I liked this one I found the other day. Wow today was crazy, AM intervals, babysitting until late afternoon, ride down to meet Marni, ship off two packages at USPS along the way, pick up my frame from Salvagetti (and a 2.4 29er Mtn King to try as a front tire) then off to climbing with Marni and Brett. Scored 119 "points" tonight climbing with one 5.11- clean and a 5.11 and 5.11+ with a big of hangdogging at the end of the night. The points aren't anything special, just a way to keep track of roughly how many/hard routes I do. Time for bed then up early to make wifey french toast. It's supposed to be warm tomorrow I think and Monocog is wanting to be ridden.
It's always windy here in the winter so I generally try to ignore the weather forecast unless it's really bad. While we were gone on vacation, one wind storm of 91 MPH blew down at least 10% of the fences in the neighborhood. When the forecast mentions "wind prone areas" that's my house. Luckily so far our house has survived all this without any major damage.
The hiker and baby train :)
A light morning snowstorm left the trees dusted with cotton candy clumps of white.
Turbo says, let's keep going!
I added a little more challenge to my hike with my heavy pack (liquid bricks) and super suit boots. But considering the other guys were hauling babies, I figure that just makes it even :)
Little Zuri finally sacked out!
I love winter. So pretty.
The sun even peeked out for a bit although it was still chilly. Probably in the low 20s, upper teens. Marni had her down expedition mitts on while I had slightly chilled hands in my midweight Pearl Izumi gloves.
What would I do without Turbo? He's so photogenic!
The weather this week look good and we're all settled in after the holidays. Time for some good outdoor hours.
Our climb is the separate rock to the right of the huge 1st flatiron which we climbed last time and bounded by the narrow "Spy" on the other side.
A little snowpacked trail...
...and a little hiking.
The approach to this climb is pretty straight forward. No bushwacking yet.
A leisurely 40 minutes later we were roped up and ready to go. I opted to start right at the closest rock formation and just angle left into the east face to get a little more rock time.
Preclimb mugshot.
I led up easy terrain for a ropelength and belayed Marni up to a nice big ledge.
She is always happy to have big belay stations :)
I kept angling right, working over a few gulleys towards the center of the face. Downclimbing into the gulleys was the hardest part but I tried to keep all the moves at 5.easy for Marni to follow. The route is claimed at 5.2 which I believe if you search around for the easiest stuff. I generally just climbed straight up towards my next goal so maybe there were a few harder moves but I still only plugged a few pieces of gear per pitch.
Me at belay #2, not as luxurious but still plenty of room and a bomber cam and hex belay.
The rest of the route to the top. This pitch was probably the most fun, likely due to the least amount of gulley hopping.
We watched climbers on the east face of the first flatiron all day, including someone knocking down some big ice chunks but we were all alone on the flatironette. There were ant trains of people all day long on the hiking trails. It was nice to be climbing.
Marni at the second belay.
We started somewhere down there ~350 ft or so.
Summit pic! The last pitch was easy and we downclimbed 10 feet off the back towards the Spy. We swapped shoes, coiled the rope, swapped gear around and headed down to the E.
Spotted this really cool rainbow effect in the clouds. Not sure what it is but it looked in person just like the pictures.
Marni and I have our eye on The Spy next :) Another easy ~300 foot flatiron climb that was to our right side all day today. That one is much narrower at the top. Only one month left until the raptor restrictions close off some of the routes until July so we'll have to be careful which routes we pick.
The cousins (Teddy and Turbo) had a grand old time playing all week and suckering the humans out of food. Not the cupcake however. They are really cute together but at least for me it confirmed that I'd just prefer to own one dog myself. 140lbs of golden retriever is a lot of energy and fur.
Presents were exceptional, both given and received but that's always the case with my family. I recieved too much to list but I'll be well outfitted and clothed for the next year for sure.
My wonderful wifey got me a new bike frame with a little help from Mr.Nice and the folks at Vassago. I'll be building up my new Jabberwocky ASAP. I'd have started assembling today but I lack a couple crucial tools to prep the headset and BB for installation. Wifey got quite a haul of her own including her own climbing gear some TwinSexy clothing and a new pink Chris King headset. Bling!
I also got a really cool shadow box from my in laws to celebrate my CTR ride this year and I'm really stoked to finally have that stuff displayed in the house.
Climbing has pretty quickly become one of my favorite cross training activities and with my week in Missouri primarily a rest week combined with the fact that Marni and I were sick and the weather was generally very wet and nasty made the gym the best option for keeping from exploding from food intake. What's up Doc?
Sister came out to climb with us one day and did very well. She has been accepted to 6 out of 6 law schools she's heard back from so far too! Looks like I'll finally have my own personal legal counsel in a few years.
I got my butt kicked by some new routes and was ultimately denied a clean climb of the 5.12- I was working. Nevertheless it was a lot of fun pulling plastic in Missouri. Upper Limits is a decent gym for the midwest.
Marni continued to round out her climbing and is getting really good. This was a fun and odd 5.8 with some really goofy hand/foot matches and counter pressure moves.
My buddy from high school Michael Spear came out to climb with us too and we met a few of his nice new friends.
My dad, who is deathly afraid of heights, even came out for 2 sessions :)
And my mom also came for 2 sessions and is really good! She's never climbed before and made it up several 5.7s. Now we just need to get her to take the belay class and keep going!
Marni looking cute again :)
All too soon our visit had to end, even with staying an extra day so we could see my dad again and go out for pizza at Dewey's. At least this time I got to see my buddy Chad and his fiance plus some of my other high school friends. Marni and I played Rock Band with my little brother on Christmas but he had to leave the next day to visit Dallas. Speaking of that, my dad is highly likely to be moving to Dallas for a job very soon. If any of my blog readers know the area, in terms of cycling/running, or just in terms of good high schools and safe places to live, please let me know or leave a comment. I'm sure he'd appreciate some additional perspective.
2008 was quite the year and 2009 lays fresh in front of me, excitement bubbles strongly beneath the surface. T-16 days until my first race of the year!
Wonder if I'll shovel the driveway in these later? Wonder if I'll get to use them for real this weekend? Oh man this picture is now making me laugh...who knows why?
12/3 Training:
Is it human nature or a sickness, to want to be challenged, to want to attempt things you aren't sure you can do? Is it a product of our easy life in modern society, where dinner is now in the fridge, not a uncertain hunt for wild game? I suppose I can't answer those types of questions easily but that unknown factor is certainly what drives my passion.
After a couple lazy months of no structure, I'm getting back into some regular planned activities. My main goal over the winter is to work on biking speed and power while rounding out my general physical fitness and spending a good amount of time doing endurance work that is not solely bike based. My next big trips are still yet to be determined but hopefully a good mix of cycling, hiking and mountaineering. I'd love to do some ultra running trips but my knees aren't quite ready to run over a couple hours yet so long foot trips will remain primarily hikes for now.
