I was cutoff

An artist rendition of "the incident" from my ski day at Winter Park with Barry, Kade and the Squires Crew. This is Kade's rendition of what happened, although he technically wasn't present at the time of the crash, his father Barry rehashed it so many times throughout the day that I'm sure it is etched into poor impressionable Kade's memory forever.

I've been anxiously awaiting this photo after I heard Kade had been working on it. I got a great laugh out of it and decided it needed to go on my blog for today. I plan to put it up on my office wall.

Thanks for the picture Kade, I love it.

Lunch Loop

As spring and Daylight Savings Time approach, I'm trying to ramp up my riding. I've found a great 10 mile loop that I have been doing at lunch. Its a great loop as it has 5 miles of gradual climbing, then kicks it in harder with a much steeper 6th mile before cresting and letting it rip back down to Boulder.

This week, I did this loop 3 straight days. Tuesday & Thursday I rode it with John "The Punisher" Perry and did a solo ride on it Wednesday. John is a much stronger climber than I am, he never seems to be hurting. I am hurting before pulling out the parking lot, but I can tell it is getting easier. I have found two weaknesses in John at least: 1. resort skiing 2. techinical descents on the mountain bike. I'm just glad to have found any chink in his armor.

I think I'll take tomorrow off to save my legs for skiing on Saturday, but if the weather stays as nice as it has been this week, I might suffer through another climb.

And to keep it from being just boring words, here is the elevation graph that my GPS spits out for this loop.

(2 + 2) / 2 = 2 Too Many

As a favor to some friends who were in desperate need of a doggy sitter, we have been watching over their 2 dogs this weekend. Things have been hectic at times. 4 dogs inside is too many for sure, especially when they are medium to large sized beasts. Some highlights of the weekend:

1. One of the visiting pooches chewed out of his kennel
2. The other pooch that remained in the kennel cried and whined at 3:15 a.m. till Jill got up and let it out
3. Countless amounts of fights, mainly instigated by one of the visiting dogs, over various toys/food/etc
4. Both of the visting dogs peeing inside once each (at least it was on the tile)

Its been a long weekend with minimal sleep, but it all ends tomorrow morning when I take them back to their home. However, Jill & I did get a very enjoyable sunny (40ish deg) day on the slopes yesterday. We did 19 runs from 8:30 - 2:30 with a small break for a slice of pizza and a cookie, which left us with pretty tired legs today. I passed on two mountain bike rides today due to the windy conditions, but ended up doing some geocaching just to get out of the house for a bit today.

Storm of Death! Snow Flurries of Terror!

Well the weather forecasters hyped this storm for three days, and it turned out to be a dud. We stayed close to the house on Sunday thinking the blizzard was looming only to wake up this morning and see about an inch, maybe two, of snow on the ground. They had been calling for 10-14", but so much for that. I think Jill might be right, just don't watch the weather and then you won't have any idea what impending doom is coming your way.

On a different note, I took Friday off to ski with some extended family at Winter Park. Great day on the mountain except for the idiot girl who decided to start across the mountain without ever looking up to see that I was coming off the upper bowl at about 30mph. I had two choices, one of which involved smashing into her on this narrow chute. I took the other one and tried to hockey stop and shave 30mph of speed off in 10 feet. I ended up hitting the edge of a tree well and going down hard. Landed hard on my right shoulder, which I'm relatively certain resulted in a minor separation. This is my 4th or 5th time to separate a shoulder so I'm getting good at diagnosing them myself. It didn't keep me from skiing on, but I could tell that it was hurt.

The shoulder is sore and stiff, but feels nothing like my left shoulder did last May. I expect with some rest days it should be good to go by next weekend. The crash was result of both of us being at fault. I was going too fast in the narrow chute, but that girl really should learn to look up slope before starting from a dead stop. I've now learned my lesson that during Spring Break season you can't expect everyone to know all the etiquette on the slopes and I've got to dial it down a bit. At least I had my new helmet on.

Here and there....

Well its been a whirlwind week or two. Started in Steamboat Springs skiing for a couple days. Return back to the Front Range, work for a couple of days then headed to Copper Mountain to join Jill's parents for a couple days of skiing at Copper.

Skiing at Copper was uber cold, but the snow was great. Wind chills were reported in the -30 range, and when you account for the fact that I ski anywhere from 30-50mph on a blue run, thats pretty darn cold....One of the few days I've had to stop and warm up mid-day. As I always say though "there is no such thing as a bad ski day". That holds especially true when its mid-week and you should be working.

Drove back from Copper to see some snow for the Boulder valley. After a white-knuckle drive to work on Friday morning, I was rescued by Sarah & my Dad (who was just passing through town on his way back to Oklahoma) for some breakfast at Lucille's. We spent the day just hanging out then hit the sports bar to watch OState just miss upsetting KU in the Big 12 tourney.

We spent a pretty quiet weekend without skiing or doing much of anything. Work here in Boulder for a couple days then I'm headed to Sacramento for an overnight trip to a customer. Get back Thursday evening and may hit the slopes with some relatives on Friday. I'm at 15 days on the mountain with a month left to go in the season. I'd like to hit 22-24 days this year but I'll be happy with anything over 20. I love living this close to skiing, it helps get me through the winters.....

Till next time.

Assault on my legs

Three straight days of pushing my legs to the limit. I'm determined to be in good biking shape this summer so I can manage the brutal climbing found on a lot of great rides near the Front Range.

Thursday - 19 mile mountain bike ride with a 9.5 mile climb
Friday - Full bore skiing at Steamboat Springs
Saturday - More skiing at the Boat. 17 runs without a break and nearly 23k vertical feet of drop skied from 10:30am to 3:00pm.

Below is the GPS Elevation track from our Saturday ski day and then the Thursday bike ride. I was supposed to go for another bike ride today, but decided to push that till tomorrow after having my first ski crash of the year (unfortunately at 25mph on an ice field). Ouch.

17 runs with no stops....We hit the slopes hard on Friday (no charts as GPS was acting up) then again on Saturday. John Perry and I did 17 runs from 10:30 - 3:00pm without stopping. We ate on the lifts, and never had a lift line to wait in. Not the best snow, but a punishing day on the mountain nonetheless


What goes up, thankfully gets to come down with minimal effort. These types of grinding climbs are just the thing I need to get in shape for the upcoming biking season. So far I'm off to a good start just have to stick with it.