• I have been riding Marta a lot lately. I've already reached about 425 miles for the year. Now this may not seem like much to those of you that are not mountain bike riders, but those of you that do the singletrack along the front range know that with the climbs and all the technical stuff I've been riding this year, it is a decent amount of miles. I'm usually not to this amount of miles until the end of the season. I'm on pace to eclipse my best year by a couple of hundred miles if not more.


• I had a wonderful Father's Day. It started with a twenty mile ride at Waterton Canyon, followed by a couple of hours at the Deer Creek Pool. Then we went home and I grilled steaks for my parents and the in-laws.


• My Father's Day gift from Suzanne and the kids is a guided mountain bike trip from Western Spirit. I've done their Brian Head Singletrack trip four years ago and had an amazing time. They haul all your gear as well as do all of the (gourmet!) cooking. So all you have to do is ride, ride, ride, and setup/teardown your own camp. The trip I am doing this time is the Colorado Singletrack. It is their hardest trip. We meet in Durango, then they shuttle us to Telluride and we will ride back to Durango. The entire trip is between 8000 and 12000 feet and has quite a bit of technical riding. I'm going in late August and it cannot come soon enough as I'm stoked!


• Suzanne went on a PMS (Preserve Mom's Sanity) trip on Sunday and was gone until Tuesday afternoon. She and the girls went to a spa in Pagosa Springs. The kids and I had a couple of awesome days together. Sunday started off with Alex's soccer practice, then we took their new bikes to the park to practice riding their two wheelers for a while. Next was lunch and a quick trip to Barns and Ovals (AKA Barnes & Nobel) to pick up a few kids books. Afterwards we came home and played some video games, Lego Star Wars, for a while. I whipped up some spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, the kids showered, we read a few chapters of How to Eat Fried Worms that we purchased earlier and finally called it a day. Monday AM started with a trip to take the dog for his yearly neurologist visit (for his epilepsy). We then went to lunch at the Handlebar and Grill and headed to the zoo for a couple of hours. We left the zoo and headed straight to the movie theatre to watch Cars. After the movie, we came home, I whipped up some Mexican, tacos, tostadas, and burritos, and it was time for bed again. The kids are still tired as I kept them so busy and they had no down time.


• I went riding at Mt. Falcon today and for the first time in my life I saw a bear in person (besides the zoo which by the way has two really cute black bear cubs right now). We were about at the half way point of the Devil's Elbow loop, when I scared a black bear cub off the trail about 20 yards in front of me. I heard something rumbling around in the bushes nearby as well. That was enough for me. I don't think I've ever dismounted a bike as quickly as I did. I got behind my bike and baked up the trail as quickly as I could. I was in front so I stopped the other two riders with me and we all decided that we didn't want to chance running into mama bear so we turned around and headed back.

Posted @ 6/28/2006 10:00:00 PM | 0 comments

Posted @ 6/15/2006 12:57:00 PM | 2 comments

1. Web Users to Patrol US Border - What a waste of tax payer money. Even if people are watching, what is the chance they can get somebody to that location in time to actually catch the person. BTW, why are we so afraid of the immigrants coming to the US? For one, I plan and making sure my kids get a good education so they won't even be competing for the same jobs as the immigrants. I know it is not just jobs that is at issue here but this idea is one of the lamest that I've heard in a while.


2. Coma Woman Mix-up Pains US Family Basically this article talks about two young girls who were in car crash and the bodies got mixed up. The problem was that one of the girls survived and the other did not. I'm sorry, I don't care how beat and up and swollen the bodies were, I think I would recognize my children's bodies. It is amazing it took so long for either family to realize this. You would think a simple thing like a comparison to dental records would also have be done. I'm at a loss for words on this one.


3. Ethics Training for US Troops - I think ethics training is synonymous for parenting. I'm sorry, if you don't know that it is wrong to tortune or kill innocent people, you are shouldn't be in the military. My guess is that many of the young men and women in the military did not have a lot of other options due to the fact that their parents never did their job while their children were growing up. If the soldier do not already know this kind of stuff, do you think the traing will really help?

Posted @ 6/02/2006 05:10:00 PM | 0 comments