Last week in Colorado

Karen, Loreen, and I went out to Colorado for the week to PLAY!!
And play we did. We called the Super 8 in Salida our home for the week because it's very close to historic downtown Salida and on the main drag for each access up to Monarch mountain. The place has a kickin' continental breakfast with some tasty pre-made french toast, bagles and powdered doughnuts! All we needed prior to a day of fun.

Salida is a blast itself being 20 minutes away from the slopes, it has pleny of bars with great CO brews and restaurants with good eats. There's even a sweet bike shop for all your needs - including the repair of my broken spoke!

Sun - got into Salida about 5am. Slept until 10'ish then took in the fantastic singletrack! (Yes, the picture to the right is a rose between two thorns!)
Mon - chose to avoid the holiday lift lines and hopped on the bikes again - more singletrack!!
Tues/Wed - Ski'd in the fresh new powder. The snow just kept coming Thu - We were back in the mountains outside Salida on the singletrack.
Fri - Pulled a double today. For the first time in my 2 years going to Salida we actually got there before the lifts started. Ski'd until 1pm. Then went back down to Salida to ride the trail again. What a day!!!

Now it's back to the real world






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Ride vs Race

Spent the whole week in Colorado skiing and biking - yes both.
We pulled into the driveway at 2am this morning. So needless to say, Karen and I slept in until 10 am. Those sequence of events kept either of us from even considering Froze Toes. Not that I ever really considered it. My goal for today was to get a long ride in - road and mtb. Given the bitter cold temps and all the household things needing to get done after being gone for a week K and chose to do a road ride out to 6-flags and back.

Congrats to the men in yellow that raced Froze Toes. Looks like the team was well represented.

Goodbye Orbea - Hello Niner

I bought a used Orbea 29'er frame in 2008 just to try out the whole 29'er thing. It was a hard-tail Lanza. Turns out I would up consistently choosing to ride the Orbea instead of my full-suspension Ellsworth for all races, even Burnin' at the Bluffs and the BT Epic.

So even though I didn't do nearly as well as I'd hoped in the BT Epic, I survived it and loved the 29'er hardtail feel. Thanks to TK, Ghisallo is getting it's team members killer deals on Niners. So I had to upgrade and bought a Niner Air9! Fortunately, all components from the Orbea except the seatpost fit the Niner.

I took the Niner out on its first ride yesterday in Castlewood with John Peiffer and needless to say, I'm thrilled with the Niner!


I really wanted the frame in orange but they stopped making the Air9 in that color in 2009. I thought about looking for a 2008 but they also increased the rear wheel clearance on the 2009s so I had to stick with a 2009. (The Orbea had very little clearance and riding in mud was an issue.) So I went with the "Atomic Blue" color. I love the color but am not thrilled about one aspect of the color - it glows in the dark! Yep, it literally glows in the dark.

What the heck..

You know, I've been building Web sites for over 10 years and have never had a personal blog. So, what the heck, I may as well give it a try. I can't promise any highly intellectual thoughts or muses. Can't even promise it'll be entertaining or that I'll use proper syntax, grammar, or spelling.

It's MLK day so I'm sitting in the office trying to get caught up on things around the house. It's also 26 degrees out. The road ride I had planned for the day is scrapped, so I'll probably head down to castlewood for an hour or so. It's supposed to be a rest day, but on a sunny day off work it's hard not to ride!