The Grand Canyon

We've been back from the Grand Canyon for over a week now and a lot of people have asked to hear about the trip. Eventually I'll have much more to say, but I want to make sure I have time to do it justice.

In short it was amazing. This is my third trip through the Grand Canyon on a raft, and each time I come away with something different. This was my first oar trip, and moving down the river with nothing but the sound of the oars creaking in the oar locks is a beautiful thing.

I'll probably type up and post my journal like I did last time, and I kind of hope to do more of a summary post prior to that. Stay tuned.

Back in the saddle

Back from vacation, it's time get on with the riding. Early on this year, I kind of figured that I wouldn't do as much cyclocross racing this year as last year. So far, I think I'm right. The long vacation has kind of gotten me out of the training groove. But cyclocross is fun regardless of your fitness level. Unlike a criterium, where getting dropped in the first lap means your race is over, in a 'cross race you're still out there having a good time by yourself.

My race start time wasn't until 4PM so I had plenty of time to sleep in before heading out to a new venue in Allenspark. The course had all sorts of technical features that made it a challenge for a slacker like me. It wasn't "scary" technical, but "fun" technical. I wish I had a course like that to practice on near home. I'm sure it exists, I just need to find it.

Since I missed the only points race of the season so far, I wasn't getting a call-up to the start line. It's probably better that way, since I'm feeling kind of slow. Instead, I pretty much started at the back and took it easy for the first lap. After that, I hit the gas, and started having some fun. I had a couple mechanical issues - dropped chain, pedal issues, and a front derailleur that wasn't adjust right, but whatever. Not sure where I finished, but I had a good time. Fun to have some teammates on the sidelines cheering/heckling.

Green Mountain Sports CX #1

Time for another race season. My season opener this year, as it was last year, was the Green Mountain Sports CX in Golden.

I started the day out by working as an official. This is a new thing for me. For the past few years, I've wanted to do some officiating and I finally made the time to take the test this spring. Why would I want to do such a thankless job? I feel like it's a good chance for me to do something to support the sport besides just showing up in lycra. I don't know how to balance racing and officiating just yet, but I'm giving it a try.

There are some racers who understand the officials and the thankless work they do, and there are those that don't. The latter should spend some time with the officials some day so they can learn to not be such pricks. (Thankfully, that's a small number of racers.) On the flip-side, I wish all officials would suit up and do some racing. There are things that may not be apparent to a non-racing official but may be obvious if they saw things from the other side of the scorers table. In the end, I think our officials do a fantastic job day-in and day-out and we wouldn't be able to have safe and fair competition without them.

A little side note about appreciative racers: I've volunteered at a few CX races before and now worked as an official, and generally you'll get some "thank you's" from participants. It's much appreciated. Yesterday as he crossed the finish line after an hour long suffer-fest, Aaron Bouplon used some precious breaths to thank the officials. I don't know Boops, but he always seems super nice at the races and really appreciates being able to race. I've heard him share his thanks on many occasions, and it's a really nice gesture.

On to the race. I took off my officiating hat, put on my lycra, and set out on the course for some warmup laps. In record high heat (90+), I don't know if "warmup" is the right term. I usually like to take a couple laps a low speed and then do some stuff at race pace to pick my lines and open up my legs. I just couldn't seem to get my engine to turn over in the heat. I was a little drained from being out in the sun all day (oh, and an Ommegang brewmaster's dinner the night before didn't help).

They used last years results to do call-ups, so I actually got the front row. My plan was to just settle in mid pack the first couple laps and then find some motivation to "race".

It's a tricky course for me - really loose and bumpy. I wish I could find something near-by to practice corning in loose dirt like that because I know I was going way too slow for a lot of sections. In addition to the loosyness, good passing sections were also limited. That made it really easy for me to get complacent, sit on someone's wheel for a while and recover until there was a good place for me to pass.

I was really unmotivated to race until someone near the start/finish was trying to encourage his friend to drop me. Then he had to go and say the Velonews magazine (my team) sucked. I decided that was good time to start going hard and I put at least 30 seconds into that dude that lap. Sometimes it's all about finding a reason to go hard. :)

I finished in the top 15, which surprised me. I'm on racing hiatus until mid-October. I probably won't be that fit, and I probably wont be that motivated to train, but I still hope to get out there and dominate the mid-pack. :)

Moto to Flagstaff??

Apparently, not everyone got the memo that Christine and I are going to ride our motorcycles to Flagstaff, AZ. That's probably because I never sent the memo.

A year and a half ago, Christine and I booked ourselves on a raft trip through the Grand Canyon. I've done it before (twice in fact), but on the last trip I just knew that it was something Christine needed to do. I recently looked through my journal from the last trip and these were the last words I wrote:

I need to take another Grand Canyon vacation. An oar trip next time though.

So that what we're doing. A 16-day float trip through the Grand Canyon with ample time for hiking to some amazing places from the river.

How could we possibly make this trip better? Motorcycles. We're going to ride our motorcycles down. We'll ride from Fort Collins to Durango one day and from Durango to Flagstaff the next. We've never taken a trip like this, so I have no idea how it's going to work out. If all else fails, we park the bikes somewhere and rent a car.

The bikes are equipped and ready to go. Maybe this trip is just an excuse to tinker with the bikes. Here are some of the things we've added:
- Cruise Control / Throttle Lock
- Extra tool storage
- Aux fuse box
- Heated jackets
- Highway pegs
- Bike-to-bike intercom
- Power jacks for jackets, cell phones, gps, etc.

I'm excited to get rolling.

Moto mayhem

In a few weeks, Christine and I will embark on our longest motorcycle ride to date: Fort Collins to Flagstaff. We've been busy getting our bikes and gear ready for the long haul.

I've spent a lot of time in the garage over the past week installing cruise control on my bike. Not a throttle lock, but full-on cruise control. Conceptually it's pretty simple. There's a control unit that can tug on the throttle as it monitors speed, tach, and brake. As you might expect, it's a little involved to hook it all up.

It started with a teardown of the bike. I had to remove most of the body panels, the gas tank, the air cleaner (harder than it sounds), and even the throttle bodies. Having never taken that much off the bike, it was a little scary and I often wondered if it would all go back together. From there, I had to hook up the control unit and all of the wires. Sounds simple in words, but it took a long time and several trips to the hardware store.



Finally it was time to put things back together and cross my fingers. Once I got far enough along in the reassembly I could hook up the battery and test my wiring. So far so good, everything seemed to be working. Then I finished putting the bike together and started it up. The first time I tried to start it, I had forgotten to hook up the fuel line to the throttle body and the fuel pump spit a bunch of gas on me. Nice. After rectifying that situation, the bike started up and ran perfectly. Pretty exciting.

Then comes the scary part - a test ride. I put on all of my gear and set out to see what happens when you let a computer (and a marginally competent engineer) mess with your throttle. I got out on an open road near the house and hit the "set" button. To my amusement, I could feel the computer take ahold of the throttle and maintain my speed. It was super sweet. I tested out all the other features and everything worked great. I'm ready for some long highway miles. I still have some finishing work to do (like mounting the control pad), but it's mostly done.

In addition to the work on my bike, I made a couple modifications to Christine's. She wanted to be able to stretch her legs out a bit while riding, so I added some highway pegs. That's still a work in progress as we try to find a position that's comfortable for her. I'm not ready to tackle the cruise control install on her bike, but for now I've installed a throttle lock. Unlike cruise control, it takes some adjusting as you ride, but it will help give the throttle hand some relief.

On the wardrobe side, Christine had some height added to her boots. Even with a lowered bike, it's hard for her to get her feet down. The added bit of sole really helps.

And to top it all off, we added some new white leather pants and a white leather jacket. Hotness ensued.

Weight weenie

When it comes to camping, Christine is a weight weenie.

As we were packing up to leave, she was debating on whether or not to bring her flip-flops for lounging around camp. She decided not to bring them because she didn't want the extra weight. (I don't know how much flip-flops weigh, but I'd guess you measure it in ounces.)

Later that night, she pulls an electric toothbrush out of her bag. It was awesome. We all have our favorite luxury items. Hers is a toothbrush.

(Mine is a wife. Does that count as a luxury "item"? I don't care. I don't like going camping without that bit of luxury. But I am glad I don't have to carry her...often.)

Browns Lake

It's the middle of August, and Christine and I finally went on our first backpacking trip of the year. Yeah, I suppose we "camped" during the Bicycle Tour of Colorado, but I don't think that counts. :)

After work on Friday, Christine and I drove up to Pingre Park road to car camp for the evening. That area gets a little crowded on the weekend, but we found a cool campsite off the road behind some big rocks.


Saturday morning we took a short drive down Crown Point road to the Browns Lake trailhead. We've hike to Browns Lake several times, and it's always nice to get back to an old favorite. Even though we didn't get there until Saturday afternoon, we managed to get our favorite camp site in the area. It's away from the other sites (camping only in designated sites here), and there's plenty of space.

In the past, I've caught a lot of really nice fish here. This time, I didn't have much luck. I caught a couple decent ones, and a couple that were so small I didn't know how they get on the hook.

Sunday morning we lazily slept in and cooked up some eggs for breakfast. We don't normally cook eggs because it's a bit of a pain. This time, we steamed them with spinach and cheese in these funny silicon cupcake cups. It worked great.


We didn't stick around long. Christine had a flight to catch, so we got out of there right after breakfast and headed home. I wish we could have spent more time out, but we'll take what we can get. It was a great time.