Got in 6.5 hours in this week!

Great week of riding. Two mountain bike sessions with Billy et al. and one road riding session today. Tuesday. Billy, Jeff, and I go do White Ranch. White Ranch is ranked 44th globally from the website singletracks.com; and is considered advanced. So there's this wicked cool cross-country race in WinterPark coming up and what else than doing White Ranch to get our chops in fighting shape? It's a series of loops looped onto other loopy-loops that can get one loopy looping it all together. We do two loops that make it long-ish and here are three guys that normally don't ooze testosterone but when our three chemistry's mix, it turns out to be an oh-so friendly $hit on your neighbor ride. Truly though, we are friendly. It was a hard ride and I tried to push it (i.e. where we normally rest, I tried to drop it a gear and march on). We've ridden with people-not even doing the long-ish loop-where it turns out to be a three hour ride; but with us, it was two hours 11 minutes (Jeff's time). Coulda been shorter if my boys wouldn't've taken a break. I still love them though. You should've seen us climbing, we looked like a synchronized mountain bike team. You couldn't've put a penny between the rear tire of one leading and the front tire of the followers. It gave me chicken skin when I was tail-gunning the formation. Got a scratch on my right arm cutting an apex a wee bit tight and not watching the tree branch sticking out (boo-hoo). Not a whole lot's being said when we're in the zone. Friday. Did Mt. Falcon. It too is rated advanced and has a climb that just flat out sucks the life out of you. Alec, Kevin, and I started before Billy and his wife got there due to my time commitments. I didn't climb it was well as I liked but got my salvation/penance through self-torture for the transgressions I committed during the work week. My new fork's a winner-albeit heavy as all hell-and the U-lock feature gives me more (or less) travel on the fly. The lockout feature's cool too on long, sutained effort climbs. My only performance caveat is when I have maximum travel (130 mm), the bike rides like a chopper and is not so fluid around real tight switchbacks; but on the downhill straightaways? Forgetaboutit. The weekend was spent with my son since all the girls went hither and yon in various configurations. Melissa had a girl weekend in a posh house at a ski resort whilst my beautiful daughters had a sleepover at Grandma's. That left me with the Moose. We had a great time. We spent it cycling, reading, doing chores, and eating salmon steaks and various junky items along the way. It was great! Sunday, Grandpa watched him for two hours while I got my road climbing session in near my house. A great week! As Mr. Miyagi said, "Balance Daniel-san (except my name's Michael!)." Here's me capturing the ever-so-crafty North American Moose on the move!