Fall equinox's a'comin'

yesterday began with a bike ride up squaw pass-starting from bergen park-to echo lake and back down. took 2.5 hours. started at 8:30 so i was wearing the arm warmers, thermal base layer, and the groovy matching vc windbreaker vest (thanks christopher) to compliment my nutty vitamin cottage ensemble (aka the barney kit). there's practically no cyclists that early in the morning ascending the evergreen side of squaw, but i passed one anyways. it was a beautiful, penultimate day of summer with the aspens' colors changing. yeah, the date on this picture's some years old, but that's what i saw yesterday (i'm tellin' ya!). the weather was crisp and my pistons were okay. descending onto echo lake, i had a fierce headwind but that's okay, because on the return trip to bergen park i had a nice tailwind generously pushing me. i tried not to use my granny, but had to a couple of times because i don't want to go hard in the off-season (to be honest, i never really had an on-season this year). a butt-load of jet bikers were cruising up squaw too with their four-bangers and aftermarket exhausts redlining the straightaways. it's an impressive sound hearing them blow by me in their crotch missile aero tuck. there were your cruiser-harley-types too practicing for their sunday drives.
i rode early because i was meeting my in-laws and my family at home so we could go hike kenosha pass (as well as the rest of colorado). parking wasn't an issue because there's always somebody leaving. i portage mason on the kid kelty and it's off we go. it's always a hoot hiking with the family because my girls hike like it's nobody's business nowadays. there was a lot of hominids either riding or walking out on the colorado trail (the eastside of 285). saw alison dunlap sporting her luna bar kit. asked her if she's doing anything competitive and she replied she's semi-retired. what a cool girl. i remember meeting her back in the 90's in one of our u.t. cycling meetings. our plan was to hike up till it peaked then pull a u-turn. my new plan when carrying mason's to bring my ski-poles to augment my balance as they act like outriggers on a sea canoe. it also helps me when i use 'em like cross country poles giving me a little push as i go uphill (and braking when i descend). mason's yelling, "hi!" to all the people we pass making me deaf in one ear. i tell him to quit yelling. what mason also likes is when i get close to trees on the singletrack, i tell him to touch the bark or overhanging branches of the trees. so whenever he sees trees now he always reminds me to, "touch, daddy." he's cool like that. once we get to the apex, grandma reminds grandpa of a bench there were he can rest. i snap some pictures of the surrounding area when we get to the bench. the middle picture's from melissa and her esthetically refined viewpoint. the top one's mine. it's overlooking southpark with 285 meandering in the background. we hike a little further and maura and her no-nap-today self's already getting pooped-out and cranky. so we turn around and head on back. she trips on a root and cries a bit because she hurt her knee. she's really tired and mason and his 40-pound self translates into kid kelty's shoulder straps digging into my atrophied scapulas. i want to bellyache but i don't. it's the return trip anyhooses. on our way home we comment on how there's a long-ish queue at the coney island (hotdog) landmark. it's good if you like greasy spoon joints with artery clogging milkshakes to boot (remember denver's griff's hamburgers?).
at the safeway conifer complex, we have an early dinner at anthony's pizza and pasta. our family orders a sicilian-style thick crust pizza (vegetarian of course!), we devour it, and wash it down with pop (my dietary achilles heel). here's a bit of safeway conifer trivia: there's a new starbucks there and yours truly was their first ever customer. so, i received a pound of coffee gratis and they also took my picture with the caption: our very first!. how funny is that? so whenever i go inside for my nicotine delivery device every now and again i look at my picture. it's akin to listening to your recorded voice. "nutty" i say to myself whenever i look at that unreasonable facsimile of me on the wall. have i mentioned that i like that anthony's ny-style pizza?
at our house we start a bonfire, setup the lawn chairs, and veg so as to signal our end to a righteous, physically active day. we roast some marshmallows on grandpa's whittled branches to make s'mores that we eat for dessert. it's close to the girls bedtime and melissa and i are bear-hugging a kiddo each (on our laps, mason's already in bed), taking advantage of convection (as opposed to confection) heating made possible by a grant from our bonfire...a great end to a fantastic day of riding and quality family time. o yes...

last winterpark series xc race: point to point, king of the rockies

yo freakadelics. here are the results for today-13th place! coincidentally, that's the same place i came in for the last xc race with my complicitor kenny (see "links that i frequent"). this was by far the best off-road experience i've had racing yet. it was a lovely 25.8 mile jaunt in some of the most gnarliest terrain ever-let alone in a xc race! whoever thought of putting a (tipperary) creek crossing where the top of the water exceeds the bottom bracket height is nutrageous. anyhoo, like always, i was running just a wee bit late and since it was a point to point, i had to ride a wee bit tempo, 5 miles away from the ski area past fraser, to get to our staging area. no biggy, it beats getting there two hours early to register and sit around wasting precious energy. this time i pre-reg'd on-line and saved ten bones. there was a three mile fireroad that began before the climb. all the roadies got up front and pushed this insane pace. there were already people peeling off the front due to this insane pace (don't they know it's a 25.8 mile race with a wicked sawtooth profile?). welcome to colorado racing folks. the people who popped early were true mountain bikers because of the high rpms they had when they exploded backwards, plus they couldn't draft to save their lives. damn roadies (just kidding, it was kind of cool actually). billy, preroad this course a while back and gave me the 411 where the crucial holeshot would be (at the singletrack hillclimb off the fireroad). so, with this in mind i kept my pack position top ten-like. sure enough, with no warning the corner marshall pointed left (her right), and we rocket up the singletrack. billy also said to keep it in the middle ring, which i did. all good information. i pretty much stayed in this position until the final climb with some six miles to go. it was so immensely difficult for me at this point i had to put it in my granny; furthermore, my chain was so dry it kept skipping off the upper two cogs (the ones closest to the spokes). so i had to climb in a gear a wee bit more difficult for me to spin. this is where i got passed by a whole slew of people.
the insane part of this race was the people who were in front of me who turned on the after-burners on the downhills. for the rocky stuff it was just too much for my hardtail (instead of pointing and shooting like the dual boingers, i had to thread the needle to find the path of least resistance) but on the quasi-loamy, hard dirt, i didn't believe how fast we were flying. the speeds were fataly surreal. i bet we were humming at least 40 mph through some unbelievable (singletrack) scenery. it was awesome! another reason why my endorphins are pegging is how excellent my bike (other than the dry chain) responded. it felt as if my bike were an extension of my filipino pistons. she was righteous the way she gave me feedback and application of watts baby! i love my yeti (that didn't sound right). for a dollar i'll let you touch my yeti, if you want.
well, when the dust settled my blown-self finito'd 13. it's ite, but the endorphin cascade was off the charts. no flats, no ruined components, just a big toofy grin with my funkified pheromones kickin' stereo-like in my pits (my pheromones were saying, "check me out, i be glowing and sheeyat, muh-fuh."). oh yeah! all hail winterpark!
i didn't stick around for the schwag. i've already been there for six hours. did i mention there was 4,100 feet of climbing today? did i mention also, that i finished a 25,8 mile course in 2 hours and 27 minutes? did i again mention that today was pretty durn righteous? well, i mean to. well, cyclocross season here i come....

Hanging w/ Grant in El Paso (county, that is)-revised

woa. kenny. you missed a spankin' good time brah. we were thinking positive thoughts of you though on today's ride. when i mapquested grant's address, it's officially 97 miles door to door. that's all right though, it was my turn to go his haunts. here's the dealio with grant: i've known grant since the late 80's from our hometown of plano, tx. plano, is a story in and of itself really. anyhoo, we were roommates in college (hook 'em horns muhfuh!), lived in north austin (across the street from the state parole board), on a street called shoal creek, teammates on the plano schwinn cycling team and at the university of texas (hook 'em horns again muhfuh!-dats right), and even taught at the same school in plano. he, social studies; me, science. quite a long and storied past, but i digress...
right outside his door there's a whole series of trails were we can dump ourselves into and ride to some pretty spectacular topography with picture postcard vistas all around us. so we climb up to buckhorn, and he shows me some exceptional views like helen hunt waterfall and rampart range. buckhorn's scarily like the the scree fields at the top of the firecracker 50 singletrack. it's like a tightroping act, here's why. grant says the trail is pulverized granite and it's very scree-like, so any little bobble can lead your tire to some traction breaking rough which can take you over the edge if there're drop offs. the key is to go fast uphill and look where you want to go because if you slow down, you increase your chance to vacillate your handlebars where it can place your front tire in very loose gravel. grant's flying uphill (he's getting fit to race the leadville 100) and i'm working pretty hard just to stay in contact with him. i rarely put it in my granny, mostly my middle. once we get to the top of buckhorn we take some pix of this amazing vista. at the top are some cyclists who complain of motocrossers ehfing up the singletrack. grant's a pretty non-confrontational guy except when it comes to cycling. so he tell's the guy to pipe down because it's the moto-xers that maintain the trails in this here parts. grant warns me the downhill's pretty loose at some places, so we hit it pointing down. sure enough we're flying and any deviation off the packed gravel and my front tire's washing with it's own agenda. this is dangerous because there's a cliff off to my left. i spy grant's line and copy him to a tee. my skiing background gives me a tendency to g.s. turn it to scrape off speed with a natural turn without hitting the brakes. in this loose stuff, it just makes the front tire go squirrely. i lose it a couple of times and i throw out my inside leg to avoid smacking the ground. i hit some woop-de-doos and i get the giggles because on the apexes my stomach gets weightless and it makes me laugh in fits. nutty funny.
grant says this downhill's called jacks (upper or lower or something close to that). again it's like the firecracker without the babyheads.
our next singletrack's up palmer. incidentally grant climbs like a billy goat and we know the physiological, background reason why. insert harp-type music here, reminiscent of earlier times...
the summers in austin were spent scrounging for money to pay our apartment's rent. since we were cat a racers-grant thinks i sandbagged the cat b's-the graduate student friends we knew in the human physiology dept. were always asking the cyclists to be their guinea pigs in figuring out physiological triggers. we participated in a tour de france study where shaklee (a sports specific, dietetically nutritional l.l.c) was testing their energy drink. we had to ride a total of three hours (one day a week for a month) in various levels of intensity relative to our vo2 max (the way our body utilizes oxygen per kilogram body mass). the science behind it was, to see how our slow-twitch muscles retained glucose (clear=no glucose, dark-ish means glucose retention), during aerobic/anaerobic events (hence the 'tour' study). so, you ask, how do they sample our fast and slow twitch muscles? well, they biopsy a pea-six amount from our vastus lateralis during the ride and physically count, under a microscope (then we hop on the bike and finish the regimen). witnessing our own biopsy was more unbelievable than someone telling us we were getting a biopsy. they paid us for this. the nutty part was the scalpel they used to tease/cut our faschia in front of the lateralis was the same one in my dissection kit (i bought a nice one for my a and p classes). grant has the distinction of having mostly slow-twitch muscles; me, split fairly even between fast and slow-twitch. this translates-on rides-to grant is essentially a lung with the metabolism of a kangaroo rat. on endurance rides with him, i have to eat and eat and eat (and drink) in order to match his intensity (which on this day i couldn't). fast forward...now!...
he rides away from me at palmer and i ride at tempo so as not to be too far back. we bust a u-turn and shred it on the downs to keep it at three hours and for me to stave off mr. bonks. we hit this place called the "chutes" where it's a burmed, somewhat technical at speed, singletrack-like a luge course. the centrifugal force on the berms made the bikes, if you were crankin' it, ride the singletrack at some pretty obtuse angles. fast and nutty it was, thrilling mostly. total ride time was three and a quarter hours. for me that was good, because there were almost no rests and i was drilling it in the middle ring trying to keep up with him on the ups. wow. what a great ride. i showered, said my goodbyes to their largess' and headed back home to celebrate my mother in-law's birthday.
thanks grant and christina and next time kenny....

Last Day at Tahoe

it doesn't bode well for me when it rains on the last day. we planned the route i took to squaw for today on the truckee recreational trail (pictured). we brought all our bikes with us, but we didn't think maura would make the 10-mile round trip so we rented a 2-kid trailer and attached it to my yeti. it started to rain sure enough, but it didn't stop our ride. i must admit though, there's nothing more mentally ill than starting a ride in the rain. i don't mind if it rains on us when we're out there but before? booohooo.
maricel was a trooper and her new bike has 6 gears and a high-low chainring. on the way back i tried to teach her when to shift and she was awesome. she rode the whole ten miles with nary a complaint. at the end though, she said that her legs felt pretty "rubbery". she's awesome. may i add that maura and mason fought like cats behind me in the trailer. i had to ignore them because i didn't want their foolishness to ruin my ride.
to end this great, and last day on holiday, we decompressed at commons beach (pictured), right there in lovely tahoe city. the girls went shopping and i watched the kids play in the water and playground. they played for at least 3 hours and it's funny watching little people interact with other little people. there's kind of a hierarchy that's there. they definitely don't like whiners. for example, maricel and maura can knock off some monkey bars, but when a whiner needs help and whines for attention, the group pretty much ignores them. there was also this big rock where kids can free climb. what a great collection of objects for kids to be kids. a climbing rock, an elaborate swing-monkeybar-two-tiered slides-platform thingy. the grand finale was when i put both girls on one swing (facing each other) and pushed them so hard up in the air all they did was laugh, laugh, and laugh.
on our way back home to colorful colorado, we passed through elko, nv. it brought back fond memories of when kenny and i drove his corvette from reno to denver.

Tenzing Daddy

when they were younger, it was conceivable to do hikes 'round three or so hours in fairly technical terrain. nowadays, with mason close to 30 pounds, two hours of mildly technical terrain's pretty much all i can handle. the hardest part is taking off and putting the kid kelty (with mason) on. next year, though, i'll be damned if i'm backpacking with any of my urchins on my back. i considered a b.o.b. tricycle/babyjogger, but the wheel width's so narrow i've seen people dump it with their kids in it.
next year, it'll probably be shorter hikes with all three busting out some bipedalism with varying degrees of proficiency. my shoulder's are screaming every now and again when i hit the two hour mark; but, the trade-off's checking out things in awe with 10 brand new eyes.
this picture's of mason and me (and the rest of team m, not pictured) hiking cascade falls on our first, true day in the desolation wilderness of lake tahoe.

Lake Tahoe, Day Four

this morning was dedicated to mountain biking-shweeet! so i consult the handy-dandy guide book to see how to ride to squaw valley, home of the 1960 winter (duh) olympics. lo and behold there's a dedicated bike trail called the truckee recreational trail. 4.9 miles from tahoe city to squaw. i don the monkey suit (my teammates refer to it as the barney costume due to it's garish displays of purple-ouch!) and kick on down highway 89 to tahoe city onwards to sqizzy-squaw. it follows the truckee river which originates in tahoe city now being controlled by a dam. the trail's filled with families cycling so i say something encouraging as i pedal on by them. in the motherland-colorado-i'm assuming most ski areas are open to mountain bikers; therefore, california ski areas must be too. i get to the base at squaw and it's eerily devoid of any cycling activity. i spy a nice, juicy trail heading upwards and i ask a worker bee if this trail hooks up with a maintenance road to the top. he replies, "there hasn't been any mountain biking here for the past 5 years ever since a cyclist hurt himself pretty bad." back in my mind i hear the charlie brown wahhhhh, wahhhhh, wahhhhhh whenever charlie self-mulliganed. how LAY-YUM is that!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i was so psyched to tear some squaw valley terrain up and now this?! it's like, when you're supremely hungry, ordering a nice, juicy, veggie burrito and hunkering down on it and finding out it's a garlic, mayonnaise, and tapetum lucidum (it's what causes light to bounce from certain mammals' eyes and allows them wicked night vision) from the eye-balls of bovines-flavored. incidentally, the wahhhhh, wahhhhhhh, wahhhhhh sound it a trumpet (or coronet) blasting onto a the surface of water (as if in a fishbowl). the sound waves are muted because it's randomly bouncing off the surface of the water (due to water's adhesive and cohesive forces, and yes, i'm a geek). from that point on, my reptilian brain stem was in a f-bomb tape loop, slowly stewing and fermenting, poisoning my mellow-self, ready to pop and unleash holeee verbal hell if someone were to ask me what i'm doing here with a bike.
i head back to tahoe city, still in disbelief, go back up the granlibakken resort and do yesterday's ride in reverse. to spite squaw resorts, i did not buy a cheesy, touristy cotton-poly blend t-shirt. so there squaw valley wankers!
hooked up with my ass-kicking family and decompressed at meek's beach. the rains fell and we spontaneously decided to make a field trip to south tahoe, home of the '07 fires, heavenly ski resort (owned by vail and associates), and gambling. on the way there, highway 89 went on a ridge temporarily and on either side we saw lake tahoe on the left, and cascade and fallen leaf lakes (pictured). it was visually stunning and for i got a picosecond's worth of vertigo. strange.
at s. tahoe i scored a cheesy, touristy, cotton-poly blend t-shirt with characters assembled in this sequence, going left to right, h-e-a-v-e-n-l-y displayed where one's pectoral muscles would go. since this joint was owned by vail and associates it was formulaicly touristy yet mildly enjoyable (kinda like your date on ketamine). did you know, that at homewood resort kids ski free if they're less than or equal to 10 years of age? betcha didn't know that...

Lake Tahoe, Day Three

there are so many state parks here with camping that there's always plenty of places for people to leisurely and inexpensively enjoy lake tahoe without that yosemite-esque carnival atmosphere; and, the maintenance in these areas are nearly impeccable. you go to state lake park near the dallas, texas area there'll be broken glass in the bathrooms, litter strewn hither and yon, and you'd be surrounded by a bunch of drunk yahoos to boot. anyhoo, our handy-dandy guide book said that d.l. bliss state park has great beach front in lester beach; and, it's the beginning of the rubicon (hiking not the 4wd) trail. the sand at the beaches here is really coarsely ground, pulverized rocks; and for me, overtime it hurts my green feet (boo-hoo)when i walk barefoot on it (in the water as well). the beaches here have nenes (geese) walking around with little fear of humans. in fact, when i was pulling the girls on their floaties, a duck was grooming itself right near us. i gently touched its wing to say, "hello!" it jumped, and maricel and i giggled. i goosed a goose.
okay, the trail. rubicon trail ends at emerald bay. on its shores there's a historical landmark, a house, called vikingsholm. the original owners back in the '40s used old school scandinavian engineering to build vikingsholm. for instance, it has thatched, turfed roof without any nails keeping everything together. check out the topmost pic. in-between lester beach and vikingsholm we would also see: a lighthouse, rubicon point, and calawee cove-a smallish, sandy cove with less of a crowd there. the little bay with the tree in the background's one perspective of calawee cove; the polarized shot looking out towards the lake's another perspective. it's a 4 miler one-way to vikingsholm so we're pushing our timely luck with tenzing daddy portaging mason. we had to ask grandpa to watch the girls on the beach when we went hiking, of course he said, "yes", so off we go for about 2.5 hours, roundtrip. while hiking, the girls were completely content building sandcastles and jumping in the cold water to cool off (and repeating when necessary). calawee cove was picturesque and we made a mental note to hang out there later in the week. rubicon point was gorgeous too and i took a picture of it. from the pictures, it's the big dead tree in the foreground. the lighthouse should've been called the outhouse-it was lame (say lame, using two syllables!)!
after the beach, i went on a solo mountain bike ride on the tahoe rim trail (trt). not the whole loop but the part that started near tahoe pines. the trt was kind of technical and i took skip's advice and the route advice of a bike mechanic in a store called cyclepaths for my sub-2h ride. the ascent from tahoe pines led me to a vista called alpine meadows-a scenic, high alpine forest (with nobody there!). it was spooky quiet and super lush with this great light coming in from the trees' canopies. gorgeous. so i keep taking right handers and you really can't get lost out here-any downhill leads to the lake. so i'm middle-ringing the trail (it's comparable to riding at night, it's a hyper-alert olfactory situation where the legs pedal tirelessly) and geeking at everything. i see a trail marker for tahoe city, 3 miles it says. yup, 3 miles of downhill. it was sweet (again, there's nobody out here)! it dumps me into a private, quasi-posh tennis/ski club called granlibakken. here i tuck into my mt. aero position to take advantage of the downhill, paved streets to take me back to highway 89. wow!
before the in-laws go out for dinner, they agree to watch mason for a wee bit, so the remaining team m go on a bike ride (yup, maricel and maura ride now) to sugar pine point state park. there's endless, paved, two-way bike lanes here so we hop on the trail from our b&b to the sugar pine. at sugar pine, the ehrman mansion overlooks lake tahoe with a medium-lengthed pier going over the lake. when we arrive, it's twilight so the lake seems like it's glowing this faint, blue hue and nobody's on the pier. we walk out and you can see lake's bottom. it's surrealy transparent with this bluish tint, similar to the blue you see on glaciers. man, here's team m just soaking up this beautiful moment. nobody's talking and there's this electric hush around us we're feeling each other's camaraderie, familial bond-energy. it was downright spiritual, it was. you only feel like this in the inside maybe 10 times in a lifetime if you're lucky...