Laborious Day Weekend

my work space: didja like the way i fabricated my chainsawing "y"s?i rented one day's worth of a hydraulic log-splitter again. after we piled on 4 toyota tacoma's bed-worth of wood to our house and two bed's worth to grandpa's our tee pee source woodpile still looked pretty good. so, after yesterday's splitting we got the tee pee woodpile back to it's original height. i do believe we are ready for a record breaking winter and back-to-back days of firing up the stove if need be. also why we need butt-load of wood are on the early winter days when it's cold as all hell, or the malingering spring months, with little snow on the ground and we need to fire up the stove to get the cold edge off. we, grandpa and i, got up early and started splitting by 9am and stopped by 3pm. our first, major, uncut log pile from the previous owners, is pretty much gone. there are two more major uncut piles left. after that, i don't know what we'll do. guess we'll have to buy our firewood; but that's a long way away kids. monday we'll again distribute the firewood booty accordingly-aaahhhhrrrrrrr!
the girls are gone this weekend for a girl's only retreat-that leaves the menfolk remaining. they're getting back tomorrow. it was nice for them to quasi-skedaddle (in the most chill terms) for a while. we're pretty much homebodies (the menfolk that is). it's good that i get the alone time with mason because he fights for attention when his sister's are around and every now and again maura really likes to dig in him. ahhh, sibling rivalry...
the weather here's just slightly starting to change. the morning's are getting chillier. i actually have to put on a shirt nowadays when i let my doggies do their bodily excretions in our yard. where we live you can't see our neighbors. our neighbor who shares the common dirt driveway off the main street's in a little geographical depression below us-so we don't see them. hence i can get away with, early in the morning, standing around in just my boxers. truly there's nobody around at six or so in the morning 'cept me and my doggies.
sunday, after fixing waffles for the menfolk, i went for a ride out at pine valley ranch park.
it's a pretty cool place to mountain bike and it's pretty close to my house. it's been a hot summer up there and the gneiss, crushed rock makes it super loose and exceptionally sandy. at the beginning the north fork of the south platte river parallels the trail.there was a major fire in this area back in 1996 and the flora's kinda making a rebound. at the beginning there's a long-ish climb-buck gulch trail-and i snap a picture of this funky lookin' tree on the way up.i think it's a male tree. there's nobody else out there and i go so late it's always threatening rain. at the skipper trail it descends and here, you get to see another angle of the fire damage back in the day.at the junction of buffalo creek camp ground or back to homestead via miller's gulch, i snap away at the high point and at the rock formations at this particularly wide open area.
this is towards buffalo creekthis is where i came fromit's purty out here ain't it? as i'm snapping away another cyclist goes by me and after i put on my gear and several minutes pass i try to catch him (it must be that dreaded testosterone dealio). when i catch him (what seems like several miles later), i ask if i can pass and he lets me. i let 'er rip on the downhill but slow down or stop completely if the trail's skinny when i see hikers. he catches up to me. it's back to the car and my obvious lack of fitness is appalling. oh well. at least it was a glorious day. monday, i'ma clean the house so the rest of my family'll come home to something resembling order-or at least hair-free. the reason why i'm so snap happy is because i just purchased the nikon coolpix Ll8 because after 4 years of faithful service, my sony cybershot with 3.2 megapixels stepped towards the white light. i'm sure the d.a.t. tapedeck and the auto-reverse walkman'll be there to greet it...

Wayne's World (w/ addendum)

today was a good day. the only thing that wasn't good was our two dog's fighting. we are currently experiencing a changing of the guard here. ruby the up-and-coming self-perceived, alpha is challenging the old guard-adela. the most vicious fights are between females and their last three i thought we were going to have to bury one. it usually ends up with ruby pinning addie to the ground with both their jaws locked onto each other's faces. not a pretty sight and it gets my adrenalin off the charts. it just sets everything into a foul vacuum. ah!
okay...count to ten...phew! ite den. let's begin...
met my teammate and homeboy kenny; and kev from homey trinity fame at white ranch today at 7am.
irene and kev's sweet cj
check out irene's motor (that's kev's hand)
kenny fabricated the aluminum duct work. check out the sweet garrett turbo! we all realized-all too soon-how far out of shape we were as compared to mid-season. all the technical stuff we usually ride we walked today; but since it was just us three we didn't take any breaks. kevin was climbing stronger than what i usually remember; my butt was climbing slower than i particularly remember...after kenny went boom-boom he pumped up his tires for one of the gnarly descents.it was a particularly beautiful day up here at white ranch. i snapped some of our surroundings when kenny was pumping up his tires. (addendum) kenny and i were explaining to kevin after a difficult ride, that today was way too much work for us. usually, when we road ride, if there's an incline we just pedal harder and tap out a rhythm that matches our heart rate and cadence. we forgot how difficult it is to mountain bike: having to unweight, slide towards a center of gravity, body english the singletrack, synchronizing the pedals at the 12 o'clock so as not to bottom out your pedal stroke on an obstacle-things like that that completely differentiates mountain riding from road.
today is also the day my hahn af base brother wayne was in town from south carolina. the last time we were together was back in 1986 when we were stationed in the rheinland-pfalz stadt auf deutschland! it was by far the most memorable travel experience i've ever had. i was 18, single, living in germany near the benelux region of europe. i met wayne et al. in the hahn ab ski club. every weekend we'd go to some place exotic to ski (i.e. france: chamonix-mt brevent, aiguille du midi, les houches, les grand montets; austria: st. johann, st. veit, sölden-glacier skiing on the 4th of july; die schweiss: davos; undt deutschland: garmisch to name drop some heavy hitters), enjoy life, and to get hammered and converse with like-minded europeans. when we weren't skiing, wayne and i pushed each other on the road riding scene. again just traveling down to the mosel river from our base and riding to wherever we wanted to and to get back by sundown on most occasions (after getting rained on in the german spring and early summers). it was such a carefree, hedonistic lifestyle. we were just hoping our president wouldn't interrupt our fun with a war or something. the cool thing about living as guests in a different country was they'd play germany's national anthem before ours to end the conventional duty day. i always thought the german national anthem was a pretty rockin' tune. i digress. anyhoo wayne was in town and i took my eldest and youngest child out to estes park to catch up on old times. it was great. wayne's still wayne, except more mature and more focused. he's on a weight loss plan and we intend to tear some shizzle up like we used to skiing and cycling in the very near future. i can't wait! it was truly exquisite to see him and for him to see my young 'uns. i had a pretty silly smile on my face for our 2 hour ride home. i'm glad i went out to see him.

Back At Work Kids

i miss you lake tahoe!
well. all good things come to an end. no more summer days (daze?) running around with my oh so awesome children anymore. my butt's back at work! yup. survived my first, full week back at the high school. this year my assignments are ace! i'm teamed up with my 9-year co-teacher associate linda and i finally got honors biology. it's not that i'd ever complain but i've been taking it for the team for the past three years running. taking the harder than usual assignments. not because they're academically challenging per se (they are!) but because it's out of my comfort zone. okay. i guess that's why i also volunteered for them because complacency's 'bout a beeyatch! anyhoo after taking it for the team they gave me my dream schedule.
so here's my breakdown. on certain days-i'll call 'em red days-i'm teamed up with my homegirl and colleague, linda; on other days-i'll call 'em black days-i have my honors classes. i love my kids and i love this schedule. i'm still working my ass off though! especially at home just to keep from drowning from the grading and the logistical setup of everyday's class.
i think y'all would be surprised of what types of technologies are in today's classroom. gone are the days of the overhead projector and the water-based vis-à-vis markers for the sole purpose of writing on overheads. also gone are chalk. remember chalk? it's the accumulation of dead, waterborne protists and their shells composed of calcite and limestone. we have these lovely inventions called visualizers where it's an almost real time, colored (red, blue, green but that's the deal with our ocular nerves with those three it gives us the impression that we have a full spectrum palette) display of whatever hard copy texts, sheets, hell anything three dimensional really that can be manipulated digitally. we also have clicker technology. it's essentially a powerpoint presentation of testable materials where the students answer with a remote control. it gives me-the teacher-instantaneous feedback on who answered the questions correctly or incorrectly, assign a grade and generates a report of most statistically significant landmarks. it's awesome. i don't go home with the trademark tattooing of the stereotypical teacher.
didn't have much of a competitive campaign this year. am i disappointed? not really. i spent some pretty meaningful time with my kids and my family before the cataclysm called work started. damn. this work shtuff really eats into my: sleep, recreational, alone, book-reading, cycling, and family time. i'm with the french and their nationally mandated 35-hour work week. hhhrrmph.
i'm even wearing ties and stuff and non-pleated dockers. i'm still kinda stunned and it's still a hard pill to swallow this work thing. i'm getting paid pretty nicely (i think), and i'm no stranger to hard work (although i try to avoid it). my work ethic isn't incredible and i'll be the first to call in sick when my children are. i still believe teaching's my best gig ever. don't really see what i'd want to do other than this, yet.
well. there's always cyclocross. my license's still good until the 31st of december-my geburtstag!. most 'cross events still accept mountain bikes. so, i can salvage something competitive and then there's always moab in october...
a cold front's settled in currently. it's 38°F outside, 62° inside. i've started a fire kids. i'm watching the olympics while fiddlin' on the laptop. the american olympian kid taylor phinney's from around my parts. we actually raced in the same pack. he won a boat load of races even whooping up on us senior three men! good for him, he has truly a pedigree from cycling.

"Paul Bunyon Ain't Got Shizzle On Me...!"

here's my new best friend, the woodsplitter
my apologies to the most excellent movie training day; but that's how i felt-after the day was done-when my father in-law and i split and quartered wood all day yesterday and again today to get ready for a record-breaking winter (just in case!).
we were armed with a hydraulic wood splitter, an axe, and a splitting maul. he hydraulically split, while i axed and mauled to quarter. when my in-laws arrived we got right back at it. here it is (and yes, we have a headless dog!), the teepee woodpile.it's always a good feeling seeing the fruits of your labor-in this case: my father and brother in-laws, and me.

NYPD's Finest (A$$ hole)

when good cops go bad...

click here for what happened to barney fife for his transgressions.
i got this from my digg account. here's an invite if you want to join digg.com
i'm not a fan of the social networking sites; but what i like about this is like-minded people basically bookmarking videos, news, pictures of the same stuff i like. check it out.

Moab in July (updated w/Billy's photos!)

l-r me, billy, kev on top o'klondike bluffs (courtesy o'billy)
Friday
moab's temperatures nowadays hover near 100° fahrenheit and the lows are in the 70s. so, what better time than now to go to moab (thinketh the homey trinity)? i believe i'm living a charmed life. as a believer in karma, i do believe i need to become a better individual-starting immediately-as a result of the weather and massive endorphin release hanging/riding/conversing with the homey trinity in moab this past weekend. the national weather service said friday was going to be 99° so hez-chilly looked up rides in the nearby la sal (this is spelled correctly) mountains (14 or so miles south of moab). he found one and later confirmed as a cool ride by the poison spider bike shop dudes. it was called moonlight meadows. originally it (was) The Manti-La Sal National Forest in the mountains above Moab just opened the Moonlight Meadows downhill trail, which was built to reroute a renegade singletrack built by Moab locals (Philipps, 2006).
here are the la sals in the waaaaaay background
at the la sals looking down!
it's quite a different perspective isn't it? if you notice a localized rain cell's dumping in the near background. this rain cell cooled our trailhead to a nice 77°. it was chilly. we were also 9000 feet up. meteorologically speaking it was a rare but pleasant surprise! armed with gps units and billy's pocket guide we hit the moonlight meadows trail. the poison spider guys warned us there was a long-ish, gravelly, fire road climb but the wacky descent was worth it. sure enough the climb sucked but we also realized it just rained up here and there were wee pockets of standing water in the depressions. okay, so we thought the trail'd be nice and tacky (kind of like your distant, kooky relative poaching your wedding). at the top of this farmer's meadow we see the singletrack-and it's mudfest.
the calm before the storm (courtesy o'billy)
the key to gliding/riding over mud is to pretend you're on ice and to make the turns eons before the trail goes crooked (and to not ride the brakes!). once you lose your imaginary fall-line (kind of like a mental laser pointer on the path), and your front tire's no longer on the laser pointer marks on the ground (your fall line), you end up fighting-via over compensating-to keep the front tire on your fall line. once the steering gets hamfisted the front tire wants to launch over the troughed-out, rain-slicked tree roots, with rocks-a'plenty singletrack like a bad luger going high on the berms. that was my mistake twice and i launched! thank goodness my three years of kara-te paid off and i rolled to absorb the impact of the ground anxiously awaiting my airborne, gravity assisted 145 lb mass of glee and fright. i was tête de la course for the first and arrière du kev and billy for the second. the downhill truly was an invention of sick moab locals...
i'ma walking (courtesy o'billy)
kev's a'walking (courtesy o'billy)
...and throw in some very loose baby head sized rocks with off camber switchbacks you have either: a very defeated person who's riding something over his/her head; or, you let 'er rip and use the knowledge and skill set you accumulated mountain biking over the years (and hope you have some muscle memory to finesse the sick stuff!). since it was also testosterone-fest the latter person showed up and we were riding close, singlefile stuff hoping the person in front wouldn't biff and doing a major case of monkey-see-monkey-do over the technical shizzle. it was all tight singletrack through the aspen groves and the babyheads never stopped! it was a mixture of pins and needles and open-throttled white noise in the brain. your whole, leading edge of your body was like a radar dish soaking up as much terrain data, sights, sounds, wind speeds, and topography, as it could possibly handle and translating that to body english, center-of-gravity shifts, calculating fall lines, and feather braking in real time. all this sensory overload led to voluminous releases of adrenaline and endorphins. scary yet pee-in-your- pants fun!
this picture does the trail's ninja-like technicality no justice!
at the oowah lake trail junction we take a breather.
me in disbelief that we all survived that downhill (courtesy o'billy)
kev smilin' because we survivedbilly-aka the master, stoic, because he is the master
by now the trail's getting drier but the tight singletrack and off-cambered switchbacks with copious amounts of babyheads continue. after some more trail finding and descending we arrive at our trailhead parking lot. wow. we thought briefly about camping while at moab; but sensibility arrived and we ended up getting a room at the inn that had a perfectly working hot tub and pool. we mixed up both in order to achieve a state of physiological and mental relaxation (and repeating if necessary to achieve both). what a way to end the day. 11 something miles in about 2h.
Saturday
we woke to freezer burns on our bodies because we cranked the air conditioning unit. it makes for great sleeping too that ac. today, we set a goal for making our best pr time at slickrock. three words describe our effort(s): pain, pain, and (did i mention?) pain. last time we did it in 2h flat. this time? 1h 36 mins including a seven-minute break we took at this particular junction...
for reasons unknown i took a picture of my doggies...after we ate, we hit our pool/hot tub combo again before venturing out to arches national park. inside arches, there are some spectacular looking rock formations like this one called (yup, you guessed it!)...

balanced rock
with super nutty rock formations every second driving deeper into the park, it's as if i was in manhattan for the first time. i kept looking up, put in a constant state of awe and wonder (in this case nature's beauty vs man's) by these nutrageous rock formations. by now it's 103°. 103 oppressive degrees. 103° of torture. 103° of mind numbing foolishness. ouch. but billy says we have to press on and hike to this spectacle of nature called delicate arch. like a novice, i hike in my flip-flops. oh well. after abrading my doggies on the hike, i'm rewarded with this view of delicate arch. those are people skirting the top of the rim. watch that first step! it's a doozy...
here it is closerpretty spectacular isn't it? yeah billy, good call on arches! two very enthusiastic thumbs up for this national park kids! i was so inspired i bought this t-shirt as a souvenir...
for our last ride, we do klondike bluffs. i want to weasel out of this one because the hike and heat's kicking my butt. our goal too is to completely blast our legs for this trip so we head off to the klondike bluffs trailhead. as soon as fate would have it, another storm cell rolls overhead and we go from 103° to 86°.
here's a friendly storm cell
as our last hurrah before we start school a sudden sense of urgency kicks in. we realize it's our last opportunity as a cycling pod to put a fraternal, friendly, competitive, butt whoopin' on each other. when we hit the unforgiving moonrock signifying the start of the ascent, billy goes to the front and establishes a torrid pace. i dangle off his wheel and wait for the right moment to return the favor. we hit a sandy patch and he breaks traction. this is where i go for the pass and drop it a gear. again we roll onto this nasty moonrock and i'm bumped off my line and can't even sustain my cadence. i get passed. darn you inventor of the dual suspension frame! eventually we meet at the top and my camera's dead. we hike to the scenic viewpoint to witness the devil's furnace (or something like that). it's indescribably beautiful and coupled with the depth between us and this landmark, it gets me seasick and i have to ensure my feet's grounded so my brain'll stop freaking out.
behind us's the devils furnace outcropping (courtesy o'billy)
on the descent, kevin and his brand new yeti 575 show me wassup and they both wait for me at the bottom. darn you inventor of the hardtail frame! oi! what a trip. what other ride(s) can we do next time that'll release even more endorphins from the pleasure/pain portion of our brain? i can't wait!...you may ask yourself why does machmoud go with the homey trinity to moab all the time? the answer is: because i can and the homey trinity's cool like that! amen brothers and sisters. amen...

ps. kev drove us in his sweet, pimpish (that's an adjective my high school students use to mean oh so cool) toyota sequoia
pps. upon googling moonlight meadows, i came across this interesting piece of info from trails.com. it reads: This eTrail is currently unavailable from Trails.com. According to the USDA… 'the Geyser Pass to Oowah Moab Lake (Moonlight Meadow) Trail is in violation of the Manti-Las Sal[sic] National Forest Travel Plan. Furthermore if you have ridden the Geyser Pass to Oowah Moab Lake (Moonlight Meadow) Trail you are in violation of the Manti-Las Sal National Forest Travel Plan. Forest Order Number 04-010-002 "(3) Possess or use any type of vehicle off forest development roads or trails when prohibited or restricted as shown on Exhibit 'A', the Travel map, 36 CFR 261.56.'Further legal action my[sic] follow.' oops.
ppps. here's a slideshow of most of the photos hez-chilly and i took. enjoy

Dog Days O'Summer're Here

went for an early four hour ride with christopher who's lighter and fitter this year than others and kenny with his new scandium ride. it was hot. after we dropped kenny off, we had an hour back to ride to chris' and we were suffering in the heat. our legs were pretty spent too from doing some climbing but it was a great ride. i was spent. melissa called en route and said to meet her at the rec. center for a swim. she works out and i watch the kids swimming. when she's done we hit the hot tub and it's glorious. she forgot to bring my swim shorts so i bought a winner at old navy. hell yeah it's gawdy that's why it's on sale (it's the one on the right if you can't figure it out-mason's left!). it didn't have the mesh, built-in underwear. oh well.
there're kayaks, sunsets, orchids, palm trees et al. on there representing all that is stereotypical of a bad, bad aloha shirt ('cept it's on my shorts boy!!). at the pool we go down the slide, hang in the hot tub and experience evaporative cooling on the sunny deck in beautiful evergreen colorado. hydrotherapy baby. excellent way to end a ride and we bust out some family fun