Category Archives: family
Gobble, gobble!
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! It’s been a great day so far (unless you’re one of these…). Liz has been busy cooking all morning, and we just finished stuffing ourselves. Yum! The girls got a front-row seat to the action, and have been learning a lot about cooking from their mother. She even taught them how to make turkeys out of napkins. Dinner was great, we all enjoyed the FEAST.
Jessica especially liked the olives.
The day started off pretty cold, down in the 30’s, but by mid-morning it warmed up a bit. So Malcolm and I took off for a short ride up to Roxborough State Park. What a pretty day, the air was really clear and we had a great view into downtown Denver (you can kind of see the skyline to the right of us in the picture). It’s almost spooky riding with him, he looks and acts so much like me on the bike… He even attacked me on a steep hill! Just like I would have if I was him :-).
We sure wish we could be with our families, but at the same time appreciate being able to spend time together on our own. I’m so thankful for my family and for what I have.
Now it’s off to digest. Good thing we burned off some calories beforehand. Here are the rest of the pics from our ride:
bike1 bike2 bike3 bike4 bike5 bike6
bike7 bike8 bike9 bike10 bike11 bike12
Happy 4th!
Good day today. I got up at 5:30 to meet some guys for a mountain bike ride. It was only my second time on the MTB this year. It was a great ride, lots of sweet singletrack – all right in our back yard. We had a great time jumping, crashing, getting lost, running out of water, and calling wives at 11:30 to explain why the estimated return time of 9:00 hadn’t quite worked out…
We went on a massive school shopping trip to get the kids ready for the start of the new year (tomorrow!). This year-round stuff takes some getting used to. Malcolm will be in 6th grade, Lindsey in 3rd, and Natalie in 2nd. I can’t believe how fast they’re growing up!
We had a great dinner of hot dogs and fresh corn on the cob. Jessica LOVED it! After dinner, it was time for our little fireworks display. Everyone had a great time throwing snaps and popping streamers.
I just polished off 3 helpings of stawberry shortcake to finish off the night…
Big ride with Phil
Long day in the saddle…
I met up with my bro this morning for our first road ride together in eon’s. We started in Provo, and worked our way over to American Fork canyon to ride the Alpine Loop. This is my favorite ride. The upper part is so cool. Narrow road, little traffic (on a weekday), spectacular scenery, lots of switchbacks, and a looong climb.
Unfortunately, we were turned back near the top due to some hasty construction work being done to repair a section of road that had washed out in a recent storm. Undaunted, we headed back down the canyon and climbed over the SunCrest road into Salt Lake valley. A huge crosswind on the descent (and some loose bearings in my rear wheel that I discovered later) had me crawling down the hill like a near-sighted granny with the emergency brake engaged and the hazard lights flashing. I think Phil was a little worried about me, the bike was just feeling REALLY squirrelly and I got spooked when I let it run.
My bright idea was to take the frontage road along the freeway as we headed south. I’ve ridden it a few times before and thought it was ok. What I didn’t think of is that it had always been on a weekend – fairly quiet. Today is Friday and there’s a huge gravel pit in full operation. That means trucks… No shoulder to ride on and a huge headwind made for a pretty scary time of it. I put my head down and just started cranking into the wind with Phil on my wheel trying to get us out of there as quickly as possible. We had to sprint through a construction zone complete with ruts, holes, mud, dust, and puddles. Fun!! not
When I got back to the house, most everyone was out shopping, so I took the opportunity to contine my ride and get some more miles in. I headed up Maple Canyon (steep 4 mile climb) with 90 miles of hard riding already in my legs. Turns out I was able to tie my personal best that I set (with fresh legs…) 10 years ago. Nice!!!
I finished off the day with 101 miles and 6 1/2 hours of riding.
The Scene Begins 
