Havasupai

Well, July means it's time for the Boy Scouts' 50 miler in our ward. This year we picked Havasupai for it. We were there Monday through Friday of this last week hiking, swimming, cliff jumping, wreaking havoc on other campers, etc. We had a blast and there were a few newcomers to the 50 mile hike. They did great and we had a great time. The weather was perfect and warm while the water was just cool enough. My legs hurt a bit, but they're doing better now. Here are some pics, enjoy:



Being there (yes, even with all the people) really gives a sense of why the Havasupai tribe believe that the waterfall and creek is a direct manifestation of God's power and love for the people. It is a humbling place and there is definitely something magical and spiritual about the area.

Collegiate Cycling National Finals (Finally)

After leaving for the Virgin Islands, Lake Powell, and then having Justin leave for Alaska, I finally got all my pictures that I (and Katie, good job Katie) took at National Finals. Justin had them on his computer because I couldn't fit them all on one CF card (now I have a bigger card though, hehe. Bigger is always better, eh?). Anyway, to give a little background, the U of U cycling team had a few people that qualified for the Collegiate Cycling National Finals in Lawrence, KS and here's the story.



An acquaintance of some of the team members was absolutely awesome in letting us crash in his living room. (Cam, thanks for the genuine Kansan hospitality bro) And his room-mates were great in dealing with a bunch of sweaty bike racers for nearly a week too! Thanks guys. We had a great time and our team had some great placings overall. I only qualified to race in the team time trial, which we did OK in. And as a team, we were quite happy with it even though we didn't place really great (not last though, haha). Justin was the Veteran and showed us all the ropes while Mitch represented for the U of U also. In the road race, T-mo and Brian ripped it up with T-mo placing really well (I'll have to remember what he placed and edit this post, but it was like top 20 IIRC out of nearly 150). Brian placed in the middle of the pack somewhere on a brutal 90 mile course through the rolling Kansan hills in 90 degree weather that was ridiculously humid for us Utah folk. The crit was a great time and the town really knows how to support a bike race, they showed up in droves packing the whole crit course a couple of people deep. Katie did great in her events and showed everybody what a Utah girl is made of. It was a great race and we were sad to leave (especially because we had a 16 hour drive ahead of us to go home, ouch). Good times were had by all. Now, because there are so many pics, here's a slideshow of some of the better ones.

Evening Ride

Today, being such a nice day and all, needed to be filled with as much biking as possible. So Gina and I headed out after we got off work and went for a tour around SLC. It was a pretty good ride at about 17 miles and she did awesome! Just take a look at this elevation plot!



She's pretty tough, because just coming up from downtown to our house is nearly 1000 feet of climbing. And of course, we gotta have the picture from the ride.

Virgin Islands trip

Ahoy! Gina and I returned a few weeks ago from a 10 day sailing trip with her family to The Virgin Islands. We chartered our own 40 foot Catamaran named "Clarity." Gina's older brother Tom captained our vessel and the rest of us, okay mostly us guys, worked hard as the sailing crew. We really loved the sailing and I think we got the hang of it pretty good. We had great food, okay amazing food, that we prepared right on the boat. We spent our days sailing, swimming, snorkeling, eating...you get the idea. Needless to say, we had so much fun! It has been slow getting back into work and day to day life and my mind keeps drifting back to the awesome memories we have made. Take us back to paradise...

Ode to Judd

This post is about Judd (mostly because I have pictures of him from lab, but because he's a good guy too). Judd started working in the cardiovascular physiology shortly after I did. We put our lives at risk there everyday (just kidding). Here's Judd playing with beta mercaptoethanol





Deadly stuff, it will work it's way into your skin and denature proteins. Believe me, you do not want your proteins denatured.

Flat tires all around

Flat tires on a bike suck. Synopsis:

Slept in = missed 3 earlier buses
Fast shower = not clean enough (hoo-wee!)
no breakfast = cranky
Utah roads and watching traffic instead of the road = two pinch flats = missed last bus too

Rode to Gina's work to get the car to drive to work, but my fast patch job didn't hold so the front slowly started losing air and I barely limped it in to Gina's work. Then she says that she's going to get off early (yay!) so I can't drive the car to work. That means I work from home today. A day in the life of me.

My dog Sunny

Well, one of the first posts on my blog was about my dog Sunny, so it's fitting that I put a remembrance post up about her also since she's passed away.



Today when my little brother went to feed the dogs, he found Sunny in the back yard in kind of a low spot in the grass. He could see that she couldn't get up and was in obvious pain. When he tried to lift her out of the dip, she started trying to move but just seemed to thrash around. I was at work in Orem, so I went over to my dad's house to see what was up. When I saw her, I could see that there was something wrong. I first thought that her hip was broken because it has been giving her lots of problems lately anyway and she's had a hard time walking. When I tried to lift her, I could see that it didn't seem like her hip, but I didn't know what it was. We took her to the vet and he determined that she'd had a stroke. After he said that, everything clicked because her face looked droopy on one side and she couldn't move one side of her body. Strokes are hard to recover from for a human, and we just couldn't imagine Sunny living as a vegetable in my dad's back yard, so the decision was made to put her down. My dad came to the vet and me, Russ, Michelle, and my dad were there when they put her down. It was sad and those of you that have had a 14 year old pet die that you are very close to will understand. We all cried and we're still mourning the loss, she will be missed.

Here she is guarding the tent on a campout:


Here she is guarding the camp spot:


She definitely won't be a dog that can be replaced easily, she was perfect in every way and never caused any problems. She was friendly to all and just her being there has given the rest of us comfort many times over. She's a sweetheart. She was in so much pain near the end and her sight and hearing were going also, so it was for the better. We were lucky in a way that something major happened, like this stroke, because that made the decision to put her down easier. Sunny, we love you, you were such a big part of our lives growing up!

Collegiate Bike Racing

We just got home Sunday night from Grand Junction, CO where the U of U Cycling Team competed in the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Cycling Conference Championships. The team did great overall, and I'm happy with my results too. I ended up in 6th in the road race, 3rd in the team time trial and 6th in the criterium, each event was out of about 40 racers in my group. Gina came along as our cheer squad and photographer. It's great having her there cheering us all on. It was a great race, and the weather was beautiful for every event. All in all, with over 100 miles of racing this weekend, I'm a little sore, but not as bad as yesterday! haha

Fort Lewis College Race

We had a great time in Durango even though the trip was super short. We left on Friday, got in late Friday night, hit the sack, got up and raced the team time trial, then the crit, then drove home. It was a lot of fun though, and although I didn't race super well, we had some big mile marks with the car... First off, we passed the 111,111 mile mark on the odometer.







Next up was that we broke 50 MPG average for the whole trip - 53.1 MPG to be exact, which works out to 803.3 miles on one tank! Aren't TDI's amazing. We went from SLC to Durango and back to SLC on one tank of diesel fuel.





Next up was that it was a really fun race, although the TTT was longer than normal at about 20 miles. Later that day was the crit, and lucky enough for me, it rained and even started snowing during my group's race! Needless to say, I got a bit dirty. I finished with the pack, but count that a good finish because there was a short little hill on the course that was an all out sprint up on every lap (every 0.5 miles) for 45 minutes straight. That kicked my butt, but I hung in there. The break away group of 3 got away about half way through and stayed away the rest of the time. They ended up nearly lapping the rest of us. It was a great time though, and we (the U of U team) will probably have a pretty good chance at going to the National Finals race in a couple of weeks. We'll see how we do at Conference Championships though, it's this coming weekend.

Late post from the CSU race

Well, it's been too long since I posted, so here goes.

For those of you that don't know, I race for the U of U road cycling team. Every weekend in the spring we go somewhere (usually Colorado) to race against other schools in the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Cycling Conference (RMCCC). Some of the schools include Colorado State University, Denver University, Mesa State College, University of New Mexico, Utah State University, BYU, Air Force Academy, etc. Anyway, one race that we went to was the race at CSU in Fort Collins, Colorado. The weather was pretty crazy for the events on Saturday, but then Sunday was beautiful for the oval criterium on the CSU campus.

Here's a shot of some of the U of U team bikes in our pit area for the team time trial (TTT) and road race (RR).


It was 40 degrees and rainy during the TTT and the RR so we were freezing when we were done! Of course, after we finished those two events, the clouds cleared and the sun came out and it turned to a nice evening. Between the TTT and the RR, we were all freezing and everything we had was soaked, so we had to remedy that somehow or the RR would have been quite uncomfortable to say the least! So what did we do? We headed into town to find the nearest laundromat to dry all of our stuff. We didn't care about washing it, but we wanted it dry.

Our team and a bunch of other teams stormed
the local laundromat to use the dryers.

After we finally got all the clothes dry, we headed back to our pit area to get ready for the road race. We have three groups that race, the A's, B's, and C's. A's are the fast guys, B's a little slower, and C's a little slower than the B's. I race with the B's and we ended up doing about 45 miles (they shortened it because of the weather which was a welcomed decision!).

Here is a pic of the start of the TTT. From left to right there's me, Brian, and Russell.

Here's a pic of the road race and I'm the one on the far right with the yellow sleeve wearing a red and gray helmet.



And one last pic of the RR, this is the B peloton coming up a short climb to turn around the corner and head up the next hill. Notice our support vehicles following us. It was a well organized race.





And of course, after the road race, it was time to hit the town of Fort Collins for some good, warm food and fun. We ate at Coopersmith's Pub and Brewery which had some darn good food! Here's Jin chowing down on a big buffalo burger. And another pic of Me, Gina, and Brian waiting for our food to get there.











The next day was Sunday and the crit was scheduled to start at 8:00 am for the C group. The B group went off later sometime around 9:30am. It was a beautiful day with temps in the 60's in the morning and rising to around 70 in the afternoon.... just perfect for a bike race. In the B group, I ended up placing 5th in the oval crit and was pretty pleased with that!

Here's the start of the B group at the oval crit, I'm in there somewhere in the middle just a few guys back.








There I am, with Russ, waiting for the starting whistle.









In the B crit, there were about 3 bad wrecks. Two were caused by a wheel touch and one was caused by a guy cutting a corner too sharp and the peloton not giving him enough room. All 3 were pretty bad, but a wheel touch on a prim lap right near the start/finish line was the worst. I saw the wheel touch a little in front and to the left of me a couple of guys over. I saw the guy start to go down and I veered right to try and avoid it. As he fell into the other guys, they fell towards me and I was pinched up near the curb. Luckily, as the guy next to me went down, I was able to move to the right far enough so that as he went down, his helmet just barely hit my left foot. It wobbled me a bit, but I kept the rubber side down luckily. Here's a picture of him after the race.



Another guy that went down got his finger caught in the spokes of a wheel and the spokes took the tip of his finger right off, ouch!



more pics can be found here