wooh, what the hell is going on ? when i started this blog thing it was new years day, it now happpens to be jan 21st '09. january has been a blur ( no not from santa cruz, oh have you seen the new carbon ? i got an email about a new carbon blur, if i wasnt so computer tarded i would put their link up here but i am still learning how this all works. ) my god , my minds wandering, where was i ? oh yeah january.. so the next day after my first post i caught a flu bug that kicked the living shit out of me, there was one point that i truly wish that i had died, infact i still feel it in me. well needless to say i havent been riding, which isnt a bad thing really, i could use a break at this point as the miles in '08 were endless at times. the cateye on the ibis reads 7480 from sept'07 to sept '08. not to bad but considering that i put 2500 miles on that thing the first 6 weeks i owned it i guess those miles could have been higher. however, lets add in the the miles zipping through the trees and over the boulders, flying past the cactus and the 300 foot cliffs, dropping the 3,4 and 5 footers, ending up in the ditches feet stright up in the air, ripping the skin off of elbows and knees, torn flesh left behind on sandpaper slick rock, yes, gooseberry and littlecreek mesa's. i spent more time discovering the bombass trails in this area than should be allowed by law, tell you what i came to southern utah to be a bike bum and i nailed it man ! i spent 11 nights in the middle of january on gooseberry,and rode all but two days, those two days were spent hiking with my best bud "skully" my black lab, the only reason i came down was i ran out of food completly. yet those countless days spent in the desert were mostly in the spring and over shadowed by the weekend after weekend after weekend living in the thin air of brianhead ut. i got word in spring of a race that would be held at the 11,307 foot mountain, the a.m.c ! american mountain classic, a four day stage race held in and around brian head resort, my friend gps'd the race its self and his garmin read out at 177 miles with 16,800 feet of climbing. i trained for that race like a possesed man, there were days on that mountain that i had to hide under trees while the hail pelted down. one day i left the lodge , made the climb to the peek,( about 2000 feet in under 7 miles) started out to the louder ponds trail made the decent and then the climb up sidney peeks road and started down bunker creek, all in glorious bright blue sunshine, only to start the return to the peek in a sheet of rain. i know alot of you have decended bunker creek but how many of you have turned around and made the climb back ? let me assure you that if you are not into massive amounts of pain you should take a shuttle back to the ski resort because its an unholly pain fest making that climb back to the peek, its nearly a 20 mile journey with well over 3500 feet of gain, and air is hard to find. well that day i started out in sunshine i ended up walking over half of that distance in snot mud and hail and rain and lightning and then again in sunshine. it was one of the most unbelievable days ive ever spent on a bike, comes close to the day in 2003 that i fell on porcupine rim and broke both arms, but thats another tail. needless to say brian head utah is as epic as it gets and all the training that i did paid off big time as i won my class over those four awesome days of racing with a time of 16 hours even, man is that one beautiful winners jersey !!!! so if you add in all the miles together it has to be some stupid number, i dont keep a computer on the yeti so i dont have an exact distance but im reasonably sure i pushed the 12,000 mile mark in '08. heading out on a road bike ride today,"gunlock loop" i'll stop in and let you know how it goes. and as i learn how to use this computer better i will start to add some pics and vids, more later.... here lizard lizard lizard !!
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