A pictureless CABRA post

Well this weekend was full of riding and I don't have a single photo to put up here. A 95 mile "touring pace" ride to the Grand Canyon on dirt followed by a race back along the same route was the schedule of events for Saturday and Sunday. I felt that the race back part might be out of my league but wanted to ride back in some fashion so I pack up camping gear in my panniers and had them shuttled out to the campground for me. I was planning on ride back about half way and camping out then returning home today. What ended up happening somewhere along the wind pummeled route home is that I decided to just put my head down and keep on pedaling all the way home. Good food, beer and a bed were too much to pass up. The trip back ended up taking about 8 hours including a couple road side naps, a picnic and an Eskimo Pie in the lovely town of Valle. The only bad part of my plan was that had I made the decision to head all the way home earlier I could have ditched the panniers and not had to carry the extra 20 pounds home. Oh well I would up with around 95 miles on Saturday and about 71 miles on Sunday. 166 miles for the trip is not bad for this guy. On a side note the festivities for CABRA were top notch in my opinion. Great support, great food, great beer, great attitudes and ample quantities of all the aforementioned items. The folks at the Pay'n Take have come up with and pulled off another fun event.

A couple of quick pics

Last night I cut some fresh chard out of the garden for dinner. It's not too exciting but it is nice to be able to grow something to add to the dinner table. The two pictures of the Turner are not too exciting to me either. That's right there is a crack all the way around the seat tube. I will say that Turner's customer service is pretty damn good because earlier this year they sent me replacement rocker arms within the same week that they broke and I would have had a new front triangle sent out today except I opted for a powder coated frame instead of the raw frame so it has to go to paint. I should have it in a couple of weeks and then I will send my cracked frame back once I receive the new one. Have a good weekend.

Out of order back from the mother land

While living the dream I sometime forget stuff. Before we went to Vermont I loaded Yampa and a bike into the truck and headed to New Mexico. I had a visit with the parents and a bike race on the agenda. The race was fun and it was good to ride where I grew up but I was still mid cold and felt pretty crappy so that was the only ride I did while I was there. My dad and I headed up to the old Los Alamos reservoir that was drained after the Cerro Grande fire to be used as a catchment for flood waters that came down the canyon. I used to go up there all the time when I was younger to fish and just hang out (not to mention some misbehaving in the high school years) do to it's close proximity to town. It is amazing how much more water is around that area compared to Flagstaff because everything else is so similar. Yampa had a good time swimming in the small pond that was still there while Sierra looked on to make sure everything was alright. My dad always seems to have dog treats in his pocket and can get the dog's attention pretty quick. There were tons of wild rose bushes along the road amongst tons of green, green vegetation. It was a good trip home. Oh I almost forgot that I clean some crap out of the shed and came across this Coors Classic cycling cap from the early 80's. We used to catch a couple of stages every year on our family trips to Colorado when I was a kid. Good stuff.

We're not in Arizona anymore Toto

Not many posts lately but we did just recently return from Vermont. We went for Anne's college reunion in Middlebury and vacationed for a few days after the reunion was over. We stayed near Stowe at the Lake Mansfield Trout Club which is like a country club for fishermen. While there we traveled to East Burke to ride the Kingdom Trails which recently received high praise in Bike magazine. We rented bikes and went out to do a review of our own. I will sum up my impression of the trail system by saying that although it was fun I am glad to live with the trail options in Flagstaff. I do have to say that the rental bike that I had was the best rental out of 5 bikes that I have rented in the past 2 years. The folks at East Burke Sports were really friendly and super helpful in planning a route through the system.