No reason to gross anyone out with photos. I was recently afflicted with what I thought were a few zits, that then turned into what looked like a giant spider bite, and was later diagnosed as shingles. For once I’m happy I work with a bunch of old people. The doctor at our company medical facility spotted the problem immediately upon looking at my forehead and reading my symptoms I’d shared with his nurse. I thought he was full of it when he first diagnosed me. I have a feeling he sees this a lot since shingles usually occurs in people over 50…hmmm, that sounds like most of the people I work with. Not that 50 is old or anything…

So, I get to take potent doses of Valtrex to get rid of the crusty nastiness above my left brow. In the meantime, since I have a very weak immune system right now, I’m supposed to take it easy. Not difficult since my body feels like it is going through the flu, plus I got hit with a migraine today, right behind where the shingles have laid to rest on my face.  This is lovely.

The weather is beautiful outside and all my friends are going for fun rides. Boo! I went for a neighborhood walk today, which was nice, but really not the same as riding the bike. I was pooped from the walk, so I guess that means I’m not ready for riding quite yet.

Snow?!? What? It’s not time for winter, is it? Arrrgghhh…well, I got in a couple good rides at least before it all came down.

Tonight was a spin class, first of the season. I did a lot better than last year. Last year, during my first spin class ever, I almost passed out on the bike. Now I wear a heart rate monitor to make sure I don’t go into cardiac arrest.

So I’ve been on a little staycation after a short visit home to see my parents. Upon return, the kittens were more interested in my bags than me.

Our favorite, furry felines love to trash the house and get as dirty as possible. Knocking over house plants is their specialty. The garage is their favorite place to create messes. I can no longer use the drying rack in the garage when the cats are there. Why, you ask?

Yes, he's going right after the one thing left hanging...

They got a new kitty condo for the garage. It’s actually called the “Kitty Jail.”

And tonight, they discovered the water faucet.

These two are endless sources of entertainment.

I took the Carver to Phil’s World in Cortez, CO for a fun ride with Kerry.

Kerry climbing to the lookout

Wow, now I can really appreciate that rigid fork! It still hurts a little on the descents, but for climbing, the bigger wheel and the rigid fork make me feel strong! I was able to go over obstacles I haven’t been able to clear in the past, and the ride today was perfect. I’m really, really getting into this bike.

Beautiful views!

Perfect SS climbing

A few Fall colors left

Today is a ride in the Gulch from Carbon Junction. I think I’ll take the geared bike today because my knees are bothering me a bit, but what I really want to do is ride the SS!! I think I’m becoming a bit of an addict on that bike.

People keep asking me, “Why would you ride that when you can use gears??” I can’t explain why I like it, I just do.

Decided to take the Carver out for another fun ride with Matt (no choice since the Moots and Intense had a flat!).

Matt showed me parts of Test Tracks I’d never seen before. I ride Test Tracks, but always mix it up with a College ride or the Gulch. I rarely spend more than an hour or so in Test Tracks itself. I don’t know the routes very well, but holy cow, I learned some new stuff today! Check it out…3 loops!

Perfect for singlespeeding, the trails are smooth dirt with lots of climbs. 2764 foot worth of climbing for today, although that includes the little climb back home too. Still, a lot of climbing on a singlespeed for me.

It’s awesome here, you get rides in the trees…

Then awesome openess where the sky never ends.

This place gives you variety everywhere you turn. The views are spectacular…you have to remember to keep your eyes on the trail for the descents though! Oh, and your butt behind the seat. That’s another good thing to remember.

I discovered Slimy Gulch today, thanks to Matt. This is a super fun little out and back. You can see it at the top of my map above.

This was the trickiest part for me today. Took me 3 tries to build up the mojo to get around the rock without thinking about riding off the ledge. I’m a chicken, I know.

I can’t believe I’ve never ridden some of this! Leave it to Matt to show me something new on the trails. Thanks too for all the photos!

We headed back into town after the ride and grabbed some coffee cake and coffee from the Steaming Bean. Matt took off for the Gulch for some more riding, and I went over to MBS for the Specialized women’s bike demo. I wasn’t planning on trying a bike, just looking at them, but ended up trying out the S-Works Era Carbon Mountain Bike and headed towards the Gulch for a little more riding. I think Jason, the Spez rep, told me that this baby weighs in at 22 lbs. A full suspension mountain bike, at that weight! I’m in love. It retails at $8800. I have 7 bikes. I think I’ll have to get rid of some if I ever plan on getting the Era.

Got home and Matt, me, and the boys had a nice quiet dinner together. I love this place. I love this life.

I’ve had photos on my camera phone that I haven’t been able to transfer to my computer (or mail to myself) for almost 2 years. I finally broke down and bought a memory card, and now, here they are! Kinda cool to look through these. Some I took just after our move to Durango.

Here’s my first adventure to go ride Animas. Turns out I took a detour and ended up on Sailing Hawks.I know, I know, don’t start teasing me about always getting lost…

Some random photos I took while waiting for Matt to finish KTR…

After Matt’s crash at the 12 Hours of Mesa Verde, he was still on the Big Wheels while in the emergency room.

And the best of all from the camera phone? My first meeting with Julius (he was named Harry at the time by the Humane Society) before breaking him outta the pen. We were sitting right next to his cage. His name was on the paper tag wrapped around his neck. How cute.

The Carver 96er is built! This baby is awesome! Thanks to Matt for building up my fully rigid, Carver 96er singlespeed!!

The short first ride was in the Gulch…

This baby has some parts from two of the greatest sponsors we have: Ergon and White Brothers! I love Ergon grips, so of course Matt had to add some green love to this baby. The grips match my bike! The White Brothers rigid carbon Rock Solid is treating me well too.

The day after the Fall Blaze, Matt and I took off from the house to the Dry Fork trail head for a Dry Fork, Hoffein’s, Gudy’s, Colorado Trail back home ride. Awesome, we had perfectly blue skies!!

Even with tired legs, I could tell this is a great ride that I should do more frequently on the SS. This also gave me a chance to really try out the new bike since I had lots of climbing, and some great descents.

The rigid fork takes some getting used to…no more sloppy riding and just rolloing into rocks. Now the trick is finding the right line, which definitely requires some finesse. I find myself standing up a lot more when climbing with this bike. I think the gear ratio is slightly more difficult on the 96er than the 26er.

The fall colors are awesome right now! I know folks are hitting the high country, but I’ll tell you what, the Colorado Trail is definitely providing some great color right now too!

Thanks to my better half for making this happen!!

Matt and I did the annual Fall Blaze again this year. We’ve been to every century event they’ve had so far, 4 of them. It’s so great to be able to roll out to this event from our house!

The best thing is that we ride this event together. Matt rides his singlespeed road bike, and I get to have him pull and give me some nice pushes up steep hills. This event supports the Fort Lewis College cycling team.

Done! 5951 foot of elevation climbing over 100 miles of terrain. Not a huge climbing century, but you still feel some of those climbs.

This year our new found friends TJ, Bill, Eric, and Diz were also riding. We caught up with them at the end of the event for the Blaze potato bar and free Steamworks beer, which ran out…so, we took off to the next best place to be in town on this wonderful Saturday afternoon, Oktoberfest!! Lots of beer to be had there, and all sorts of interesting folks to see. A perfect day for this.

Matt and I had rolled down to the event on the cruiser road bikes, so we stopped by Home Slice for dinner, then biked back home. I don’t think we could have had a better day!

Peace, baby!

As many of you know, I’ve been coveting others’ 29ers for a long time. Why? Because I can’t fit one, and everyone talks about how great they are. So, Matt, being the most awesome hubby in the world, is helping me out.

We’re starting with a Carver 96er. Low cost, 13″ frame. If this works, then I’ll consider going custom to get what I really want.

No, the kittens aren't allowed on the counter. Bad kitties!

There’s only 1 water bottle cage. But the frame looks great! I love the color (okay, I’ve always been a sucker for marketing of any kind, so color really makes me happy).

OJ pointing out the 1 water bottle cage issue

I can’t wait to try this out! The Mavic Crossmax 26″ and 29″ wheels, tires, seatpost, stem, and bottom bracket have all arrived in the mail. My lovely White Brothers Rock Solid carbon fork is awaiting its steed. All the rest will come from the very nice parts bin that Matt keeps well-stocked.

I can’t wait! I’m going to have one bad-assed rigid singlespeed pretty soon.

Wow, what an event! Glad I can say that I was able to partake in one of the SSWC races in this world of ours, and in my home town to boot! The coolest thing about the race was that part of the course overlooked the neighborhood where we live and will soon become one of my regular rides. Even better? My sweat equity went into building some of that trail with Trails 2000.

The start was amazing. Bikes and people everywhere downtown! With spectators and riders combined, there had to be a good 2000 people there! Lots of fun costumes too. Elvis was everywhere, along with lots of tight, sparkly Lycra and feather boas. Tighty whities were in the crowd too, hilarious! Riding with your nuts hanging out of them? Not so cool. Eww!

This 19.5 mile course had 3627 foot of elevation climbing and 3365 foot descending. On a singlespeed this turned out to be quite painful on my legs. Ouch! My SS leg muscles are obviously not in great shape. But definitely an awesome challenge that I’m glad I finished.

The Ridge was a killer, and I knew it would be for me. I definitely need to improve my technical riding skills. It’s such an amazing trail though and has some of the best views of the city from the top. At the top I was parched. 2 water bottles was not enough for this one. It was a bit warmer than I thought it was going to be too. There was plenty of beer, but no water at the top, so what the hell, I chugged 2 cups of beer and carried on. Unfortunately the buzz didn’t help my technical skills at all, but it did take away some leg pain.

By the time I got to the 1/2 way point, I was ecstatic…I’d made the cutoff…YES! On I went through a shower of beer from all the drunks cheering us on. This let me finish the 2nd half of the race sticky and stinky. I managed to demonstrate some nice bike balancing skills as I high-fived tons of screaming, costumed people waving their Oskar Blues, trying to get me to down a cold one before moving on into the 2nd part of the course. Talk about motivation! My legs were tired, I had already started to cramp in several different spots in both legs, and I was parched…yet I got some sort of energy boost from all the excitement.

Up Cuchillo to Mike’s, which just about killed me (okay, that was before I’d hit the climb to the Secret trail). Somewhere on Cuchillo I ran into Dave resting under a tree. He’s a friend of Bendan’s I met at the 12 Hours of Temecula while crewing for Matt. I stopped, ate a few Cliff Blocks and chatted with Dave until he was ready to continue on. At the bottom of Cuchillo, I ran into another friend cheering on the racers. No water, but she had this leftover gray gunk in the bottom of her cooler with a few ice chunk floaters. Dirt and small flecks of who knows what floating in it, I poured it into my water bottle and it tasted wonderful, minus the grit left in the back of my teeth with each swig.

Toward the top of Mike’s I was able to chug down some water from some guy’s water bottle and passed on a pan of cooked bacon. I did have some sliced pear though, which was quite refreshing! I turned down some other “pain management” that was offered to me and continued on to the top of Mike’s. At the base of Secret trail I was able to get about a 1/2 bottle of real water, some more Cliff Blocks, and I was on my way. Oh, I think there was also a swig of whiskey from a bottle along the way there too.

The finish ended with a climb, a roll through a pile of beer cans, and tons of screaming, smiling fans!

I was grimacing as I made it up the climb. I had just been hit with 2 inner thigh leg cramps and I knew the muscles were going to lock up at any moment. I couldn’t stop in front of all these people, so I smiled through it and rode to the finish!! Matt was at the end, cheering me on and convincing me I could do one last pedal stroke to the end.

Wahoo!! Stick a fork in me, I’m done!

The entire town of Durango was out today and hiked many parts of the course to cheer us on. It was so great to see so many of my friends out there. Thanks to everyone for the cheers!

We topped it off with a roaring party at Ska Brewery. I’ve never seen so many people at one place. Basketball between New Zealand and Italy to determine the next SSWC locale kept us all entertained while we sipped our Ska and ate our Zia. What a great way to end the day.