Home

Wally the giraffe and I have made it safely home, although not without a little excitement. After I took advantage of one last sunny bike ride in the morning, we left San Diego about 3 pm on Monday. Thanks to high speed limits(In Utah you can drive 80 in the flat spots, but they do make you take it down to 75 for the turns.)  and good weather, we made it to Green River, UT that night. (Even with one last dinner at IN n OUT in Vegas.) We hit the road the next morning, ready to make tracks again.

When we hit CO, I noticed signs every few miles warning commercial trucks that they were required to have chains for MM 178, Vail Pass. Until about MM 150, I assumed MM 178 stood for some side road to Vail. I mean, really, it wasn't even snowing where I was. 

Somewhere between mile marker 150 and 160, I realized that the whole MM 178 thing stood for mile marker 178 on the road I was on, I-70. I decided maybe I should at least pull over and exchange my flip flops for shoes. 

Because who really wants to be the dumbass from Cali that skids off the road in the snow, can't find her shoes and has to push her car out wearing flip flops? 

Literally ten minutes after I changed into shoes I drove from weather that involved just a few flakes, into this:

(Although this is actually after the snowplow passed us and cleared the road a little.)

Apparently I wasn't the only dumbass because I saw a trucker putting chains on his rig in shorts and a t-shirt.

Basically, for nearly two hours, we crept along hoping not to drive into the ditch. Thankfully, the snowplow finally passed us and threw down some gravel, which was a relief because at that point I was stuck behind a constantly fish-tailing Lexus driven by a woman so terrified she didn't realize that she might stand a chance of ending the fish-tail if she would just drive over 10 mph. Ever tried to drive uphill in the snow at only 10 mph? We all fish-tailed except the snowplow.

I know what you're thinking- why not just pull over? Easier said than done when every exit and rest area are completely snowed in. Rather than risk being stuck along the road, I chose to sneak in behind the ski resort shuttle van and drive it out. I figured no one else on the road had driven in snow as much as that poor guy. Plus, I figured the mini van would handle as least as well as his van in the snow.

Mr. Shuttle Driver delivered us safely down the other side of the pass and we played tag with the storm the rest of the trip. Thank goodness I put the all season tires on before this trip!

Memories

Today was the day to open up the storage unit that flooded last month. It didn't look bad when I opened it and I was so excited to get my bike out that I didn't notice the smell at first. Once the excitement wore off though, the smell kicked in. Something smelled moldy.

Turns out a lot of stuff was moldy.

You know how a lot of us have a box, that box that's full of all the sentimental stuff? Mine is now also full of mold. Unfortunately this thing had to go in the dumpster.

Fortunately this little gem was saved. 

Now you know the workings of my six year old mind. I liked big commas and apostrophes I guess. That and my parents. As long as they loved me, that is.

Arrival

After 4 days and 2600 miles, San Diego just sort of snuck up on me. I have a feeling that I'm sneaking in one last moment of calm before the storm of old friends rushes in. Track practice starts in 45 minutes. My legs probably won't work, but my mouth will probably never stop moving.

The trip started Sat. morning with a little mountain bike race spectating. It was in the 20's. There was snow. I put on all my warm stuff and ran out to find a place to take pictures and waited for orange. The Latitude 45 jerseys are orange. I got some great pics.

Too bad I don't know these guys. Wrong orange jersey. Of course, when the right one finally went by, I didn't have the camera ready.

So I ran back to the car in hopes of a finish pic. After car ride, a bus ride and a mad dash off the bus when it got stuck in traffic, I found a spot near a corner by the finish where I knew I could at least get a heads up when the orange jersey came my way.

Nope, that's still not the right orange jersey, but it did finally come by, making a sprint for the finish.

No crashes, no wrong turns, no broken bike....

Just a lot of mud.

A couple of hours later, I was back on the road, headed straight south in search of a warm place to sleep for the night. I found it four states later at 4 am. 

Three days later, I made it here, waiting for track. I even survived a crazy night in the desert with the best bud last night. My abs still hurt from laughing.....

The Forecast

Saturday I leave for San Diego to rescue my goods (primarily a certain 6 foot tall giraffe) from storage. The Friday forecast for Petoskey:  

I arrive in San Diego next Wednesday. The Wednesday forecast for San Diego:

Could I really ask for anything better? A little dose of snow right before I get to escape to sunny, 70 and my long lost and much missed road bike....

Now I just have to remember to pack my bathing suit....

Wind, Rain, Fun

This post is for all of you who told me you thought I couldn't handle the Michigan weather.

Wednesday night is group mountain bike night. You probably already know this since I usually only post on Thursday now. (Really, I do have a life other than Wednesday night riding. I just keep forgetting to write about it.) This week Wednesday arrived with something like 60 mph winds and rain. I took my riding stuff to work, but really I thought everyone else would bail and I'd get out of riding in the wind, rain and dark.

No one else bailed.

I have met my match in crazy with this group. When no one else bails there's really no choice but to ride  because if you don't you'll look like a wimp.

I hate looking like a wimp.

So- my trusty partner Cheryl and I headed out in our usual fashion, which is basically me just following blindly because I never know where I'm going.  Until last night, I also followed blindly because since I don't really know what I'm doing on a mountain bike I just try to follow her line and figure if she can ride over it so can I.

Just so you know- that theory was ridiculous. Within 2 minutes she rode over a log, which I then proceeded to hit and skid sideways along. Two seconds later I was on my ass.

Thankfully the boys hadn't caught up to us yet so no one got to witness this display of complete and utter ungracefulness. (Spellcheck doesn't think that's a word, but if spellcheck knew me, it would know this word. I'm pretty ungraceful most of the time.)

In fact, I'll just go ahead and admit that I'm pretty sure I managed to be completely ungraceful for over and hour while we rode, which leads me to a new reason to just keep riding behind my trusty partner. She doesn't have to witness how completely awkward I can manage to be on a mountain bike.

That said- I also want to clarify that while I might be ungraceful, I'm incredibly grateful at the same time. Grateful for new friends that will ride in the rain and wind, grateful for a riding partner who always finds the trail (and doesn't laugh when I talk to myself while riding) and grateful for this crazy weather that lets me feel like I'm a badass just for being out there.

Cuz we all know I'm never that much of a badass so I need the weather to help me out on this one.

Bye Bye Jules

My favorite perk of the bike shop has ended. We had one demo/rental mountain bike that fit me. I'd sorta claimed her as my own the last few weeks.

Unfortunately, since I work in a bike shop, I sometimes have to actually sell a bike and since Jules was the perfect fit for a customer on Wednesday, I had to let her go. I tried to throw in the idea that we had a brand new version of the exact same bike, but it was a no go. One ride on Jules and she was hooked. Thankfully I'd cleaned her up after our last outing, which started out pretty enough:

 but quickly progressed into a trudge through the swamp. At first I was convinced I could just ride through the swamp. This worked fine for about 20 feet until the water submerged my front wheel and I came to a dead standstill, which lasted for about a half a second before I realized I was going to tip over and be partially submerged in the swamp. It was then that I decided that I'd rather trudge through knee deep water carrying the bike on my shoulder than risk crashing and swimming.

Of course, I immediately envisioned gators and water snakes and attempted to hop back on the bike to save my feet from the critters. There were numerous go arounds of mounting the bike, nearly falling off into the water, carrying the bike, panicking about snakes and remounting the bike before I finally decided that in northern Michigan the worst thing in that nasty swamp was probably a leech or two. This realization came immediately after I attempted to ride over a floating log, thinking it would just get pushed to the bottom and I would ride over it. While this seems like a great idea, let me just tell you- it doesn't work. You end up wet.

After a half a mile of this whole carry, try to ride, carry thing, I finally emerged on the other side of the swamp to discover that some wise-ass marked the trail this way to warn of the water:

Whoever marked the trail either has a sick sense of humor or speaks a language  in which "flooded" and "narrow" mean the same thing.

Either way, it was worth it because the rest of the ride pretty much looked like this:

Proof

For those of you who've ever seen some of my lame attempts at mountain biking in  San Diego, and therefore can't believe I might actually try it at night- I've got proof. 

Of course, this picture is also proof that I don't know how to work either my camera or my headlamp very well so my trusty riding partner finally had to just take control of the camera so we could get a decent picture.

We're at the top of someplace called Avalanche, and Boyne City is in the background. The boys were way ahead of us so we decided to descend via the dirt road, which was more like a sand road, which means we pretty much surfed our bikes down the hill. This made me laugh for some reason, which could apparently be heard down in the parking lot. Hey- at least I wasn't screaming in fear....