Gold Bar .. later Porqupine

riding and riding and riding

Ok.. now in moab..
Have been riding since we flew in on Monday..
This is what we’ve ridden..

Monday
Russell’s Loop (Woooohooo! We made it to fruita! Awesome views and classic riding)

From Fruita, Colorado

Horsestheif branch (ok.. here is some gnarly shit.. and then a perfect sweet trail)

From Fruita, Colorado

Tuesday
18 Road
Prime Cut (the Single Track alternative to climbing on the road.. ok I’ll take it, just don’t hit the massive piles of poo.. or the calf in the trail)

From Fruita, Colorado

Chutes and Ladders (name says it all, wtf, ok wait.. I need to do that again..)

From Fruita, Colorado

Kessels Run (x3ish both ways) (the best slalom course you’ve ever ridden…ever)

From Fruita, Colorado

Western Zippity (nice chill climb with rad views like most things round these parts)

From Fruita, Colorado

Part of Front Side (oh woops, the switchbacks are up not down.. sorry)

From Fruita, Colorado

Joe’s ridge (holy –F my mom’s going to kill herself, this is not the place to talk about loosing one’s balance, seriously)

From Fruita, Colorado

Wednesday

Zippity Doo Da. (kicking Robbie out of his sleeping bag on to the trail, we blazed down this Trail- super exposed steep and wicked fun, look for the photo shoot he had there last week in a magazine coming soon)

From Fruita, Colorado

Thursday

Slick Rock.. (fun with mom, look closely and you'll see her twice in this stitched photo)

From Fruita, Colorado

From Fruita, Colorado

Slick Rock.. (fun with Ken and Scott)

From Fruita, Colorado

Chili Pepper (super gnarly bad ass fun with ken and scott)

From Fruita, Colorado

Dinner at Kens

From hangin in moab

Ken (THE Ken Moody) wants some props for being on the cover of these books..so here it is:

From hangin in moab

Cool Dudes who like to ride bikes too and be goofy

From hangin in moab

more riding tomorrow....

waiting to ride...

From Fruita, Colorado

While I wait to ride, as mom figures out what she wants to wear on our ride... I thought I might as well post up a few pics from our ride yesterday and our morning. A phone call woke us at 5 am and we just figured we might as well get up and check out the sunrise. We took a short drive to Colorado National Monument...

Heading to Fruita and Moab

So the 6 hour of Warrior Creek didn't end up as I might have hopped. As a two woman team- my mom and I arrived at the Warrior Creek Campground ready to go. Since my new jersey hadn't arrived yet, I represented for my mom's team - Piedmont Velo Sports. The plan was for me to start and get two laps in, have Mom do a lap or two hopefully, then I'd finish up with a lap or two. After having Drew take a quick look at my new I-9 wheels that I have been riding the hell out of, I thought I was ready to go. It was a fast start and a tight trail. Once I caught up with super fast bad ass - Christine Putnam - I tried hard to stay on her wheel, which wasn't very easy... It felt like a painful nauseating XC race and then things just suddenly weren't right - my rear derailleur broke. Not too sure why yet.. I think I might have gotten into trouble again from doing too much work on my bike too soon before a race. But riding in the mud and rain had done a lot of damage to my bike in the weeks before. And I'm finding that I can't really keep up with how often I need to change my chain these days.. guess I might need to start thinking about single speeding a little bit more. ugh. Well anyway.. My rear der. broke, I walked out, borrowed a Gary Fisher Big Sur from my friend Charlie (THANKS CHARLIE!), road back to where I had departed the route, and completed the first lap.

Mom took off and returned about an hr and 20ish later.. meanwhile the super cool folks at Magic Cycles offered up an xtr rear der for me to borrow... um.. well ok! Totally worried I was about to brake a stupidly expensive derailleur, I road carefully as I started my second lap. Instantly my shifting got all funky.. so I began to ride without putting too much pressure on things.. which was tough on this course. Tight, twisty, lots of quick ups and downs that required either power or fast shifting, neither thing I could do without stressing my derailleur of course. And then before I knew it my chain broke. Without a tool on me, I figured I'd just walk out and give it up. But then a nice Single Speeder who seemed pretty happy just chillin for a few min lent me his chain tool. With no need to rush, I fixed my chain, had a nice chat and was back on my way. My shifting greatly improved and I picked up speed. As I approached the "technical rock garden", I got pretty excited as now I could hit it with my big wheels (which I was missing the first time around on the borrowed GF.) Taking a bad line, I recovered just as a dagger of a rock sliced my side wall. NOOOOOO.. Stans spewed everywhere.. deep breath. Ok. Pulled out my tube, borrowed a pump from a passing rider, pumped it up and then the friggin core of the valve stem came out. Ok. Done. Defeated, I walked out and mom and I gave it up. We were happy that neither of us became so injured that we would f-up our up and coming trip to Fruita and Moab together...

The picture to the right is Charles of Mock Orange Bikes in Winston-Salem... I really like this picture, kinetic images took some rad shots of the twisty-ness of the race.. you should check 'em out.

I would totally do this race again - Tough and interesting course, Good people, Awesome food and beer at the end, Overall very well run. They even had super cool nice'n'soft t-shirts. Lots of great people showed up and rode hard and didn't have tons of mechanicals.

Now I'm heading west to bigger sky's and bigger rocks and a week of mountain biking with my mom. If you are out there and want to ride drop me a line.. I'll be riding in Fruita 13th and 14th then Moab from the 15th to the 19th.. or something like that