Sunday, April 24, 2005

Bishop's loop

My Bishop invited me to go on a bike ride starting from his house going down to Saratoga Springs, down to Elberta, up to Eureka, out to Vernon then Faust, and back to his house. He suggested I could borrow a bike he had given to someone else, but I didn't feel comfortable about asking to borrow the bike, and I have been wanting to get a road bike, so I went out and bought a new bike. While I was at it I got a new bike computer that has altitude gain. So today's numbers are my first numbers with the new computer and my first road bike trip.

I tried to use MapQuest to see how far it says this trip would be, but it wanted to take a round about way to get from Faust to Eagle Mountain. MSN's map took a long route from the highway back to the Bishop's house. Anyway using a combination of MapQuest and MSN I come up with the route being 107.18 miles.

Today's picture didn't turn out too well, but it is a view of Cedar Valley. The ride was basically going around all of the mountains that surround this valley.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Snow Day

I felt like going a little higher up Slate Canyon today. A little ways past the slate hill the trail turned into snow, so I stopped there and turned around.

I realized I didn't have a picture of my new bike on the blog yet, so I snapped this picture where I turned around.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Real Men of Genius

We went up Slate Canyon today. It has been a while since we have been up Slate Canyon, so it was kind of like visiting an old friend. Someone had been up Slate Canyon on their motorcycle and messed the trail up a bit. I ended up getting off track on my first attempt to climb the hill after the gate, and had to retry it. But then I was able to make it all the way above the pipe hill without stopping for the first time. By the time I got to the top of the hill I felt sick from pushing to hard, and had to sit down and recover.

This picture is from a couple of weeks ago. It goes to show how stupid people can be when they have been drinking. The truck looked like if you breathed on it wrong it would roll down the hill. The stupid thing is there was no reason we could see for having gone off the road onto the hill like that except the can of beer that had fallen out of the truck when they opened the door. Also it appears that they got out of the truck on the down hill side, as there were cigarettes, beer and other things that had fallen out when the door opened. They were extremely lucky the truck didn't roll over them on the way out.

Monday, April 11, 2005

Little Jumps

Sometimes it is just nice to take it a bit slower. We didn't really push hard today, but just had a nice fun ride. I'm really liking my new bike. I think I have gotten faster going down hill and I seem to be doing better at taking jumps. My climbing on the other hand is a lot better with the new bike. The one hill I was wondering if I would ever be able to climb is now a rare occasion that I don't make it, like today when the chain came off of the gears. However I turned around and retried the hill with no problem.

Today's picture is Layne hitting a little jump. The jump is a little bit better than the picture makes it look. I have been having a lot of fun jumping off any little drops I can find. Nothing spectacular, just little things, and of course not nearly as well as Layne.

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