Cold & Rednecks

We are all tired of the cold and thick air. Tanner and I have been spending some quality time in the basement pain cave. Actually, it's a pretty nice setup and not too bad most of the time. I just borrowed the '07 Vuelta and Tour DVD's from AJ, so we'll have something to watch this week. Watching bike races is the only way to make the time go sort of fast.

I'm finally feeling better and had a good training week. I managed 3 days lifting and lots of riding. The air is so bad, I didn't make it outside during the week. However, most of us on the team couldn't take it anymore and decided to ride in Park City Saturday. The air was nice and clean, but very cold. We did 2 and 1/2 hours and the max temp was about 15. I think that's the coldest ride I've ever done.

I must admit that I'm suffering a bad case of bike-envy. I know this is hard to believe from a guy with many highend bikes. However, we had most of our team out Saturday and I'm the ONLY one on the team without a Tarmac SL. I told Erin before she left that I'm making a huge sacrifice to pay for her mission, no new bike for me this year. I am getting my road bike back together and Glen gave me his old S-Works carbon crank to try, so all is not lost.


I sent 3 days this week working in the Easton booth at the Western Hunting and Conservation Expo at the Salt Palace. It was an interesting time. It's always entertaining to talk with our customers, the rednecks. They are good people and keep us in business. In this picture is Phil Phillips. He's on a TV hunting show and a celebrety in the hunting world. We're one of his sponsors so he spent time in our booth signing autographs. It was fun to hear his hunting stories. It's a pretty good gig to make good money hunting around the world.

The purpose of the show was to raise money for hunting conservation groups. Even if you don't like hunting, you should appreciate what the rednecks do for wildlife and open space preservation. Over $10 million dollars was raised this weekend that will be used to puchase open space, restore habitat, and re-introduce animals. A good example is Bighorn Sheep in Utah. 30 years ago there were no Bighorns in Utah. Working with the division of wildlife resources, sportsman have funded the re-introduction of Bighorns in Utah and there are now close to 5,000 animals. There are only 70 hunting tags issued each year and the herds are now very healthy.

At the aution last night, hunting tags went for as much as $170,000 for a sheep hunt in Canada. The Utah Governer's Mule Deer tag (you can hunt any unit in Utah) went for $137,500. Karl Malone bought a sheep tag and a mule deer tag that totaled $125,000. It would be nice to have that kind of cash.

Have a good week,

Daren