Planes, bikes & autos

It's been a pretty long week with some good and not so good. On the 24th, Tanner and I rode our MTB's in Corner Canyon for a couple of hours and had a good time. It was a little on the warm side, but we had the upper canyon to ourselves.

I spent a couple of long travel days beginning Wed morning at 4am. I was visiting one of our production facilities in Eastern Iowa (Doug's beloved Hawkeye territory). All went OK until the trip home. We had a 45 minute commuter flight turn into a 2 hour flight dodging lighting and thunderstorms. We missed our connection in Minneapolis had were lucky to get a hotel accross from the Mall of America at midnight. It was back to the airport early Friday for more commuter flights to Billings and then the SLC. We were only 18 hours late. I love flying in the late summer. Weather causes havic every time I fly.

I got home in time to head to the Happy Hunting Grounds for some scouting Friday night and Saturday. Tanner, a friend from work and I went to my neighbor's property. We had a good time and saw some nice deer but few elk. Hopefully, the elk will be easier to find in 4 weeks when I'm there for the real hunt. We put up a couple of tree stands (a small platform you hang 10 - 20 feet up in a tree usually by a water hole to bowhunt from) and helped clean up from a black bear. Because it's been so dry, the bears are having a hard time finding food. One bear discovered the camp kitchen (a 12 x 24 tuff shed), pulled 2x10's off the outside of the windows, opened the window and climbed in. He pretty much opened everything in the kitchen and trashed the place. Pretty amazing.

This week, I'm fully back in training and racing mode. I've had a good 3 week break and I'm ready to go at it. This week I'm racing RMR on Tuesday and the final ICUP MTB race on Saturday. I'm leading the 40+ Expert ICUP points and need a decent race on Saturday to secure the overall points win for the second year in a row. I didn't set out to win the points this year, but now that it is possible, I'll give it a good effort Saturday.

Daren