Living Up To Its Name

Powder Mountain 1/29/098.


Tanner

Doug

Daren

Doug and Tanner

Daren

Needless to say, a good time was had by all.

Snow in Eugene?

Snow in Eugene? Actually there is. It has been snowing on and off since Saturday night out here. When it snows here everything shuts down. We had half the ward show up on Sunday, no school on Monday, 2 hour delays on Tuesday and Wednesday. It is pretty entertaining. People don't know how to drive in snow out here. They go way to fast and slide all over the place. Granted, there is a lot of black ice from the moisture.

With all the snow it has made commuting nearly impossible. I have been trying to spend as much time as possible in the "pain cave." But we all know how that goes, it gets pretty boring after a while.

I know this isn't the same as Doug's picture, but it's the best we can do.

Snowshoes

I spent most of this week working at the Outdoor Retail show. Easton launched our new showsnow called Easton Artica. The shoe was really well received and Chrispy's year of hard work paid off. I had a good time and enjoy going to the show. It's good they let the finance guy out of the office every once in a while.

This is our booth as we set up at the on snow demo at Snowbasin. It was a spectacular day in the mountains

I made the front page of the Trib Money section showing our new shoe.

The weather was nice yesterday and Doug, Tanner and I made it out after the OR show (Doug and Tanner got to wander the show and see all the new toys they want. Tanner has about 3 new pairs of skis he wants). Tanner was manning the camera.

Doug and me.

We had a great time riding together and saw a few fellow cross riders out and about. Overall, a really nice day.

Not Much

Not much interesting happening the last week. Work has been busy and the new year of training is going well. I have a long list of bike repair and building projects (between me and Tanner, I have one new frame to build and 5 other bikes with various repairs or upgrades to install). My normal life is busy, so most days its a choice of working out of working on bikes. Not much happened with the bikes this week. The bike I want to get going most is my 1989 Bridgestone RB-1. I realized I have enough parts to make it into a single speed. Should be a pretty sweet bike with a mid-80's Campy crank and American Classic wheels.

I'm happy to be back training. I actually like structured workouts and enjoy the effort. I don't like getting up early or going to the gym to lift weights. However, both are necessities for me, so I do it. Tanner and I got in 3.5 hours on the road with the team yesterday and it was fun. The weather wasn't too cold and the company was really good. I haven't gone on a true group road ride for months and I realized I missed it. I certainly go harder with a group than if I go alone and I'm worked today. It was great to have Tanner on the ride and he was taking his turns on the front and rolling through when we pacelined. He's slowly getting more comfortable in groups and even considering racing some crits this year.

Wednesday night I took 10 14 - 18 year old scouts and leaders on a snowshoe hike on Guardsman. We had a good time and with a 2/3's moon and snow, no headlights were required. It was beautiful in the pines and deep snow. The only downside was it was COLD!! When we got out of the vehicles, it was -8. It took about 2 days for me to warm up.

Redneck Show

I spent last week in Indianapolis at the Archery Trade Association annual trade show. It's the archery version of Interbike, just with lots of bows, arrows, hunting equipment and rednecks instead of bikes. Similar to Interbike, it is a dealer show where manufactures are trying to write orders. It is actual remarkable how similar the archery and cycling industries are. Both are driven by the independent dealer with box stores growing rapidly. The dealers are generally enthusiasts who love the sport. One bid difference is cycling dealers are usually fit riders while archery dealers are bubba bowhunters. Here's a look at the show:


This is our booths. We had seven brands at the show. Easton (in the forefront), Hoyt (in the background), Reflex and Fuse (not seen).

This is Delta and McKenzie targets with Easton in the background. Our other arrow brand Beman is not pictured. We're probably the largest combine archery company and have a large footprint at the show.

One of our competitors had a Swat Team stand around their booth to promote how tuff their arrows are. Yea, we thought it was pretty lame too.

We had all of our sponsored TV hunting personalities signing pictures in our booth throughout the day (If you don't think hunting shows are big on TV, just scan ESPN2, Versus, the Outdoor Channel or The Men's Channel next weekend. The TV hunting show personalities make far more money than any Olympic level archer.). Lee (in the blue vest) and Tiffiny (in the Camo shirt) Lakoski seemed to be the most popular for some reason. The bubba's stood in line for 30 minutes to get a signature and a picture.

Somehow, I don't think the Bubba's were in line to see Lee. Check out all the fit guys in line and how far it goes back.

Of course you can get your Harley in Camo if you want.

Cycling did make an appearance at the show. Pacific Sports (Schwinn, GT and Mongoose) had a camo bike they were pitching with a custom rack for your bow. It is a Schwinn frame dipped in camo just like a bow. Pretty sweet. I'm thinking I might need one of those racks. I have to check with Hoyt to see if a frame will fit in their dip tank. If it does, a camo MTB might be in my future.

This beauty is nice. Green paint, camo stickers and a nice rack system. I tried to pick it up but I wasn't strong enough. It's like a road motorcycle. If it falls over, it takes three guys to get it back up.

Now that I'm back, I'm officially on the training again. I wish I had the time flexibility to skate ski or snowshoe everyday to get my endurance time in. However, I'm stuck in the dark valley so I get out at lunch sometimes on the bike and the rest of the time I'm at the gym or on the trainer. Good times. There is some good news. Tanner is full-on this year, so he shares the pain with me in our basement pain cave most of the time. Also, I just got three new Cross DVD's yesterday so the entertainment factor just went up dramatically. Almost makes me WANT to ride the trainer just to watch. Less than 10 months to Cross season and only 11 to Nationals! I wish I were in Belgim for Masters World's this weekend. Good luck to the Utah boys that made the trip. Maybe one year..........

Snow anyone?/New baby

We got dumped on here is Ogden! 18 inches. I have snow blown for two days straight. Good thing I have retired. I had a great time at Brady's, if he hadn't dumped me over a cliff in the dark. The Cottle GI track. Be safe.

Congratulations Alissa and Robby. This is Madeline, 6lbs 13 oz and 19 inches. Mom and baby are doing great. Emily is doing good with her new sister.

Last Chance Cross

It's been a couple of days, but the "Last Chance Cross" or "First Chance of the Year" race was a good time Saturday. We were only racing for fun, but it was still hard. I haven't figured out how to race and not go to my limit. I think it is a genetic flaw. In any case, I guess I beat all the old guys and didn't get lapped by Bart, so I'd call that a success. I hadn't really done anything on the bike since Nationals, so it was a shock to my system the first 15 minutes. The conditions were wet, muddy, snowy, slick and cold. In other words, a pretty good day for a cross race.

Tanner moved up and raced with the fast B men. He was a stud. He was in the top ten the entire race up to the last lap. While in 8th or so, he went down on a slick corner and lost his chain on the outside. He was pasted by 4 or 5 guys while getting it back on. He pasted a few back before the finish and was pleased with his effort. T is going to race with the B's next year and should be very competitive. (Mike W also moved up to the B's and was in the top 3 all day on his single speed. I think he and Tanner will be battling in the B's next year. They'll both be beating up on the A's in no time.)



Tanner with the race promoter, Matt O'hran.

Up the muddy hill then..

remount at the top.

The awards party that night was fun. It was an 80's theme party with a live band. The band was 12 year olds from a Performance High School featuring O'hran's daughter on vocals. They rocked! We were all blown away how good they were.

Here's Tanner getting his Junior overall series winner award.

I actually was a finalist with Bart and Art for the best costume. The 80's preppie look was spot on. Art won the prize on a sympathy vote. Bart always wins, so Art got the prize. My lack of dance moves held me back from the win.

However, if Blaze would have made the party, he would have won easily. Blaze, aka MK, rocked the race on a single speed sporting long hair, a mechanic's jump suit, unfiltered smokes and Miller High Life hand-ups each lap. Impressive! He's off to Belgium this week to be with his people. There's a group of UT old-guy crossers in the Old Country to race Master's World's and watch a couple of Pro races. Good luck guys!

"PRE"

The immortal Steve Prefontaine. When Doug comes into town there are a few things we always have to do, go to Nike (the first one ever), go to Hayward Field (track town U.S.A.), and go to Pre's rock. Pre was one of the greatest middle distance runners during the early 70's. At one time he held all three U.S. records in the middle distances. Pre was killed while driving home drunk one night at the age of 24. He was the first paid athlete that Nike sponsored and help put them on the map. These are the pictures we took of his memorial rock. Many people like to leave personal items, such as, medals, numbers, shoes, or hats. One of the hats is from 1975. All to show their respect to the "rebel with a cause."

Doug's foot

Doug has been hobbling around for the last few days. It is pretty swollen, purple, and painful. We have had to wait on him hand and foot, like a little baby. Doug was telling me a funny story about his trip with Daren and Tanner to the cyclocross nationals. He said that he and Daren were laying there watching TV and noticed that both of their toes were crossed. Quite unique. Notice the toes being crossed in this picture.

Adam's five

1. I've never sent a text message, but then again I don't even own a cell phone. Then again I didn't even have a working computer at home until last week.

2. This last year was the first time in 10 years that I didn't make it to a dodger game.

3. I meet my wife water skiing while she was on a date with one of my friend. I talked him in to giving me her number while on the boat. Thanks Andy

4. Only 1 of the 7 road bikes I've ridden/owned/used over the past ten years has actually been mine. Big thanks to my Uncles hand- ME- downs. They truly support my peddling habit. As far as mountain biking is concerned I've never ridden a mountain bike with out some type of help from Daren.

5. This might come as a shocker, but I own no power tools what so ever. I take that back I have drill, but it's not cordless.

Doug, have you ridden a bike at 100% in the past 4 years? I've got to give you props, because you keep peddling through the pain, but you should have know that nothing good has ever happened with a Number 2 bathroom break on the side of the road (Lotoja 2007).

The crash (not even on a bike)

This is Doug before the crash, when he is still happy!

This is the crash site. You can see the tree below and Doug landed where the light is.

We were discussing titles for this blog and here were some of the suggestions, "A poopy deal" and "Falling of and getting back up." It all started with Doug and I enjoying a little ride in the morning, then driving over for a nice day down at the Oregon coast. We went to a light house and enjoyed the beach, wind and all. We found a nice restaurant, Mo's, and ate some seafood (I had chicken fried steak - really fishy). We finished by having some ice cream at the local BJ's.

Doug must have had a little too much, because he got a diarrhea attack on the drive home. Going from Eugene to the coast is a very beautiful drive, with trees on both sides. It looks like the road was cut through the middle of the forest. So I pulled over and Doug ran out into the black and rainy forest. I jumped out to find a tree, it was all that Mountain Dew at the restaurant. The next thing I hear is, "Ah! (thud) I'm in trouble! (thud)"

"Are you alright?" I asked.

"I pooped my pants and I think I broke my leg."

As it turned out, Doug stepped over a log and couldn't see that it dropped down about 4-5 feet. When he fell the logs broke his fall, but his ankle got pinned between the cliff and the log. His momentum carried him over and he fell another 4-5 feet landing in moss and tree limbs. I was standing right above him and couldn't see what had taken my dad. It looked like he had been swallowed into the black abyss. I had to carefully climb down and help pull him up out of the hole. Luckily, he wasn't seriously hurt. His ankle is sprained and his wrist is hurting worse. Once we knew he was somewhat alright we got a pretty good laugh about it. It is definitely something I will never forget. Just imagine Doug trying to explain to people why he is limping. "Well, I had to stop to go to the bathroom and fell off a cliff!" Seems pretty far fetched but pretty entertaining.

Here is Avery's version (my 10 year old daughter)

But then came the catestrufy. It started out as simple every day thing. Going potty. So when Doug got out and whent over to a quite area and deceided that right over this log he would go. Little did he know that over that log was a 4 foot drop then a log then a 5 foot drop and then ainto a of junk.Such as leaves,moss,dirt and other stuff.It was to dark to see so down went Doug, cellphone and all on to log number 1 then rolled over and droped on log number2.'' Help ,thud, help''.

My Five Things

There is a challenge going around the Utah cycling bloggers to list 5 things people don't know about you. The lists have been interesting and entertaining so far (although I now know things about Turbo I really didn't need to know). Since I don't want any bad cycling karma coming my way, I'll follow along and make a list. (Big disclaimer: Most of the 10 or so readers of this blog are family members that already know just about everything about me, so they aren't going to learn anything new.)

1. I've had a golf handicap index as low as 3.4 and yet I've played exactly 3 rounds of golf in the last 3 years and all of them were in 4 man scramble tournaments (2 wins I might add). Yep, I gave up being a Cat 1/2 golfer to be a pack fill Cat 3 road racer. The real reason I gave it up is I was a distant 3rd best golfer in my family behind my brother and Dad. I just got tired of getting beat all the time.

2. I'm a big fan of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Really. There is no musical instrument as powerful and emotional as 300 voices working together in a live performance. Regardless of your religious affiliation or lack thereof, you need to go hear the live Sunday morning Tabernacle broadcast at least once. Trust me on this one. You'll likely react like Sting. He described singing with and listening to the Choir during the 2002 Olympics as one of the most moving experiences of his life.

3. I'm an information junkie. Every day, I read the SL Trib, the Wall Street Journal, Velonews.com, Cyclingnews.com, blogs and other periodicals and listen to NPR. I also have 2 to 3 books going at any given time. The last few years, most of the books I've read have been non-fiction works about sports, politics, history and outdoor adventures. My wife and 3 children join in the reading passion. We are frequent visitors to the Sandy Library and have library fines rather than DVD late rental fees.

4. I've never owned a video game system and I've never sent a text message using a phone. Somehow, my children have managed to survive and function. I ditched the PDA 10 years ago and my cell phone is merely a phone. However, I have become pretty attached to my notebook computer, digital camera and MP3 player.

5. I have no recollection of the first time I met my wife. This is due to the fact that we were babies at the time. We grew up a few blocks from each other and we have always been friends. We didn't start dating until late in my senior year of high school and I dated no one else after our first date. Best decision I've ever made.

There you go. The challenge is now pasted on to you.

Look'n Good

Bub the GC connection site is as Noah (6 year old boy) yelled in my ear "Look'n good". Just wanted you to know that in the eye's of Noah your a computer Jedi Master.
New year, new plans. I've been on the spinner 3 times in 3 day and I'm starting the new year only up four pounds from Lotoja. I've been hitting the weights this off season (Usually from Nov to the end of Feb), but in an effort to ride faster I started back on the bike on Jan 1. I can now bench 225 (not bad if you're a buck 67) and squatting 3 set of 5 at 285. It helps when you teach a weight lifting class. I also revised Daren's workout spread sheet (no easy task) as to keep me focused and motivated. I also but up a picture of Robby and Bubba like "Rocky" did to keep me driven. I hope to keep up with them on at least one big climb. I'm not going to beat them I just don't want to get dropped. As I'm trying to princes Brooklyn is also trying to type on our new Christmas present (Notebook with e-net). So I now have no excuse not to blog. In an effort to stop Brooklyn (almost 4) from breaking the computer I'm going to let her type a line. adfjkdfienbvbcvbdfbjalfudfuefbubdfj. Brooklyn told me that it says that she to can ride a bike.
Spin hard or ride cold.

1st ride of the New Year

Doug and I were able to get our first ride in of the new year. We road a 40 mile loop around some pretty country outside of Eugene. We went at a moderate pace with some winds from all different types of directions. Doug did great, but his wrist is paying for it now. We will see how he does the rest of the week. Doug really liked my teams brown colors, he kept making rude comments to me the whole time. I even took pictures without breaking the camera, which I dropped last time.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

Tanner and I celebrated this morning by going on the 10th Annual Glen Adams' New Year's Day hike. I've made it to 5 or 6 of these hikes and they are always good. We had about a dozen of us this year and we hiked a ridge just on the North edge of Little Cottonwood. The rule of the annual hike is that it's somewhere new each year. This was one of the best hikes we've had on a beautiful day. Good times and Tanner even spent some time breaking trail. The boy is getting strong.


The view from our turn-around spot.

Chris Bingham was on the front when he saw moose up a head. He found this shed where the moose had been.

My neighbor Kyle and I have a holiday tradition of playing some kind of practical joke on each other. Kyle is a big time hunter, so this year we bought a very tacky 8-foot inflatable snowman in hunting gear from Cabelas and put it up in his yard Christmas Eve. Later that night, Kyle "borrowed" my archery deer target that we decorate in the front yard and returned it in a game bag hung with a winch from a tree. The stakes will be higher next year.

Kyle and I playing my favorite Christmas gift this year, Rock'm Sock'm Robots!

Tanner's Christmas Cross bike he was able to race a couple of times this year. My new Tri-cross carbon came in time for Christmas, but not racing. It will have to wait for next year.

Finally, Bob and BK, I'll get my list of 5 things posted this week. Also, the skiing yesterday made up for Saturday's dissaster. Some good face shots were had by T and me. I forgot the camera, so you'll have to take my word.

One more thing, we saw the documentary "Steep" last night. It is about big mountain skiing. Even if you don't ski or ride, you have to see this movie. It is outstanding. It's currently at Tolley Square.