On NPR this morning I heard a very sad thing, Johnny Cash had died. Being only a fan the past few years his farther reaching influence was loost on me. I just thought this guy to be an old country singer that a lot of newer artist were fans of. When bands I liked when I was younger mentioned the man in black as an icon, I thought you know I should listen to more Johnny Cash to hear the influence in their music. when I finally got around to getting his music on my high-speed napster account at school a few years ago I was hooked. I had to hide the napster account files in a secretly named folder in the harddrive where nobody would look, it was great I got to learn about good music and how to hide stuff on a computer that wasn’t really mine to load 500 or so songs onto! I learned all about how to hide stuff, maybe someday that knowledge will be helpful in the real world! The ability to learn about these artists without spending a ton of money on cds I didn’t know to be the right ones to learn about music new to me. The high speed didn’t hurt either. I can’t wait to have high speed at home. Well enjoy life because you never know when you can’t ride or hear "I walk the line" listen to new music...

Today I had soup for lunch, a really good tamale soup that was just the right side of spicey, sometimes it's nice to have the simple treat of good lunch, not that it's a super big deal but it's pretty cool to have such a good hearty lunch. I rode alone this afternoon, thinking I was riding with a few people I didn't put the mp3 in my bag. My mistake. I rode some singletrack and dirt road and path to get in some good work but overall it wasn't too great. My front tire was a bit low, so on every rock I thought it was going to flat. As my mom and grandfather are here we had a wonderful dinner at home, good pasta with chicken and asparagus. Last night the four of us went to the Hearthstone and Shaubie and I had what amounted to a sushi salad. It was raw seared tuna on a bed of really good greens, the tuna was crusted with sesame and the greens were dressed with a really good soy-wasabe compound. Once or twice I got such a wasabe rush my eyes watered and I almost choked! I wish sushi was as cheap as PB&J, I'd eat it all the time. Imagine surf clam for lunch and spicy tuna as an after-ride snack! mmmmm sushi. Does anyone besides me read this? Oh well it's just my ideas.

I got back on the road bike and I feel like I’m on the trolley again, The bike has never felt better, some more cross stuff and a bit of running and I might pull off a good ride next saturday in Breck. The odds are good that my legs will show up, I can’t have that many shitty races in Summit County in a row...or can I? Tomorrow is the second cross ride, a break is just what i needed. I'm really doing intervals for the first time in a while, structure is good! Perhaps a day of motor pace work with a day of cross course stuff and not much else other than a long day of hard stuff on dirt roads, around 11-13 hours a week. Erwin would be proud. Beckham has been good aside from periodic meltdowns, the eyes are in good shape, and we think the boy is teething! He is eating his hand a lot more than normal and isn’t too thrilled if he is left alone. I hope the cross race happens next week...

The Colorado Trail up from West Ridge to Tiger road was a blast, good 90 minute climb and ripping 30 minute descent. We rode at a really slow pace on climb because he was on the verge of puking the whole time. Puke that's funny! Tim rode his singlespeed like a champ the whole way up after being sick for two days. Between he and Nick I don't know who did the most entertaining on the climb. I was just kind of suffering to climb the hill without laughing too hard, we stopped twice just to rest and eat more Mojos. MMMM mojos.... Oh yeah, the descent rocked, I actually feel like I may be a racing cyclist again soon! Then later on I rode the Barney Ford trail with Scott, we saw a black bear that was the size of my fridge! He was just walking around the woods, not caring about the stupid cyclists riding by him too fast. Scott makes a great trail, what a cool job he has! Perfectly laid out and flowing really well up & down. I hope Joel rode his bike today. Enjoy

The course this morning was unreal, the trail was a bit wet but an amazing loop! We started out in a little rain after about thirty minutes my friend went down going across a rooty section leading up to a bridge, he split open his knee pretty well and had to go back and clean it out. After not riding this stuff for a few years it's a blast to ride again a lot of them have been improved and rerouted on to better and more sustainable terrain. The track was a bit sloppy on the older stuff the mining roads and old unmaintained singletrack but it was just fun to rip through the woods on good flowing trails for three hours. I really missed the fun of a mtb while trying to go pro on the road, now I have no problem riding the fat tires and maintain a balance between the two, with a fair bit of cross stuff now that church is about to begin! I drank too much coffee today and kind of made myself sick, I was just dumb! I guess two is about all I can handle. I hope Tim A. gets over his stomach thing...

Philosophically, Standard or Daylight time makes little sense to me, I never really understood why in modern society we cling to ideas from another time. In 2003 why do we adhere to old ideas that we need more or less daylight at the end of the day, do the farmers right now really care? Hell if they do, I’m all for it, after all we are the worlds breadbasket! Once the weather starts to change and the clocks fall back an hour we usually lose a bit of our motivation to ride. The trails and roads are still there and there is still time after work to get out for a spin or a commute. I like to go out on the dirt roads and ride a cross bike with a good set of lights and some warmer clothes. Depending on where you ride, a headlamp can be a big help, for singletrack it’s a good idea. Enough about the crap you need, the important thing is getting out there and enjoying the dark on the stuff we ride we ride in the daylight! My personal favorite is dirt roads I’m not too familiar with. I like the sense of adventure I get when riding on stuff I may get a bit lost on. Darkness skews perception in such a way to put you where you thought you weren’t! My first adventure this year was on a road I had been on just once or twice on a bike before. I left work at about 6 pm and started up the road (county road #3) as I left the lighted area my lights illuminated a narrow path and put me on my way. Home was about 15 miles from where I began. I found a comfortable rhythm, the roads’ pleasant washboard on the switchbacks made for a good line to run through, and the ups and downs kept me working. Winding my way through what passes for a road between subdivisions that aren’t paved. This is a rare treat in suburban America. I was going up one of the many little hills and I saw two glowing orbs in the middle of the road, not sure what to make of it, I looked a bit harder. Only when I was within twenty or thirty feet the two little reflectors finally leapt out of their crouch to my surprise they were attached to a fox! The little guy was out looking for dinner. Perhaps a poodle or a scrumptious cat, not many poodles in Summit County though! He was a very pleasant sort, not sure what to make of the lights bearing down on him without the whir of an engine or the speed of one. Not long after I came across an intersection where my way was not 100% sure to me. I went right and started down what I thought was a shortcut. It would be have been shorter I hadn’t missed my turn to bring me back down to the main road and an easy six miles of bike path home. I went down the road and looked into the valley and saw where I wanted to be. I just couldn’t figure out a way to get down there. A few dead end cul-de-sac efforts to make my way into the valley and I struck out! After a mile of backtracking I found my road and plunged in to the valley, found the main road and went onto the bike path and upped the pace a bit to get home quicker. Being one of my first night rides of the year I really wanted to get home before the lights went south. Sure enough when I was about two miles from home on the darkest part of the bike path the lights started going! Fortunately my light has a low wattage survival setting. I wound my way home on the path and made it before the light died completely. Luckily no mechanicals slowed my ride. Just some poor route finding, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way! I was lucky enough to ride my bike in the dark on a night when there was no moon, very little ambient light, and one cool route to get home! Standard time is bad for some but it can make the bike more fun and exciting. Daylight is cool to ride in but everybody does that, well almost everybody, but to ride at night takes a bit more imagination, a bit more commitment (lights aren’t cheap!) and an urge to see things in the dark. Whatever the powers in state capitals do with this issue is fine by me. I know that parts of Arizona and Indiana don’t subscribe to this, but those of us in the areas that have it let’s just use it to motivate us to ride our bikes under different circumstances. Enjoy the wheel!

Today was a good ride to work in the rain, I looked outside at the rain and got my rain gear to ride in the wet through town. I got a donut on the way, Daylight Donuts Rocks! Those guys are the best, they had me in and out in a minute. I wanted more of a ride but as this is a rest week I decided it was best just to rest and do my little commute without any real work or longer rides. Tomorrow will be cool, the ride is going to be a good one, around three hours. The loop will be really fun, all of the standard Breck stuff up to treeline and then all the way down into town. Beckham was good this morning, we got the lenses in without much trouble, and then he was happy before I left for work. Shaubie put him in this cool looking gangsta outfit sort of hip-hop-hood. Baggy khaki pants and a flannel shirt buttoned all the way up, very cute!

Well since the laser sugery two days ago Beckham has been ah, mercurial to put it best. He wakes up so happy and then he has to have the contacts put in and he just gets pissed off beyond belief. He just hates it when we put in his contacts. When it comes to everything else he is fine, happy fun the whole bit but the eyes must really hurt and be pretty sore too! I am volunteering for the Fall Classic on sunday and I think I got the best position, my job is to pre-ride the course early sunday morning an make sure the arrows are in the right place. That and helping out with the set-up saturday night. I hope to be around sunday to see the racers finish. We got some really cool swag for helping, a cool shirt, a pair of woolie boolies and I got my sweatshirt prize for the local series overall. So far with two days before I'm supposed to ride it I have two maybes and a sort of sure to go with me. I though it was the best possible option for volunteering, I don't have to stay in one spot the whole time and I get to ride my bike, far! Other people at the meeting didn't think as highly of this job, oh well it's going to be really fun! Today the lenses went in ok on the right and then a bit of fighting on the left eye. yesterday was by far the worst in a while, we got the right one in and then the left wouldn't go, after all of the hassle just for one I bailed to get to work and popped out the right one and left him without any to come home later and get them done when he wasn't fussy. It really sucks to do this everyday. The sky was great about 6.30 this morning, the colors went from bright pink to almost green in spots, really amazing stuff, the ride to work was bland and pretty dark, I need a headlamp now to get the first mile of the ride done without crashing, after seeing the porcupine a few weeks back I worry about hitting him and going down hard only to have him pissed off at me for hitting him and possibly hurting the prickly guy. I really wish I still had my old commute, this one is way too short, 2.5 miles isn't a tenth as fun as a 9 mile ride through the woods with the animals and the weather with the sun just starting to come up in the summer at 5.20 am. The sky on some of those mornings was unreal, if I was on the road I surly would have been hit by a car, I'd be looking around at the clouds and sunrise that I'd hog the whole path. One of the mornings last fall I was riding up to work and it was a pretty rainy night/early morning and coming out of the woods onto the path there was a bit of water laying on the ground and since it was pretty cold I was looking for ice with my lights when all of the sudden I heard heavy breathing and footfalls all around me, pretty freaked out, as I am afraid of the dark, I really had no idea what was going to jump out and grab me, the boogieman, the blair witch, Jason, who knows what I thought. Well, it was a big herd of elk that were spending the night in the hollow that sits at the bottom of the hill near the road, I guess it's pretty warm and nice there and the elk just chill there with their friends for the night. One of the elks who after I shined my light up there had to have had 12 or 14 points was just glaring at me, as though I had ruined his morning, he was the one who I had heard in the first place and he was running up the hill thinking i was a threat! Hah! The other 10 or so were just laying on the other side of the path looking around as though nothing happened, what is that about big things being sissies?! He didn't want anything to do with me, and we saw each other about 20 more times in the ensuing weeks as I still rode to work over the rapidly freezing ground. Another time I was going through the same section a little ways down and the elk was standing on the side of the path about 20 meters away, instead of charging and forcing me to do a sprint workout he just started running next to me at the same distance for a good 300-400 meters, it was the coolest thing almost like he was playing with me. Looking over as he looked at me and kept the same pace the whole time, aobut 18 miles an hour. Really amazing to see big game playing with a harmless human, shitloads better than watching them kill them on the OLN shows between the Giro/Tour and Vuelta stages (which starts tomorrow.) The strength that they show when they run just makes we jealous at how regal and graceful they are. More next time on a cool night ride on the cross bike on dirt roads.

Well, it's been a hell of a few days, surgery yesterday and then a night in Denver with more doctor stuff today. Beckham needed laser surgery in both eyes to re-open the rims so that light will go through the pupil, the doctor was optimistic that the eyes are keeping up with each other though we may need to patch the left one to let the right keep up. Shaubie is the most amazing mother I have ever seen, she is up before a cry can finish its first two seconds to feed, clean or hold the boy. I hope my skills are half as good! The break is coming along well, I'm still a bit tired but feel that I may have turned the corner a bit, some more rest and a bit of couch time and I'm back in it. I still only want to ride my mtb, the thought of going on new and old trails is a big draw right now. The Breck cross race is two weeks from saturday, so I need t oget recovered and get out there on the cross bike soon. Travis is bringing a scooter back from Madison so we can do some good motor pacing on the roads, how cool will that be!!! I may want to get a singlespeed, I want to have that bike, some of the trails would be a blast on one speed. I hope Joel rode today.

I wish I could ride to work everyday the way I did today. There was frost on the windshields as I left the hood to climb up and over Gold Run. The flumes were great just wet enough from all of the rain we've had lately and tacky in the corners. The downside of going to work at 5.30 am is that I can't do a fun ride to work on trails. Afterwork I went to Carter Park and climbed about 40 minutes out of there to Sally Barber Road on the Moonstone Trails, really good new singletrack that was just built. Beckham was thrilled when I got home, he was laughing and cooing while I said hi. After last night when he woke at midnight and cried himself back to sleep, while I developed a splitting headache. I ended up going down to the couch to sleep and slept with a pseudo-chill until about 6.15 this morning. I need to rest more, but I'm enjoying the bike so much, all I want to do is ride new stuff and stuff I haven't ridden in a few years. And the calendar is ticking. I think I'll try to get a softail, not quite sure how it will happen but there is always a way. I wonder where Joel rode today...