Killing Butterflies
· Jun 25, 11:32 AM
Butterflies are actually kind of big. When you hit many of them at 35-40mph descending on a bike they hurt a little. Not a bad kind of hurt, but I wouldn’t want to take one in the face.
Nice Weather
· Jun 9, 06:29 PM
We’ve had some really phenomenal weather here recently. Rain for 3 or 4 days last week including a couple of good thunderstorms. But that was nothing compared to this afternoon. Today was one of those rain-and-hail-bouncing-off-the-pavement-and-the-sky-turns-dark-at-2pm sort of storms. Awesome.
In Search of Snow
· Jun 7, 03:11 PM
Ever since last Spring’s epic crust cruise, I’ve wanted to go back to McKenzie pass and ski more of the lava flow. In particular, the North Side and Belknap Crater looked so wide open and fun. I almost went last weekend, but was turned off a bit by the warm temps. When Lars floated the idea of going out there yesterday afternoon I was immediately interested. When I woke up this morning to see an overnight low of 38 in Sisters and 34 up at Bachelor I was, as they say, all in.
We decided that since the road is currently open to bikes but not cars, we would make it a proper adventure and ride up to the snow with our skis on our backs.
Pictures, Crust Skiing and PPP
· May 27, 09:29 PM
Given the spectacular days of skiing we’ve had for the last three weeks I really should have a bunch of pictures to post and make you all jealous that you haven’t been getting up to Bachelor frequently. But I don’t. Fortunately a lot of people have been here skiing the last 10 days (thank you for the grooming USST) and they have the pictures to prove it.
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Spring Time
· Apr 19, 03:37 PM
Sorry to have been away from the posting for a while. I got myself a twitter account, and while I can’t say I’ve been prolific, the little bit of muttering I’ve done has seemed to sap the energy I would normally devote to the blog. Or it could just be that I’m lazy.
Today was the second warm day of spring here in Bend, though with temps heading above 80 tomorrow, it might be less like spring and more like summer. In fact the whole week has been pretty nice, and I’ve been able to get out and enjoy it a little. I got in two days of Alpine skiing (trying hard to make the spring path worth the $129, I haven’t figured out what my goal should be in terms of runs or vertical, but since Bachelor let’s me track both, I figure a goal is in order… please offer suggestions in the comments), a short run (did my legs ever feel shaky after that one!) a crust ski on the Bachelor trails yesterday and a bike ride today. Pretty excellent really.
I think tomorrow I may try to re-acquaint myself with paddling in preparation of the upcoming multi-sport event that grips Bend with a wild fever. If anyone has or knows of a TT bike in town for me to borrow, I’m all ears.
Back to work this week, and I’ll do my best to stay active. Training starts up again for real in about 10 days, so it would be good to be ready. Just have to come up with a good plan for the year between now and then.
Hardest. Race. Ever.
· Apr 1, 11:16 PM
That pretty much sums up how I felt about the 50k in Fairbanks on Sunday. If you haven’t read the FasterSkier race report, you should, it was an exciting day up at the front of both the men’s and women’s races. Maybe the most exciting domestic races of the year. Stinson gives me far more credit than I deserve for being part of the chase group with Kuzzy. We were there, but more like around 15th as opposed to 10th, but hey, it’s good publicity! Anyways, on to the race.
Fairbanks
· Mar 23, 04:37 PM
Two days in March has gone a long ways towards changing my opinion of Fairbanks. While it’s still ridiculously cold (below 0°F) in the mornings, the sun actually comes up in the sky a little (and stays there) to the point where we’re seeing highs around 20. Actually, the skiing the last two days has been great. The snow is still squeaky cold, but skiing with temps in the teens really isn’t bad. And it’s hard to complain about waxing when VR40 is plenty of kick and really on the slow side.
Racing starts tomorrow at the late hour of 6PM, which does make me wonder what to do with the rest of the day. Normally I’d think daylight would be an issue, but it’s a little different up here this time of year. It takes at least an hour and a half for the sun to rise, and once it does, it just sort of stays at late afternoon type sunlight all day – until 8 or 830. So it might be cold, but it won’t be dark.
The only other news of note right now is that Mt. Redoubt erupted last night. There are some issues involved in flying between Fairbanks and Anchorage right now (can’t do it), so let’s hope that clears up by Sunday…