Good Mountains

The last couple weeks have been kind of crazy. Eugena, Kiowa and I made the move from Kirksville, MO to Logan, UT about 2 weeks ago and are finally getting settled in. We were down in SLC a couple days for my younger brothers wedding and I had the chance of riding the most epic and leg-busting ride of my life...more on that later. First our new place in Logan is pretty much the sweetest place we've had thus far in our relatively short married life. We have a good sized house with a nice backyard. There is a little canal that runs along the outside of the fence so Kiowa gets morning and afternoon swims to keep her furriness cool during these hot summer days. The house is withing walking distance to a bunch of stores, and the best part by far is that I have space for a sweet bike shop. No longer will I have to use our office/study room/storage room to work on our bikes. Logan so far is awesome, it's sitting right by the mountains and is a pretty quiet town. Bigger than the ville, but not so huge that you get choked out by asphalt everywhere. I went mountain biking with Eugena and my Dad yesterday and it was so nice to be up in the mountains. Man I didn't realize how much I missed the high country, plus the trails out here are pretty cool. I did go on a mtn ride with some guys from a local shop and was able to see a guy endo and face plant into a rock (a nice chance to practice a little wilderness medicine), he busted out some teeth and after we got him down the canyon to a doctor he ended up with 3 busted teeth, a fractured maxilla and some facial lacerations. So it was a pretty exciting first mountain biking outing.

By far the coolest ride I was able to do since being back at elevation was what we have dubbed the "Triple Death Threat" ride. My older brother (Mr. Fabulous), my then-soon-to-be-wed younger brother (k-dog) and I left early one morning for Millcreek canyon. Millcreek would be the first of three canyons, followed by Big Cottonwood, then finally Little Cottonwood. Millcreek is a great climb, about 8.5 miles long and averages around 6.5% grade with sections that kick up to 15%. Big Cottonwood was just that, big. It's about 15 miles avg 5% grade. Then when we finally came to Little Cottonwood, the hardest of them all, 9 miles at around 8% avg grade, and in the heat of the afternoon. It was easily the hardest ride I've ever done. This was a courageous endevour, We didn't know the exact milage or the exact amount of feet to be climbed when we started, we just knew it would be a lot....This is what my ibike elevation profile revealed: If you look at the bottom you can see the elevation climbed....yeah almost 11,000 feet in 86 miles. It was a blast.

Tomorrow we are hitting the road again first for southern utah for an organized century, then to california for a week long Salt Sea Pirates LOTOJA training camp. Eugie has organized a bunch of sweet road rides in northern california so it should be a blast.

The bike shop

The new addition to the bike family