Suncrest is Fierce

We weren't looking to buy a new place when we drove up to Suncrest the first time - but being the outdoorsy type folks, kind of got stopped in our tracks with what we saw and how it felt like being in some little mountain town. So, we more or less bought it on impulse.

Had no idea we were getting a place that came with it's very own weather system. Here's what we didn't bargain for - or at least underestimated:

Pretty typical look at the front yard in the winter
Figuring out where to put the latest 12 inches of fresh snow is not an uncommon problem
There is an entrance to the house on the level below where Annie and the kids are standing - it's perfectly functional come March or April, but fairly worthless and impassable around the time this photo was taken.
This is what a Super Bowl tailgate party looks like in Suncrest - veggie tray on the back of an ATV. Served during a break from shoveling after church and before the big game.
Not unlikely that this is the 2nd or 3rd round of plowing in a day.

And here's what we did bargain for, but also underestimated. It ain't a bad thing to wake up and go to sleep looking at this kind of stuff out the back windows/deck.

I think it will be 4 years this year, and as pretty as it is to look at, it's even better as a playground if you dig the outdoors. Can't think of many places I'd rather live....

Snakebitten - chapter 2

For the most part, I consider myself a pretty lucky guy - so I don't like adding chapters to this heading.

So, after my previous post on getting a little concerned all over again about the tubular tires I've started to experiment with - I decided to strip them off of the Tufo tape and reglue them with the glue recommended by continental - the maker of my conti competition tires - and you guessed it, they recommend continental glue be used to glue their tires - go figure. But I bit, you know, just in case it actually might hold them on better on top of conti selling an extra can of glue.

I won't beat around the bush. Installing tubular tires is laborious. Stretch the tire. Put a layer of glue on, let it dry, put another layer on, let it dry, put another layer on, then wrestle with the wheel while trying to stretch the tire over it, while it has wet glue on it - yeah, it's like that. But once on, you should be set for a might long time right. That's how it's supposed to work.

So after this process - I got out Tuesday night with Zeph (who recently got caught wrestling something else), Brandon and Tyler - a few of the conmen who suckered me into leadville, and piled it on by making throw my name in the hat for LOTOJA. Once again am crossing my fingers I don't get drawn. Anyway, back to the ride. I put on the Easton Aero wheels with the newly glued tubies on them - thumbs still raw from wrestling the tires on - and head down the north side of the hill to the local grocery store, then back up to meet the gang for a quick tour into Utah County and then back up the hill to get home.

First item of note - those of you who ride suncrest know that when descending the north side, you need to be ready for some wind coming around the second left handed bend on the way down. There's a little there more often than not, and sometimes it can be stiff, which can be sketchy at 50+ mph. I learned real quick that those deeper dish wheels make my bike buck a little harder when that wind hit's it - no fun crash story, but pucker factor none the less.

I meet a guy named Paul on the ride back up who was good company which makes the climb go a little faster, and meet up with the guys. We race down the south side trying to keep up with EB who makes his bike go pretty fast down hills and settle into a nice ride. The tubies feel great, no sketch factor at all. Then it happens. PSSHH. It wasn't pssssssssssss, it was PSSHH - and the whole group heard it. At first I thought it was my front tire, which had sealant in it, which I thought worked great. But no such luck - it was the rear tire, which had no sealant, and no sealant worked about as well as you'd expect.

So before I can rave about the pros of my new tubular tires, I've got a couple of con's to bring up.
1 - Your screwed if you get a flat. Granted- sealant should eliminate this the large majority of the time - but if not, your screwed. No tube to throw in or patch to throw on. The only fix is to carry an extra tire, which you'll need to throw on and ride gingerly home since there's not much besides a tight fit holding it on your wheel. After having to wrestle it on in public on the side of a road.
2 - Carrying an extra tire isn't really that much more of a deal in regards to weight and room than carrying your standard spare tube - other than I think I'd feel a little silly announcing to the group - "uh, hold up once second, forgot to grab my spare tire".
3 - Carrying that spare tire is that much more of a deal on a cost basis. That flat tire I got - it was a bad one, large slice on the sidewall, not sealable with sealant - so the tire's shot, with less than 150 miles on it. Here's the rub - those things cost $100 a pop. Yes, there are cheaper tubies, and I'm a frugal guy for the most part, but not in this case. So yes, I was a little peeved at ruining an expensive tire after so little use, and more peeved about the prospect of having to wrestle a new one onto that dang wheel again - it's currently being "stretched" in preparation for install tomorrow night.

While on the topic of cons - here's another. Cell phone reception can sometimes be spotty where I live in Suncrest - it's great most of the time, but there are moments. So, tire's blown, I tell the guys I forgot my spare tire, and to go on without me, I'll call my wife for a ride. It's about 7:30 and I'm up by Cedar Hills Golf Course - can see my house across the way. In fact, I can almost hear my wife's phone ringing, in my house, while looking at it while calling - but what's really going on in my house - silence - wife's cell phone is sitting on the counter taking a nap, and pretending I'm not calling it. No ring, no indication that I just left my 8th voicemail saying it's 8:30, cold, and I'm standing on the side of the road in cycling shorts and a sweaty jersey - trying to dramatize the phone into working by explaining I'm dipping into a hypothermic state. Still didn't work.

Luckily - the conmen's phone's were working, and after hitching a ride down to the gas station by a sympathetic fellow cyclist - thanks Kyle in the yellow truck, Brandon was gracious enough to drive back down the hill and pick my sorry behind up and take me home. First time I've been snakebitten on a road ride - and think I'm not due again for quite some time.

Snakebitten

That's what day 2 of last weeks St. George trip was.

Brandon got us to Springdale safely late friday night after white knuckling it through the snowstorm in the big Expedition. I decided on the way down to opt for volume out near Zions with the conmen on Saturday vs. intensity at the race in St. George, where Rick and Sam laid down an early season message that they're to be reckoned this year in the single speed category. We met the doc and rode Jem/Rim/Gould Saturday morning - Jem was fast and we had a riot ripping the 1 track back to the parking lot. It had been a good pace all day, but something about Jem makes you open the throttle - and the yelps let you know when someone hit the section where the trail drops out from under you. There was a hairless sasquatch sighting at the end of the trail - he briefly appeared on a bike coming around the last corner - but quickly retreated when he saw a larger than expected crowd near the cars.

Finished the day with a jaunt around Slickrock Swamp - great trail to wind down and play on, but we looked more like a train of zombies than kids on a playground by the time we got to the slickrock - we were pretty spent. The only rubs anyone had on day one was Tyler getting a cramp in his calf early in the morning, and Brandon feeling the bolts of his new shoes on the bottom of his foot all day - that had to be comfortable.

Tyler educated us on the virtues of backcountry skiing over breakfast the next morning before the ride. On the docket for day 2 - Gooseberry Mesa, and an uncanny series of mishaps. The day actually started off with a little luck - we were meeting up with the doc again who was coming from St. George - and it just so happened that both parties arrived within 3 minutes of each other, about 45 minutes later than the agreed upon meeting time with no cell reception to let the other know we were running late - so chalk one up for the win column right off the bat.

About 30 minutes later, the snakebites started. I think it started with me. Nothing spectacular, standard faceplant into one of the short steep ascents up one of the slickrock walls. Tyler and Erik I think are the ones who saw it, and because there were witnesses, I got up doing the post crash fake laugh thing, surveyed the damage/showed off the severe rockrash on my right arm which had added flare with all the blood, remounted, and tried to get a moment to myself to weep and scream f bombs in my head to counter the fire shooting out of the rock rash and the sprain I knew I'd put in my left wrist when trying to prevent getting a little rockrash on my face. The face was saved (no matter of opinion jokes - Annie) but at the expense of the wrist which is just starting to feel better 8 days later. May do a post on what to do with rock/road rash scabs - or any scabs for that matter. What to do with that layer of skin crust has been a source of much discussion around my house this week, with wife and kids all having their input. I'm a picker.

The next strike was on Banks - who somehow managed to break one of his eggbeater pedals. The pros of eggbeater pedals? Their light, simple design makes them a nice pedal for the minimalist. They're hands down the most popular pedal with the folks I ride with here in Suncrest, and I converted to them for cyclocross last season. Here's the con - depending on where your at on Gooseberry when that thing breaks, the lack of any type of platform on that pedal means you may very well have a long walk to the road before you can get back on the bike and limp it down the road. Brandon's walk wasn't real long, but he made it a little longer when he crashed on the way back to the road. Should mention that he crashed while walking the bike, not while riding it - talk about insult to injury - or, because the walking crash drew blood, maybe injury to insult?

The two Eric/k's and Erik's buddy Tyler and I took the hidden valley route back to the jeep road and headed back to the cars to meet back up with Brandon and Tyler after fixing the pedal problem (Erik R. happened to have an extra bike with the remedy, flats and pedal cages). If you've got to bail from the good stuff on Gooseberry, that jeep road is actually a fun descent - not nearly as good as the trail, but certainly not the suckiest bailout route that ever sucked. We were having fun bouncing around on the little rock jumps, etc... down the jeep road when I hit a rock and my rear tire let out a big belch. It was loud, and it was a lot of air. I ride a tubeless setup, and it seemed to seal right up and I was able to make it back to the car to top it off at the air pump. We regrouped, made a few jokes about the guy with one eggbeater pedal and one rat cage, and were off again for more of Gooseberry's classic trail. The happiness lasted maybe another 30 minutes, when I downshift for yet another quick/steep push up a rock, and my drivetrain locks up. I manage to get off instead of fall off, and start the delicate surgery of extracting my rear deraileur from my spokes, which is where it ended up after my chain apparently dropped off the inside of my cassette. To my surprise, the surgery actually went pretty well, and I lived to ride another day, or another couple hundred yards. The belching rear tire wasn't holding air.

But - not to be outdone - Banks wasn't content with breaking just one pedal in a day, so he went for the two bagger. Yep - he snapped the spring in both eggbeater pedals in one day. Come on, seriously - I'm still new to the scene, but I'm guessing the number of people who can claim they've done that can be counted on one hand.

So when we got back to the jeep road, I volunteered to take my slow leaking tire and attitude back to the car with Banks, along with Erik and Tyler from Cedar City who had to get back to wives and kids to finish their family vacation time. And just to top off the theme of the day, I rolled the back tire enough to burp it completely flat on the ride back down the jeep road, and ended up hoofing it the last half mile. The Zeph and Tyler finished the trail, we loaded up, and I put my seat belt on extra tight, and wrote a farewell note to my family, certain that we'd be gobbled up by the first avalanche ever to happen on Gooseberry Mesa on our drive down the hill. It doesn't matter that there was no snow or slopes, it was that kind of day. It says a lot about your friends when you look back on that kind of crap and remember it as fun, or at least funny.

Scenes from a west desert weekend

Friday night we loaded up the Honda Pilot and made the three hour trek to Garrison, Utah - home of my dad, Leslie (step mom), some cows, horses, and a few other folks. It's one of my favorite places to go for some unwind time - and it sounded like a nice place to go to celebrate my 33rd birthday and watch the Superbowl. Two dangers in driving across the west desert at night:

1 - breaking down, you may spend a night before potential help arrives via another vehicle coming by.

2 - Hitting a cow or antelope at night

We managed to dodge the black cow standing in the road about 20 miles outside of Delta - were fortunate enough to be watching and saw it with some room to make a Nascar pass around it. But as we pulled into my dad's driveway, we noticed right away that someone else hadn't been as lucky - and they were sitting at the kitchen table when we pulled in. My dad is the local constable so his place was where these locals came after hitting a bovine at about 55 mph. Yep - cows will leave a mark.

In the country you make do with the cards you've got in hand - so instead of calling AAA or a tow truck, the wife, who was sitting in the passenger seat (these folks must have been late 60's/early 70's) does her best to pick the glass off of her face after getting decked by the airbag, grabs the quilt she was knitting when the accident happened, and uses it to hold up the windshield as best she can while her husband, who was also rattled and had been decked by an airbag, drives the 40 miles to get to the next village - Garrison - where my dad lives. While desert climates can get toasty when the sun is up - they get brutal cold within a few minutes of the sun going down. I know my kids last about 5 seconds when I yell freeze out and row down the windows in high teen/low 20's temps - and their young with good circulation. Not sure what it might feel like to go 40 miles in said freezeout, i.e. no windshield, but am pretty sure it could not have been much better than miserable. Maybe the adreneline from the wreck helped, but probably not enough. This all happened Friday night - the photo was taken the following morning. A short follow up to this in a moment.

Annie and I took the road bikes down - so that I'd have something to distract myself from the homemade bread and other goodies in Leslie's kitchen - on the topic of cows, I tend to eat like one when I go to Garrison. Grazing begins just after hello hugs, and doesn't end until just prior to goodbye hugs. We got out Saturday morning for a couple of hours and rode up into Great Basin National Park until ice/snow on the road turned us back. All in all it was about 30 miles with about 2500 ft of steady climbing between miles 8 and 15. A solid workout where your burning up on the climb up, and bone cold on the decent. Am thinking this may be one of my best little training destinations this year as I try to get in shape for leadville - once the snow melts and the roads are clear all the way up, that mountain will be a stout ride.

One of the cons of being out in Utah's west desert - if you hit a cow, your not going to have much traffic come by to help. One of the pros of being out in Utah's west desert - if you feel like riding your road bike, for the most part, you've got two full lanes of prime road/highway pretty much to yourself - with some really fantastic climbing if you want it. Just don't hit the cow.


As we're descending from the park, the van pictured above that had been run over by the cow, comes cruising by with our new friend from the night before driving at about 35 mph - apparently taking his trusty steed home to be put out to pasture.

As much as I love a weekend in Garrison - the rats of the rug get even more excited about a trip to Grandma and Grandpa's. Horse riding, chores (feeding the animals), climbing haystacks, chasing cats, the nearby playground, the novelty of different toys, etc... and adoring grandparents all are things that they look forward to a lot.
Annie riding "Chief" - the girls favorite horse.
Queens of the haystack
Evening bull riding contest before bed. Chesney won this night.

Heck of a game Sunday night to cap it all off.

Don't breath the air

One of the con's of living where I live in the winter is that I dig/shovel/plow probably 4 times as much snow as I would if I lived in the valley. One of the pro's of living where I live is we dodge the inversion problem that the Wasatch Front has. Usually.

This air sucks. Am getting the urge to get out on the road bike with these warm temps - but am pretty sure the intake of this crap while breathing heavy isn't good. We're usually spared from this stuff at 6'200 feet where the house is, but not this week, it's creeping up late morning/early afternoon. This is what the Salt Lake valley looks like before I head down the hill to work around 7:45 am.



Utah County ain't no better

If I do go ride, I've either got to do it in the morning before this stuff creeps up, or I'm wearing one of those bird flu masks you see them wearing over in asia during outbreak scares, and doubling that layer up with a painters mask.