Lets catch up, shall we?

Well, its been a while, aside for of course the post I just published about the season not getting here soon enough. I actually wrote that when i got back from Jackson Hole where I was lucky to visit Annie for 4 excellent days. I figured that I would post a picture-heavy blog that goes from the day i got back from Jackson to today! Annnd go.

So, camp was great but did not really put an emphasis on "hard training" and I did zero riding in Jackson (although we did climb, walk, cross-country ski for the first time in my life, and avoided skiing down hills mainly because im a fancy-pants afraid of injury). The word "injury" is actually a great transition to what I did find waiting for me back in AZ: trying to get the new shoes and pedals on the same terms as the old shoes and pedals:

If you think that looks like a mess, you are correct. I rode my left knee into a place of darkness that i hope to never revisit. Key lesson here is to ease into training after off time, especially if you replace every piece of equipment there is to have in biking. 2 hard long rides is all it took to put me out for 2 days bored as hell and forced to do things like this:

Crepe day!!! Theres not much to do here if your not biking, or tired from biking, so i channeled that energy into something somewhat awesome: peanut butter, jelly, cinnamon, and brown sugar crepes. I liked to keep mine modest, brian on the other hand....

Were just going to let you all make up your own comments and jokes for that picture. Moving on, my boredom seemed to infect Sal and Brian which led to the thought "i wonder if you can eat a cactus" well, heres a cactus paddle we found outside:

And here is what the three of us, some salt, olive oil, and 10 slivers later, came up with:

Not so impressive considering where we started, but by the time we came up with that small peice, the taste of it was not good enough to warrant another bout with the prickers of yet another cactus paddle. But, it was good! Thing is, you could put olive oil and salt on a rock and id probably consider eating it.

Lets see, what else happened? Ahhh St. Patricks day Tucson Style:

Dad send his son (me) a nice card and some money to get some beers on St. Pats day, and thats what we did. Tucson aint such a bad place to drink on a porch at night. With St. Pats day over and my knee healing up with max levels of ibuprofen and iceing, I got back to it with really one mindset: smash myself to the best of my abilities. I dont have much time left here so i figured take this time and weather to make it almost a good idea to sit in a car for 2 days with the bike banished to the roof. While thats going on, a few old great friends came to visit me in Tucson, so I found a way to thrash myself AND help them enjoy Mt. Lemmon: Meet me at the cookie cabin.

Pure joy. After the cookie cabin it was on to the hiking portion of the day, having already ridden to the top of a mountain i was looking forward less to this part of the day than the cookie cabin part of the day. Alas, jim earned a gold star for fitness, and also got some great pictures for the effort. Looking down on Mt. Lemmon Hwy (about mile 8 to 9):

Once the tourism portion of the hiking was over, it was time for the "where do you think that trail goes" portion of the day. This trail goes up, no sh%#

There was quite a bit of PA-ing taking place on this trip, since catherine and heidi are both here for a PA conference (who knows what thats going to be like). Needless to say, pulses were checked, and PA's were in action:

While showing people around this mountain that I have spent so much time with this year, I started to get a little nostalgic about leaving this place that has been such a part of my life the past 3 months. So this picture has maybe more meaning to me, as it is Mt. Lemmon Hwy going up, and then again at the top of the picture you can see it way up.
We celebrated a full day of Lemmon with trader joes snacks and pizza, and 2 buck chuck... not really going to say today was full of good feelings in the morning, but i did punish myself during the ride so i am feeling a bit better.

I leave here in 5 days, going to stop off in Jackson since its "on the way" home. Then I will be back home for the summer, getting ready for The Gila and Joe Martin from the comforts of my parents own home :) I cant wait to race, as you can see from the previous post. I will miss it here but there are some great things to come, for example, the Kenda boys ended up with a 2nd overall at Tour of Taiwan this week, great work. I think its a symbol of things to come this year, so im looking forward to it.