I'm Going To Be a Daddy!

It's official! Rosey and I are pregnant (well, she's really doing most of the 'being pregnant'). We are due, I believe, sometime in February. I can't think of a better person than Rosey to tackle parenthood with. She will make a wonderful Mommy.

Of course there is the small detail of a wedding that will be planned in the coming months. I never was good at doing things in the right order :) I'll keep you posted with details as we settle on plans. I'm so excited!

Thursday Morning Commute

Every Thursday for the last 3 weeks (and hopefully for the rest of the summer) I have a special commute into work. For this commute, I wake up at 3 in the morning, drive past Novell to Orem and then bike from Orem around the backside of Utah Lake 79 miles into work. It is undoubtedly not the most efficient way to get from Spanish Fork to Novell, but it sure is a lot of fun :) Believe it or not, there are actually 4 other guys (Novell or ex-Novell) who also think that this sounds like fun.

The ride officially starts in Orem at 4 in the morning when it's still very dark out. I had to buy a headlight and blinking taillights for my bike in order to ride safely. The headlight helps a little but it's still a little scary to be cruising along a backroad at 20 MPH when you can barely see the asphalt. It's all worth it though by the time that we get around the back of the lake a little after 5 in the morning. The sun is just starting peek out over Timpanogos and you get a gorgeous view of the lake with all of Utah Valley and the mountains in the background.

A New Pet Peeve

As I've been driving around Provo for the last couple of days, I've noticed something that is starting to really annoy me. You see, it's started to warm up a little after a short cold spell and I've seen dozens of people riding through town on their bikes. This should be a good thing right?

Well, what really annoys me is seeing a bunch of people riding around town on full suspension mountain bikes that they never intend to take off the pavement. You can always tell these people because you can see them bouncing up and down on their suspension as they try to propel themselves forward.

Full suspension mountain bikes were never intended to be ridden on pavement for any extended distance. The rear suspension actually makes pedaling less efficient by absorbing some of the down stroke of your pedaling motion. When you are cruising over a rocky and/or stumpy trail, that rear suspension can be invaluable. When you are riding down the street, that rear suspension just makes you look silly.

I think that we have Wal-Mart to blame for this phenomenon. Wal-Mart doesn't really care about selling you the right bike, they just want to sell you a bike. They figure if the really expensive, high-end mountain bikes have full suspensions, then what everyone wants and needs is a really cheap Walmart bike with a full suspension.

Unfortunately, there is no one in Wal-Mart's bike department to help you pick out the bike you really need. So, you come to Wal-Mart to look at bikes, notice that 90% of their mountain bike selection is full suspension and priced under a $100, and you think to yourself: That looks like the bike that I need to buy. This would never happen in a real bike store with competent sales people.

How to Clean an iPod

Step 1: Carry your iPod around in the hidden pocket of your cargo shorts.
Step 2: Forget to remove iPod from said pocket when taking shorts off.
Step 3: Wash cargo shorts in washing machine using favorite detergent and water temperature.
Step 4: Transfer cargo shorts (and iPod) into the dryer and let bounce around for about an hour until thoroughly dry.
Step 5: Remove iPod from cargo shorts.

You should now have a very, very clean iPod.

Note: iPod may cease to work properly after trip through washer. But, hey, at least it's clean :)

Step 6: Attempt repeatedly for at least a week to power on and/or reboot your iPod.
Step 7: Finally break down and totally disassemble your iPod using a knife (my implement of choice) or other sharp object.

Note: At this point you should no longer hold any hope that you can get it working again... you just want to see what it looks like inside.

Hiking the Narrows

I already alluded to this in a previous post, but I didn't have time to post any details. So, several weeks ago Rosey and I hiked the entire length of the Zion Narrows from Chamberlain Ranch down to the Temple of Sinawava in Zion Canyon. The total trip was 16 miles, most of which was hiked in the middle of the Virgin river.

The trip was originally planned as a Birthday trip for my sister M who, like me, had attempted several times to hike the Narrows but always had plans fall through for one reason or another. Unfortunately for her, this weekend ended up being one of those times. She had recently had some surgery, and her doctor, at the last minute, disagreed with her that she was well enough to go on a hike like this. I would have just rescheduled the entire trip but all of this happened two days before we were scheduled for the trip and I already had reservations for everything.

Rosey and I took the day off on Friday and drove down to Zion. We needed to get there before 6PM in order to pick up our backcountry permit and to rent our river hiking gear. The river hiking gear consisted of neoperene socks, special boots that are meant to shed water easily, hiking sticks, fleeces, and a dry bag. Actually we could have just brought our own fleeces but it didn't occur to us how cold it was going to be in the Narrows early in the morning.

The trailhead at the top of the Narrows is an hours drive away. We made arrangements with the rental company to shuttle us up there to start the hike. Even if we had two cars with us, it's just so much more convenient to not have to worry about driving an extra 2 hours at the end of the day to go pick up your car.

Our shuttle left bright and early at 6:30 in the morning. We should have been on the trail by 7:30, but one of the groups on our shuttle was hiking in a different area of the park and we had to drop them off first. So, we didn't get started until sometime after 8AM.

The first three miles of the hike followed a dirt road that ran alongside the virgin river. At this point in the hike there was no canyon and no narrows to speak of... just a river running through a field. It was still a beautiful area though.


The walls of the canyon began to grow around us as we ventured further down the river. It was kind of neat to see the canyon forming like that.

And then, about 4 or 5 miles into the hike, really before we had even gotten int o the Narrows proper, tragedy struck. Rosey had just gotten a brand new digital camera from her Mom for her Birthday a couple of weeks earlier. As Rosey was removing the camera from it's case, it accidentally slipped out of her hand and fell to the ground.

The camera really didn't drop far enough that the impact did any damage. It actually had a pretty soft landing in some really fine sand. However, in the instant that the camera came in contact with that fine sand, the sand somehow infiltrated all of the inner working of the camera and bound them up. We could no longer even get the camera to turn on. So, we were stuck without a camera for the rest of the trip. It was a little sad to be without a camera but I was still just happy to get to do the hike after trying for so long.

I'll spare you the narrative for all sixteen miles of the hike and instead point out a couple of highlights:

• We ate lunch sitting on a log beneath a waterfall. The waterfall was only a 10-15 feet tall but there was a massive amount of water pouring over it.
  
• In the heat of the day we found a nice large boulder to jump off of into a deep pool in the river.
• There were several spots when we were able to take a short swim through some deep parts of the river. We never had to hike in water deeper than our thighs but sometimes we would jump in just to cool off.
• Rosey was pretty excited to spot some fish in the Virgin river. I'll admit that even I was impressed that the fish seemed to be doing so well in such a small and seemingly isolated river. She thought that they were some kind of trout.
  

Sixteen miles is a strenuous hike even on flat ground, but it is all the more so when you have unsturdy footing on the bottom of a rocky river bed. Although Rosey and I were beat by the time we made it back to the Temple of Sinawava, there were no serious injuries or complaints.

Some other people that we passed were not so lucky. There was one guy that we met about 3 miles from the from the end of the hike that was hobbling along because he had blown out both of his knees. I felt bad but there just wasn't much that we could do for him. He was close enough to the end of the hike that I wasn't too worried about him making it back before nightfall. Somehow, I'm guessing that guy didn't do much hiking for the next couple of days.

Rosey and I made it back to the Temple of Sinawava trailhead at about 6PM... nearly 10 hours after we had started earlier that morning. On the one hand it was kind of frustrating to have to take the park Shuttle back to our car, but on the other hand it just felt damned good to sit down :)

The few pictures that we did get before the camera puked are here.

My Special Mountain Bike

I decided this weekend that I hadn't spent quite enough money on bikes this year, so I went out and bought me a new mountain bike. It's a Specialized FSRxc Comp with an aluminum frame, full suspension and hydraulic disc brakes. I'm still acclimating to the full suspension but the light aluminum frame is much nicer than my old steel Gary Fisher that weighed a million pounds and I LOVE the hydraulic disc brakes.

Rosey and I took it out on it's maiden voyage this morning at the Big Springs trail in Provo Canyon. Unfortunately, I don't think that I gave it the send off that it deserved. After tackling the alpine loop yesterday I just didn't have much energy left to do a lot of climbing today. It turns out that the trail that I chose was like the steepest trail in Utah county (probably not literally, but it felt like it today).

We probably only got in a couple of miles before I couldn't take any more abuse and turn around. But then again, going downhill is what mountain biking is all about anyway :) It was actually really fun to cruise downhill on my new bike. I felt like I was able to take it a little faster because of the added stability from my rear suspension. However, even with the new bike, there was no keeping up with Rosey who went flying down the hill. I'm still a little timid when it comes to traversing a rocky trail at full speed. Maybe I'll get more comfortable with practice.

Conquering a Lesser Summit

I conquered my second mountain ride of the summer on Saturday. I did a 40 miles loop from my sister's house in Orem up and over the Alpine Loop. Compared to Nebo, there was about half as much climbing and the overall ride was shorter by 10 miles. Also, I only hit a peak elevation of 8000 feet versus the 9300 feet on Nebo. Nonetheless, it was a worthwhile challenge.

I encountered way more cyclists on the road going over Alpine than I did going over Nebo. It seems to be a fairly popular route. Although, most of the cyclists that I encountered appeared to be riding from the other direction. I've heard that it's easier from that direction (although it didn't seem obvious that that was the case as I descended into American Fork Canyon).

There was however one cyclist going in the same direction as me. He passed me up in Provo canyon before even getting to the Sundance turnoff. I was struggling to find energy early in the ride and was fighting a pretty stiff headwind coming through Provo Canyon. So, I was kind of glad when he passed me and gave me the opportunity to draft off of him for a little while. I had no trouble keeping up with him as long as he was fighting off all of the wind for me :)

We chatted as we rode for a couple of miles, but once we hit the turnoff to Sundance and started the climb I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep up with him for much longer. I may have been able to hang with him for a little while, but it probably would have been at the expense of pushing myself too hard and threatening my ability to complete the loop. So, we wished each other good rides and parted ways.

As I watched him bike off it made me realize how much work I have left to do to really be able to cycle competitively. Cycling is all about your PWR (Power-to-Weight ratio). If you want to be a stronger cyclist you essentially have two options: 1) Gain Power, or 2) Lose Weight. Although I'm thrilled that I finally dropped below 200 pounds, you still just don't see a lot of 200 pound cyclists. My best option to be able to compete with guys like that would be to lose another 20 pounds. Of course, I'll continue to build my power by riding over mountains too :)