svoid the wanderer

Blogging Again

2008-10-13T11:04:00.003-06:00

I finally bit the bullet and decided to move my blog off of my own server (which was having DNS issues) and back onto blogspot. It's easier this way :) Unfortunately, since all of my old content was published to my own web server, I am missing some stuff like photos.

Losing the Lotoja Lottery

2008-05-21T09:58:00.002-06:00

I just received my notification from LOTOJA that I did not get a spot in this year's ride. Too bad :( I guess I will have to wait until next year for my shot at redemption. Or, I could ride with a handful of guys that are going to attempt the LOTOJA route several weeks before the race.

Returning to the Scene of the Crime

2008-04-23T14:20:00.002-06:00

I hadn't planned on mountain biking again so quickly. My plan was to road bike this week while my wounds were healing. But, alas, it was too windy to road bike today but too warm to workout indoors. So, I did the only thing I could... I velcroed on my biking cleats, still caked with the dried blood of Friday's incident, and headed back out onto the trail. I did take it a little easier than normal, and, of course, I avoided riding the section that I crashed on. But, I did stop to get a picture. I hesitate to post it because it probably doesn't look as treacherous as I described it, but here it is anyway:

In other crash related news... I took my iPhone up to the Gateway Apple Store on Saturday. They laughed when I asked if it might be covered by the warranty :) Rather than repair, they offered to give me a replacement for the low, low price of $250. Unfortunately, I didn't think to ask if they would give me a price break on upgrading to the 16Gig iPhone until later that day. Oh well.

The swelling has gone down a little on my back, but it's gotten even uglier. I woke up Saturday morning to my entire left side being painted the deep purple of subcutaneous blood. I'll spare you the picture. Several days later and the fringes of the purple splotch are starting to fade to yellow. Although it's still a little tender to the touch, it's more of an annoyance at this point. I feel like I have a big ugly appendage sticking out of my back and side.

Living Dangerously

2008-04-19T07:19:00.002-06:00

In more than two years of riding my road bike I have only had one major accident. Riding my mountain bike, on the other hand, seems to result in at least one wreck per week. Usually these aren't very bad; scrapes, bruises... normal stuff. But yesterday I managed to raise the bar.

I was riding solo on my lunch ride when I decided to tackle a short steep hill that I usually ride around. It's the sort of hill that you could never just ride up, but if you get enough momentum and then switch through your gears fast enough you can manage to get up without stopping. What makes the hill particularly difficult is that you can't ride straight up it. There is a slight S-curve that you need to navigate as you are riding. Also, the hill drops off on one side to pit several feet down filled with broken fragments of concrete slab.

Well, I didn't get enough momentum going into the hill and ended up about halfway up before I had trouble pedaling. The hill was steep enough that as I came to a stop I started to feel myself going over backwards. I went to put my feet down to catch myself but there was nowhere for them to go because of the drop off. Before I knew it I was upside down with my body slamming into the concrete slabs.

I can honestly say that my helmet saved my life yesterday. My lower back took the brunt of the fall, but shortly after my back hit my head (or rather my helmet) came slamming down as well. I was really lucky that I managed to not get impaled by the several pieces of rebar that were sticking out of the concrete slabs.

Fortunately, I was able to pick myself up and walk away. I had blood dripping down my leg and my back hurt like hell but at least it didn't feel like anything was broken.

Now here comes the stupid part... I was riding circles in the parking lot beneath the Slate Canyon trailhead trying to decide whether or not I should continue riding or just head back to work and I'll bet that you can't guess which I chose. Yep, with my back hurting so bad that it was painful to walk, I decided to finish my workout and continue the climb up Slate Canyon. Silly me :)

I actually wasn't too concerned about the injury until I got back to work. It was starting to swell really bad. By 3 in the afternoon, a couple of hours after the incident, I felt like I had a basketball embedded in my back. I showed my boss and he insisted that I go to a doctor to have it looked at.

On top of the pain, I was starting to get faint. This started at work but continued to get worse through my doctor visit. I actually blacked out at one point as I was talking to the doctor and they had to wheel me around in a wheelchair as I was beginning to doubt that I could walk without passing out and falling over.

The only thing that I learned from the doctor was that I had a massive hematoma in my back. They did some blood work to make sure that I wasn't losing too much blood to internal bleeding and then checked my urine to make sure that I hadn't damaged my kidneys in the fall. Both checked out OK. There wasn't a whole lot left to do other than wait for the pain to subside and the swelling to go down.

Here is a picture of my hematoma. It's kind of embarrassing because it looks like I just have a massive love handle.

It turns out that my body was not the only thing to get injured. When I mountain bike, I carry along my iPhone in my camel back. After the accident, the iPhone was still playing music, so I didn't suspect any damage. But when I got back to work and pulled it out of my pack, this is what I saw:

Do you think that this will be covered by the warranty? It makes me so sad that I want to cry :(

Our Sick Little Monkey

2008-03-07T10:03:00.002-07:00

Somehow our little Sara Belle picked up a pretty nasty chest cold and has been miserable for the last couple of days. There is nothing more awful than hearing a 2 week old baby hack like a smoker. To make matters worse, Mom has the same ailment and Dad may be coming down with it as well.

Nursery Video

2008-02-23T18:31:00.003-07:00

Here is some video that I took right after Sara was put in the nursery. I wanted to post it earlier but I didn't have the proper software at the hospital to extract the video from the camera.

Blue Man and a Baby

2008-02-23T18:14:00.002-07:00

Escape From The Hospital

2008-02-23T17:50:00.002-07:00

Free at last. We are finally, free at last.

It wasn't easy though. We had a beeyotch of a nurse this morning who seemed content to ignore us into staying another day at the hospital if it was up to her. By nine in the morning we had gotten the OK both from Rosey's doctor and from Sara's pediatrician to head on home. So, I started packing all of our bags into the car. The only thing that we were waiting for was for the nurse to come remove Rosey's staples and then turn off Sara's security device.

After waiting an hour, I very politely nudged the nurse and asked what was left to do before we go. She looked at a bunch of papers, and said that there were just a couple of formalities to take care of and then we were free to leave. She then disappeared. I presumed that she disappeared to wrap up those formalities, but began to doubt when we hadn't heard anything from her in another hour. So, once again, politely asked her what else needed to be done for us to check out. A second time I got an identical response... few things to wrap up and then disappear.

After waiting three hours, I was starting to get a little upset. I called her up one last time and asked a little less politely for her to help us leave the hospital. She finally comes storming into our room all pissed off and then blows up at us because Rosey is still in her hospital gown. She gives us a dirty look and says, "Your wife isn't even dressed and you still have all these bags to take out to the car. You're not even ready to leave yet."

She seemed unphased and unapologetic when we reminded her that the reason that Rosey was still in her gown was because no one had yet removed the staples from her incision. And, by the way, the only bags remaining in the room were the ones containing Rosey clothes and the baby's things. I had removed all of the others hours ago.

With an ugly scowl on her face she removed Rosey's staples without saying a word to us and then disappeared. Another nurse, a much nicer nurse, then offerred to do the final release and walk us out to our car.

It was funny to compare all of the different nurses that we got while staying at the hospital for several days. Every one of them had their own little quirks, but for the most part they were all really good at what they did and really pleasant to work with. It's funny that the worst nursing experience we had was with the very last nurse that we had assigned to us.

Marathon Hospital Stay

2008-02-22T17:39:00.003-07:00

It feels like we have been at the hospital forever now. Thankfully, there is an end in sight. It looks like we'll be let go on Saturday morning. We've been here since Tuesday night... ugh.

Sara is an exceptionally healthy baby. She is very alert and seems bigger and stronger than most 2 day old babies. Our only trouble has been that she seems to get a lot of gas. As I was burping last night, I asked in a baby voice... "Where's all the gas coming from, huh?"... and then the answer occurred to me: GENETICS. Poor girl.

Rosey seems to be getting better by the hour. She has been able to get up and walk around and seems to be relying a little less on the pain medication. It's still no picnic for her though. We're hoping that she'll be feeling back to normal within a week or so.

After hearing and/or reading about how much trouble some women have with breast feeding I was almost surprised to see how natural it seemed to come to Rosey and Sara. Sara has a killer grip... a lesson which I learned to Rosey's consternation when I tried to pull her away from Rosey's breast without unlatching her first. I won't make that mistake again. I also think that Rosey's success is largely due to the months of reading and research that she did to prepare herself. I'm really proud of all the work that she has done and it's fun to see it all paying off now.

C-Sections make for lucky fathers that get to spend more time with baby since Mom isn't feeling well. Because Rosey isn't very mobile, I have been charged with most of the other care duties outside of breast feeding. Largely this means, burping, soothing, and changing dirty diapers. Because of little Sara's gas this has been no small task. I have also quickly become acquainted with the affects of sleep deprivation. I woke up this morning at 1am after only getting about an hour of sleep and it took me several minutes to remember who I was and what I was doing. It was seriously a creepy kind of feeling.

Rosey's Mom has been with us here in the hospital and has been a huge help to us both. I think that the only reason that I've gotten any sleep at all in the last two days has been thanks to her. It's funny how your perspective can change so quickly. Before the baby came we were convinced that we were going to be able to handle everything by ourselves and that Mom's help would be superfluous. I would say that it took less than 8 hours after Sara was born to realize just how wrong we were and now we are immensely grateful that Rosey's Mom is here to help us. Thanks Mom.

More Baby Photos

2008-02-22T17:36:00.000-07:00

Sara Belle Christensen

2008-02-21T00:27:00.002-07:00

Going into surgery

2008-02-20T22:26:00.001-07:00

We're doing the c-section after all. Not enough progress. Will update post op.

Sent from my iPhone

24 Hours and Counting

2008-02-20T19:13:00.001-07:00

It just occured to me that we have now been at the hospital for more than 24 hours. Rosey is doing well and things seem to be progressing again. She struggled with a little bit of nausea, and managed to vacate her already food deprived stomach (she hasn't eaten since 6am). They say this is a good sign. We are just waiting for full dilation now and the next stage of labor to begin.

Sent from my iPhone

An Almost Caesarian

2008-02-20T17:41:00.001-07:00

For a moment there we thought that we might end up with a c-section. The contractions seemed to go into a holding pattern for a while and the doc was concerned that labor was no longer progressing. But when the nurse checked, Rosey had dilated some more and so we were given the OK to continue with natural labor. But the threat of c-section continues to loom if the labor does not consistenly progress.

Sent from my iPhone

4cm and Still Dilating

2008-02-20T15:29:00.001-07:00

We have been making slow progress since my last update. Rosey's cervix has thinned out considerably but is still only dilated four centimeters. We are all speculating that it will be a 9pm delivery.

Sent from my iPhone

We Got Drugs

2008-02-20T11:30:00.001-07:00

The epidural has now been administered and it came not a moment too soon. It's providing Rosey with some much needed relief. Contractions are now about three minutes apart.

After the epidural the nurse had some trouble hooking up the scalp electrode to the baby's head and noted that may be an indication of a full head of hair. I guess we will know shortly.

Sent from my iPhone

Let the Pitocin Begin

2008-02-20T07:51:00.001-07:00

Rosey started having contractions overnight. As of about seven this morning they were coming about every ten minutes. We just started the pitocin drip and now things should really get interesting.

Sent from my iPhone

Induction

2008-02-19T16:23:00.001-07:00

We go into the hospital tonight to start inducing. So we should have little Sara by late afternoon tomorrow. Hooray!

Sent from my iPhone

The Office View

2008-02-15T20:09:00.002-07:00

Here is another pic that I took from my new office.

P.S. - This post was mainly to test whether or not I could send picture directly from my iPhone to my blog... And I guess the answer is NO. The picture associated with this post did not show until I manually uploaded the photo. The original photo had an img src with a cid: url type. Looks like blogger didn't pull the photo from the MIME like I expected. I wonder if it's blogger bug, blogger on published to a non-blogger server bug or if it's an iPhone bug.

Mobile Office

2008-02-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

This is the entire contents of my office packed onto a cart. Yes, I do have a lot of computers. I was also surprised to discover how much junk I've accumulated over the 7 years that I've been here at Novell. Like, where the hell did that Nerf bow and arrow come from?

Novell is consolidating office space and our group got moved from the second floor to the third. I guess I'm lucky. This is the first time that I've ever had to move since starting at Novell. I know of other people who have had to move offices practically once a year.

My new office, other than being on the third floor, is pretty similar to my old one. Actually, if you were to dissect the building diagonally, my new office would be the mirror image of my old office. It's evil twin so to speak :)

The best part of the new office is that I now have a view of the mountains instead of a view of I-15. I'll miss the sunsets but the mountains more than make up for it. Check this out:

The only downside of my new location is my new neighbors. I'm now two doors down from my boss's boss's boss's boss, the vice president and general manager of the workgroup business unit.

My First Yoga Experience

2008-02-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

I tried yoga for the very first time today and I think that I like it. Lately I've been working out at the Novell gym during my lunch break. I usually split my time between a stairmaster and lifting free weights. But five days a week of the same indoor activity can get kind of boring... not to mention my legs are often low energy by mid-week from very lower-body centric cardio.

Novell offers a yoga class several times a week in one of the studios in the gym. Several of the guys that I cycle with have been taking them forever and swear by them. So, today I decided to give it a try. It's a perfect solution to my stairmaster boredom and I'm excited about what it can do for my flexibility and core strength... two areas that are particularly weak right now.

I was called out as a newb within seconds of entering the room. Apparently I grabbed the wrong kind of mat and was the only one in the room wearing shoes. I guess I stuck out like a sore thumb. But the teacher was nice and slowed the pace down a little for me as well as gave me a little extra instruction. It was humbling to discover just how inflexible I am and how little core strentgh I have. I have a new hero though... one of the guys that I ride with was able to twist and balance his body in all manner of poses that I would have otherwise thought humanly impossible.

9 Days To Go and All Is Well

2008-02-06T10:34:00.001-07:00

This is it. The final stretch. We had an appointment this morning and everything looks fine. Rosey's blood pressure is holding steady and they are predicting a very normal healthy birth.

Chicken Butternut Stew with Couscous

2008-02-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

Usually I have meals planned out in advance, but last night I found myself in a situation where I didn't have a plan and didn't really feel like going grocery shopping. So, I decided to get creative with some stuff that I had laying around and invented this recipe. Surprisingly, it turned out pretty good, so I thought that I would share.

1 Medium Butternut Squash peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
3 Large Boneless Chicken Breasts cut into 1 inch cubes
4 slices Bacon
3 Small Pink Lady Apples cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 Small Yellow Onions (or 1 large) cut into 1/2 inch squares
1 1/2 cups Raisins
2 Bay Leaves
1/2 tsp celery seed
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp red/black pepper blend.
4 whole cloves
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup uncooked couscous

Cook the four slices of bacon in a deep skillet. Remove bacon but retain bacon grease in pan. Cook the cubed chicken in the bacon grease until just starting to brown. Add squash, apples and onions. Cut up or crumble bacon and add to skillet with chicken and vegetables. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes on medium high heat. Add raisins, celery seed, thyme, cloves and chicken broth. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat, cover and simmer on low for approximately 30 minutes until squash is cooked through. Add couscous and let stand 5 minutes before serving for the couscous to absorb the liquid from the stew.

I was originally going to cook the couscous separately and then serve the stew over the couscous, but then I figured that it would taste even better if the couscous were to absorb the liquid from the stew rather than just plain water. Unfortunately I used twice as much as I indicated in the recipe here and ended up with a chicken butternut couscous paste :) It was still tasty but not so presentable. So, I halved the amount that I actually used for the recipe.

The cloves were kind of a last minute addition. I wanted something to compliment the sweet flavors of the apples and raisins. I considered using nutmeg or cinnamon but decided the cloves would work better in the end.

Serves about 6. Enjoy!

Surviving Arabesque

2008-02-03T08:23:00.001-07:00

Well, after practicing incessantly all week, I survived my recital on Saturday afternoon. It wasn't my best performance of the piece, but at least I feel like I didn't totally embarass myself. There were three spots where I kind of "screwed up":

I had a dramatic pause in the beginning where I overshot a jump and had to recorrect my hand position.
My ending was really weak because I was afraid to try and execute the big jump at the end very fast while I was so nervous.
There was a spot in the middle where I started to play the wrong note and then backed up and corrected. But I did it without even pausing so might not recognize it as a mistake unless you are familiar with the piece and listening closely.

Without further ado, here is the recording (made possible by a generous gift of an awesome camcorder from Rosey's Mom... Thanks Mom!):

21 Days and Counting

2008-01-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

Only 21 more days until little Sara is ready to pop out. We are back at the original doctor after a short stint with a doctor and office in Payson that we were even less happy about. Rosey's blood pressure has stabilized now (in fact it was almost normal at her last visit) and we suspect that she is going to carry full term without any complications.

Our biggest dilemma now is what to call her. We can't decide (agree) between:
Sarabelle Christensen
Sara Belle Christensen
Sara [non-Belle middle name] Christensen
or maybe even a latecomer,
Emma Christensen

Hmm...

Biffing the Practice Recital

2008-01-24T23:50:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the practice recital for my performance next weekend and I totally biffed it. Even though I have had the song memorized for nearly two months and have literally played it hundreds of times, I couldn't get through it in front a small gathering of fellow pupils. I stopped half-way through, almost lost my place, and then continued on slurring all of the notes together. I totally embarrassed myself.

After everyone else had gone, I was tempted to ask for another chance to play to redeem myself. But then it occurred to me... that's the whole point of performance. You only get one shot, one opportunity. You're either prepared for it or you aren't. I doubt that there was anyone there who thought I wasn't capable of playing that song given enough time. Nor did anyone care whether or not I could play if perfectly in the privacy of my own home.

The difference between being able to play a song and being able to perform a song is a whole lot of practice. Unfortunately, I hadn't really been practicing this song. See, I got the song to where I could play it pretty good and from that point on I PLAYED the song instead of PRACTICING it. I left the rehearsal recital committed to practice the hell out of this song for the next 9 days and hope that it's enough to not embarrass myself on the real performance.

Thanksgiving 2007: The Lost Photos

2008-01-01T16:35:00.000-07:00

Oops, I forgot to post these photos from Thanksgiving.

An Early Delivery?

2008-01-01T16:17:00.001-07:00

Rosey and I finally got fed up with her doctors constantly sending her to the hospital despite getting positive test results over and over again. So, we decided to switch to a new doctor based out of the hospital in Payson. We figured that the new doctor may not be much better, but at least:

there would be only one doctor to deal with instead of getting a different doctor at every appointment.
the new doctor was a female OB-GYN and came highly recommended by everyone that had heard of her.
the clinic is Payson is much closer and therefore means less travel time even if Rosey did end up going to the hospital as frequently.

Rosey saw the doctor for the first time on New Year's Eve. The jury is still out on whether or not we are going to have a better experience with this doctor.

Although Rosey's blood pressure continues to be only slightly elevated, and neither she nor the baby is showing any other signs of distress or pre-eclampsia, the doctor was concerned. Enough so, that she said that she will monitor Rosey over the coming weeks and decide week by week whether or not she wants to induce labor and get the baby out early. She said that she could do this as soon as the baby reaches 34 weeks and has mature lungs. That would be next week :)

Even if everything goes well over the coming weeks, she said that she will probably want to get the baby out one way or the other when she reaches full-term at 37 weeks. As you can imagine, neither Rosey nor I are very happy about this. Neither of us want there to be any danger for little Sarabelle, but unless there is an imminent risk we would prefer that she get to cook for as long as possible. And so far, every test, other than the blood pressure reading itself has come back showing that there is no imminent risk.

It's very frustrating to feel like you are at odds with your doctor. I understand that doctor's are concerned about taking risk's that could lead to lawsuits if something goes wrong, but on the other hand, I feel like they put their own interests (of covering their own asses) ahead of the best interests of the baby.

In any case, if the doctor gets her way, we may be parents a little sooner than expected. So much for having a valentines baby :)

A Mighty Wind

2008-01-01T16:10:00.000-07:00

For most of the year we love that we live so close to Spanish Fork canyon and across from a farmer's field. The mountains and canyon are so beautiful and we get unobstructed views.

Unfortunately, this benefit comes with a price. Over the winter, the brutal Spanish Fork canyon wind blows across those empty farmer's fields and dumps small mountains of windblown snow right onto our driveway :(

It's a good thing that I got a sturdy new snow-shovel from my (Rosey's) Grandma Lightcap for my birthday. That poor shovel has seen it's share of snow this year.

Baby Stuff

2007-12-31T10:31:00.000-07:00

Rosey and I finally went and did our shopping for Sarabelle's nursery yesterday. Between some money that I had set aside and a generous gift from Dad, we were able to get pretty much everything we needed in one shot. Let me tell you... Babies 'R Us made a killing yesterday :) It's amazing how quickly you can blow through money buying stuff for baby.

We got:

Stroller System (Graco Tour Deluxe)
Dresser/Changing Table Combo
Nursing Glider
Baby Swing
Baby Carrier
All manner of bottles, sheets, cloths, rags, diapers, ointments and miscellaneous "stuff" that you just need to have :)

We were afraid that it might not all fit in the car, but we just barely made it.

The dresser was the only thing that we weren't able to take home with us. They didn't have the one we wanted in stock and had to order it in. I suppose that was a good thing as we wouldn't have been able to fit it anyway.

We spent the afternoon assembling. I was actually surprised how easily most of the stuff went together. The most difficult piece was the swing. Other than that, the bulk of the work was mostly unpacking, unwrapping and shuffling stuff around.

Ice Cream Treats

2007-12-31T10:17:00.001-07:00

Rosey, Sarabelle and I got a really fun Christmas present from Rosey's Mom... an ice cream maker. I was a little reluctant at first, but after reading through the recipe book that came with it I started to get really excited about experimenting with my own ice cream. We've used it several times now and have had awesome results.

So far, we've made:

Fresh Strawberry
Pineapple Coconut
Chocolate Raspberry

I still have a little bit of tinkering to do to get the recipes just right, but they all turned out pretty good.

Nine Mile Canyon Winter Hike

2007-12-08T15:39:00.000-07:00

Every time that Rosey and I drive down to Moab we stop at a gas station just south of Price. A side road leading away from the gas station and highway six is labeled "Nine Mile Canyon". For years, I've thought to myself, "Someday, I'm going to check out that road". Well several weekends ago when Rosey and I were looking for some way to occupy ourselves on a Saturday afternoon, I said, "Let's check out Nine Mile Canyon".

We've been there several times now and have discovered that it's a really interesting area. It's a mix of red rock and sandstone, canyons and mountains, desert and alpine flora. Really it's a pretty cool place that doesn't seem to be very well traveled by many people. I think that this is exactly what Rosey loves about it :)

On our most recent trip down there, we saw a wash that came up to the side of the road which originated in a canyon in the distance. It didn't really look like a hiking trail but we decided to take it anyway. Our adventurous spirit was rewarded with a spectacular hike through an ice covered sandstone canyon. Way Cool!

And yes, I probably should go to bad husband hell for taking my pregnant wife on a hike like this. But the great thing about Rosey is that she wouldn't have it any other way :)

My Very First Piano Recital

2007-12-08T14:53:00.000-07:00

I got a new piano teacher about 6 weeks ago and she convinced me to perform in the Christmas recital. The piece that I performed was called Musetta's Waltz by Puccini. It was the last piece that I learned with my old teacher, Tanner, before he stopped giving lessons.

It was somewhat horrifying to perform in front of a room full of strangers. It's particularly odd because I am obviously old enough to realize that a bad piano recital is not going to make or break my future. And yet, my hands were trembling so bad that I'm surprised that I was able to hit any of the keys at all. It was also rather comical to be the only 31 year old performing amidst a bunch of 8 to 12 year olds.

Here is a video that Rosey took of the performance:

I think that Rosey deserves special credit for putting up with hearing me play this song for so many months in a row :) She's a good sport to pretend like she's not tired of me playing the same piece over and over again.

My next recital is in February when I will be performing the piece "Arabesque" by Johan Burgmuller.

Pregnancy Update

2007-12-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

With less than 70 days until the birth of our daughter, Sara Belle Christensen, we are entering the home stretch of the pregnancy. Little Sara seems to be really healthy, but Rosey has started to have some problems with elevated blood pressure. The numbers are right on the border of where the doctors are concerned, and we aren't really sure if this is just her chronic hypertension acting up in response to stress of if she has a mild case of pregnancy induced hypertension.

Either way, the doctor suggested (ordered) that she quit working and try to spend as much time as possible relaxing. I don't think that she's on official "bedrest" yet, but they are continuing to monitor her condition and run tests. In the meantime, Rosey actually feels pretty well despite what the doctor says. We are still going on frequent walks through the neighborhood, which we have discovered actually helps to lower Rosey's blood pressure and is fun for the both of us.

Blog Back Up

2007-12-08T14:38:00.000-07:00

After several weeks of being down, I finally revived my blog today. I had suspected that my server had gone down, but it turns out that my DNS account for the domain name svoid.mine.nu had expired. I register through a free service called DynDNS and they recently changed their policy to expire accounts that don't log into their web page at least once a month. So, that's what happened. I recreated my account this morning and everything is happy again. Although I may have to look into switching to a different service that isn't such a pain in the ass.

It's a Girl!

2007-10-16T12:52:00.000-06:00

We're having a baby girl!

It's a ...

2007-10-11T13:56:00.000-06:00

Rosey and I had our first ultrasound today and discovered that our baby is... uncooperative :( The baby had it's legged crossed beneath it in a way that made it impossible to determine it's sex. We tried to get the baby to move, but it just seemed way too comfortable to budge.

Fortunately, we'll get one more shot at it today. We have another appointment in a couple of hours to see if we can get a better look. Wish us luck!

The Perfect Reception

2007-10-07T22:00:00.001-06:00

Well, despite the weather, Rosey and I had what I would consider the perfect reception. Although snow came and went all day the roads never got treacherous and the fire did an excellent job of keeping the cold out. In fact, I think that most people who attended would agree that the blazing fire in the center of the pavilion was the highlight of the day. Everyone gathered round the fire and talked and ate and drank while listening to music blasting from the sound of my generator powered laptop and rented speakers.

Thank you to all the people who braved the weather to come celebrate with us. And I would like to send out a very special thank you to all of the people who helped us plan and organize the reception. This includes (but is not limited to):

My Dad without whom we probably never could have pulled this off. He flew out from Barbados a week early to help plan and prepare and was busy nearly every minute of that week tracking down the sound system, firewood, and other necessary rental equipment on top of helping to plan out the food and beverage menu.
Rosey's Mom, who helped with table decorations, food preparation and just general preparation and cleanup.
My friend Owen who manned the barbecue grill all day and did a fine job I might add.
My friends Chris and Shannon who flew out from Wisconsin and showed up early on Saturday to help setup and stayed late to help tear down.
Rosey's friend Fara who flew in from Alabama and helped setup and tear down.
My sisters Marci and Lisa who helped tremendously with the food preparation.
And finally my friend Rand whose excellent home brew was enjoyed by many.

Here are our pictures...

It's On

2007-10-06T07:22:00.000-06:00

As of this morning the roads are clear, so we will be seeing you up at Altamont.

Dreams Die Hard

2007-10-05T07:50:00.000-06:00

Dreams die hard.

Rosey and I had a dream of having a friendly and informal outdoor wedding reception in some beautiful mountain location. We worked hard to make this dream a reality. However, a couple of days before the reception it looks like the weather is going to throw us a wild card and test our resolve :)

We weighed our various options and have decided that we are not going to let this dream die so easily. We are going to go ahead and plan on having our reception at Altamont in American Fork Canyon despite the weather forecast. If you venture to join us in our defiance you will be handsomely rewarded with good food, good company, a warm fire and plenty of hot cocoa. Please dress warm.

Of course we are concerned with your safety and ours. If on Saturday morning we feel like the weather has made the drive up to Altamont dangerous then we will move the reception party to our house in Spanish Fork. If we do this, I will send out another email informing you of this decision. I will also post last minute information about the reception location on my blog. So, please check your email, check my blog or call me at 801-400-8597 before heading out on Saturday afternoon.

Our Address Is:
[email me for address]

Thank You,
Dan and Rosey Christensen

Pregnancy Appointment #3: Anticipation

2007-10-01T07:14:00.000-06:00

I'm late posting this. Our third pregnancy appointment was last Thursday. It was easy to forget about though because we are actually more excited for our next appointment... the one in which the sex of the baby will be determined. We are scheduled for an ultrasound on Thursday, October 11th. So we, nor you, will have to wait much longer in suspense.

Rosey has a pretty strong feeling that we are going to have a boy. I used to have that feeling as well, but now I'm really not sure which it will be.

I'm glad to say that Rosey is feeling much, much better now. She used to listen to people telling her that things would get better after the first trimester and was convinced that, despite that, it would never end for her. I was even beginning to believe that the sickness and fatigue might last for the entire 9 months. But, somehow as if magically, she is feeling better. She doesn't have to choose her food so carefully anymore and actually has more energy for hiking and other activities than a pregnant woman ought to :)

Our Life In Photos

2007-09-28T05:36:00.000-06:00

Rosey and I have had a lot of adventures over the last year and a half. Here is a photo slideshow that I've put together showing the life and times of Dan and Rosey. Thank you Rosey for all of the good times. If we've done this much in the last year and a half then imagine what we can do with the rest of our lives :)

A Little Less Wise

2007-09-24T09:51:00.000-06:00

I celebrated my return to work this morning by stopping off at the dentist office before work and having a couple of wisdom teeth pulled. I can't feel my entire lower jaw or tongue right now and I have two gaping holes in my jaw stuffed with gauze. How fun is that? :)

The Honeymoon Is Over

2007-09-23T20:45:00.000-06:00

We got home on Thursday night so the honeymoon has actually been over for several days now, but I was so exhausted from all of the traveling that it has taken me all of three days to write this post. Despite being a lot of driving (somewhere in the ballpark of 3500 miles), I would say that we had a pretty good wedding and honeymoon. I think that both Rosey and I would agree that walking on the beaches of the Oregon coast was the highlight of the trip.

So, why home so early? Well, I think that these pictures will explain everything...

This is me packing up camp at Yosemite in the snow.

And this is us driving out of Yosemite through the very treacherous Tioga Pass Road. We learned when we reached the east entrance of the park that they had actually closed the road in the other direction and were not letting anyone else travel into the park on that road.

We had originally planned on hitting Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and then coming down to the redwoods in California. But, we decided to prolong our drive down the coast a little further and go to the redwoods first before heading inland to Crater Lake. So, we stayed a night in Crescent City, California and spent a day poking around in the Redwoods.

Because of the damage to our lens we weren't able to get very many pictures in the redwoods. We snapped a couple of photos with our smaller digital camera, but it's just so difficult to get a photo in the shadows of big trees. The lighting is all wrong.

Rosey and I had a pretty good 4 mile hike through the Redwoods, but I have to say that the highlight for me was riding my bike from Crescent City into Redwood National Park on the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway. It was a spectacular ride through big trees and lush ferns. I was surprised to discover that just because you are proximate to the ocean does not mean that your elevation cannot quickly rise above sea level. The first couple of miles out of Crescent City I climbed a 'hill' that peaked above 1000 feet.

Before leaving our motel in Crescent City, I checked the weather and discovered that Crater Lake was supposed to be blanketed with snow over the next couple of days. In other words, it didn't sound like a whole lot of fun to hike, bike or camp in Crater Lake... especially if you're pregnant :)

So, we altered our course and pointed our car eastward in the direction of the nearest Olive Garden restaurant... Redding, California. Ok, so we were headed that way anyway, but we figured if we had to stay somewhere, we might as well get a good meal. We were on our way to Yosemite National Park and Redding was as good a place as any to stay for the night.

While in Redding, we stopped by a camera store and bought a new lens for our camera. It was much more pricey that I had expected, but we couldn't exactly go on a trip to Yosemite National Park without a good camera now could we?

It turns out that we could have. Not only was Yosemite overcast and gray, but they had been performing controlled burns in the park for the last couple of days so it was smokey on top of it. Here is an example of one of the astounding pictures that we got with our expensive new lens.

At least we got some good squirrel photos.

While at Yosemite, we managed to get in a hike in the Mariposa grove of giant Sequoias. Now those are some huge trees. This is also where I believe that we got the only photo from the whole trip of both Rosey and I (with the exception of our wedding photos on the beach).

We were planning on doing more in Yosemite, but if you read the beginning of this post then you already know how that turned out.

So, it's good to be home now. We've basically spent the last couple of days lounging around the house and unwinding from all the traveling. Unfortunately, tomorrow, the honeymoon really is over... we both have to go back to work :(

Camera Woes

2007-09-16T21:37:00.001-06:00

We have two cameras with us on this trip... a smaller Fuji camera and our new Canon EOS Digital Rebel. The Fuji got dropped in the sand earlier this year when we were hiking the Zion Narrows and is no longer able to zoom in on anything. This morning, on the way down to the beach, I was holding the Canon when I slipped and fell and got sand all up in the lens. As we were trying to clean the sand out we somehow managed to completely screw up the telescoping mechanism and now the zoom lens is stuck out. So, now we have one camera that can't zoom in and another that can't zoom out :)

At least the camera itself seems to still be working fine. We're going to try and stop by a camera shop tomorrow to get the lens repaired or replaced. We have such horrible luck with cameras :(

More Pictures From The Oregon Coast

2007-09-16T21:32:00.000-06:00

Here are some pictures that we've taken over the last couple of days as we've traveled down the Oregon coast:

Wedding Photos

2007-09-14T23:22:00.001-06:00

Hooray! We're married :) Here are some photos from the wedding ceremony on the beach:

Olympic Camping and Beaches

2007-09-14T10:31:00.000-06:00

Here are some pictures that we took while camping and exploring in Olympic National Park in Washington. We stayed in the Graves Creek campground in the Quinault Rainforest area of Olympic National Park.

Photos from Cannon Beach

2007-09-13T23:31:00.000-06:00

Here are some photos that we took on the beach when we arrived on Monday.

Photos From LOTOJA

2007-09-13T23:01:00.001-06:00

Here are some photos that Rosey took of me (and Chris) riding in LOTOJA. Note that you probably need to view this in a browser instead of an RSS reader.

Marriage License Waiting Period

2007-09-11T11:48:00.000-06:00

After LOTOJA, Rosey and I were originally planning on spending a couple of days in Grand Teton and Yellowstone park with our friends Chris and Shannon before heading out to the coast. But, we discovered just before leaving last week that Oregon requires a three day waiting period on marriage licenses. So, we had to book it out to the coast to get our marriage license waiting period started in time to finish before we were scheduled to get married on Friday.

We did still get to spend Sunday afternoon in the Tetons and we used it to do a hike to hidden falls behind Jenny lake. The hike was fun and the waterfall was beautiful but we got rained and snowed on a little bit as we took a ferry back across the lake. Because of the weather and in order to cut down on the amount of driving that we had to do on Monday we took off Sunday night and drove to Pocatello.

Monday was a day full of driving. It felt like my second endurance activity in 3 days. After spending 12 hours on the bike on Saturday, we got to spend 13 hours in the car on Monday. At least we got to start the day with some mammoth muffins from Perkins in Pocatello. And the scenery on the drive, at least once you get near Portland, was pretty spectacular.

We made it to Cannon beach in the early evening and got to walk on the beach that we'll be married on. Rosey made a good choice. It's a beautiful beach. The lady at the hotel mentioned that Cannon beach is currently rated as the #1 beach in the nation. Cool!

Ninety One Point Eight Percent

2007-09-11T11:23:00.000-06:00

LOTOJA kicked my ass on Saturday. I rode hard for just over 12 hours and made it 189 miles but just couldn't make it the rest of the way to the finish line. I am severely disappointed :(

I think that the biggest factor contributing to non-completion was letting up on my training regimen in the month leading up to LOTOJA. I had been riding about 200 miles a week for most of the summer but then dropped down to less than a hundred miles a week after riding ULCER in early August. Of course, it didn't help to train at a lower weight for most of the summer and then put on a few extra pounds towards the end of the summer.

It's kind of creepy that I finished exactly as much of LOTOJA as I did of RANATAD. I rode 147 of 160 miles of RANATAD and I rode 189 of 206 miles of LOTOJA. Those both work out to almost exactly 91.8% of the total. It's almost like a switch goes off inside of me and says, "You've done 91.8% of the ride... it's time to quit now".

After failing to complete RANATAD, I told myself that I just needed to have more mental toughness. I needed to push myself to get through no matter what. And, I was prepared to push myself to finish LOTOJA no matter what. The problem is that my body was ready to give up 120 miles into the ride. By the time that I had ridden over the three mountain passes (Strawberry, Geneva and Salt River) and descended into Afton my body was in agonizing pain.

It was sheer mental toughness that drove me through the next 70 miles to get me through Star Valley, Snake River Canyon and just outside of Jackson. From that standpoint I was actually proud of myself that I was able to push that far. It was particularly difficult becuase for much of the ride through Star Valley I was riding into a soul crushing cross/head wind. Several of the guys who rode last year said that the wind this year made the ride much more difficult.

The other factor that I think contributed to my failure was that I rode solo for much of the ride. The guys that I trained with from work all summer were actually riding in a different age category than me so I wasn't able to start at the same time as them. I stuck with my starting pack to Preston, got split up going into the mountains and then for the rest of the day just had a difficult time latching on to anyone. Riding 206 miles in a group is difficult but riding that distance solo is really just sheer stupidity. In retrospect, I think that I would have been better off even finding a slower group of riders and just sticking with them all day so that I didn't have to do as much work riding into the wind.

Again, I am hugely disappointed. I don't know if I dare to wear the LOTOJA jersey that I bought before the ride considering that I didn't finish. But all I can do is come back next year with a little more wisdom and preparation.

Rosey got some pictures from the ride, but I don't have the cable to get them from the camera while we are on the road, so I'll have to post them when we get back home in a couple of weeks.

Goin' to the Chapel and We're Gonna Get Married

2007-09-07T13:24:00.000-06:00

Alright, so we're not really going to a chapel, it'll be more like a beach. But either way, we're gettin' married. After LOTOJA, Rosey and I are heading off on a two week wedding/honeymoon vacation extravaganza. We'll spend a couple of days in the Teton/Yellowstone area before heading off to the coast of Oregon and Washington where we will be married on the beach. After the wedding we'll continue exploring Oregon and Northern California (the redwoods) before heading back to Utah a couple of weeks before the reception where we hope to see you all.

Preparing for LOTOJA

2007-09-07T13:15:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow is the ride that I've been preparing for all summer... LOTOJA. We'll ride 206 miles from Logan, UT to Jackson, WY in a single day. For the most part I think that I'm well prepared. I've ridden about 4000 miles on my bike since this spring. I'm a little concerned that I've let up a little in the last couple of weeks (things have been hectic between work and wedding preparations) but I think that I'll be OK.

I'm shooting for an overall course time of under 11 hours. That means that I'll have to keep a moving average of about 20 miles per hour and keep my stopped time down to about 45 minutes. I'll start in a pack of about 60 riders at 7:10 AM and hope to get to Jackson around 6PM.

Rosey will be following with the car, but she has already threatened that she will not let me into the car without finishing unless I'm dead :) She doesn't want to have to listen to me bitch for the next year about not finishing LOTOJA :) I guess I don't blame her.

Pregnancy Appointment #2: It Lives!

2007-08-14T13:51:00.001-06:00

Rosey and I had our second pregnancy appointment today. The highlight of the appointment was that we got to hear the baby's heartbeat. Wow, how cool is that? He/She must have been excited too because his/her little heart was beating really fast. I guess that's normal though.

Less exciting but equally notable was that Rosey discovered that there may be some relief for the problems that she's been having. First the nurse told her that it was perfectly OK for her to be taking her Claritin. Second, they gave her a Vitamin B shot which they claimed would help with her nausea and lack of energy. And third, if the Vitamins didn't help the nausea then they gave her a prescription for something that should. She was ecstatic to discover all of this but at the same time upset that she's been sufferring for so long... why didn't the previous doctor mention any of these things???

ULCER 2007

2007-08-12T14:03:00.000-06:00

I rode my second ULCER (Utah Lake Century Epic Ride) on Saturday August 11th. The course started and ended at Thanksgiving Point and rode 111 miles around Utah Lake... although I managed to squeeze in an extra 6 miles by getting off course near Spanish Fork canyon. I completed the ride with a moving average of 21 miles per hour. That's a pretty good speed for me but it probably would have been better if it wasn't for some trouble that I had along the way.

This is essentially a slightly longer version of the weekly ride that I do on Thursday mornings. On Thursdays, I do the same loop traveling in the opposite direction but only end with about 89 miles as we don't start at Thanksgiving Point and we don't detour all the way out to Springville.

I was hoping to ride ULCER with the same group that I do my weekly ride with, but they all either had prior commitments or they weren't interested in doing an organized ride that they already ride so frequently for free. I could see their point, but there is just something special about the ULCER being in our "neighborhood" and it's kind of neat to ride in a group of 2000 cyclists that share your passion for riding.

So, I had originally thought that I was going to be riding the ULCER solo, but then I got hooked up with some friends of DanB that were riding as a team. This was MikeB, his son, Ben, Bob and a guy whose name I never got despite riding with for most of the day. We'll refer to him as WhiteJerseyGuy or WJG for short. I had briefly met MikeB and his son Ben at RANATAD but all of the other faces were new.

Riding as a team we actually got to start a little earlier than the general crowd. The teams were released in stages starting at 7AM. We got off by about 7:15. Despite Mike claiming that we were going to start "slow and easy to warm up", we ended up peeling away from the starting line and holding a pace of better than 25 miles per hour. We probably couldn't have maintained this pace on our own, but we were riding on the wheels of a larger group of teams that was doing most of the work. We just got the free ride :)

About 15 miles into the ride, the larger group started to split into several smaller ones. Somehow we ended up in a slightly slower group doing 22 miles per hour. After a couple of miles at this pace, I looked over at my teammate and asked, "Wanna close the gap on the larger group?". "Yeah", he said, "I was thinking about that too. Lead the way." And so I did.

It looked like I had to sprint for a quarter mile to catch up to the larger pack. But after going all out and finally catching the group in front of us, it turned out that they weren't the larger, faster group. They were just another slow group that had been dropped by the fast group. So, I rested for a second and then sprinted for another quarter mile to catch the next group. This happened 3 or 4 times until we finally caught a group that was moving at a nice pace. What looked like an easy quarter mile sprint ended up being an exhausting 2 or 3 mile sprint to catch up with this group. I took the next several miles easy to catch my breath.

By the time that we reached the first rest stop in Springville 30 some odd miles into the ride, we were riding a staggering average of 23 miles per hour. That's fast. At least for me that's fast. I was feeling good, but starting to fear that I couldn't hold that pace for the full 111 miles. We actually rode right on past the first rest stop. The guys that I was riding with really wanted to put in a good time, and so they planned on doing the full loop with only a single stop at the 70 mile mark.

At this point in the ride, we had already lost MikeB and Bob back in Pleasant Grove somewhere. So, it was just Ben, WhiteJerseyGuy and myself heading out from Springville into Spanish Fork. We were still riding on the wheels of another team as we left Springville and starting climbing the hill in Mapleton up Hwy 89. As we got further and further and down this road I begun to wonder when the course was going to turn off towards the lake. This didn't feel right.

To make things worse, we were riding into gale force winds of Spanish Fork Canyon. This couldn't be the right route. No one would be sadistic enough to plan a ride into this kind of a canyon wind. But I just kept following the guy in front of me who was following the guy in front of him. I assumed that someone at the front the of pack knew where we were going. It wasn't until we reached the mouth of Spanish Fork canyon that the entire group collectively realized that we were lost.

We rode fast back down Hwy 6 into Spanish Fork. I knew how to get back on course, but I couldn't convince anyone else to come with me except for WhiteJerseyGuy. So, we split off from the larger group and I took backroads through my hometown to get us back on course. Ben had disappeared into one of the other groups and we wouldn't see him for the rest of the day. I kind of wonder how long it took those other groups to get back on track. It really pissed me to not only lose 6 miles worth of course time, but to have to ride those into a grueling canyon wind. You really don't need that kind of extra work when you are already riding a 111 mile course.

The ride from Spanish Fork to the front side of the lake was smooth. WJG and I got back into a fast moving pack and cruised through the country side out to the lake. I even got the opportunity to pull (ride in front and let the group draft off of me) a couple of times. Things didn't get ugly until we hit the Southwest corner of West Mountain. It's there that we hit a ridiculously strong headwind and a small patch of climbing that knocks the gusto out of you.

The climbing wasn't very difficult by Nebo standards but it just hits you in a way that demoralizing after riding so fast. Coupled with the heat of the rising sun and a water bottle that was beginning to run dry, this section was kind of miserable. The group quickly scattered into individual riders slogging along at their own pace. For the first time in the day, WJG pulled ahead of me and I ended up riding semi-solo for a couple of miles.

There was a water stop just before we picked up highway 6 in Goshen. And it was well placed considering that my water bottles had completely dried up a mile earlier. Even though it was only another 5 miles to our planned lunch stop, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to refill my bottles, empty my bladder and stretch my legs for a couple of minutes.

We were still fighting a stiff head/cross wind on the road to Goshen. But somehow it was made easier knowing that we had such a short distance to cover and that we were going to stop for lunch once we got there. The time went quickly.

At the lunch stop we reunited with MikeB and Bob. Apparently, our little detour through Spanish Fork canyon had given them plenty of time to catch up with us. They pulled into the rest stop just a little after we did. MikeB was still full of vim and vigor but Bob looked a little worse for the wear. We grabbed a couple of bites to eat and then jumped right back out on the road.

I led the group heading out of Goshen. We only had about 5 miles to Elberta where we would turn behind the lake and turn that grueling cross/headwind into a glorious tailwind. I pushed hard to fight the wind on that stretch of road but I was still concerned that I was going too slow for my teammates... so I would push a little harder. A couple of miles down the road, I decided to pull out and let someone else pull when I realized that there was no longer any of my teammates behind me. I had apparently dropped all of them. I hadn't realized it because some other guy had gotten on my wheel making me think that they were still behind me.

I rode solo up to the Elberta turn-off and then waited a couple of minutes in the shade for the rest of the group to catch up. At this point, I wasn't all that concerned about my individual time, I just wanted to have a good, fun ride back to Thanksgiving Point. MikeB and WJG came tooling along in a couple of minutes but Bob was nowhere to be seen. I got back on their wheels and we rode a blazing fast pace with a beautiful tailwind behind us.

When it comes to favorable riding conditions such as tail winds and downhill sections, there are two types of riders: Those who use the easy riding as an opportunity to rest for a while and enjoy the ride and those who use the conditions as mechanism to bolster their average speed. I can be either type of rider depending on the scenario, but with 75+ miles behind me already on this ride, I was leaning more towards cruising for a few miles to recuperate from that ugly headwind.

The group that we were pacing however, saw things differently. They decided that tailwind was the perfect reason to pick the speed up to over 30 miles an hour. That was actually easier than it sounds given the wind and stretch of road that we were riding. But nonetheless, we held that pace for about 5 miles before MikeB decided that he'd had enough and wanted to drop back to a more comfortable pace. I wasn't about to argue with him. A more comfortable pace sounded pretty good to me.

So, we slowed it back down to about 25 or 26 miles per hour and "relaxed" :) We had been cruising along at this pace for a couple of minutes when all of the sudden I heard a loud popping noise. It kind of startled me. At first I thought that I had blown one of my tires. Had my Kevlar failed me? No, my tires seemed to be holding pressure although something didn't look quite right about my front wheel. I pulled over to take a closer look and discovered that I had popped one of my spokes. That popping sound was the sound of my spoke breaking. I'm not entirely sure what caused it. I might have run over something or it could just be a freak accident.

The broken spoke had caused my wheel to become untrue. It was crooked enough that as it spun an entire revolution it rubbed up against both the left and right brake pads. On top of slowing me down, this made it so that the front wheel was kind of wobbly as it spun around. It probably wasn't that big of a deal but after the accident that I had just survived a week ago, a wobbly wheel at 25 miles per hour sounded a little intimidating.

MikeB stuck with me until the next rest stop where I was planning to get a SAG vehicle to bring a mechanic to look at my wheel. We dropped the pace down a couple of miles an hour just to be safe. As if the difference between 25 miles per hour and 23 miles per hour was going to matter if my wheel failed and I came crashing down into the asphalt.

The next "rest stop" was basically a tent setup in the middle of nowhere with a volunteer passing out ice and water. It was a minor stop that most riders didn't even bother to stop at. But at least the guy had a radio and he started to track down a mechanic for me. I probably waited for 15 minutes before being informed that it would be a while before they could get anyone out to me. But, there was a mechanic from Bingham cycle setup at the next rest stop just 12 miles down the road.

They offered to SAG me up to it. I appreciated the offer, but there was no way that I was going to be SAG'ed for any portion of this ride. I saddled up and decided to ride slow and easy to the next stop. 12 miles really wasn't that far. It went quickly with that nice tailwind and a few good tunes on my iPod.

The mechanic took one look at my wheel and basically told me I was screwed. He didn't have any spare spokes and even if he had normal ones, he wouldn't have any of the special spokes that my wheel takes. See I have these fancy wheels with flat aerodynamic spokes rather than the normal round ones. Basically, my only option was to open up my brakes so that the wheel didn't rub as it spun around and to ride the last 20 some odd miles on a wobbly wheel. "Why not?" I thought to myself. If I could ride 15 miles on a wobbly wheel then I can ride another 20. No problem.

Just as I had resigned myself to this option, the mechanic says, "Or... I could just let you take the wheel of my bike here". Hanging right behind him was his personal road bike. I'm not quite sure why he had it with him considering that he wasn't riding, but it just so happened to have the exact same set of wheels that I had on my bike. It wouldn't have mattered if they weren't the same set of wheels, but I thought it a strange coincidence that they just happened to be the same set of wheels. It was an offer that was too good to refuse. I took the wheels and got back on the road without even partaking of the food or water at the rest stop.

The 20 miles back to the finish line actually went pretty quickly. With my confidence in my wheels restored I was able to pick up the speed a little (actually a lot) and pass up a bunch of the people that had passed me up when I had been riding slower on bum wheels. There wasn't a whole lot of drafting to be had. I was mostly riding solo or picking up small groups here and there. The groups never seemed to last for very long though.

Coming through Saratoga Springs I actually met up with Bob again. Apparently the fiddling that I had done with my wheels had given him the opportunity to get back in front of me. I slowed for a minute to talk to him and even briefly considered sticking with him for the remainder of the ride. But he seemed to be really bogged down and after finally getting a good set of wheels back I just didn't feel like holding myself back anymore.

I pulled into the finish line 6 hours and five minutes after leaving earlier that morning. That included roughly 35 minutes of non-moving time for a moving time of 5 hours and 30 minutes with an average speed of 21 miles per hour.

Here is the elevation profile for the ride. It actually looks more jagged than some of the other profiles that I've posted but that's because there was much less overall elevation change which means you see more detail in the rolling ups and downs.

Wedding and Reception Plans

2007-08-08T17:33:00.000-06:00

Just wanted to give a heads up to everyone about our wedding plans. We're still working out the details, but we do have a date range for the wedding and a weekend picked out for the reception.

The wedding is going to occur sometime between the 7th of September and the 21st of September as Rosey and I take a 2 week long road trip throughout the Northwest. The actual date hasn't been decided yet because we are just going to pick a nice spot as we are on the road and get married there. In case you haven't figured it out yet... you're not invited :) The wedding is going to be just Rosey and I. Well, I suppose that we'll have someone to officiate the ceremony as well.

You ARE, on the other hand, invited to the wedding reception. The reception will be held on Saturday, October the 6th. We don't have a time or place nailed down yet, but I am thinking about 11AM and we are hoping to reserve an outdoor spot in American Fork Canyon.

For those of you in Hawaii... unfortunately we will not be coming to Hawaii this fall. Our current plan is to come sometime next Spring after the baby comes. So, don't feel like you have to figure out a way to get to the reception in October. We would love to have you, but if you're not able to come, we'll be seeing you soon enough.

For those of you in other far off places... if you are unable to attend, we are willing to take this show on the road for the price of plane tickets. This applies particularly to my Australian, German and Russian blog readers :)

Once we've solidified the plans for the reception, we'll be sure to send out invitations to everyone.

Getting Spoiled

2007-08-06T13:14:00.001-06:00

Rosey's Mom came to visit for the last week and a half and spoiled the three of us (baby included) rotten. On top of taking us out to eat numerous times she decided to tackle a few projects around the house while Rosey and I worked during the day. The most daunting, and wildly appreciated, of these projects was her tackling the weed forest out in our yard.

It took most of the time that she was here to accomplish it, but she was able to clean up and landscape nearly all of our delinquent flower beds around the house. In addition to pulling weeds (a monumental task in and of itself), she laid down landscaping bark and planted a bunch of new plants and flowers. Here are some photos of her handiwork...

The back yard...

The front yard...

Our little aspen grove...

Thank you so much Mom for everything that you did for us while you were here visiting!

Battle Wound

2007-08-03T07:00:00.000-06:00

I think this is going to leave a scar.

Who Let This Chicken into my Pain Cave?

2007-08-02T16:23:00.000-06:00

I woke up a little after 3AM this morning, just like I do every Thursday morning, to ride in to work around Utah Lake. Only this morning, from the instant that my alarm clock went off, every muscle in my body and every neuron in my brain was screaming, "GO BACK TO BED!". It was more than just being tired; I couldn't shake this weird feeling that I just shouldn't ride this morning. Oh, if only I had listened.

The first sign of trouble came as we were riding through the still dark streets of pleasant grove at four in the morning. We were approaching a red traffic light that for some strange reason actually had a fair amount of traffic approaching from the green direction. It was almost as if light saw us coming and switched in our favor so that we had the green and the traffic got the red. I proceeded to power through the light only to hear Layne shout from behind me, "WATCH OUT!!!".

Well, it turns out that the cars approaching from the other direction did something that I myself might have done. They saw a red light at 4 in the morning with no apparent cross traffic and they were just about to run through it... directly into my path. I'm not sure if Layne's shout got their attention or if they just finally saw my approaching lights, but they did stop and we made it safely through the intersection.

We suffered no major catastrophes for the remainder of the ride to Saratoga Springs where we met up with our DanB, but I did think it unlucky that somehow we managed to ride straight through the middle of about half-a-dozen brain-jarring potholes. These are potholes that are usually easily avoidable even in the wee hours of the morning. But somehow we hit nearly every one of them.

After we picked up DanB, we got about 5 miles before he got a flat tire. As I was waiting for him to change his tire, my bowels decided that they were unhappy with my selection of food last night. Well, not so much unhappy with the selection, but rather with the quantity. See, I get into this bad habit of thinking, "I'm riding 90 miles tomorrow so I can eat whatever I want tonight". And although this is true from a caloric perspective, I have discovered that eating large quantities of food before a long ride just leaves me miserable and in constant anticipation of our next bathroom stop.

I had actually been dreaming of our first bathroom stop in Goshen ever since leaving Orem. Now, in Saratoga Springs, we were still an hour and a half away and I knew that I just wasn't going to make it. And in case your unfamiliar with Utah Lake, there is nothing but scrub brush between Saratoga Springs and Elberta... no parks, no gas stations, no porta-potties, just scrub brush.

We were right on the edge of town in Saratoga Springs. Just beyond that last couple of houses were some farm fields. Luckily, I had the foresight to bring along some emergency tissue to use as toilet paper. So, I headed off into one of the fields, pulled my bike shorts around my ankles, squatted down and did my business. I'm not exactly sure what was growing in those fields (looked like weeds mostly), but it really wasn't very tall. I could look one way and see houses and the other and see the road; and no doubt I was also in plain sight of both.

I kept waiting for a light to turn on in one of the houses and for an angry farmer to come chase me down with a shotgun for pooing in his field. Fortunately there were no lights or shotguns. Unfortunately, there was irrigation. Just as I was finishing my business an irrigation sprinkler that had been spouting the other direction had now run a full cycle and was shooting full blast at me. It must have been a funny sight to see me in that field, buck naked from the bottom down, struggling in the dark to find the leg holes in my black underwear and biker shorts. It was no simple task. It took several misfires of getting my bike cleats stuck in my shorts and almost falling over sideways before I was finally successful.

The ride to Elberta was fraught with ugly headwinds. There was a storm brewing up ahead and we were fighting hard to keep a speed of 17.5 MPH. Several times on this stretch of road, I couldn't help but questioning what I found so enticing about all of this to get myself out of bed at 3 in the morning just to endure this kind of suffering. I had trouble coming up with answers.

And then the rain came. It was slow at first but gradually worked into a fairly steady downpour. It wasn't long before we were all soaking wet. Nonetheless, we were all still in fairly good spirits. That headwind from behind the lake was now a crosswind, and in a few more miles would turn into a tailwind that would carry us along West Mountain at a speed of about 27 to 30 miles per hour. That's a great thing about loop rides... even the worst headwind is bound to turn into a tailwind at some point.

The downside of a tailwind, is that once you turn out of it, and you're bound to turn at some point, it's SO demoralizing to go from riding a light and lively 25+ MPH back down to a grueling, fighting the wind pace. It was after making just such a turn that we stumbled onto the most bizarre incident of the day...

I was out in front pulling the group along into the wind. My gaze rest upon the 3 feet of pavement in front of me, intensely concentrating on each and every grueling stroke of the pedal. I was in my pain cave. I was cold and wet and my legs were burning. But I knew that the only way to get into work was to finish that ride. Surrender was not an option.

Just then I hear a loud, "baaa-gaaawwkk" and a chicken came darting out into the road right in front of my tire. A real, live, full-sized, farm chicken. I tried to swerve but couldn't get out of the way in time. I rode right over the top of that chicken. Feathers were flying and it let out a blood curdling scream. But to my amazement, after it cleared my wheel it just kept on moving. I suspect that it made it to the other side of the road and probably died in the ditch. But I'll never know for sure because my cohorts and I were too busy laughing hysterically to pay attention to the chicken :)

The chicken carnage was not to be the last carnage that we were to encounter this morning. As we approached the WalMart overpass in Springville, I was overcome by this foreboding feeling. Something bad was going to happen. I even thought to myself that I should warn my riding companions to take it easy for the next couple of miles until we got back to Novell. But I didn't because I thought it would sound hokey.

Not 5 minutes later, we were taking a sharp right onto Kuhni road via what was previously referred to as Layne's corner. This is the corner that Layne wiped out on at last year's ULCER. History was about to repeat itself only with different players. Layne even warned the group to slow down, but even with the warning, DanB hit that corner just the wrong way on wet asphalt and his bike went flying out from beneath him. Fortunately both bike and rider were OK. DanB got some good road rash on his right thigh but other than that he was able to shake it off in a couple of minutes and get back onto the bike.

As we pulled away from the site of the wreck, I still had that foreboding feeling. I just had the sense that wasn't the last of our bad luck for the morning even though we were just a couple of miles from our destination now. Not but a couple of minutes later, calamity struck once more.

This time Layne was out in front and I was riding tight on his rear wheel to take advantage of the draft. Layne is usually a pretty steady rider and so I don't worry about getting right on his wheel. But as he was riding along this morning his bike computer completely gave out and he slowed down to turn around and tell us about it. I wasn't paying close enough attention and before I knew it my front tire bumped right into the back of his.

At first I was OK, I got over to the right side of his tire. But then to try and recover from my wobble my bike veered back to the left. By this time I had gained an inch on his back tire so that as I came back left, my wheel hit the side of his wheel. This bump along with the wet pavement was just enough to throw my front wheel out from underneath me. My bike went flying to the right and I came crashing down into the pavement chest first and slid to a slow uncomfortable stop on chip-sealed asphalt. A very uncomfortable stop.

The impact was nearly enough to knock the wind out of me but not so much wind was knocked to prevent the shouting of expletives :) It hurt. Bad. After a minute or so I was able to get up and take inventory. The damage didn't actually look that bad. My knees were scraped up and bleeding. My palms were sore from partially breaking the fall. But then I looked down and noticed the blood streaming from left elbow. It didn't feel broken but there was a dime-size chunk of skin missing about half-an-inch deep.

It was ugly. And if you know me very well, you know that I don't handle blood well. So, I laid down and mustered all my mental fortitude to keep from passing out. The laceration was deep but I still think that if I was a normal person I wouldn't have had a problem riding the rest of the way into work before getting it treated. But every time that I tried to stand up I got dizzy again and had to lay back down. So, Rosey came to the rescue, scooped me and my bike up and took me to the clinic where the wound was scraped out and sewn up with many and varied stitches.

So, the moral of the story is this: the next time you get up at three in the morning and everything is screaming at you to go back to bed... listen :)

The End.

Going Wireless

2007-07-31T14:49:00.000-06:00

After realizing over the last couple of months how little I actually use my home phone line that I pay $45 a month for, I finally called the phone company today and canceled my service. So, starting tomorrow I will no longer have a home phone line.

I'm taking the money that I'm saving on the home phone line and upgrading my cell phone from a pay-as-you-go phone to a monthly rate. I hate the idea of signing a two year contract with a cell phone company but it eases the pain to think of it as replacing a monthly fee that I was already paying to the phone company. Not to mention, I'll actually get a pretty good deal by signing up for a "Family Share Plan" with Rosey. Neither one of us use enough minutes that it's a big deal to share 5 or 600 minutes a month.

I should be keeping my same cell phone number as I switch providers, however the change between the two may mean that my phone is out of service for a couple of days. If you don't already have my cell phone number then email me and I'll give it to you. If you don't have my email address... well, then you have no business having my cell phone number :)

Officially Engaged

2007-07-23T07:52:00.000-06:00

I proposed to Rosey this weekend in Bryce Canyon National Park. We were on the Navajo Loop to Queens Garden trail when we ventured off trail to get away from the people. Surrounded by redrock hoodoos, I asked Rosey to be my wife and, fortunately for me, she said Yes :)

Swim Lessons

2007-07-20T10:41:00.001-06:00

I have wanted to take swim lessons for a long time now. Growing up in Hawaii I learned to swim in the sense that I wouldn't drown if thrown into the water, but I never really learned how to swim athletically. I would swim with my head above the water and stroke really inefficiently such that I couldn't go more than 20 or 30 yards without stopping to take a breather.

Last weekend I stopped by the pool at the Orem Rec center and went for a swim. On my way out, I noticed that they offerred private swim lessons that were very reasonably priced. So, I signed up. My classes don't begin until August, but I'm already very excited about them.

Last night I went back to the pool with Rosey and she, being a fairly experienced swimmer, gave me some good pointers to get started. She makes an excellent teacher. I almost regret signing up for lessons now as I think that she could teach me everything that I really need to know. But the lessons are already paid for, so I figure that I can get twice the learning: from Rosey and my instructor.

I spent the night practicing swimming with my head below the water and trying to remember to breathe occasionally :) It's amazing how much difference it makes to wear goggles. It's much more comfortable to keep your head below water that way. It also amazes me how much more efficient it is to swim that way. I was able to swim the length of the pool without tiring as opposed the 20 or 30 yards that I could swim above water.

So, why swimming? I guess that there are really two reasons. One, after biking all week and totally stressing out my lower body it will be nice to have another activity that I can do that focuses more on upper body. Two, I have been dreaming for a long time of being able to participate in a Triathlon and the swimming has been my one weak activity. When's the Ironman in Hawaii? :)

Pregnancy Appointment #1

2007-07-17T14:46:00.001-06:00

Rosey and I just got back from our first official pregnancy appointment. We are roughly 8 weeks pregnant right now. Everything went great. The doctor was really nice and it looks like Rosey is really healthy and everything is going well with the exception of a slight anemia (which is apparently common among pregnant women). We discovered that her uterus is roughly the size of an orange right now. Mmm, citrus :) Our next appointment is in 4 weeks when we will get to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time. I can't wait!

Rana-Mo-Tad

2007-07-09T21:57:00.000-06:00

Rana-Mo-Tad: Ride Around Nebo and Most Of Timp in A Day.

I failed to complete the full RANATAD ride today. I came so close, at 147 of the 160 total miles. That's just 7 more miles of climbing that I would have had to do followed by an easy 6 miles downhill back to Sundance. But my body just wouldn't take anymore.

The funny thing was that it wasn't my legs that gave out. As the day wore on, my stomach gave me more and more trouble. By my last rest stop, the very thought of food was enough to make me nauseous. Even water was beginning to give me trouble. On the last leg of the ride, Rosey came to meet me and brought me some cold water. As soon as I got off the bike, I almost puked and then shortly thereafter almost blacked out. That's when I decided that it was time to throw in the towel for this year.

Nonetheless, I did still ride 147 miles on my bike including going over the Nebo Loop and doing most of the Alpine Loop as well. Not only is that a personal best for me, but I think that it is also a fairly significant accomplishment even without finishing (although I'm still very sad that I didn't finish).

The day started off well. There were somewhere between 40 and 50 people signed up for the ride. We left Sundance at 6:30 in the morning and rode a very fast 25 MPH average to Payson, some 36 miles away. It was kind of nuts. I heard later that some guy wrecked on that first section and busted his head open. Scary!

As we were leaving our rest stop in Payson, I got separated from my group. I turned around and it appeared that everyone was already gone from the park. I didn't worry about it too much since we hadn't really planned on staying together for the climb anyway. Once you hit serious elevation, it's every man for himself until you get to the other side.

Well, it turns out that most of my group missed a detour and got stuck going through some mud in a construction area. It slowed them down just enough for me to get ahead of them. I expected that they would catch up to me shortly, but I never did see them on that section. I must have been riding fast, because I was one of the first 10 people to make it over the loop to Nephi. I was pretty impressed with myself. I think that it helped me to have ridden Nebo so many times already this year.

My original plan had been wait for the rest of the group once I got to the other side. But I waited for 10 or 15 minutes and there was still no sign of them. When a bunch of guys decided to head back out on the road, I figured that I would just jump in and ride with them instead of waiting.

This turned out to not be such a good idea. The problem with being at the head of the pack is that it is populated by the strongest riders. We were 35 miles from our lunch stop and these guys were setting of pace of 25 to 30 MPH. It was crazy. I held on for the first 25 miles but then got dropped going up a small section of uphill. With 90 miles and a huge climb behind me, I just didn't have what it took to keep their pace.

I think that riding at that pace really took a lot out of me. I would have been better off sticking with a group that was moving 20-25 MPH. Fortunately, I was smart enough to not make the same mistake leaving our lunch stop. I actually waited for the second group to come in rather than leave with the fast group.

It turned out that the second group had several mechanical difficulties and was more than an hour behind the first group. I used the time to rest up. My stomach was already giving me trouble at this point. I was at the lunch stop for over 30 minutes before I could even think about eating anything.

The ride between the lunch stop and the 35 miles to our next stop in Pleasant Grove was slow and HOT. The mid-July temperates were in full swing and it was nearly 100 degrees out. It made things worse that we ended up in a smaller groups that quickly dwindled down to nothing. As we left the stop there were only four of us. We rode hard and caught up with another group of four in front of us. But then one dropped off the back and four split off the front, leaving me to ride with just two compatriots.

But then, just as we were approaching Novell, I turned around and the two of them had disappeared. Poof, vanished into thin air. Now, it was just me, riding solo in the sweltering sun with 120 miles behind me and another 20 in front of me to the next rest stop. As I meandered through Provo, trying to stick to the course, I was fortunate enough to bump into half of the group of four that had split off in front of us. I'm still not quite sure how it happened. But I rode with them all the way to the next rest stop.

I probably spent an hour at that rest stop, waiting for something to sound edible. But no matter how long I waited, nothing sounded good. I finally downed a Coke (someone mentioned that they settle your stomach) and then decided to tackle the final 23 miles.

The final 23 miles went like this: 4 miles of rolling hills followed by 13 miles of climbing, followed by 6 miles of downhill back to Sundance. I was convinced that I could suffer through a mere 17 miles and make it to the downhill section. It may take me longer than usual, but I could do it. I was totally convinced of this until I stopped 10 miles into the climb and nearly blacked out.

So, I guess the moral of the story is: There's always next year :)

In the meantime, I need to figure out how to prevent these problems from happening during LOTOJA. I think that riding in cooler weather will be a huge help. Also, LOTOJA, is said to be an easier ride even though it's longer because it doesn't have nearly as much climbing. But, I need to experiment with food that I can eat on a long ride and not feel like I'm going to puke. And it probably wouldn't hurt to be carrying a little less weight with me up those hills.

Sicko

2007-07-07T12:11:00.000-06:00

Last weekend Rosey and I went to see Michael Moore's new film, "Sicko". It's a documentary that exposes how broken the American health care system is and poses the question, Why doesn't America have universal health care like much of the rest of the civilized world?

Although he makes some really good points, you can't help but feel like you are being manipulated. The format of the movie is basically this: Tell the story of some poor sap in America that has been screwed by the health care system and then contrast that to the story of some blissfully happy people in another country that has universal health care. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I have no doubt that there are some things that are broken with our health care system. I have no doubt that there are people in other countries that are happy with universal health care. But I guarantee you that the bad isn't as bad as he makes it look and the good isn't as good as he makes it look. I bet that you could just as easily make a movie about the evils of socialized medicine in Canada, England or France and have just as many sad stories to tell of people that felt they were screwed by the system.

I believe this to be a Universal Truth: Anywhere you have a system, any kind of system, there will be people that feel marginalized or victimized by that system, with probably some percentage of those that genuinely are. This means that filmmakers like Michael Moore will always be able to find the right set of people and capture their sad stories as evidence of a broken system.

Despite feeling blatantly manipulated, I did actually leave the film feeling two things:
1) More educated about the issue of Universal Health Care
2) That America would be a better place if it were to implement some sort of Universal Health Care.

I had no idea that much of the civilized world already offers universal health care. That came as a shock to me. Paying for health care is as much ingrained in my American mind as not paying for it was ingrained in the minds of the English or French... judging by their confused reactions when Michael Moore went into various European hospitals and asked where he could pay his bill.

The other argument that I found interesting was that we already have some precedent for socialized services. It's not like medicine would be the first thing to be controlled by the government. Think about education, fire protection, law enforcement, libraries, etc. And in many of these cases, you still have the option to pay for additional services if you feel like your needs aren't be met by the government offered ones. For instance, you can still send your child to private school if you're not happy with the public ones. And, I imagine, you would still be able to pay for private health care if you felt like you weren't getting what you needed out of the public system.

Of course the two things that Michael Moore left out of his documentary was exactly how much these universal health care systems cost the average citizen and any sort of proposal of how to transition America from it's current privatized system into a public one. The transition is what I see as the biggest problem. Even if everyone were to jump on board and agree that universal health care is what we needed, it would be an epic transformation. As I understand it, the health care industry is the second largest industry in the nation (second to the military). How do you pull the rug out from underneath an industry that large?

A friend of mine pointed out that there may be other obstacles to America converting to a socialized system of medicine. He posited that the high prices that we pay for health care and drugs in America actually subsidize the industry for the rest of the world. That's right. According to him, the reason why Universal Health Care works in places like Canada, England and France is that we Americans are paying for it up front. A lot of medical and drug research is funded in America. If that revenue stream were to dry up, would it be worth it for companies to continue research?

Here's an interesting question for you: If you had to choose between universal health care and the progress of medical research, which would you choose? Personally, I think that I would choose universal health care. A lot of research these days is targeting very specialized ailments, whereas a lot of good could be done with the generalized knowledge that we already have. Not to mention, I think that more emphasis should be placed on preventative maintenance rather than spending millions of dollars on developing drugs to fix a problem after the fact.

Down With The Sickness

2007-07-06T14:16:00.000-06:00

Endurance athletes (if I may deign to label myself as such) are a pretty twisted bunch of people. This is a group of people that like to punish themselves with exercise. It's almost like we are the modern day ascetics.

A really good endurance event might be referred to as a "suffer-fest". And instead of discouraging people from signing up, the use of this term might actually bolster attendance. You might even find these people talking about going in search of their "Pain Cave".

Quoth "The Everyday Athlete"

It’s that place you go where you are enveloped by a complete and raw brand of pain. You reach it after feeling the seering inside of you and then ignoring it. You reach it when every voice inside of you has screamed for you to stop and you have silenced them all. The quiet of the pain cave is eerie and horrific.

If there really is such a thing as a pain cave, and you knew that you had one, would you really go looking for it?

I would. I am.

It's not good enough to have ridden the Nebo Loop. It's not good enough to have ridden the Alpine Loop. How about I get together with a bunch of other lunatics and take a day off of work to ride them both in the same day. Now that sounds like fun!

The event is called R.A.N.A.T.A.D. - Ride Around Nebo And Timp in A Day. 170 miles, 13,000 feet of elevation gain. The ride starts at Sundance resort on the Alpine Loop. You descend into Utah Valley, ride to Payson, up and over the Nebo Loop to Nephi, come back through the valley to Alpine and then end by climbing up and over the Alpine Loop back to Sundance. I get chills just thinking about it :)

The ride is on Monday, July 9th. If all goes well, I hope to still be alive on July 10th :) Wish me luck!

How to Lower Your Bike Seat

2007-07-06T13:55:00.000-06:00

Following on the heels of the ever-so-popular "How to Clean Your iPod" is the next installment in my do-it-yourself series, "How to Lower Your Bike Seat".

Step 1: Affix your bike to the roof rack of your car. Ensure that you perform this step outside of your garage.

Step 2: Forget that bike is affixed to top of car and drive into garage. Note that this procedure only works when your bike seat is slightly taller than the opening of your garage door, but not so tall that the garage door takes the bike clean off the top of your car.

Step 3: Remove bike from roof and enjoy your new properly adjusted seat.

Disclaimer - This procedure may cause peripheral damage to the vehicle used to perform the adjustments, such as (but not limited to) indentations, scraped paint and roof rack removal. This is completely normal.

Yeah, so this is pretty much the worst nightmare of anyone who has ever owned a roof rack :) Fortunately very little damage was done. The only visible damage to the bike was the seat was scuffed up some by the stucco as it squeezed to fit below the garage opening.

My Camry didn't fair as well. The front mounting bracket of the roof rack was ripped free of the door and took a good chunk of paint with it as it came loose. Okay, so it was really a pretty tiny section of paint but it felt bigger than it was :) The rear mounting bracket was pushed into the sheet metal of the roof and made a pretty good indentation. And, again, by "pretty good indentation" I mean a really very small indentation :)

I'm hoping that I can get a body shop to clean up both spots for me. In the meantime, I'm trying to dream up some sort of infrared device that detects that the bike is on top of the car and kills the ignition if I attempt to drive into garage. Fortunately for me, I have a pretty low waiting period before tragedy turns into comedy. After all, it is pretty funny if you think about it :)

iPod Stasis

2007-07-02T08:09:00.000-06:00

After several weeks with two busted iPods, we have finally restored iPod stasis this weekend. On Saturday, I bought a new 30 Gig iPod Video to replace the one that went through the wash. I was originally entertaining the idea of getting one of the new iPhone's but I just couldn't talk myself into the $600 price tag or the monthly fee for AT&T cellular service. Although, after seeing one in person on Sunday I'm beginning to have second thoughts :) Maybe next month.

Rosey's iPod has had a dead clickwheel for the last several weeks. It would sync, charge and was probably even capable of playing music if it weren't for the fact that there was no way for you fingers to send signals of the brain of the iPod to do anything. Luckily, the nano was still covered under Apple's one year warranty. I thought it was neat that they have a spot on their website where you can just type in your serial number and they will tell you whether or not it's still covered.

So, we dropped by the Apple Store at the Gateway in Salt Lake City and intended to drop the unit off for service. But, it turns out that they don't service iPods at the store... they just outright replace them. So, we walked out of the Apple Store with a brand spanking new iPod nano to replace the one with the bad clickwheel. I have to say that I'm terribly impressed with how Apple does business. It was so easy to get this thing replaced. Granted, I did have to pay $30 processing fee since it was past the first 6 months of the warranty, but that's nothing compared to the price of a new unit.

Mountain Bike Miles

2007-07-01T08:40:00.000-06:00

My fancy new mountain bike has not been sitting idle despite all of the miles that I've been racking up on my road bike lately. Yesterday morning I rode a 30 mile loop from Diamond Fork canyon up and over the mountains into Hobble Creek canyon and then turned around and rode back to Diamond Fork.

The ride was interesting in that it incorporated 3 shorter rides or trails that Rosey and I had attempted previously in the year...

A couple of months ago we rode from Diamond Fork about 7 or 8 miles up the trail to Mollie's Nipple (I swear that's the official name of the geological formation). We speculated that if we continued on that trail that it would continue on into Hobble Creek but neither of us had the energy or water to continue on that day.

The second stretch of trail we happened upon while hiking with Rosey's stepmom Karen in March. We started at Sawmill Hollow in Diamond Fork canyon and ended up hiking to a dirt road in the middle of the mountains. At that time the whole area was still largely covered in snow. I had no idea that the dirt road that we hiked on was actually going to be the same road that mountain bike trail turned into. It was kind of neat to see the same area again without all of the snow 4 months later.

The final stretch of trail was a ride that we did a couple of months back. We had planned on riding from Hobble Creek to Diamond Fork over the dirt road. Unfortunately we were only about to make it a couple of miles before we ran into impassable snow on the road. Ironically, we stopped on the road where there was a 'T' in the road with another trail. We were curious where that trail went but figured that we would have to wait until the snow melted until we found out.

Well it turns out that trail connected to the hike that we had done earlier and then eventually to the same mountain bike trail that we had attempted in Diamond Fork. It was kind of fun to ride all three sections yesterday without even realizing that I was going to be seeing all of these familiar places.

The irony of the ride was that I really hadn't planned on doing it as a 'out and back' ride. I was going to ride from Diamond Fork to Hobble Creek and then come down Hobble Creek canyon and have Rosey pick me up with the car. I was worried that it would be too long of a ride otherwise.

Well, it turns out that the ride from Diamond Fork to Hobble Creek was actually shorter than I had imagined. It was 14.6 miles from where I had parked my car in Diamond Fork to where the pavement begins in Hobble Creek. As I reached the pavement, I thought to myself, "Hmm, I could continue down the pavement and get home early OR I could turn around and just ride back over the mountain to my car. A peak at my elevation profile will tell you which option I took :)

I took a different route on the ride back. I stayed on the main dirt road that connected the two canyons. It was actually a fairly easy ride compared to the ride out. In fact, the last 8 miles of the ride were 'cheating' miles. The dirt road ended in Diamond Fork and I coasted down 8 miles of pavement back to my car.

I'm Going To Be a Daddy!

2007-06-30T15:31:00.000-06:00

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

2007-06-28T09:09:00.000-06:00

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

2007-06-09T16:45:00.001-06:00

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

2007-06-09T16:34:00.000-06:00

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

2007-06-03T15:53:00.000-06:00

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

2007-06-03T13:37:00.000-06:00

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

2007-06-03T13:17:00.000-06:00

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 :)

A Memorable Memorial Day Weekend

2007-05-31T17:28:00.000-06:00

This past Memorial Day weekend Rosey and I got out on a 5-day long road trip through the Southwest. On the way we passed through 5 states (Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona), saw 2 national parks and 2 national monuments.

Our first stop on the trip was Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This is a park that has been on my list of places that I've wanted to see for several years. I'm kind of a sucker for a good cave tour and I heard that this one was supposed to be one of the best. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed. I think that it's fair to say that this was the coolest (neatest) cave that I've ever been in.

I've never been able to get very good pictures in a cave and this trip seemed worst than most. All I managed to get was some shots of complete darkness. So, our only recorded memories from this park will be of the entrance to the caves :)

The cave was just massive and it was decorated with some pretty unbelievable cave formations. There were all of the normal formations that you might expect like flowstone, drapery, popcorn, stalactites, stalagmites and columns but there were also a handful of unique formations. The most interesting one, I thought was called the lion's tail. It was a stalactite that had grown a ball of cave popcorn on it's tail. It was pretty neat. I was also impressed by the fairyland. It reminded me a little of Goblin Valley only with the hoodoos being made of cave formations instead of redrock.

Our second stop was in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. To be honest, this wasn't a park that had really been on my list of places to see, but it was so close to Carlsbad that I figured it warranted a visit if for no other reason than to expand my collection of National Parks Maps :) I think that Rosey and I were both glad that we stopped. We both appreciated the desert landscape and the beautiful and unique mountains and I think that Rosey was particularly thrilled to learn about the geological history of the park (which I'll let her explain in her own post).

We took the better part of the 3rd day of our trip and did a 14 mile hike through the Guadalupe Mountains. The scenery was spectacular and it felt unbelievably good to get out and do some real hiking after spending the 2 days on the road.

On Day 4 we started our trek back home. Instead of going back the way we came we took a slight detour through central New Mexico and stopped by White Sands National Monument. I was impressed to discover that it is the largest gypsum sand dunes in the world.

I also thought it was really neat to learn how the dunes were formed. Apparently water running off the nearby mountains carries alot of dissolved minerals with it. The water settles into lakes in the valley which because of the heat dry up over the summer. As the mineral rich water dries it leaves massive gypsum crystals in the lake bed. Over time the crystals are broken down by the wind and blown into the nearby dunes. It would have been neat to go and see the crystals in the lake bed but unfortunately that part of the park is only accessible via ranger led hikes in the fall.

We didn't stay that long in White Sands and we really didn't do that much hiking. But we did stop to play in the sand. I had a lot of fun walking barefoot through the sand dunes. I was worried it would be too hot to go barefoot, but the sand was actually pretty cool and there seemed to be a surprising amount of moisture just beneath the surface.

Day 5 found us in a small town in Arizona where we had bedded for the night. We still had about 8 hours of driving ahead of us straight up highway 191. I had chose this route hoping that we would get to drive through Monument Valley. As it turned out we didn't get to see Monument Valley but we did get to stop at an unexpected fourth National Park (actually Monument).

As we were driving up 191 we stopped at Canyon De Chelly National Monument in Chinle, Arizona. The park was unique in that it appeared to still be occupied by Navajo residents. In fact there was only one trail in the entire park that you were allowed to hike without a special permit or Navajo guide. It was really quite interesting to see actual residences inside of a national monument.

The canyon was amazing. Rosey pointed out that it looked like a smaller version of Zion Canyon. At first I didn't agree but I started to see the similarity. We didn't have a ton of time so we toured the park by car stopping off at some of the viewpoints along the way. The most impressive viewpoint was of Spider Rock.

I'd love to come back sometime and backpack and/or mountain bike through the park. We just need to figure out how to get a Navajo guide that could keep up with us :)

A Month of "Finally"'s

2007-05-25T09:37:00.000-06:00

May has been a month of "Finally"'s for me.

I finally rode my bike over Nebo after having the goal for over a year and making several attempts.
I finally hiked the Zion Narrows after numerous failed attempts (due to plans falling through) over the last several years.
I finally dropped below 200 lbs after thinking that I was real close at least 3 times over the last year.
And this weekend I will finally get to see Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico after wishing for several years to go see it.

May has been a pretty good month :)

Now, if only there were enough time left in May to finally climb Spanish Fork Peak.

A Whole New Century

2007-05-25T09:30:00.000-06:00

It's taken a whole lot longer than I had originally planned, but this week I finally dropped under 200 lbs. I haven't been this light since I graduated high school. I want to keep working to drop another 10 lbs or so to clean up a few of my jiggly spots, but I'm getting closer and closer to my 'ideal' weight.

Going Kevlar

2007-05-25T09:24:00.000-06:00

After another two flat tires within 24 hours of each other, I decided that I had finally had enough with my current tires. So, I swapped in my old Roubaix tires for a set of Specialized Armadillos. The Armadillos are made with a layer of DuPont Kevlar (a material commonly used in bullet proof vests) to be extra puncture resistant. I'm hoping that it gives me bulletproof tires but I'm betting that I'll manage to puncture them within a week :)

Conquering Nebo

2007-05-14T06:42:00.000-06:00

I finally did it! Yesterday, I rode 48.5 miles from my house in Spanish Fork to Nephi over the Nebo Loop. I hit the highest point of the ride at 9300 feet above sea level. That's 4700 feet of elevation gain from the lowest point at 4600 feet above sea level.

There was a bit of snow on the road once I got up to the higher elevations, but for the most part it wasn't covering the whole road and I was able to find a path through it. However, there were a handful of times when I had to get off my bike and walk through 10 to 20 yards of snow that was completely covering the road.

My biggest obstacle was a massive tree that had fallen. It was too big to climb over so I had no choice but to go around it. Going around it meant climbing 10 feet or so up the hillside. This wouldn't have been a problem had the hillside not been covered in snow. I got three steps into the climb before I was up to my waste in snow. With a little bit of persistence I was able to finally make it to the other side and continue my ride.

I definitely wasn't setting any speed records yesterday. I completed the ride in just over 4 hours. Of course, I couldn't expect to keep a 20 mph average over a route like that, but I think that I was still riding a little slower than normal. First of all, Rosey and I had gone on a 12 mile hike through the mountains yesterday and my legs and body already felt a little fatigued. Second, I was fighting a pretty ugly wind for the first 10 miles of the ride. On top of being generally demoralizing, fighting that much wind kind of zapped a lot of my energy before I even got to the hard part of the ride.

Now that I've got Nebo behind me, I'm starting to set my sights on other climbs in the area. The Alpine Loop is likely to be next on the list. I'd also like to tackle Fairview to Huntington. I'm hoping that with enough training I can compete in the Alta Hill Climb this year. And, of course, the ultimate goal... Haleakala!

Best Practicer

2007-05-07T22:56:00.000-06:00

I was awarded the "Best Practicer" award by my piano teacher today. My teacher said that out of 30 or so of his students that I was the most dedicated to practicing regularly. I was really quite flattered :) They apparently give awards to recognize students every semester.

I wouldn't have guessed that I was the best practicer, but then again, I do practice 45 minutes pretty much every day before work. Weekends are my weak spot as I am often out of town and/or engaged in other activities.

The problem with an award like this is that now I'm really going to be conscious about making sure that I practice so that I feel like I earned the recognition. Hmmm, come to think of it, maybe this is a reverse psychology kind of thing and I really wasn't the best practicer at all :)

Lighting Doesn't Strike Twice...

2007-05-07T22:46:00.000-06:00

... but apparently flat tires don't abide by that rule. I was out riding at lunch, cruising down Springville Main street at about 28 miles per hour (I love that stretch of road) when all of the sudden I felt the bike bouncing in rhythm with my pedal stroke. That's a sure sign that the rear tire is going or has gone flat. As I slowed to a stop I could hear air hissing out of my rear tire. I discovered as I inspected the tire that I had ridden over some sort of twisted, rusted metal roofing staple.

Fortunately, I keep a spare tube and a CO2 catridge handy for repairing flats. Within a couple of minutes I was back on the bike and made it safely to my lunch destination (Subway).

Later that day... I was riding home from my piano lesson through Hwy 89 in Mapleton when I heard a sharp pop and then a whole lot of hissing. Within a couple of seconds my rear tire was completely flat. The offending piece of road debris was no longer stuck in the tire, but the impression left in my tire looked like it had been caused by a thumbtack. Now who would leave one of those sitting in the middle of the road?

Fortunately, I keep a spare tube and a CO2 catridge handy for repairing flats. Oh wait, I already used my spare tube and CO2 catridge. Damnit! Luckily, I was able to get ahold of Rosey just before she was about to head out on a ride of her own. She was gracious enough to come and rescue me.

I'm starting to think that I need steel belted road bike tires :)

Nebo Loop, Take 2

2007-05-07T06:52:00.000-06:00

One of my goals from last year that I left unfinished was to ride my bike over the Nebo loop. It's a 30 mile ride through the mountains that gains and then loses about 4500 feet of elevation.

Yesterday, I made another attempt on the loop. My ride started from home and I made it 20 miles before hitting snow on the road just before Payson Lakes. Although I covered only 1/3 the total distance of the ride*, I managed to climb 3000 of the 4500 feet of elevation gain. And I'm confident that I could have kept going if it weren't for the snow.

* The 30 miles counts from Payson to Nephi. I started my ride in Spanish Fork which adds about 8 miles before getting to the start of the loop. So, I really only rode 12 of the 30 miles... roughly 1/3 of the total distance.

You win some, you lose some

2007-05-05T11:00:00.000-06:00

I've always enjoyed watching the touring productions of various Broadway shows that are hosted in Salt Lake City by Broadway in Utah. However, this year was the first year that I've bought season tickets. One of the advantages of season tickets is that you get good seats to the shows that you really want to see. One of the disadvantages of season tickets is that some times you end up with tickets to shows that you're not that interested in. In the past week, I've had both.

Last weekend, Rosey and I got to see "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" at Capitol Theatre. Prior to buying the tickets, I didn't even realize that that DRS was a Broadway show. I only knew it as a movie with Steve Martin. It was a spectacular show. One of the best that I've seen in a while. It was an all-singing, all-dancing, all-entertaining raucous of a show. Although, it was apparently a little too risque for the delicate sensibilities of some members of our Utah audience... half-way through the show about 15% of seats in the theatre had cleared out :)

Last night, on the other hand, was a much less pleasurable experience. We had tickets to see "One Man Star Wars" at the Rose Wagner theatre in Salt Lake City. It wasn't a show that held a lot of natural appeal to me, but I was encouraged by all of the positive reviews that it had gotten. About 10 seconds into the show I knew that I was in for trouble when the sole actor started voicing the opening score for Star Wars while acting out the plot text floating over the "screen".

Fortunately, the show was only an hour long and only encompassed the original Star Wars trilogy. However, that entire hour I spent feeling like I was on the outside of an inside joke. The audience kept laughing hysterically at, what seemed to me, to be the most inane humor. Maybe I'm just not enough of a die-hard Star Wars fanatic (which, of course, I'm not) but I barely broke into a chuckle once during the entire show.

April Training Recap

2007-05-01T07:29:00.000-06:00

It was my goal to ride 200 miles a week in April. That means that I should have hit over 800 miles over the course of the month. Unfortunately, I fell short of that goal and only got 714 miles of riding in. I think that the weather was the largest factor in not meeting my goal. There were still quite a few days that I couldn't ride because of the rain.

As I look forward to May, I want to keep the same total mileage goal, but I want to focus on riding fewer, but longer rides. In April my longest single ride was only 52 miles. Most of my riding was accumulated by lots of short 12-20 mile rides (i.e. commuting back and forth to work). I really need to get in longer rides to start building my endurance.

Paddling the Great Salt Lake

2007-04-29T10:33:00.000-06:00

With all of the biking that I do during the week, I often find myself wishing for a weekend activity that would keep me active while allowing my lower body to rest a little. It occurred to me several weekends ago that kayaking would be that perfect activity. I still get to be outdoors, I still get to be active, but it puts no strain on my lower body at all.

So, on Saturday, Rosey and I, rented a couple of kayaks from the Wasatch Touring company and headed out onto the Great Salt Lake. The kayaks were reasonably priced at $25/day. If I end up doing this very often, I'd probably want to just buy my own, but in the mean time that's not so bad.

We put in at the Great Salt Lake Marina just a mile down the road from Saltair. I've only been kayaking once before in my life when I was visiting Hawaii for Christmas a couple of years back. Fortunately for me, Rosey is a seasoned kayaking veteran and was able to give me a number of tips on paddling technique and maneuvering. By the end of the day I still wasn't nearly as proficient as she was, but I was at least able to keep the boat going mostly straight :)

We set our sights on Stanisbury island, one of the larger islands in the Great Salt Lake. It was just off in the distance and looked like it would make for a good afternoon of paddling. Well, looks can be deceiving. After 2 hours and a little over 5 miles of paddling, Stanisbury island still looked about as far away as when we started :) When I got home and looked it up on the map, I discovered that it was about 15 miles from the Marina to the island. Oops.

Even without reaching the island it was fun to be out on the water. Our paddle out was through unusually calm water... almost glasslike. We had a few more waves on the way back.

I never really appreciated how salty the Great Salt Lake was until I paddled it. About 30 minutes into our trip we were both covered in a crust of salt from all the water that splashed up onto us. Of course, I was far worse off than Rosey, since my paddling technique was so sloppy that I tended to get water everywhere and over everything :) By the time that we got back to the marina, all of our clothes were stiff from the salt, and Rosey's hair was like a helmet (my hair was spared by a baseball cap that I was wearing).

I'm not sure that I'm reading to go out and buy two new kayaks yet, but I certainly had fun and you can be assured that this won't be the last time that we go kayaking this summer. Next time, I think that we may go for the closers and less saline waters of Utah Lake.

Our Spring Break Adventure

2007-04-29T10:11:00.000-06:00

My sister Marci was on Spring Break last week and wanted to get out and have an adventure. Marci, Rosey and I decided to do some backpacking in the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park. We hiked 5.5 miles into our campsite at Peekaboo Springs where we setup camp next to the Salt Creek. The full set of pictures is here.

I think that we may have been packed a little heavy for one night in the backcountry :) How many backpackers do you know that pack in a queen size air mattress and battery operated pump? Hey, I'm not complaining... I slept awesome that night!

The views were spectacular. We hiked in and out of several canyons that wound through the park like a maze.

We had to scale several ladders on the hike including this one. This one was particularly challenging because of how narrow the opening was. My pack was so large that I got wedged in between the rocks about 2/3 of the way down. I wanted to just push back and force my pack through, but I was worried that once I broke free I would end up toppling backwards off of the ladder.

Climbing with Two Wheels

2007-04-15T20:54:00.000-06:00

I didn't get a ton of miles on my bike this weekend, but the ones that I did get I had to work for.

Saturday, Rosey and I went mountain biking in Diamond Fork Canyon. We survived about8 miles straight uphill on a rocky mountain trail. We probably would have kept plowing through to Hobble creek canyon but we were both running low on water and didn't want to take any chances. Here is the elevation profile from my GPS:

As if that wasn't enough, on Sunday I decided to tackle Indian Pass on Hwy 191 connecting Price and Duchesne. The inspiration for this ride came last weekend as we were riding the Harley through this very spot. I thought it would make an awesome bike ride... and it did.

The only problem is that it's difficult to gauge exactly how steep a road is when riding in a motorized vehicle. I gained nearly 2000 feet of elevation in the first 7.5 miles of riding. That was rough. My favorite part of the climb was looking at the faces of the passing motorists wondering why the hell I was voluntarily climbing a hill like that.

Once I reached the summit at 9100 ft, it was pretty much all downhill for the next 28 miles. My top speed was a little over 40 miles per hour coming down the steepest section of the mountain. I do wear a helmet on whenever I anticipate speeds like that. Although I was thinking today as I was descending, that at 40 miles per hour, I don't think that my bicycle helmet would really help that much.

My original plan had been to have lunch in Duchesne and then ride back to where I started. Only I hadn't counted on having regain so much elevation coming back from Duchesne. I had imagined that the road was mostly flat after the initial ascent/descent from Indian Pass. Between the mountain biking I had done on Saturday and the climbing that I had already done that morning, my legs were pretty much fried.

I started back to the car but only got about half-way before Rosey met me with the car. I was so happy that she decided to come along and hike while I biked, because I'm not sure that I would have made it back up that mountain :)

Here is the elevation profile of the Indian Pass ride:

Fuel Costs of Commuting By Bike

2007-04-05T09:49:00.000-06:00

I was talking to a friend the other day about how I love cycling to work because it is good exercise, good fun, environmentally friendly and saves me a ton of money on gas. He looked at me quizzically and said, "Do you really save that much money on fuel?".

"What do you mean? Of course, I do. I don't have to put ANY gas in my bike"

"Yeah, but how much extra fuel do you have to put in yourself in order to bike back and forth to work?"

I had never really thought of it that way before. On an average day that I drive to work, I end up driving 56 miles. That's 14 miles each way, twice (I usually come home for lunch). My Camry gets about 28 miles per gallon which means that I use 2 gallons of fuel on an average work day. Given the current price of fuel, commuting by car costs me between 5 and 6 dollars a day.

That means that for commuting by bike to be economically advantageous I would have to spend less than 5 dollars a day extra on food. An average day of riding to work accrues 40 miles; that 12.5 each way and then a 15 mile ride at lunch. Between bigger meals to fuel myself and snacks in between meals to keep me going, I probably spend pretty close to an extra 5 dollars a day when I bike.

Of course, that's not going to prevent me from biking to work. Even if I only break even financially, I still get all of the other benefits of biking. And from a fitness and lifestyle perspective I really like the philsophy of "eat more, exercise more". I ran into some guys on a ride last year that put it this way, "I eat to live, live to ride, and ride so that I can eat more".

LOTOJA Route Misunderstanding

2007-04-05T06:34:00.000-06:00

I was talking to one of my coworkers yesterday who actually rode LOTOJA last year and realized that I misunderstood the route. The ride does not go through Logan canyon and descend on Bear lake like I had originally thought. Rather it continues North from Logan into Idaho and then turns Northwest at Preston and rides along Hwy 36. We will rejoin Hwy 89 just outside of Montpellier.

On the one hand I'm relieved to discover that I won't have to tackle Logan canyon as part of a 200 mile ride. On the other hand, I'm a little disappointed to discover that the epic ride that I was imagining is going to be a little less epic than I imagined. I've already told a handful people that I was riding Logan canyon as part of LOTOJA. Maybe I'll ride it my way anyway and meet up with everyone else in Montpellier :)

Bike Seats and Long Rides

2007-04-04T10:13:00.000-06:00

TK asked in the comments of my last blog whether or not they make comfort seats for long rides on a bicycle. The answer is yes and no. Yes, they do make large padded comfort seats for bicycles, but No, you would never use one for a long ride like LOTOJA. The comfort seats are generally marketed to people that ride slow and for really short distances.

Despite being contrary to what one might consider common sense, it's actually better to have a really small seat on a long ride. The difference between a bicycle and a motorcycle is that, on a bicycle, you actually need to move your legs to pedal. A large seat actually inhibits this action. In addition, there are large arteries that pump blood through your crotch area to your legs. Small seats are designed to avoid placing any pressure on these arteries. A poorly designed seat can actually make your legs go numb after 20 miles.

That's not to say that really small seats are "comfortable" by any stretch of the imagination. But after a 50 mile ride your butt is much less likely to be in agonizing pain on small seat than it would be on a large "comfort" seat.

LOTOJA Registration

2007-04-02T14:10:00.000-06:00

I just completed my registration for the 2007 Logan to Jackson road bike race. The ride is a 206 mile trek through the mountains from Logan, Utah to Jackson, Wyoming... in a single day. At an average pace of about 20 miles per hour, I can expect to spend at least 10 hours in the saddle. Fortunately, the ride isn't until September 8th, so I have plenty of time to get my butt in shape :)

My New Wheels

2007-03-19T17:57:00.000-06:00

After riding Rosey's old road bike for nearly a year, I finally decided to go out and buy my own. I bought a 2007 Specialized Roubaix Pro. I'm not really into the specs, but in case you are... it has a carbon fiber frame (or in other words, it's really light) and has SRAM components (shifters, crank and derailleurs). Here's a pic:

And, yes, I paid more for it than I did for my first three cars put together. But, then again, if you know much about my first three cars, that's not saying much :)

Traffic School

2007-02-25T16:21:00.000-07:00

I just successfully completed my online traffic school course. It's awfully convenient that you are able to do this online now instead of attending class in-person. However, considering that it still took me over 2 hours to complete the course and take the test (and cost $110), it's not like I actually spent less time (or money) than if I was to appear in person.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I only scored 80% on a 10 question open book test :) But I stand behind the two answers that I gave that were marked incorrect. The first question that I got wrong had to do with the circumstance under which you should use extra caution around a motorcycle. In addition to, "In bad weather" and "On slippery surfaces", I answered "At night". Apparently the online traffic school did not agree that you should pay (special) attention to motorcycles at night. Of course, as someone that rides a motorcycle, I believe that you should pay special attention to them at ALL times.

The second question that I got wrong had to do with the appropriate behaviour when approaching a schoolbus with flashing yellow lights from the opposite direction on a non-divided road. I knew that the answer, "Slow down and use caution" was the appropriate answer listed in the course material. However, as I scanned the other options, I saw this: "Yield right of way to any children getting on the bus and then proceed". Hmm, under what circumstances would not yield the right of way to children getting on to the bus. True, the bus should have red lights flashing if it was stopped and children were getting on. But regardless of the color of the flashing lights, if there are children present, call me crazy, but I think that it's prudent to yield the right of way to them. Once again, the online traffic school did not agree with me.

So, why was I enrolled in an online traffic school? Could I really think of no better way to spend a snowy Sunday afternoon? Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was coming home for lunch and got nailed doing 43 in a 25. I openly admit to regularly speeding, and to be honest, given the frequency with which I speed and am not ticketed, I probably deserved this ticket. However, I take particular issue with the location in which it was cited.

The main road leading up to my house is about a mile long. Although there are only officially two lanes of traffic, the road is wide enough for there to be 5 lanes of traffic. On the entire stretch of road there is only a single house with a driveway that faces the road. There is a school but it is fenced off (and there were no children present at the time that I was ticketed). Similar roads, elsewhere in Spanish Fork have speed of 40MPH or greater. However, this one stretch of road has a speed limit of 25. It's kind of ridiculous because nobody drives that slow on that road.

I thought about fighting the ticket and arguing that the road should have a higher speed limit. But even if I convinced someone of that fact, it wouldn't change that I exceeded the speed limit while it was still posted at it's old speed. Or in other words, there's no real way of arguing that what I did was legal and shouldn't have been ticketed. Oh well. I'm still thinking of writing a letter to the city encouraging them to reconsider.

Our Winter/Spring Weekend

2007-02-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

Was this past weekend a late winter weeknd or an early spring weekend? I'm still really not sure. Judging by our activities though it may have been a little bit of both.

On Friday we went cross country skiing at the Sundance Nordic center. Unfortunatley the trail was mostly mush due to the warm temperatures. We still managed a quick loop through Middle Earth and arrived safely back at our car despite having a few near death experience coming down some steep runs with no stopping power in the wet slushy snow.

Later that day... we didn't get enough of a workout from the skiing so we decided to go on a quick bike ride. We did a short 12 mile ride around the neighborhood to stretch out our legs. God, I love biking.

Friday night, (unrelated to physical activity) we saw the Flying Karamazov Brothers at Abravenel Hall in Salt Lake City. It was a juggling act that performed in conjunction with the Utah symphony. Some of the juggling was impressive, but too much of the show was centered around cheap laughs rather than juggling performances. For instance, one of the "numbers" were these four middle aged men dressed in tutu's doing a mock ballet. It was amusing, no doubt, but felt a little like I was watching a "cultured" version of a "Jackass" episode (if there is such a thing). The best part of the evening was hearing the symphony perform a medley of music from the Russian composer Shastakovich (sp?).

Saturday morning, we packed up the car and headed down to Moab for the weekend. We started with an 8 mile hike around the permiter of Upheaval Dome in Canyonlands National Park (I believe it's actually called the Syncline Loop trail). Although much of the trail was in the sun and very warm, we ended up walking several miles through a shaded canyon where everything was still frozen and covered in snow. It was strange to transition between these two extremes on the same hike.

Saturday night I discovered that it was bad to mix large quantities of alcohol, sugar and fried food. We ate out at a Mexican Restaurant in Moab and I decided to cut loose a little bit and have a few drinks with dinner. The specialty that night was a pomegranate margarita. It sounded interesting, I had never had a pomegranate drink before. And so, I ordered and drank 3 of them.

I don't think that it was the alcohol itself that did me in. But something in the combination of the alcohol, sticky sugary sweet pomegranate margarita mix, the 3 baskets of chips and salsa that I ate while waiting for a table and the two mammoth sized enchiladadas that I ate for dinner made me feel really not well. I spent the remainder of the night moaning and groaning and trying very hard not to let anything touch or otherwise put any pressure on my stomach for fear that it might rupture and spill out the vile concoction that I had shoved into it earlier that night.

Sunday was dedicated to biking. In fact, my original inspiration for a weekend in Moab came from the desire to road bike through Arches. We ended up in Canyonlands rather than Arches but it still satisfied my craving for miles on the road bike. In fact I even think that the ride in Canyonlands was better than riding through Arches.

We kept a moderate pace riding from the visitor center out to Grand View Point; a short 12 mile ride on a brisk Sunday morning. But on the way back I split off on my own and decided to haul ass in order to atone for my previous nights indescretions. With the wind at my back and a slight downhill grade I achieved a top speed of 39 miles per hour... yes, on a leg-powered road bike. It was way cool.

I continued riding past the car at the visitors center and continued on to Dead Horse Point; about another 15 miles. I had been there several times before but it was Rosey's first time. We spent a couple of minutes gazing down at the gooseneck before returning back to the car for the day.

I ended up with a grand total of 52 miles for the day. Certainly not my longest ride (compared to some of my rides last year), but not bad for a ride in mid-February. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to discover that I had lost some of my stamina over the winter. Towards the end of the ride I was really struggling to find energy. Hopefully, I will regain it all when I start riding to work again.

We rounded out the day by doing some off-roading in Rosey's rodeo. Her vehicle is no longer new by any stretch of the imagination. It was a little unnerving to hear all of the squeaking and rattling as we traversed the rocky road. There were a couple of bumps where I was convinced the whole thing was just going to fall to pieces and that we would have to hike back out. In the end, the truck held together and we were rewarded with an incredible, up-close-and-personal view of the gooseneck in the Colorado river. It was a worthwhile diversion.

We woke up this morning to discover that our Spring Weekend was over. The weather suddenly remembered that it was February and decided to snow again. We drove home under ominous black clouds and light snow and arrived to 5 inches of snow in the driveway. I however, refused to let go of my Spring weekend. The weather was going to have to pry it from my cold dead hands. As an act of defiance, I decided to shovel my driveway in shorts and sandals.

Flirting with Spring

2007-02-19T18:12:00.000-07:00

The warm weather of the last couple of weeks has been making me restless. The temperatures have been reaching as high as the 50's mid-day. The snow has all melted and I have even been able to bring my bike with me to work and to ride at lunch. I love spring weather. However, the spring weather has a consequence. Once it's nice enough to do stuff outside, I feel like working out inside is a waste of time. Who wants to get up every morning to ride 20 miles on an exercise bike when I know that I can ride 20 miles at lunch time on a real bike on real pavement.

So, I have found myself for the last couple of weeks skipping my indoor workouts in favor of getting my exercise outdoors. The problem that I keep trying to ignore is that it is really still February. Sure there are some days when we hit the 50's, but some of those days are drenched with rain and there are still days when the temperatures drop into the 30's. And no matter how devoted I am to biking, it's just no fun riding into the wind in 30 degree weather.

The moral of the story is that I have all but stopped working out inside but it's still not nice enough to get all of the exercise that I need outside. It's starting to make me feel like crap. But the thought of retiring to my dungeon of a basement for yet another month of indoor workouts is more than I can take. I just wish that Spring would hurry up and come already.

Mid-Term Russian Update

2007-02-19T17:43:00.000-07:00

Mom asked me how my Russian class was going so I thought that I would give an update. I've been in class for about 5 weeks now and things are going well. The class is not nearly as structured as I had hoped it would be and really isn't very demanding. There are only 4 of us total enrolled in the course: a married couple, myself and a high school student. The teacher is a recent college graduate with a degree in Geography (huh?) who is incidentally fluent in both Russian and Italian.

The first several weeks of class I was way ahead of everyone else since I was already familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet. Even though it wasn't totally new material it was still fun to be in a class and to practice reading and speaking Russian.

I'm afraid, however, that the ease of the class made me a little complacent. At the end of our fourth class we had a quiz on the vocabulary that we had been assigned at the beginning of the first class. I assumed that we were going to just be covering the words that we had talked about so far in class and so I didn't really study. Even though I did as well (or better) than anyone else in the class I was embarrassed that I had to leave so many questions unanswered. I didn't realize that we were being quizzed on the entire vocabulary list and not just the words that we had covered in class.

I'm not one of those people that obsesses about being the best student in class but I don't like to get caught unprepared for something that I should know. So, I went home after class and typed up all 150 vocabulary words on flash cards and then proceeded to memorize every single one of them for my next class.

Of course, the way that life works you often don't get the chance to make up for an occasion like that. The most likely outcome would be that I would go to class the following week and that we would not be quizzed on those same words again. Sure, I imagined being able to rattle off each and every one of those 160 words that I had studied when challenged by the teacher. But would that really happen in real life?

It turns out that I got exactly that opportunity. Only it didn't make me feel as good as I had hoped. We ended up with some spare time at the end of our last class and the teacher decided to quiz us on some vocabulary words. In response to the first couple of words I blurted out the answer almost before the teacher had finished saying them.

After that I figured that I had made my point and had vindicated myself from the previous weeks lackluster performance. I decided to let some of the other students answer the next couple of words. The only problem was that the other students didn't seem to know any of the answer. After a couple seconds of dead silence I began to fear that the teacher would assume that I wasn't answering because I also did not know the answer.

And so, unable to bear the silence in the classroom any longer, one word after another, I blurted out the answer. It got to where I was embarrassing myself. I felt like I was being a showboat, but I just couldn't seem to stop myself from spitting out the answers. I had, after all, studied so hard to learn each and every one of them. At one point, the teacher even allowed the other students to use their printed list of words to cheat... and they still couldn't answer fast enough.

I left class that night feeling bad about my episode. I'm sure that all of the other students in class hated me. I even apologized to the teacher on the way out (although she didn't seem concerned or even realize that there was cause for concern).

Laughing Hysterically at the Symphony

2007-01-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

On Friday night I had my second experience with the Symphony. Rosey and I, along with my friends S&J, went out to see the Utah Symphony perform Gershwin's "An American in Paris". At least that's what we thought we were going to see. It turns out that the Gershwin piece was just a small part of the overall performance that evening. The first half of the evening's performance was highlighting the work of an American composer that I had never heard of before: Charles Ives.

I first suspected that something was up when the conductor of the orchestra addressed the audience before the performance and gave something of an explanation as well as a disclaimer. Ives, as it turns out, was very experimental with his music. Few, if any, of his pieces were ever performed in his lifetime. We were warned that this group of professional musicians on stage were about to plays notes off beat and out of key and a myriad of rhythms intertwined with each other. We were assured that they were indeed worthy musicians but this was in fact how Charles Ives intended his music to be performed.

I'd like to think that I'm open to new things, so I was anxious to hear this 'original' American composer. The symphony was entitled, "Four Holidays" and each of the four movements was a tribute to a different New England holiday. The first movement was really different and kind of dissonant, but not all that bad. Things went downhill from there.

The second and third movements were really strange beyond my capacity for musical appreciation. One of the things that mesmerized me when we went to the symphony a couple of months ago was watching the bows of all of the violinists moving in perfect unison. That was not so in this performance. In fact, for the entire second and third movement I don't think that there were any two instruments on stage that were playing the same rhythm on the same beat.

By the end of the third movement, celebrating the 4th of July, there was so much musical chaos, so many different beats and rhythms, so many unexplained large frightening crashes and booms, that I couldn't contain myself and just started to burst out laughing. Not just snickering, but laughing hysterically. To hear a group of professional musicians playing this music that sounded a lot like a 3 year old banging pots and pans together was just amusing to me. It was even more amusing to me that a concert hall full of a couple of thousand people paid to see this performance.

I was not alone in my hysterics. About a quarter of the audience was apparently experiencing the same thing as I was. Total disbelief at what they were hearing. The effect was so uniform that I begun to believe that maybe this was even the desired effect of the conductor as he chose to perform this piece. For even the conductor as he concluded the third movement and turned around to address the audience, chuckled a little bit with a huge smile on his face and assured us once more that the musicians were intentionally playing off beat.

The fourth movement was actually the best. It was the earliest piece of the collection. There was still dissonance in the music, but it was balanced by enough consonance that you felt like he achieved the effect of adding a little chaos to the music without overwhelming the audience.

There were apparently some people in the audience, Rosey included, who "got it". These people made comments like, "What a brave choice of music by the conductor", or, "Imagine the skill required of the musicians to play a piece like that", or "What an interesting piece of America's musical history", or even, "Wow, the dissonance of the two middle movements create a negative contrast that really allows you to appreciate the final movement. Brilliant!".

I, on the other hand, am not afraid or ashamed to admit that I just didn't "get it". In fact, I'll go one step further and postulate that there really was nothing "to get". I understand that the conductor was brave to play a piece of music like that: Of course, he was brave, he was playing a crappy piece of music in front of an audience of thousands that paid good money to hear the orchestra play. Who cares that the conductor was brave? I would rather hear a good piece of music.

I also understand that the musicians were challenged by the piece. But, again, who cares? If the piece doesn't have any aesthetic quality, what do I care how challenging it is to play?

I have talked about this with my piano teacher on several occasions. Often when I come to practice some of the other teachers, many of whom are music majors at BYU, are practicing their difficult pieces in between lessons. Most of the time they sound like ass because they are playing these pieces that are musically difficult but aesthetically displeasing. My teacher has said that he'll never understand why people will spend a lifetime studying music to be able to play crap like that when there is so much beautiful music that you could play. I tend to agree.

Anyway, the evening at the symphony wasn't a total loss. The work of Charles Ives was good for a laugh and the second half of the performance, including Gershwin's "An American in Paris" was really quite good.