Today we took my new bike on its maiden voyage up Picture Rock, the other half of Heil Valley Ranch. This side of the trail is much nicer than the side we did last week.

It starts by gradually winding uphill through a very pretty valley. After a few very tight turns on steep drop offs are a few slightly technical sections. Great views.

I have been mountain biking dozens of times but I have never been clipped in before today. So far so good. I came back with all the skin on my knees.

Can’t say the same for my rear-end. I should have known there would be trouble when the salesman called the seat the “ass hatchet”. After the ride I picked up a seat that isn’t designed to skin a girl alive.

Check out my new shoes:

Don’t they go nicely with my new bike? Heh heh.

So pretty. It still needs to be girled-out a little bit but even so. The pictures just don’t do it justice. I can’t wait to go for a ride!

After a few hours of volleyball the girls and I (and Sam, of course) went out for Thai food. Christina and Miki who are both thin as rails played a game of who can order and eat the most food. It started with soup, salad, and a chicken appetizer. Then came full plate of tempura. By the time dinner came I was already full. Yet those two tiny girls continued to put it down. Look at the portions at this place. This is sold as one entree but could feed a family:

Notice the spoon on the right. You could easily fit two of them end-to-end across the width of this plate. Next time you have dinner put your spoon across your plate and you will understand how huge these dinners are. That is not a plate it’s a platter. Christina (who ranks among the best women’s doubles beach volleyball players in Colorado) almost finished one of these gigantic plates covered edge to edge stacked two levels high with battered and fried strips of pork. Very impressive.

When the fortune cookies came new games emerged. The first was to try to pronounce the “Learn Chinese” words on the back of our fortunes and have Christina, who speaks some Chinese, guess what we were trying to say. My stomach hurts from laughing so hard. We were terrible. At one point she said it sounded more like French.

When we were bored with that Sam started a game of basketball using pieces of the fortune cookies as the ball and our water glasses as the hoop. He is really good at it. Me… not so much. One of my shots almost landed in Christina’s purse.  I came closer when I started using orange peels but still no luck.

BTW – Don’t worry, we had our fun but the rest of the place was empty and we did not leave a huge mess for the waitress so we weren’t completely obnoxious.

Todd and I went Mountain Biking at Heil Valley Ranch with Neighbor Joe. The loop we did was only about 8 miles and not terribly difficult but it was great to get out.

Todd loves when I take pictures at 8:00 in the morning.

The trail itself we found to be full of large loose rocks. Very bumpy.

The payoff made it worth while though.

There is a smile.

This is right before Joe accidentally tried to do a front flip on his bike on an almost flat part of the trail. With a great recovery he escaped without a scratch.

The real payoff, of course, is going back downhill. I tried to stay off the brakes but with all those big loose rocks it was kinda rough riding on my donkey. The advice I got was to “man up”. He he he.

On the way back to town we made a stop at Amante Coffee in North Boulder and sat on their patio. Very interesting. Dozens of customers and all of them had cycling gear. Boulder’s version of a “biker bar” as Joe said.

Don’t get me wrong, my bike has been good to me. But right after this ride we spent a good part of the day at bike shops in Boulder finding me a new full suspension bike. It should be ready for me on Tuesday!

Today I was in my car at a red light thinking about my day when I was suddenly slammed into from behind by some dumb girl texting on her cell phone instead of watching the road. She motioned for me to pull into the gas station and when I did she took off. It happened so fast that I did not get the license plate or even the make and model of her car. For her it was a clever way to get out of having to be a halfway decent person. For me it was an afternoon of frustration, a headache, and phone calls with the police department trying to make a case with no information. The moral of the story is that if someone hits you don’t let them out of your site until you have their license plate number. And try not to text while you are driving.

After work yesterday, I played volleyball with a few of the girls. I have not played doubles in a few months and I missed my girls! The resolution on these pictures is pretty poor so I may try to take better pics next week.

Here is Tori back to serve.

Tori is not too much taller than I am yet is a way better blocker. She has Impeccable timing up at the net. She also has a mean cut shot.

People who don’t know Miki tend to serve her a lot because of her size. That usually ends up being a mistake. She is adorable. Always smiling and giggling as she inevitably digs your best hits and then puts the ball wherever you cannot get to it.

When she made it into the top 4 at one of the Queen of the Beach tournaments someone called her ‘the sweetest little thing to ever kick my butt’. Her defense is outstanding and it is impossible to read her shots.

Ashley is the tall athletic blondie of the group. For some reason when I play with Ashley we cannot stop laughing long enough to catch our breath. She just has that effect on people and it makes her fun to play with…
…that and the fact that she can beat the crap out of the ball. It is hard to get by her block and she also has a killer serve. Look how high her arm is over the net!

Speaking of laughing constantly, this is Liz blocking a ball that Ashley just hit. Liz is fearless and probably has more energy than anyone I know. Before I knew her last name I had her in my phone as Crazy Liz.

Get her in the right mood and she will crack jokes constantly. She has a great all around game and is a blast to play with.

The last few sessions of doubles before I took a break for CrossFit stuff I played with Michelle. We have great chemistry on the court and had a really fun time playing together. We will definitely play again.

Great hits, great sets, and an evil cross court shot that gets us every time.

Then, of course, there is me. Here I am serving, hitting, and going for a dig.

Tori won this joust against Ashley. Not an easy thing to do.

Michelle delivered a great set to me as usual.

Tori and Ashley posed for the camera.

It is really nice to play with a group of girls that are so fiercely competitive yet constantly crack me up. Anyway, right after our two hours of women’s doubles was up we raised the nets to men’s height and I played another 2 hours of co-ed 4s. It is good to be back.

The Aussies are leaving today. I never got a chance to take them tubing down Boulder Creek. Too bad. (I still plan like to find time to do that this summer though). Anyway, it is sad to see them go. They were a lot of fun to have around. With all the ATV’ing and camping and riding the alpine slides and all that stuff Jake said his favorite thing was doing demolition on Paul’s kitchen, Hahaha. Amy said her favorite was just spending time with the family in general. I think Riley liked the game with the sundaes and going to Lakeside. Yeah Lakeside. I didn’t even know that was still there. It opened in 1908!

The grocery store by my house just put in a trail mix bar. Great idea. It has everything from nuts and seeds to raisins and dried cranberries, M&Ms and mini chocolate chips to 8 different kinds of granola. It even has a bin for raw unsweetened coconut. Mmmm. For my first customized batch I pretty much added a little of all of the above. It looks like a mess but tastes fantastic.

It occurred to me that I can make my own trail mix bar much the same as when I turned my refrigerator into a salad bar awhile back. I can buy stuff separately and put it in storage containers and then throw together whatever I want. The upfront cost will be greater but in the long run I can certainly do better than six bucks for a 1/4 lb or whatever it is. I will probably start with a couple items like this:

Roasted Almonds
Raw Unsweetened Coconut
Raisins – I am going to try to make these in my dehydrator.
Apples – And other fruit dried in my dehydrator.
Extra dark chocolate
Jelly Bellies, Gummy Bears, Skittles, Runts… heh heh.

But seriously, feel free to suggest any other ideas you might have.

One of the best things about doing CrossFit is that you work extremely hard but rarely in exactly the same way. The workout yesterday was very creative, inspired by the wall and rope climbs in California.

The 6 ft wall and 20 ft rope climb for the individual competition in LA:

I want to learn how to dive over the wall head first. It looks way more fun:

Our inspired workout yesterday:

5 rounds for time of:
Run 200m
Wall climb plus 5 burpees **
Wall climb plus 5 burpees
Wall climb plus 3 heavy dead lifts
Wall climb plus 3 heavy dead lifts
1 rope climb

It took me just under 25 minutes, about the same amount of time as our last workout out on the track in California. I definitely need a few more of the longer ones. Getting used to the 5 minute workouts makes the 25 minute ones feel like they are never going to end.

** We climbed over the rail outside the building and drop down over the concrete wall. Then we had to hoist ourselves back up the wall and over the rail.

The workout on Wednesday was arms arms and more arms. My forearms are exhausted. So yesterday when I tried again to get a muscle up after the workout it was not a huge surprise that it wasn’t going to happen. But I worked on them anyway, practicing the transition from pull up to dip and trying to figure out the grip. It could be that I get a good rest on Sunday and get my first one on Monday. It could also be that I practice for weeks before I can finally do one. Either is fine with me. Every failed attempt still works the right muscles and helps with technique and therefore is one step closer to success. Every attempt will help me eventually get my first one. The trick is to be impatient enough for success that you are willing to try over and over but patient enough not to get frustrated give up on yourself.