Farm Visit

Jen and I rolled out to Washington to stop by the family farm. We decided that she needed a farm-life education, so my brother and I taught her how to ride dirt bikes and weld. She did pretty damn good at both. After a day of riding, John and I broke out the PW80 for some mini-bike races. It turns out that being the short one actually comes in handy on occasion, and my brother got to use the phrase "my long legs were in the way," which I don't think any Riser has ever uttered as long as the family has been around.

Back To Having Fun

Weather predictions for today were somewhere between a 30-50% chance of "you're not riding shit!" However, Jen got off work and wanted to go play, so we loaded up the bikes, grabbed Scott, and headed up to PC for a quickie at Trailside. We got in a half dozen laps or so while Jen got better at jumping and Scott hit the wall ride for the first time. There was a five minute stretch where the sun peaked through the clouds and cast the entire place in amazing light. Of course, that happened about sixty seconds after I locked the camera in the truck. Oh well.

Shitty Trails

The bar for lift-served mountain biking in Utah is set pretty low. Basically, all you have to do is be better than Deer Valley, and they're about as shitty as shit gets. Terrible trails, no berms, no maintenance, pissy lifties, and on and on. However, Jen and I found out today that Sundance has managed to outdo even Deer Valley in shittyness this year. Basically take all the shitty parts of Deer Valley, trim the number of actual downhill trails to two, then put some uphill in those "downhill trails" and you have Sundance. A couple years ago they had some almost kinda alright trails that were accessed by riding down several hundred yards of loose, cobble filled gravel road. Now not only are the trails in terrible shape, even the gravel road is worse than ever. Damn, I can't wait to get up to Whistler and purge myself of this place.

Injured and Weak

I somehow managed to jack up my shoulder, Jen and I are both in terrible climbing shape, and the weather was supposed to suck pretty much everywhere. So, we decided to sleep in and then drive down to American Fork for a couple pitches of chill climbing. Chaco got a bigger workout than either of us, but it was still nice to get out and the temps were great.

Team Shitshow Hits The Road

So, after Jen hurt her foot playing hockey, we decided to load the car with climbing and biking gear in hopes that we could find something to do for the four-day weekend. We drove to Jackson where we couldn't find a campsite and ended up bivying in a parking lot after exploding all the gear out of the car. The next morning we rode the JHMR bike park until it closed and then loaded everything in the car and drove the six hours to Ten Sleep. Due to some shitty mis-communication on my part, we were not able to meet up with our friends who were there and ended up doing another parking lot bivy, which sucked. The next morning we miraculously met up with our friends and climbed for two days (well, they climbed while I flailed). On the way back to SLC Jen and I also stopped at Green River to check out their new bike park. I wouldn't drive there for this place alone, but it was a nice place to stretch the legs half-way through a drive.

Crash and Burn

Today just wasn't our day. A few of us came up to do a few laps on Arcylon and things happened like they often do. I rode stiff as shit and crashed on a really small jump going really fast. Price went down hard on the road gap and then blew up his front tire (after the crash was over, however that happens). And to round things out, Jen took a slapshot to the foot playing hockey and basically can't walk. Now we're re-working our four-day weekend plans since Jen can't climb.

Round and Round

Today's ride got shut down due to rain, so Jen and I grabbed Chaco and headed over to Toni and Misti's house to ride around in circles. Pretty chill afternoon, and a good opportunity to work on flash photography. The trick is to get the shot well lit without blinding the rider and causing them to crash into the camera.

Quick on Trailside

Jen and I were feeling especially lazy this afternoon, but once again didn't want to just sit on the couch and watch movies. So, we loaded up the bikes and headed to PC to run a couple laps at the Trailside Skills Park yet again. Jen's focus today was learning to get the most out of the berms so she can carry more speed through the corners and clear the table tops. Each lap was better than the last, and you really can't ask for much more than that.