I've recently become re-acquainted with the awesome TV show "Dark Angel" thanks to a garage sale where I got both seasons for just $10! Jessica Alba and Michael Weatherly have great chemistry and the show is a good mix of action and humor. For those of you that don't remember this show, I invite you to google it or netflix it. Also, this personality quiz says I'm Max

Which Dark Angel Character Are You?

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As long as we're talking about things I haven't watched in a while, that I totally love...lets talk about Disney's Tarzan...such an awesome show..."Trashing the Camp" was one of the best songs Disney could have put in a movie. Also, Minnie Driver rocks.

Yesterday I was on my way home from work on my motorcycle, when things didn't go according to plan.. I got off at 6200, and came up to the light to a stop. The road was clear, so I began my right turn. My back tire started sliding completely out from under me. I was going down. I probably shouldn't have, but I put my right foot down to try to catch myself. I barely did before going over. I leaned it back to vertical and continued home. There has been stuff on that off ramp for months, and it keeps getting more and more slippery. As soon as I got home I sent a nasty note off to UDOT to fix that stuff before someone gets hurt or worse.

After I got home I chilled a bit, then at about 7:30 I slapped on my new Road ID, and took off on the road bike. Tonight I was headed up Little Cottonwood. I did the 1.5 to the canyon itself feeling really good. Then the uphill got steep. I rode. And rode. Eventually getting to where the grade goes really steep for a hundred meters or so. Worked my way past it. New personal best. I kept going, and eventually reached my goal for the night, gate B. 4.00 miles from home according to my computer, about 2.5 miles up the canyon itself. Turned around and had a leisurely ride back down.

The rest of the night was pretty mellow. Chatted with Jason as I watched some of the Tour over a plate of nachos. Yum!

This morning I got up early and loaded up the bikes. I drove down to Steve's house to pick up him and Max. We drove over to Germania park to take the kids riding on the Jordan River Parkway, and try them out on the Germania trail. It was a difficult thing. The trail was so narrow it made riding Jason's bike with the trail-a-bike very difficult. Max's wheels are small, so they don't just roll over stuff. There is a bit of a hill on the way out, and after I got to the top I slowed to a stop. As I stopped my front wheel went into a hole, and my brake locked. This threw the back end up into the air. I was already pretty much off the bike, but the bike endoed. I picked it up and noticed my back brake lever was bent. In that little thing! How LAME! I bent it pretty much back into place, and we finished the loop. After that we rode on the parkway itself until about 9:30 when we loaded up and went home.

As I was getting ready to leave work I got the word from Jason that Eric would be working very late tonight.  That meant he wouldn't be making the ride.  So Jason and I discussed what to do.  He decided to try to call his mom and Natalie to see if either of them could watch Amber.   His mom couldn't, and he wasn't able to get a hold of Natalie.  So we decided to call it this week.  However I still wanted to ride.

I went to an optometrist appointment right after work, then cruised home.  It was hot.  Very hot.  I didn't want to ride right then, so I chilled.  At about 6 I decided to eat dinner.  It would probably be better I thought if I ate earlier, rather than after my ride.  I had buns that would be going bad soon, so I cooked up some hot dogs.  Added some chipotle mayo, yummy.  I chilled, drank a bunch of water, and watched le Tour.

About 7:15 I started getting ready, and by 7:30 I was on the road.  The temperature was now perfect, if perhaps a little warm.  I wanted yet another new ride, so I went south.  Down into Dimple Dell.  Where the road turns west there is a road that T's off to the south, I turned up it.  This road is a climb.  It's about a 1/2 mile long and goes straight up to Wasatch Blvd.  I had done it many times in the past, but this was the first time this year.  I was doing pretty good.  I went up it far faster than I ever had in the past.  With about 30 meters to go there is a circle off to the right.  I've done many laps of that circle to keep the legs spinning, and today was no different. After just two laps though I was ready to make the final push to Wasatch.

After getting to Wasatch I decided that rather than turning left and heading home I would go right. I rode along Wasatch for a few miles until I got to the entrance to the Bonneville Shoreline trail. From there the road went down sharply, and I didn't want to climb back up it, so I turned around and followed Wasatch back.

When I got back to 94th I decided that rather than take the usual left I would go right and head up towards the canyon. This is where I started regretting those hot dogs. I started burping up hot dog, and my stomach was screaming. I contemplated riding up to the crest above La Caille as my legs had it in them, but decided I better turn around at the start of the canyon. After that it was a quick cruise home. 9 miles. I slammed a Gatorade recovery drink, which seems to help my legs feel better later.

After cleaning up I started up le Tour again. I watched for a while, then decided to finish Lego Harry Potter. After looking through some strategy guides I realized that the last two gold bricks I needed to unlock Voldemort were the ones I got from rescuing the last two Students in Peril. I found the last two, then finally finished the game unlocking Voldemort. Of course now that it's done I wonder if I'll ever play it again. Once that was done, it was back to le Tour to finish this stage I'm on. I'm only 5 behind!

Apparently I'm worse at maintaining my blog than I am at maintaining my personal journal. Let's see, what have I been up to since April 19th...sadly not much. I dated a guy for about a minute, worked a lot, and saw some awesome movies. "Toy Story 3" was killer and "Despicable Me" was super funny. I found some great deals at some garage sales, including a photo printer for $20 and the first two seasons of Dark Angel for just $5 each. I love garage sales

Well, now that you're all caught up on my boring life...I'll fill you in on the exciting news. My baby sister had a baby. The cutest little baby girl they named Jayda Lily she is super adorable.

A week ago Eric and I were talking about how we hadn't gone on any good motorcycle cruises yet this year.  So we decided that we would ride the Mirror Lake highway yesterday.  We started inviting other riders to join us, but in the end it was just Eric and I.  We started from his house and first went along Wasatch Blvd towards Draper.  Then it was up and over Traverse Mountain to drop down into Alpine.  We stopped in Highland for me to gas up as I didn't start with a full tank.   We grabbed a bite to eat in the Iceberg that was built into the gas station.  Then it was up and over the Alpine Loop.

The Alpine Loop was pretty uneventfull.  I did scrape a peg on one turn going down, but otherwise I kept everything very smooth.  At the end of the loop we turned and went up Provo Canyon to Heber.  We went straight through then made the right to head over to Francis.  On the road up I felt my phone ringing so we stopped at the Jordanelle overlook for me to check who called and call them back.  We discussed how we were feeling before going on.  It seemed like we may have chosen a long ride and our butts weren't in shape for it.  We decided to continue on.

Then came the event.

As we were going along the road to Francis, we passed a couple cars that were just going very slow along that road.  Then once I got in front, suddenly there was a black shape in the corner of my eye.  Before I knew it, it hit me right in front of my left eye!  A bird had just hit the visor of my helmet at 60 MPH!  If I did not have my helmet on, and my visor down, I would have crashed.  The adrenaline immediately surged.  I couldn't believe what had just happened.  I was shaking my head as I went back over it in my mind.

When we stopped in Kamas I relayed the story to Eric.  He didn't see a thing.  I added some gas to my bike since I have a smaller tank, to make sure I would make it to the next gas station.  Then it was over Mirror Lake Highway.  We just cruised along the road.  We stopped shortly after Provo River falls overlook, but it didn't last long as we were immediately swarmed by mosquitos.  As we got going again the turns were perfect.  We had just accelerated up to 50MPH, and it was a perfect speed to lean into those turns.  Right, left, right, left.  Perfect.  The road started to have longer straights which ended those as we headed to the summit of Bald Mountain pass.

From there it was all downhill.  Past Mirror Lake.  Past the boy scout camps.  Then to the long straight.  The last 35 miles or so to Evanston were long, straight, and flat.  My butt was killing me, and I was eagerly waiting arriving at Evanston to stop for gas and dinner.  Finally we got to town.  First off we filled up the gas tanks.  Had I not filled up in Kamas I would have made it to Evanston, but it would have been close.

We drove along the business loop, then stopped at an italian resturant for dinner.  I had Chicken Marsalla, which had a very strong marsalla flavor.  You could definitely tell we weren't in Utah.  Eric ordered Chicken Parmesan.  Now normally you expect a piece of chicken the size of a boneless skinless breast you can get in any store.  This piece on Eric's plate was literally the size of four of them in one!  It must have been a 20-24oz. piece of chicken.  I have never seen anything like it!  Eric finished it, and we got back on the road.  We were ready to just get home so we stuck to I-80 for the entire ride back.  My left leg had a bit of cramping, so we stopped for 10 minutes at Jeremy Ranch, then continued all the way home.  My butt was completely killing me.  I pretty much had the techincal motorcycle medical condition referred to as monkey butt.  You can figure it out...

Yesterday after work I ran home, and got ready to go mountain biking with Eric.  As soon as I got home I called first to see if I had jury duty (still not scheduled and that was the last day to call, yay!), then called Eric.  No answer.  Ok, well at least I'll get changed, then I just have to throw my bike on the car to go.  Time went on, no call back.  I called two more times... nothing.  So I just kept playing Lego Harry Potter.  At about 6:45 Eric called.  He was home, and on his way to pick up his bike.  I loaded up the bike, and headed over there.

When I got there Eric was just finishing getting ready.  We loaded up and headed to Corner Canyon to ride Clarks.  We started at about 7:30.  I was feeling pretty good, and it sounded like Eric was too.  I'm wanting to say we only stopped twice on the way up to the trail junction area.  That is about one mile up, and Eric was starting to feel it then.

After catching our breaths we continued on up the singletrack of awesomeness that is Clarks.  The breaks were coming more and more frequent, as the sun was getting lower and lower.  I kept urging Eric on as we were getting so close.  The sun set as we had about a half mile to go.  I put my sunglasses in the back pocket, and we kept going.  Finally we reached the top.

We didn't want to stay too long as we were seriously running out of light.  We started down the Canyon Hollow trail well after 9 PM.  There was still enough sunlight that you could see decent in clear areas, but in the tree covered areas it would suddenly get very dark.  Because of this we were going very slowly.  We couldn't see if there were holes, roots, or the lips of the jumps.  We went down as quickly as we dared in these conditions.

Eventually we made it back to the car, at 9:45.  We just made it before completely losing the light.  As we got to the parking lot there was a pair of guys heading up using full niterider setups.  After that descent, and feeling the temperature I can definitely see how that might be a lot of fun.  We stopped at Del Taco and got some dinner, then after taking Eric home I went home myself.  First thing I did was mount the handlebar light I had sitting on my desk...

Yesterday was Mountain Biking Monday™.  As such I cruised home from work, got ready, loaded up my bike and headed to Eric's.  He got off a little late, so rather than go up to Dog Lake, we drove down to Corner Canyon where we would have more daylight.

We unloaded and started up the trail.  I was feeling pretty good despite the recent ride on Saturday.  I was in the lead and decided after about 1/4 mile to pull off to the side to see if everyone was doing ok in the heat.  Jason was feeling fine, so he went on.  We had talked earlier about him doing two laps, and meeting us on his second one.

As Eric stopped he explained how his chain was having problems.  It kept trying to jump between gears.  I recommended he adjust cable tension to get it to go on the correct gear.  After resting for a bit we started going again.  After another 1/4 mile I stopped again and waited for Eric.  He never came.  After a few minutes I turned around and headed back down.  He was just a bit down the trail.  He had found the problem.  The chain had twisted.  It was the oddest thing.  There was no possible way for him to continue, so he turned around and headed back down.

I continued up the trail for just a bit.  I went up to the main clearing where all the trails break off.  I waited for about 10 minutes to see if Jason would be coming down either trail after Eric called him.  With not seeing him I turned around and headed back down, taking the singletrack trail off to the west side of the descent.

As I was coming down my front end went into a bit of a hole, this caused the front disc to lock up and my fork compressed.  I was about to endo!  I quickly let off  the front brake, and shifted more weight back.  Whew kept from endoing!  Of course now I was about to ride off a cliff.  I tried to get control of the bike as I rode along the edge of the trail, inches from a long and painfull fall.  I finally rode it out, and was able to get completely under control.  All this happened in the space of about 5 seconds.

I made my way back down, and met up with Eric.  About 10 minutes later Jason called to say he was at the top.  He then began his descent.  A few minutes later Eric and I started loading up.  That's when we discovered Eric had sat in blue gum.  All over his shorts, and now on the side of my car.  Oh well.  We examined the chain closely and I at first I only say one twisted link, later I saw two others.  The chain is definitely toast.

I dropped them back off at Eric's house, then went home, ate some dinner, and played some Lego Harry Potter.  Eric was disappointed he wasn't abe to ride more, and vowed to do it again.  The plan is for Thursday.

Yesterday at about noon I got into my cycling gear, jumped on my road bike, and started heading up Little Cottonwood Canyon.  Legs felt pretty good, but I ran out of water far too quickly.  I got just about to where I turned around last time.  So as soon as I finished it off I turned around and headed home.

After cleaning up I texted Jason to ask if he was doing anything.  I jumped on the moto and cruised up there.  I supervised as he remove the battery from his Raptor to find out the replacement was too big.  Then we loaded up and went down to Wingers where I enjoyed a nice sticky finger salad.  A little cool, a little spicy.  I did have to augment it with additional sticky fingers.   After dinner we chilled for a bit, watched some cycling, then after Amber went to bed we popped in Josie and the Pussycats.  Yum!