Car Woes....

On Weds. morning Heidie and I headed for a ride up Strawberry Canyon. The old Hondarooski had other plans. She started sputtering. So I decided that it would be best to park the car at the golf course instead of the bottom of Riverdale where there is no cell phone coverage. The car doctor can't check her out until next Mon. or Tues., I am afraid of where the cancer has spread to now. But the positive is that I have been driving the new truck ( great air conditioning)! Back to riding. We dropped the Riverdale dugway and rode up the canyon. The canyon has just been chipped sealed. It is already getting packed down well. Due to mommy time constraints we only hit about 31 miles. But alot of that ride is uphill. The Hondarooski did make it back home. I have decided to keep her parked until I know the diagnosis.

My soccer team is in the middle of a soccer tournament we have lost 2 games, each 3-2. We have one more game tomorrow morning.

Shane and JT are very busy with work. (Out in the heat.)

Good Times

Nothing too exciting to report up here in potato land. No arrests or stories of interest.

I didn't get very much riding in this week. But Heidie and I did climb Strawberry Canyon again. We thought that we had made it to the top, but Shane tells us that we didn't quite make it to the top. This ride up the canyon was alot warmer this time. Although on the descent I did put on my long sleeve jersey. On Sat. morning I did ride from Garden City to Paris, ID. and back to Garden City. It was a good ride other than all of the tourist traffic.

Product review- Strawberry fruit snacks-- Thumbs up!

We stayed at the cabin this weekend. On Fri. we went to a cave up Paris Canyon. It is called the "Mud Cave". If you can not guess what is in the cave from the name, I will tell you. When you get down into the bottom (after a few tight squeezes) there is mud everywhere. The walls are mud and the floor is mud. The kids like to slide down the walls. They also like to throw mud at the ceiling of the cave and see if the mud ball would fall on someones head. It was fun, but the girls hands got cold. We headed straight from the cave down to Bear Lake. The Lake was not as busy as the 4th of July weekend. After a few hours at the lake and then dinner, we headed outside for a round of night games. We had alot of fun playing capture the flag, kick the can, and sardines. We came away from the games with only a few injuries.

It is good to be home (doing laundry). I hope to ride more this week. I had to buy a new pair of biking shorts to hopefully eliminate some bottom hurt. (I'll keep you posted) Jace has a soccer tournament this week. I sure hope that the coach has her crap together (that's me)! We are looking forward to heading back to Bear Lake a few more times this summer.

BUSTED

I know another post. But this is to good to let it pass.

Shane is doing a job on 10th west in Logan right now. For those of you that don't know 10th west is a pretty busy road. Every time the guys at work hear a siren they kid Luke that the cops are coming for him. Well today here come the sirens the 1st cop pulls into the job site and then 3 more. The guys were all looking at each other wondering what the heck was going on. Earlier when the guys were giving Luke a hard time about the sirens, Luke went to his car, got his handcuffs out and handcuffed JT. Some concerned citizen driving by called the cops when they saw JT being handcuffed by Luke. The cops had guns and it scared JT when they started questioning him, needless to say he started crying. The cop kept asking him "are you sure you are ok?" JT kept telling him that he was fine, and that it was a joke. Shane told the cop that JT has the same reaction when we ask him to take out the trash and that he was probably scared because of the guns. The cop didn't believe Shane that he was the father. Luke felt terrible. The cop told them how uncool it was for him to have to drive across town with his lights on. (I thought cops like to drive like that.)

JT is ok.

Farewell

I realize that I just posted yesterday...but something happened today that was sooooooo funny that I just had to share the laugh!

Today was Dustin's missionary farewell. It was a great sacrament meeting. There was so many people there to see him. We had to open the gym and it was filled all the way to the back. Anyway it was a great meeting. We were invited over Dustin's Uncle's new house for the "dinner" after. Dustin's Uncle Eddy's house was very nice. We went out around the back to the large covered deck for the dinner. After everything was set up and we had the prayer on the food everyone lined up and started through the food line and started sitting down and eating. I need to describe the deck just a little. It is a LARGE deck, but halfway out there is a step down that was hard to see and there is no railing around the deck or down the stairs. Dustin had tons of really cute girls over to the dinner. One of the girls had her plate and drink and went to sit down in her seat, but..... her chair was a little to close to the edge of the deck. Yep, you guessed it off she went backwards off the deck. Her dress went up over her head, but while still in the air she manged to pull it back down and she landed sprawled spread eagle out on the lawn. Everyone kept checking on her to see if she was hurt, she should have been hurt because the back of the chair was broke and because it was a quite a fall. Needless to say she was quite embarrassed.

Lesson learned today- Always look before you sit!

Sat. Morning Ride.....

Heidie and I left the Park and Ride (Preston) at 6:00 am. We rode to North Logan where we stopped and Don and Marilyn's house. We refilled our drinks and the four of us were off. As we dropped down the hill by the mouth of Logan Canyon there was terrible canyon head wind with gusts of crosswinds. One gust totally about did me in. We headed through Logan to River Heights, to Providence, to Millville, to Nibley and then started up Black Smith Fork Canyon. At the mouth of Black Smith Fork Canyon there was another terrible head wind and the road a just been chipped and sealed. We decided to give it a try up the canyon. When cars would pass you they would flip rocks on you (painful). It was about 15 miles up the canyon. It was a very pretty ride. We turned around at Hardware Ranch and headed back down. The wind had changed directions now and once again another head wind!! We followed the same route back to Don and Marilyn's. Once at Marilyn's we tried some of her chocolate Endurox (I didn't really like it). We ended up with about 80 miles.

My favorite treat of the ride was my "Payday". The swedish fish weren't so bad either. One thing for sure, Utah drivers can be awfully rude! I am not sure because of the MB ride but I ended up with about 146-150 miles this week.

On the way to North Logan we passed a couple of big groups heading north, it definetly looked like training for the LOTOJA! We will try to climb Strawberry Canyon on Tues.

Internet Woes

I have been wanting to make a new post, but my new fancy Internet has been down all weekend. So there is much to report! Last week I rode over 130 miles on my bike!!!! JT and Shane went to a long range shooting competition on Sat. They had a lot of fun. JT took 2nd place in the "B" flight. (Out shot Shane.) Arie had a cardiology appt. on Thurs.. Things are still looking good for her heart. We will need to do a echo in Feb. We will continually have to keep on eye on the mitral valve. Jace was able to go to a gymnastics class where he learned "circus" tricks. He is going again this week. Well poor Riley is not fairing so well in the heat. I shot this video of him licking his nose. He licks his nose all day because it is sore. We try and put medicine on it but he just licks it off. Enjoy! More biking updates to come. Maybe 100 miler on Sat.???

Review of Strawberry

Tues. morning Heidie and I started out about 6:20 to start climbing Strawberry Canyon. It was cold even with a long sleeve jersey. It definitely was not a fast climb. There is not much of a shoulder on the road the whole way. It is a very curvy road, so cars are a concern. Some lessons learned on this ride--
1. Watch for road kill. (mostly fox, a few skunks and raccoons.)
2. Wear warmer clothes- especially feet. We kept out jackets on the whole climb!
3. Bring more food.
4. Ride this canyon a lot more.

We climbed for over an hour, 15.4 miles, due to mommy time constraints we turned back. The descent was nice but still really cold. We braked a lot because of the cold and also worried that we might meet a deer at 40 mph. We rode again this morning, trying to use it as a recovery ride and also to help add up the miles. On Fri. morning I think that we will head out to Clarkston and ride the race course out there.

Heidie and Kara's product review. On the Tues.morning ride we tried the cherry flavored sports beans and we also tried the orange. We think that you should skip the cherry and stick with the orange.

Holiday Weekend

I think that I achieved a PR for my race on the 4th of July, but it was still not as good as I had hoped. I will have to do this race again next year to do better!!

We had a good holiday weekend. We went over to the cabin in Bear Lake. The kids had a great time. It always nice to go and have a break from the everyday stuff. Then on Sunday we traveled down to North Ogden to baby Trey's blessing. It was really nice to go down and see and visit with the family.

So as I have been talking to various people and reading different blogs, I am wondering what the heck I was thinking when I registered for LOTOJA. Miles has totally been training and it sounds like he is going to rock on the race! My friend Sara recently changed her entry in the race to a relay team due to an injury. I am excited for the challenge, but at the same time it scares me to death! On Sunday morning I did 51.5 miles with some hills. My legs were still pretty tired from the 4th race. Tomorrow morning Heidie and I are going to climb Strawberry Canyon. (Emmigration-part of the LOTOJA course)

I had a little oops at tennis today... I am in charge of using the ball picker upper, because I run while I pick up the balls. Today I got a little close to the fence. The ball thing stopped rather abruptly and I went over the handle landing flat on my face on the court. It was a way lot embarrassing to be laying face down on the court, with people watching. No injuries--just my feel bads.

Flat

It was 6:45 pm last night. Heidie and I were headed out for a great training ride. We decided to head down the highway to Smithfield. We were making great time. We thought that we would easily hit 50 miles before the sun set. As we entered Smithfield I blew a tire. I thought no big deal, I can change a flat. In the next few minutes I broke my tire tool, had the wrong co2 cartridge, gave my tube mouth to mouth & got grease on my new jersey. All the while this old man and his family sat on their porch watching us struggle with what should be a pretty easy fix. Heidie asked what she could do to help, I told her to stand right there on the side of the road looking really cute so that some man (preferably a prepared cyclist) might stop to help. No such luck! It didn't take too long for us to start calling around, and we found Mike and Chris home in Smithfield and they brought down their bike pump. I put my wheel back on the bike. Looked it over and found that the rock I hit had slit my not only my tube but the tire as well. Obviously we did not make 50 miles but we were able to at least ride 26.4 miles before we had to call Shane to get us because of the dark. So as you can probably guess I am heading to the bike shop today!

I am posting this video of Jace. It was my trial run with the video option on my camera!