The Cycling House 2008

The past week and a half has been a busy one. Owen and I, mainly Owen, have been busy getting The Cycling House ready for operation. At the same time, after a long break from the bike this fall, I have slowly been getting back into the riding routine. Here are a few pictures of the house, near completion.


After all the work on the house Owen finally found time for some R&R

We should have some more photos of the house up on The Cycling House website in the next few days.

Thanksgiving

Moving On

I arrived back in Durango late last night after a week long visit with my parents in Montana. I went in part, in search of winter. Fall in Durango has been pleasant to say the least. For more then a month nary a drop of rain has struck Durango, the days have been cloudless, and the temp in the upper 60's. Needless to say I won't find winter in Tucson either. Unfortunately I didn't find it in Missoula either. The days were gray but pleasant and the mountain bike trails were buff and dry. While the riding was great it really just feels wrong to ride your mountain bike in Montana in November.

As it turns out, I missed winter by a few hours. As I was dropped off at the airport yesterday evening a light snow was falling but it was still to warm for it to stick. Shortly after my flight left it started to snow harder and began to stick. This morning there was something like six inches and it continued to snow for most of the morning as well.

Now it looks like I might not see snow all year. I spent today tying up some loose ends here in Durango and packing up all of my stuff. Tomorrow, its off to Tucson, for a winter of riding in the desert. Here's what the pack job looked like. To do it justice I really needed some time lapse photography but this is all I've got.

The beginning:

First the bikes:

Then everything else:

Here's a view from the front:

The speed wagon is going to have its work cut out to get me to Tucson.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

There's no place like home

Yesterday I clicked my ruby red slippers together and, after nearly a year's absence, I arrived in my hometown. In classic fall/winter fashion it was gray and dreary but there wasn't a speck of snow. I came expecting to get in some riding but not on the mountain bike. With the lack of snow though I decided to take advantage and borrowed my Dad's old Stumpjumper. After 3 hours I was left wondering why I ever left this place. The trails were incredible. They were in that state where they were wet, but not muddy, just tacky and you could rip. In a word they were buttery. In places the larch had lost all their needles and they covered the trail making it look like a yellow snake slithering between the trees, or, in keeping with the theme of this post, like the yellow brick road. You just had to look out for those damn flying monkeys. I still haven't gotten my replacement camera but I'll see what I can do about some photos.

Tomorrow I'll be throwing on some orange and getting down Montucky style.

Andy

Costa Rica and back

Hey this is Evan. It's been awhile since I've written anything here. It's been almost a month since I've had my own computer. I actually forgot how to copy and paste if you can believe that. I kind of like the fact that I had forgot some stuff. Maybe my memory is slipping I'm not sure. At any rate I'm back from a month of traveling throughout Costa Rica.
Owen and I headed out just after inter bike (oct 2nd) and hit the coast in search of surf/ coffee/and more surf. We traveled with our surfboards and small backpacks. It was one great adventure after another. We opted to travel with the locals on the bus instead of renting a car. I kind of wanted to rent the car, but Owen insisted we travel cheap and not contribute to global warming by burning up liters of gas. I think he just wanted to save money. I'm glad we took the bus though. It made for more adventure than we could handle. Eleven hour bus rides can keep things interesting. I rescued a couple of village girls from a deadly snake that had one of them cornered in a room. I'm not sure the snake was even dangerous, but I felt like the late crocodile hunter Steve Irwin for sure.
The surf was good and we were in the water every chance we had. When the surf wasn't good, we occupied our time with games of checkers (Owens really good), drinking massive amounts of coffee. Owen drank 12 cups one day and didn't sleep the rest of the trip. We also gathered up some other travelers for some beach clean up one afternoon. We barely made a dent, but we did our best. We spent about 2 hrs picking up trash and were rewarded with a whopping 11 bags(see the pics).
Besides surfing coffee was on our mind. Owen left after 2 1/2 weeks and I continued on and toured a remote organic coffee farm.

I'm in search of our next great coffee to offer and may have found it. This beautiful farm sits high in the southern mountain bordering the La Amisted national park. Here are a few pics of the area. The differences between an Organic farm and a non-organic farm were very noticeable. The organic farm was full of life and the non organic not so much. Ok this post is wearing out my fingers. All said it was a great trip, but I'm happy to be back.

Scratchy Throat

The lack of post directly corresponds to the lack of adventures in my life lately. I did race on a four-person team at the 24 Hours of Moab couple of weekends ago but I don't really have anything to say about it other then it wasn't the funnest thing that I have ever done.

The biggest thing that has happened in my life lately is getting my tonsils cut out of my throat last Thursday. The adventure started way back at The Cycling House last February. I had a really sore throat that got worse and worse until it finally got to the point where my throat was so swollen that when I took a drink of water it couldn't make it down my throat so it came out my nose. After a day of this Owen convinced me that it would be a good idea to go to the Emergency Room to get an IV to replenish my fluids since I hadn't been able to drink for over a day. At the Emergency Room the doctor immediate diagnosed an abscess of my tonsils. Basically there is a tiny space between your tonsils and your throat lining. Bacteria had gotten into this space in my throat and started multiplying. Basically I had a gigantic pimple in my throat. A specialist had to come in and he stuck a big needle into my throat and sucked all the pus out. I felt a lot better but by day two the pus had come back and I had to get it drained again. The doctor wanted to take my tonsils out right then and there because that was the only way to insure that it would never come back. I had already missed over a week of training and was able to convince him that it would be better to hold off and get my tonsils out sometime during the fall. So here I am. I really wish that I still had my camera (unfortunately it got stolen but it was my own fault) because my throat is pretty cool looking. Its swollen and has some knarly white scabs on each side.

Saying that I have had a lot of downtime since Thursday would be an understatement. Besides watching episodes of "Walker Texas Ranger" I have started reading the book "From Lance to Landis" by David Walsh. Its a pretty good book and I would recommend it to anyone who is in endurance sports, especially cycling. It might be pretty eye-opening for a lot of people. For me, it has just reinforced how I have felt about road cycling in Europe since I started paying attention to it. My only problem with the book is the author's fascination with trying to take Lance Armstrong down. This isn't the first book the author has written about doping and Lance. In fact Lance has sued Walsh over allegations he has made in the past. I understand that Lance is the shark in the sea of minnows that is professional cycling but I think that his point that cycling is a dirty sport could be made without singling out Armstrong. Anyway its a good read and one of the only reasons I have stayed sane as I have laid on the coach for these last couple of days trying not to swallow.