don't miss out on this over the fireplace beauty at the king of all things glittery and zippery yard sale.

i received a "get organized" mail order magazine in the mail today. i'm thinking that they should rename it to "some pretty good inventions for lazy people" mail order magazine.

here are some items i found quite funny:

because filling a pitcher is just too hard.

eliminate the painstaking task of cutting your credit cards more than once.

for those of you that just can't go without your daily hot dog.

yeah, this will work, and save 25% if you order now!

you want me to use a knife? whatever, i have the butter boy.

the over sized easy-to-clean grown up bib that won't let you down.

last night we were invited to a bbq out in the backwoods of durango. notice the yellow glow behind us?

well we made the fire a little too big by throwing in a wood pallet.

today we had the 6.5 hour drive home. the highlight of the trip was when jon told me about this historic site. can anyone name what movie this picture is from? i'll give you a hint, "what do you need my address for?", office manager spits watermelon seed in his hanker chief and says "we like to send out a mailer."

criterium write up from yesterday. (click)

if you're a bike racer, but have never done the ironhorse in durango then you are straigh up missing out. it is very well run. the entire state highway is shut down for you to climb up 3 mtn. passes in the road race, and the crit is technical, downtown, safe, tons of drunk cheering folks, and fun.

i have pictures from today's crit, but they are big and the internet is super slow.

results in the crit. mara went off the front and won. (again) field sprint me 2nd and tiff 3rd. lisa was a great teammate today, she won a prime, and chased down a move by "super defined fitness" megan with one to go, and set me up for the counter attack. that moved me up to 2nd in the omnium behind mara.

jon got 4th today in the crit where he had a great sprint, and then 3rd in the omnium.

more tomorrow when we get to the home wifi.

this morning jon and i woke up at 5 a.m. for the big durango to silverton road race.

i was happy to see tiff at the start line. she is always good for a couple of laughs.

i decided to take my camera with me for the race. here is a pic at the start line. there were about 60 women that started together.

this was during some down time right before the first real big hill. notice only carol smiled for the camera. she's always so happy.

and then finally the photo looking over our final destination, silverton. the race was pretty hard, but easier than the mt. evans hill climb. lisa ended up 3rd for the day and i was 6th. we were very happy with our results.

we left carbondale around 9 this morning and went on a beautiful drive down to durango. here are some places we saw along the way.

this is redstone, co. and these are the century old honeycomb coking coal ovens.

this is marble, co. and these are big slabs of marble that were mined out of the mountain. i guess this is real top notch marble because the lincoln memorial and tomb of the unknown soldier marble came from here.

this is a sweet scooter with a side car in ouray.

this is a look back at the sheer cliffs of red mountain pass. i thought we were going to end up on the 10 o'clock news when the rocks started falling on the car from way high up on the cliff (mtn. on right) you know how you always hear about people that get hit by a large boulder? well, i thought that was going to be us today.

derek, lisa, jon, and i got to durango around 5 p.m. and went on a the half valley loop. it was so lovely and green.

jon and i made it to carbondale, co. this town is surprisingly hip.

while walking around the hotel down to the river we saw a real scary cat and it started chasing us. it was all hopped up on coffee and cat nip, you could see it in her eyes.

kitty getting ready to pounce on an imaginary object. (read as hallucinating)

kitty randomly jumps into a tree.
kitties are quite agile and fearless when hopped up on "the nip".

jon and i in front of mt. sopris.

ice capades today at the giro.

things are slow this week.

there's no good news to blog about either. there was an article on a guy scamming parking meters by tying a string to a quarter and putting it in and pulling it out. that guy is cheap. other than that, the news is boring.

on a totally different topic, i have noticed that they oiled poorman's dirt section and it smells like popcorn oil, which in turn made me hungry for popcorn on my ride today.

so i'm in charge of running the ipoo and setting a playlist at my friend erin's wedding. here's my question, if you really want to get down a boogie, what is your favorite song?

please leave an anonymous (or you can sign it) answer in comments, and listing more than one song is fine. the songs should be pg13-ish, in other words no 2 live crew!

maggie, one of my bestest friends from college is so preggo. we had a baby shower for her today in castle rock and she cleaned up on the presents.

today at the north boulder criterium mara abbott won our women's race with a solo flyer off the front. she brought her saddle bag along with her for some extra weight and had a huge chain ring mark on her lower leg that she wiped off before i could get a pic.

sharon and i meet on the podium like this a lot. (that's not supposed to sound cocky, it is just funny) mara and her headband were super fast today, she is the next big thing if you ask me. she just won tour of the gila and was second at redlands. pretty impressive for a 22 year old.

jon's race was exciting. here he is taking the corner pretty fast.

this is when he took the corner way too fast and ended up actually sliding into me taking his picture. (i really don't know what this is a picture of, my finger just hit the button) anyway, talk about surreal moment. imagine having your husband crashing right at your feet and sliding into the barrier you are standing behind. he ended up being okay and unfazed by it, but honestly i was pretty shaken up.

anne and jon at the bbq we had after the race. anne also went down in that same corner in our race. here she is attempting the robot with road rash.

landis tour de france doping case = good soap opera.

yesterday my grandma wanted to hit the beauty salon and get her hair done. we visited the highly prestigious alton beauty school, in other words a small town "training" salon. the haircut and wash was $5. being the big spender that i am i gave her (from my mom's wallet) a 100% tip for giving me a lopsided haircut. one side is longer than the other, but thankfully i wear my hair in a ponytail all the time, and you can't tell. (and no my hair has not been cut in this photo, this is the up-dee-doo she did to cut it, it's the beauty school technique i guess)

after the asymetrical cut grandma, mom, and i went down the mississippi to elsah for a salad. it's hard to find anything other than iceberg lettuce in those parts, but we found some romaine.

this is a picture overlooking the mississippi. not sure about the name of the park, but it was beautiful and i wish i had my bike for the tour.

the trip to illinois was very eye opening. i learned a lot about my family history, world war II, and fried chicken.

right now my brother, mom and i are visiting with my grandparents in alton, illinois.

first off, thanks mom for birthing and mothering me. hope you had a great mother's day.

yesterday anne and i met up at 6 a.m. to get in an early ride. we only saw about four cars on the way up so we were all about taking up the entire road. it was so nice to be done with our ride by 9.

the view from halfway up the sunshine canyon climb.

up above gold hill. there is a dial up there that tells you all the different peaks you can see from that point.

the peaks off in the background.

after our ride jon, sister sara, and i went over to the madre and padre tarkington house and had a great brunch. padre tarkington went all out with some eggs, sliced tortillas with pico de gallo, fresh fruit and pastries from the panaderia. (the egg dish had some mexican name as did the pastries, but with my poor spanish skills i can't remember what it was all called)

and finally at wheels of blunder... i mean thunder with the help of my four teammates i was able to pull off a one handed salute. (it was too windy for the two hand six shooter) thanks to www.cyclimages.com for the photo. he takes some great pics.

remember that "evil eye" i talked about before?

looks like ryan has some skills in this department.

saturday was wheels of thunder. (more on that later, but in the mean time)

i would like to dedicate this mr. t video to my mother. i love you mom. (click)

today we made a quick jaunt (actually it was a long drive in bad traffic) up to the ft. collin's senior center to watch ms. sara get her diploma. she is now a certified master of social worker-ness.

the senior center was really cool. here is an example of all the fun to be had there... pool, and there in the background there was a mean game of bridge going on. also there are trips they take to boulder for the banjo billy bus, to pueblo to look at some old haunted houses. just all kinds of fun stuff. it made me want to be a senior.

afterwards we went to lucile's and had to wait a little bit before we were seated. jon found a nice place to rest his butt. (notice the clay pot)