yesterday we decided to do the monarch crest trail after 3 days of hard racing. monarch crest is pretty awesome, you have a van shuttle you up to 12,000 feet, and then do a point to point ride. one would think if you are at 12,000 ft it would be all downhill. well, i thought that would be the case, but damn there was a lot of climbing. the trail itself is awesome, it is about 30 miles of sweet as butter single track and about 5 miles of fire roads.



the gang: timmy, lauren, missy t, anne, c-ray, amy d, jon, and me.
the kids plug away at some of the high altitude climbing.
jon and i getting in a scenic pic.

these two were rockin' they rode so fast both up and downhill. tough girl little amy d. is pro mountain biker caliber. you heard it here first. (she did flat 3 times though, so she may need to work on her tire pressure and bike up keep)

cool shot of anne descending into the lush forest.

c-ray drinks some canned pimpjuice, it looked like bottled radiator fluid, and tasted like crap, but it made her a pimp.

it was quite a muddy/wet ride. missy faces her bottom into the wind to help dry off her backside.

c-ray has this little pink-haired freak rubber banded to the back of her seat tube.

by the end of the ride the little freak had a full body mud mask. it's skin is so fresh and smooth now.

this weekend was busy, and i didn't blog yesterday so i am going to blog about yesterday today, and today tomorrow. are we following?

sunday morning.

i woke up to see a lazy woman walking her dog with a scooter.

jon, renee, c-ray and i did an easy ride around salida, it was quite nice.

we stopped for some coffee. (sparky was worried about chipping stucco so left her helmet on)

jon's race was insane. it rained more in 30 minutes than it has rained all year in boulder. it was hailing, lightening, pretty much epic. they ended up calling the race 50 minutes early, it was a cluster, and jon wasn't happy.

after the skies were done opening up we headed over to moonlight pizza place. it was really good, but if you are in a hurry i wouldn't count on getting your food fast. the girls had a good ol' time and the beer was flowing to the wee hours of 8 p.m. then they (except for anne and c-ray) all crashed on the floor of our rental house. good times, just like college only i was sober.

i don't have any photos from our crit, but it went well for the vitamin cottage women. we ended up winning it, and sealing the omnium win as well. excel rider, little a to the dombroski had some bad luck, she crashed herself while anticipating sparky's next move, and then her seat fell off in the final sprint. the good news is she didn't sit down.

jon did great in the road race on saturday with a huge effort and ended up 8th in his pro 1/2 omnium.

more blogs about the weekend:

little a to the dombroski

sparky spark

c-ray sunshine

link to salida omnium results scroll to the bottom of the page

we woke up real early this morning, and it was pretty purty out side.

sparky captures the magic.

syrae loves vc, a hot cup of coffee, and herself.

a to the dombroski won the state road race and i think i know her secret...

watermelon smirnoff to numb the pain.

we had to ride in a horrible down pour. thank goodness we have the luxury of a washing machine.

we had the vc team over for a bbq. we didn't anticipate the rain cloud which sat over our place for about two hours.

c-ray and sparky enjoy a carpet picnic. (notice the pouring rain ruining our bbq)

trish, sue, and joe get their pasta on.

dinner for two?

zach begins to sit on leah who is trying to fit in the kid carryall.

click here to see what else the kid carryall carries.

say it ain't so...

well we made it to salida and we rented a double wide-ish house with a million dollar view.

command central, this is were we work out all the omnium points for the race.

tt went well for us. me 1st, sparky 6th, c-ray 15th. anne is doing the women's 35+ race and won her tt.

more here and here.

Road tripping

Road tripping, originally uploaded by bfisk99.

sweet, number five IS alive, and only $100,000!

today we headed down to cultural east colfax and had some dominican food with the madre and padre. it was pretty tasty. different, but tasty.

another shop on e. colfax, mr. gold teeth sounds like a pretty cool place, but we were tight on time and had to miss it.

so we got a used (but new to us) truck and it is so very large. let's just say we see eye to eye with the fire folk.

r. kelly's "i believe i can fly" comes to mind when i look at this photo.

i wonder if menzies was singing it in his head.

el pollo es mierda.
i must be psychic because i knew this was coming. i guess we all did though. he just looks slimy huh...?
(click for full story)

in other news, don't you just love the obnoxious americans. the guy with the horns cracks me up. that thing must weigh a ton.

Super slide, originally uploaded by bfisk99.

leah and i on the super slide.

originally uploaded by bfisk99.

cycling is dope. (click)
i really am crushed that these dudes are dopers.

the mailman just made a timely delivery of some clothing. click here to get yours now.

originally uploaded by bfisk99.

my ride was hot (even starting at 9), but pretty.

Poop

Poop, originally uploaded by bfisk99.

there was an incident

originally uploaded by bfisk99.

more pool time with zach and leah.

originally uploaded by bfisk99.

im surprised this didnt clear the pool

Bye bye car

Bye bye car, originally uploaded by bfisk99.

This nice family bought our Explorer.

Slurpee, originally uploaded by bfisk99.

yes we know high fructose corn syrup is the devil, but a slurpee is what you need on a hot day.

today was the mt. evans hill climb. (click for the history) just like last year i brought my camera along for the ride. here are some pictures from the race.

pre-race ritual, getting stuck in your bib shorts.

sparky had an incident with scissors and ended up needing a lot of band aids. she later blamed her performance on the loss of blood before the race.

syrae and her vintage phone (remember last weekend) were at the race volunteering and cheering.

getting ready to start the race. those two look uptight with their arms crossed and all.

i made the mistake of going hard at the beginning with a bunch of really skinny, little teeny tiny 5' 2" tall girls, and paid for it later. this is a shot of noel, (i don't really know her at all, but she's from grand juction and is very little as you can tell from the towering camera angle, she has no idea i took this, i am just that stealth.) i was able to hang onto her until a mile or two before summit lake. (which, by the way, is a stupid name for that lake because it is not at the summit)

then she rode me off of her wheel.

the view from the top.

once you get to the top and you have no oxygen you start talking and moving real slowly. i think lisa asked me if i rode my horse to the top or something like that and it made complete sense to me. another example of stupidity at 14,000 ft is a guy asked me what time our race started and i stared at him for about 30 seconds and then said 10 o'clock (which was about an 1 hour and 20 minutes off). we were all pretty messed up.

i got a ride home and i was freaking out about the cliff on my side of the car.

luckily i spotted flight for life and felt a smidgen better about rolling thousands of feet down a steep cliff.

this pic just shows you how narrow the road is with the cliff on the right. i guess we made it down though cause i am here to blog about the events.

results are here.