Pura Vida
Wrapping up another fun summer in Spearfish. The garage door remodel was the biggest project of the summer. Mattie learned how to ride her pedal bike and we’re about to head into another Five-O Labor Day weekend.
Here are some photos from the summer.
Here we are again, back in South Dakota. January feels like lightyears ago. It was a cool and wet spring in Arizona which made for lots of wildflowers, waterfalls and releasing lots of water from the damns to reduce flooding.
Mattie loves her new preschool, CASY, She goes 2 days a week and will be back in the fall. Toddlerhood is still wild and crazy. When she wakes up each morning she says “I got bigger!”
This week she rode her pedal bike for the first time by herself thanks to her momma. Now she’s off to the park and Hatchery and spillway by her own mobility which is cool.
The MBAA season felt long this year, I believe I’m in my 6th year now as director after being on the board for 2 or 3 years before that. We were able to mix it up with a mass start format for our last race due to snow in Flagstaff forcing us to move the race down to McDowell. It’s actually been a super nice May in Arizona with relatively cool temperatures. On race day it was only 70 degrees.
Grandma Marie passed away in March. Lots of good memories at my grandparents house in Wisconsin playing in Lake Michigan.
I raced Whiskey 50 in Prescott at the end of April. Planning on the Dakota Five-O and the Pike’s Peak Apex in September so I didn’t make a huge push to ride as much in January/February like I normally would. Luckily I’ve raced enough, especially the Whiskey, to trust my fueling and pacing and ended up pulling off a 2nd place.
We’ve been in South Dakota a little over a week and made a lot of progress on the garage and a handful of other projects. For the year you spend planning, ordering materials and strategizing, you are still always hit by curveballs, usually minor, but always good to brace yourself ahead of time for unknows when you start opening up walls and concrete, especially in bathrooms. So far things have gone really smooth on this garage remodel though.
Evie is doing the Pine Island Gravel Grinder so we’re going to go scope out the new racecourse this weekend and do some hiking with Mattie & Lucy. Cheers!
2023 is already upon us so here’s a photo dump and quick summary of the past few months. We left off in September, returning to AZ from Spearfish and it was full steam into Evie’s school semester and me putting on the MBAA enduro series.
Mattie started pre-school, then got kicked out for pushing other kids on the playground. She started at a new school this week, doing well so far…
In addition to doing anything outdoors, she enjoys playing in the snow, toilet paper roll telescopes, scootering, bike riding, putting things in bags, playing with Lucy, climbing, and playing with friends.
We spent Christmas in Spearfish and got to enjoy a few days of -20 degrees (as the high!), but later that week it was back into the 50s. We arrived just after a massive winter storm so we got in some XC skiing, sledding and even a ride through the canyon after the snow melted.
I slipped on the ice near the end of our trip and banged up my other hip (not the one I fractured in 2018). Now they’ll be evenly calloused. It’s been about 2 weeks and it’s feeling much better.
The first MBAA XC race kicked off this past weekend. Nice to get my garage emptied from all the boxes of water bottles, bars, merch and other misc. race prep items.
Enjoy the host of photos from the past few months!
