Category: Life’s Adventures

Since last posting a lot has happened…

August has been a whirlwind. Evie started teaching full time at Grand Canyon University, organizing the Masters of Public Administration program and teaching classes throughout the week. It’s a pretty great arrangement, the school is awesome, she really likes her colleagues and she’ll have the flexibility of summers off so we can escape the heat.

We got back to AZ in the middle of August from spending the summer in Colorado Springs again. Evie started up with a couple weeks of prep before students returned for the fall semester.

Also this summer, we bought a condo from my grandparents, the one in Scottsdale. I’m sure glad that process of paperwork is over. We are in the process of doing a small remodel. We painted the kitchen & bathroom cabinets, added some hardware, put up some new mirrors in the bathroom, swapped out some fixtures and then will be redoing the floors with the help of my friend Craig and some subs. Oh, and we also painted the entire interior (one room left to go!).

On Labor Day we took our annual trip to Spearfish, South Dakota for the Dakota Five-O. Another great year with great weather and good people. I got 7th with some great competition yet again. This past weekend I raced Fire on the Rim here in Arizona, just outside of Payson so it’s a little cooler and higher elevation. I won for the 2nd year in a row. It’s a great course with steep climbs and technical descents, a great way to cap off the season.

The summer and fall has also been filled with planning for the MBAA’s new Enduro series. A type of mountain bike racing that is made up of multiple timed descents with pedal transitions in between. Logistically it takes a lot, we held our first race at Sunrise Ski Resort the day after Fire on the Rim. I spent the week working on the trails up there with a great crew from Sunrise and planning for the weekend.

All in all things went great and the response from the nearly 200 riders who came out was fantastic. The next race is in Tucson next weekend and then the third and final race is in Prescott.

This weekend I’ll be doing the final painting and hanging some new blinds, next week we tear out the carpet and put down the vinyl wood flooring and tile in the bathroom, then we’ll finally be able to get our stuff out of storage. Looking forward to things slowing down a bit in late October 🙂

A few pictures from the variety of happenings these past two months. Cheers!

Relive my ride from the Dakota Five-O

Well, August is just around the corner. Lots has been going on (as always) so here’s an update with plenty of pictures.

Evie took a full time position at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix which, works out pretty well in that it’s a 9-month on 3-months off arrangement. We’ll be living in Scottsdale and finding a place to escape to during the summer, hard to beat that.

Summer Travels

The Grand Junction & Carson City Off-Roads did not go quite as planned. A flat tire in Junction and a failing back at Carson City didn’t result in great results, but still fun places to hangout and ride. Thanks to good friends for the accommodations and fun.

Prior to Carson City, Evie and I had our bikes stolen. I eventually got mine back (miraculously), but Evie’s is still at large in Albuquerque.

My dad and I went on a pretty spectacular hiking trip the week after Carson City. We hiked down to the Gunnison river at the Curecanti Needle and then up above 12,000 feet to Ice Lake which, was still covered in snow making for a tough last mile or so, but me made it.

Filling in the gaps of our travels were a few trips to Trestle to ride DH, Tucson and Sunrise to scope out the courses for the MBAA enduro series this fall, and spending time in Colorado Springs with the niece and nephews.

Lucy Update

Lucy is doing better, her leg is healing, but her side to side stability will probably never regain full strength. She is running and jumping and swimming so that’s been good to see. We will keep working with her and monitor her legs.

Here is a collection of pictures from our summer adventures…

Last week Lucy injured her rear left leg while playing ball. I had to carry her home from the park and it lay limp for the first few days afterwards. The vet gave her some Vetprofin to help with inflammation and we took her to a orthopedic doctor yesterday. The doc said it’s a partial Cranial Cruciate Ligament (CCL) tear and also thinks her other leg experienced a similar tear years ago.

Surgery was presented as an option, but she is likely to end up with some arthritis when she gets older either way. After doing a little research we found a number of cases where the dog healed without surgery back to near full strength.

After 5-7 days she has started showing signs of improvement, but has a long way to go. Since ligaments are not living things they won’t grow back, instead scar tissue will develop around the knee area to stabilize it. We are going to give it 6-8 weeks and see if we can rehab her, then reassess to see if surgery will be needed.

I’m hoping her days of trail running, swimming, and ball chasing aren’t over just yet. At 4-1/2 she has a lot of years still in her. In the meantime, we’ll try and keep her from running and will need to crate rest her for quite some time.