Stans photo shoot

Although it is the dead of winter, we can remember the good times of summer, right?  Here are some pictures from a sort of favor we did for our friend and pro mountain biker Kathy Sherwin.  She races for the Stans NoTubes Elite team, sponsored by Stan's NoTubes.  They needed photos for their promotional material.  We and several of our teammates spent most of one hot Saturday and Sunday in June on a photo shoot.

We got about 200 shots of each of us; but these are my favorites.

For all the action depicted on these photos, there really wasn't a whole lot of riding.  There was more of this...

Standing around waiting to be called out to ride past the photographer.

and this

Cleaning the bikes of dust so the wheels looked best.

And this

Posing for the photographer, Steven Lloyd, while he set up lights and angles.

You gotta admit though, he made us look good!

This is a rad shot of the dude that put the shoot together and did the marketing material for Stan's, the man behind Damion Hickman Designs.

For our time, in addition to the photos and a good deal on the wheelsets, we got to keep a couple of sets of clothes and nice Lazer helmets.  We got some really sweet blue shorts for me and red shorts for Drew from Zoic.  Nice stuff that I ended up wearing a lot of throughout the rest of the summer.

It was mostly work, but we had a little nature encounter too.

In the end, we ended up with some shots in the Stan's catalog and some big posters for Zoic at trade shows.

I kinda felt like a rock star there for about a day.

Last ride of the season

 So far we've had a pretty warm fall and winter, it seems to me.  Late in November friend Erica joined us in Draper for an afternoon ride.  The trails were in fantastic shape. 

I think I'm about ready for the off season.  More time to learn how to bake bread, finish up some house projects, and BLOG.

I am back because I have figured it all out!

Yay! I finally figured out my photo posting problem.  For months now I have been wanting to blog but when I try to upload photos, Blogger tells me I am out of space.  I finally had some time to research what is going on and figure out a way around the upload limit.  This involved updating Picasa on my computer, learning how to get Picasa to recognize which photos I want uploaded which I would rather do in Windows Photo Gallery, getting Picasa on my computer to sync with Picasa web albums, and then finally grabbing the pictures for my post from Picasa web albums.  Here are two pictures to prove it.

 Marley doesn't seem to care that I figured this out.

But now I am happy that I can get caught up.  Still have those Grand Canyon posts to do!

Osh Kosh Air Show Mancation

Posted by Drew

Yes, I know you are asking what is a blog post from July 2011 doing out of order and over a year late in November 2012.  The truth is that I have been promising my head blog editor to get this out for  months.  The burden of properly representing the male species weighs strongly on all of us and this post continues to prove that the we continue to follow through with our promises. 

The Oshkosh Airshow is the biggest airshow in North America.  Hosted in late July up in, yes, you guessed it, Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  Spectators and aviators come from around the world.  My dad is a regular at the Oshkosh Airshow, and I have always wanted to join him to see for myself the spectacle that is Oshkosh.  I traveled to the 2011 show with my friend, Jim, and his father, Bill.  We met Dad there.  We spent a great few days geeking out about all things aeronautic. 

At the Oshkosh show there are vintage aircraft, military aircraft, and tons of general aviation aircraft on display.  Spectators can walk for days around the airport and wide open fields looking at these aircraft.  Throughout the day there are also aerial displays featuring everything from aerobatic routines, wing walkers, and formation flying being performed.  Sometimes these complex aircraft encounter problems and issues.

 An Air Force F-16 runs off the end of the runway during its landing roll out.

The air shows are cool, but most of all, I enjoyed just wandering around looking at really great planes.

I could go on and on, but if I don't get this post up, my lead blog editor is never again going to let me document a vacation again.  Oh, wait, she doesn't do that now anyway.  That's probably for the better if you readers want to know what we are doing in the current year.

Happy Halloween

My state government office encourages participation in Halloween activities. I went dressed as a dude. Wore the costume home on the scoot. I only got a couple of waves. People are so cranky! How do you not smile when you see this?

 

Happy Halloween, everybody! Scooter life is rad.

 

Posted with Blogsy

The Budster, workhorse

Grocery run

Tried out the cargo capacity of The Budster today. $130 worth of groceries is no problemo for my ghetto version of a trunk.  Would love to get some sort of foldable crate to attach to the rear rack. Then those after work quick stops at the market and perhaps even a Home Depot run would be a cinch.

I am taking a motorcycle driving course this weekend so I can learn how to be a Motorcycle Mama, or really, a Scooter Sweetheart.

Scooter life is rad.

_______________________

Update: I took the two-day basic motorcycle driving course.  It was very hard.  In addition to balance and throttle, motorcycles have that whole issue of shifting.  There is a lot going on at one time.  I did all right though and aced the written portion and only went outside the line of the slow-speed maneuver box on the driving portion of the test just a little way, so they passed me with flying colors.

I think that I am a much safer scooter driver now.
___________________________
November 27 update:
I officially have my motorcycle endorsement on my driver's license!  Because I took a qualified course, I didn't need to do the driving portion of the motorcycle test.  I went to take the 25-question written test today and I actually failed on the first try.  (There was one question about how many parts are there to the driving portion of the test: what do I care - I don't have to take it!)  But I tried again and passed.  So, Hooray!, now I can officially drive a motorcycle on the street.  I just need a motorcycle.

The East Bed

It has been forever since I posted.  This fall has been the busiest I can remember, mostly because Drew and I are coaching the new East High Mountain Bike Team.  It is fun and rewarding and about as time consuming as a part time job.  But that is not what this post is about. This post is a celebration of yard work.  Finally, after two years, I found a few weekends of nice weather and planted the east flower bed in the back yard.

Yeah, pretty exciting, I know.  I'll bet you are sitting on the edge of your seat, as eager to see the flower pictures as you were to look at your first adult magazine.  But really, this is a big deal.  You will remember that when we put the addition on the house, we pulled out rocks from under the vinyl fence and made a raised bed.  That was in July 2010!  I have been dreaming of getting this bed done since then. 

So the before pictures:

Taken 8/14/2007.  This first one made me cringe a little.  This is taken from where our garage stands now, looking back toward the house before we built the garage and the addition. Of the three trees along the vinyl fence, only the middle one remains.  One died and the other was moved to the front yard.  I gave the one left of the hot tub away, and the one in the silver cattle trough planter is the Ginkgo biloba from our wedding, which you will see in the final design.

Taken 5/17/2010.  This second picture is on day 2 of work on the big addition.  You can kind of see the red boulders under the vinyl fence, and also my cute workin' man husband.

 
Taken 5/13/2011. And the last two are the flower bed the way it was after the majority of the construction was done on the addition.  The rocks are out where they should be and the area behind them was backfilled with amended top soil.  That is how the flower bed sat for two years.  Not that we weren't doing landscape projects.  Last fall we added sod, laid the flagstone path, and added rock mulch, so the east bed never made its way to the top of the the to do list.

During the bed's two year "rest", the rhubarb and strawberries were there temporarily until I could get their permanent home in the back 40 fixed up.  I periodically added an inch or so of topsoil around the base of each of the two trees so as to not smother them while gradually bringing the soil level up to the top of the rock border.

Then a few weeks ago, after the temps came down some, I decided that the time had come for our sorry looking east flower bed to get its act together and start acting like the beautiful growing place it could be.   I began preparations for planting day by taking out the two old lilac bushes you can see in the last picture above.  These had been in another spot in the yard when Drew bought the house in 2001.  They were scraggly and mature at that point, so I suspect they were 30 or more years old.  As much as I love the smell of lilac and hate to kill a hardy plant, they were too big for that space and we have no where else to move them to.  I did save one newer lilac that I think has a smaller mature size.  It is in the back 40 with the rhubarb and strawberries.

I also planted the right hand side of the driveway with some sea oat grass donated by a friend.  I'm not sure I'll stick with this planting.  Need something taller.

  
Then, I went to the store. Fun!!!  I had designed the bed with some different plants, but Home depot didn't have the ones I wanted and I liked some of these others very much, so here is the plan I ended up with:

Two weekends ago I planted everything and last weekend I added the drip lines and mulch.

It was fun, dirty work.

I really like the way the mix of colors and textures came out, and our wedding Ginkgo is so happy to have a mulch blanket and friends to grow with.

 The big tree is a hawthorn we planted in September 2007.  The little tree is the Ginkgo.  There are three purple leaved ninebark bushes along the fence. They will grow to be 4'x4' and hide the vinyl while repeating the color of the neighbor's purple plum trees on the other side of the driveway. (Thanks cousin Ruth for that idea.)

The next three shots are close ups so you can see the plants better.  

This is the north end. Marigolds in front remaining from a temporary planting this summer.  Lavender and coneflower at the base of the hawthorn.

The middle section has a ninebark at the rear, bushy pink and green foliage spurge in front, and three airy gaura between them.  Gaura is a favorite of mine.

On the south end we have the Ginkgo tree on the left and the ninebark at the back. There is a standard Shasta daisy and small snowcap Shasta daisies, plus the silver foliage of western mugwort.  I shoved a red hot poker in the back corner because that poor thing has been living in a pot since I drug it up here from my old place in 2004.  It deserves to live after that prison sentence.

So all in all, I think it turned out beautifully. Now it just needs to fill in and be so stunning that people will not be able to take their eyes off the flowers and therefore will not notice the neighbor kids' sniper tower in the background! 

Hello Buddy Scoot!

I got a scooter!

Genuine Buddy 170i. He/she (I have not bonded with it enough to know its gender) has got a 170 cc, fuel injected engine.  I debated between the Stella and the Buddy, but in the end, Buddy's large underseat storage and ease of operation won out over Stella's fantastic retro looks.

Brand spankin' new!  Picked it up today from Salt Lake Scooter Co.

 Going out for Buddy's first errand.

Buddy's first trip was to Papa Murphy's tonight to pick up a pizza.  I am happy to report that a large pie fits nicely in the underseat storage compartment.

 

Check that one off his list: Park City Point 2 Point

Saturday Drew raced the Park City Point 2 Point, one of the toughest 1-day endurance mountain bike races in the country.  I am going to throw up a bunch of photos here, but if you want all the pain and suffering, you'll have to ask Drew about the details.

The weekend started Friday afternoon when cousin Milissa and her hubby Christian, came to town.  We had a great pasta dinner at the house that included a salad made with lots of produce from the garden.

At bedtime, we started to hear thunder, then flashes of lightning, and then rain.  Mind you, we have had two significant thunderstorm since May. It has been very dry and trails were moon dust, so we definitely needed rain, but did it have to be today?

We woke on Saturday at 5 to a wonderful steady rain.  I wished Drew and Christian were not racing, because we needed it so badly and it would have been perfect to hunker down and enjoy the rain all day.  But we loaded up and drive to Park City through some serious storms.  We figured there would be no chance of starting.

The start was delayed an hour to let the weather figure out what it would do for the day.  It didn't look good.

Drew seemed pretty content not to race and just blind everyone with his jacket.

But the consensus at the racer meeting was to go ahead and race that day except cut our the first 10 or so miles in Round Valley, which would have been a mud bog.  So the boys suited up.

 And at 8:15 they were off!  Christian is the rider in the center of the photo in black and blue.  I started my job of team photographer off poorly by missing Drew fly by.

Milissa and figured we had about 9-10 hours to do our support thing all day. We had 4 places we could catch them.  So we moseyed to Einsteins for a bagel sandwich and coffee.  We had a hard day ahead of us.

The first place we saw them was at Solomere Drive.  Christian came through first.

With Drew not far behind.  This was the first of many haf-man shots.  

 From there, it was up the chair lift at Deer Valley with support gear in hand.  The fall colors are beginning to show. 

Christian came though the aid station 1 and Milissa helped get him fed and the mud out of his derailleur.

 While I waited for the other half of Drew. 

 We got them both out on the trail again and then we got to enjoy a beautiful ride down the chair.
 

 The next Christian and Drew siting would be on Guardsman Way.  They were both doing OK except Drew's hand was cut open from a collision with a mean downhiller.

 

From there it was on to PCMR.  What a party!  Some pit crew had music going and Olympia beer.  We hung out across from them!  Christian came though first and headed out on the last leg.

 Drew made it through at about 3 o'clock. 

After a quick bite and sweaty kiss, he headed out for probably the worst leg of the race.  Up the climb he went.

At about 3:20 the organizers closed the course and would not let anyone else through the aid station because the sky had broken loose with thunder, lightning galore, and hard rain and hail. 

Drew was out there somewhere, but there was nothing we could do so over to the finish line we went to drink beer and cheer in racers.

At about 5:30, Christian finished the race!!!

And a half hour later, Drew too. 9 hours 55 minutes of hard riding!

 A wet and muddy Park City Point 2 Point in the books!