Dirt and Snow

I had a wonderful typical Boulder winter weekend. Jesper was out of town on a BOYZ skiing trip, so I was on my own to get out and have some fun. Before the weekend, I rode the trainer and ran to ensure that I wasn't going into the weekend fresh. Who wants to be fresh?

Saturday was slated to be pretty warm down in the Front Range, so I set up a mountain bike ride with my friend Cynthia at Devil's Backbone up near Loveland. She invited her friend Mark, who invited his buddy Rob. Then we met up with some of Rob's buddies on the trail, so it turned into a nice group ride. Cynthia and I decided to ride our Single Speeds and two of the guys we met up with (Jesse and Joe) were also on SS bikes. We rode over 18 miles, me trying to keep up with Jesse and Joe. I felt pretty good about my riding considering that I'm in tele ski shape, not SS shape. The ride really worked me over in a good way. After the bitter cold we've had most of this month, it was awful nice to be out in shorts riding on dirt.

Here's a sweet pic Mark took of me getting a little stylie air. See, there's air under both my tires!


I followed the day of shorts and dirt with a day of snow. My friend Seneca and I headed up to A-Basin for a GURLZ day on the slopes. Seneca usually skis back country, so she enjoyed being able to do run after run after run that you can do at a resort with lifts. It was the warmest day skiing since probably early December.
We started out in the new Zuma Bowl and particularly enjoyed the steep lines on far skier's right like Jump and End-Zone. Then, after the wind got to be too much on that side, we migrated over to the front-side of the mountain and skied under the Palavicini chair. Here's Seneca coming down a double black to skier's left of the chair. The picture makes the slope look tame, but it was pretty steep!

We had a great day followed with a nice cold beer, followed by a horrendous drive home in massive traffic. It was worth it though.

Dirt and Snow - I love that I can go for a mountain bike ride in shorts one day and then go skiing the next! Gotta love Colorado!