I ride alone but it doesn't bother me.

Endurance athletes have a whole crazy concept of what constitutes a long workout. Unfortunately I am not one of them. I am queen of sprinting on the treadmill at 9.0 mph in order to get really tired quickly and not have to run anymore. I was a sprinter/hurdler in track, a wing in rugby and consider my competitive advantage my speediness more than any sort of endurance nonsense. So it is interesting that now I am trying to do these endurance events. I think it is the challenge of something I am inherently not built for. That and two straight years of knee issues where sprinting is difficult and slow endurance activities are the only thing you are allowed to do.

So anyway, for endurance athletes, a three hour bike ride is just a normal jaunt in the park. I am not an endurance athlete however , so my quick mtb bike ride Saturday afternoon that ended up being a three hour bonk fest, was a bit exhausting. Since my normal biking buddy Sarah is rowing across the Atlantic, I am riding more and more on my own. I used to be afraid that if I mountain biked on new trails by myself, I would go off a cliff and die a lonely death. But I am somehow over that and now just assume I would break my leg close enough to the path to yell for help.

Saturday, I got ready to go for a quick ride while on the phone with a friend, so I ran out of the house without really thinking bringing no food or camera, and only filling up my camelback halfway. I road a part of a trail in South Mountain that I haven't ridden ever which hooks up with a trail I am very familiar with, the Desert Classic. The beginning of the trail was a pretty cool uphill slog of big rocks and climbing. I was fresh so felt pretty good and was pleasantly surprised how technical this ride was. About an hour in, I stopped to drink some water and realized that I was still a ways from the portion of the trail I know. But I was having a good time and didn't want to turn around yet. I hate hate hate not getting to the end of something, turning around early is really hard for me. Maybe something cool is around the corner!

So I decided just to keep going and if I had to take the road back, I would. I knew it was only around 10 miles of trail to the other end which isn't bad if you are in shape, but my acl-less knee might not enjoy 20 miles of trail out of the blue. So once I got to the part of the trail I knew, I was flying (at least in my mind). Wet sand is sooo much better to ride on than dry sand. Loving life, I reached the other end in 1 hr and 45 minutes as clouds rolled in and thunder started sounding.

I decided to take the road back for expediency and since I was running dangerously low on water and had no food. Problem was, I hadn't realized I was riding with a back wind the whole time (climbing will take away that advantage) and all of the sudden, I was tired and trying to ride into ridiculous headwind. Not to mention this road biker kept passing me like I was going still as he weaved in and out of neighborhoods. I think he was laughing at my big dirty tires.

Finally I was getting fed up with the road and I came upon a road cutting down into a wash back into the mountains behind the house line. I thought maybe that would be a short cut to the parking lot my car was it which was behind the house line also. At the very least, it would at get me out of the wind. The trail was fun and wet with sections of it actually consisting of running water, which is such a treat to see in the normally dry rock pile of a mountain range.

I was happy with my decision until the trail starting climbing the mountain again. It became almost unbikable uphill and at this point I was bonking pretty bad. After summiting a ridge, it dumped me down into a million dollar neighborhood on the top of a private mountain. I was then had to scale an 8 foot fence with my bike to get out of the neighborhood before finally making it back to my car. Tired dirty hungry and happy was a pretty accurate description of how I felt. I would guess I did about 12 trail miles and 10 road miles on about 1 liter of water. Not my smartest move ever, but, it made my cookie and wine party that night seem much more earned.

I forgot to take my camera, but snapped these pics from the top with my cell phone. Not bad for a cell phone camera.

Thoughts on Christmas

I am alive with the yuletide spirit. It ripples through me like amber waves of grain. Each ornament placed on the tree and each wreath hung signifies my devotion to all things of the season. [...record screeching to a loud and violent halt sound followed by maniacal laughter.]

I haven't done anything for Christmas yet. No gift buying, decorating, card sending or even candy cane buying. I am one lazy mofo. For whatever reason, even though I grew up in a house that decorated for Christmas with all the normal hubbub, I am totally lazy at decorating my own pad. Maybe it's because I am wearing shorts as I make plans to "do things" outside. I think it's easier to decorate in cold places since you are essentially stuck in the house due to the ridiculously bad weather outside. Sure, I'd string thousands of pieces of popcorn on a string. That sounds like more fun than going mountain biking in the glorious 70 degree weather.

[Alert: This is the point in the year that people who live in bad weather places (as I call them), should stop reading this blog, because I am going to become insufferable as I describe the perfect weather everyday. Check back in in June.]

In addition, I hate Christmas shopping because the mall is sort of my worst nightmare and sometimes I just want to lower my shoulder as I run screaming for the door, knocking over little old ladies and bratty kids alike. I shudder at the question, what do you want for Christmas. I am forced to come up with ideas that are in the right price range. Can't I just say, "I want a new bike so buy me a fork or rear derailer please." I can buy my own things, thanks, lets skip the gifts this year. But hang on dear readers, I will not scrooge myself completely quite yet.

But even though I am lazy and have to force myself to decorate and shop, there are many things I enjoy about Christmas. I love caroling. It's nice and I know all the words to harmonize for most Christmas songs. I enjoy the time with family and friends back home, especially if it snows. Nothing beats snow at Christmas when you don't have to go anywhere. I like the food. Ahh food. People go all out around Christmas time and no one even stops to think twice about the amount of butter that goes in that Christmas morning cinnamon bread candy cane shaped tee-ring. Delicious. My mother is a great baker and prepares treats months in advance of my arrival. I do not know why I can not cook or bake anything. I am an aberration in my family. And really, I enjoy the warmth of the reason for the season. It's about love, giving, friends, family and rebirth and with the turn of a calendar year, all things are possible. Even potentially two knee surgeries while starting school again, working and selling a house with a little marathon and bike racing thrown in for fun. Can't wait for Christmas and 2008.

Maybe a reason why I injure myself playing rugby.

Wow. That's a solid base, is all I'm saying.

I was looking through some old pics on my computer and found this photo from my days at the ole Ohio State U. I don't believe I dump tackled this person, if I had to guess. Bad high form didn't help, but man that's a solid base to move. That's why they stuck me on the wing... all speed no form. I never really felt small in rugby though, at least not until I played club level against teams like Berkeley and I was having my garbage taken out by the freaking dump truck.

The rez. My rez.

Look at the Puddles! Of Water! In the desert! Sigh. Pure Bliss.

Ever since I have found the hole in the fence, I have been pretty excited.

I have talked about the Ak Chin NA reservation land just south of my house before. And how I found a hole in the fence that is my entry into this exciting portal. About how it is my own little deserted playground of dirt trails, roads, and just deserted barren land. Ugly by all standards, I find the absolute desolation of it quite endearing. It's kind of like when someone has a baby, and really its the ugliest baby in the history of babies, but they think it so cute just because it it is theirs. Well that is what I feel about my rez, not really mine, but since no one else uses it, it might as well be.

So we had some major rain this past weekend. It was around 2.5 inches. That is approximately 1/3 of our average rainfall. In 24 hours. Wow. Imagine if you had 1/3 of your rainfall in 24 hours. That would be like 75 inches in some places in Hawaii. In fact we had so much rain, that my roof sprang a leak and water was dripping down the inside of the drywall. That was slightly exciting, but not as exciting as riding in the mud on the rez. I went for a bike/run Saturday and just enjoyed getting dirty. The giant rainbow being painted across the sky, just served as artwork for the mini lake puddles that offset the tumbleweed sculptures. Sometimes that ugly desolation just seems almost beautiful.

Running in mud, biking in mud, it is all new for me now. I forget how mud flies up from your tire and smacks you in the face. And I forget the soft squishy unstable feeling of running through anything other than desert concrete. But I laugh out loud as I revel in the newness and excitement of mud and it makes me feel like a kid again.

Please doc... can I ...

Forget to mention that New Doc wasn't really that keen on me running the half marathon in January. He said "well if its really something you want to do, but I really don't recommend." Is it really something I want to do? Actually no, I don't even like road running, BUT THATS NOT THE POINT!

So I conveniently forgot to ask him about riding in a 24 hour bike race as well. Cause that is something that I really really really want to do.

Sigh. I can't win. I shall have to consult my astrology report and see if my stars are aligning. Then I will drink goat's blood, kill a chicken and strap on my running shoes.

Why I am guaranteed arthritis.

So I met with a new orthopedic doc yesterday. His name was given to me by my disappearing act previous surgeon who also can't find my previous medical records and is really annoying me. I think I like New Doc though. He is very real and tells me what he is thinking and he also spent more than 3 minutes with me so that is also a plus. Unfortunately, his words weren't that exciting to hear however.

The first thing he told me was that I should stop running forever because I am guaranteed to have arthritis in my bad and knee and it will just make it worse. Awesome. I know this is probs true, but whatever, I can't live my life like that.

The second unsettling news is that because I am having a do-over surgery, I may have to have a two step process for fixing it. In the previous ACL reconstruction, they drilled tunnels in my tibia and femur to attach the new ACL in. These tunnels can not be used in the second surgery (?) and they need to drill new ones. If the paths of these two sets of tunnels are interfering, they will have to do a bone draft in the first step and then wait 3 months for the tunnels to fill in with bone. Then I would have a second procedure for the actual ACL reconstruction. I take this as stretching out hell as long as possible. Argh.

New Doc also has different rehab methods which include walking much quicker, but doing most of the initial rehab at home vs with a physical therapist. I am cool with that since PT cost $20 a pop and totally rules your life since you have to go during work hours 3 times a week. So I am optimistic that I like New Doc but the reality is that this knee isn't going to be back to normal anytime soon and that I really shouldn't plan big events for a long time. Blah. I went to the gym last night after the appt and ran a couple of miles on the treadmill. Take that New Doc.

I love the word emo.

So I have had a hard time blogging lately. Mostly because there isn't anything going on right now that is all that inspiring to blog about. True writers can blog entertainingly about anything: Britney Spears, the cost of gas, or whether Tila Tequila is really bi or straight. Vastly important topics of course, but really nothing that I care enough about to try to write humorously about.

I can only write when inspired and most of the time I just want to put pics up anyway. I am going through some thing right now. It's not depression or anything overly dramatic like that. I will just call it a funk, a work induced, knee injury induced, where the hell is the sun today kind of funk. I don't blog about work normally, but I will say this, something has to change. And I am working on that as we speak. As for the knee, I can't really blame it totally because I am not stuck in the house due to it and I can still do a lot of activities, but it has had an effect. I am not doing an adventure race I planned on doing this weekend due to it, and I now back to mostly solo working out. No frisbee or other team sports, or even just pick up racquet ball games, etc. So I am fighting off those feelings, while trying to stay motivated to still train hard due to the races I want to do in January and February. And the weather right now is blah. It's been dreary all week and is now raining. I am sooooo addicted to sun, that I miss it almost immediately. This is why I moved here in the first place.

So blah is here and will probably stay for a minute, before I kick it's ass and invite happiness disambiguation in (google actually considers these synonyms which I found interesting and totally timely). I think it's okay though because blah is fine for awhile. I put a lot of pressure on myself to feel happy all the time and sometimes, you just wanna feel like crap and wallow in it. I am going to go put on some emo music, surf monster and eat brownies while complaining about how tv sucks but refusing to go out and have a life. For a minute. Byte me. LOL. Nerd.

Announcements that no one cares about.

So winter has rolled around to the P H X. This doesn't mean that much in the way of cold, although it has gotten much colder. The biggest effect is how early it gets dark. It sort of depressing to get out of work at 6 and have it already be dark. Since I am a hater of the gym, it makes me less motivated to work out. I think I am going to start doing more dark trail running and biking. I love head lamps anyway. Gadget gadgets are my fave.

In other boring exciting news. I am working on creating my online business website. I don't actually know what the business is going to be yet (oh but i have grande dreams --evil cackle--), but that is just details right? I figured I will start on the website anyway and maybe it will just come to me. I am creating the website using a free source content management system named Drupal. It uses Apache as it's web server and MySQL as the database. Confused? Well this is just geek speak for "its going to be a website and do cool stuff". I created a website for my rugby team the seen here using similar technology called Joomla awhile ago and the benefit of the content management portion is that once I created this site, I do not have to be the only one to maintain it. I trained the team captain and manager to add calendar events, news and other things to the site. So let me know if you have any sweet ideas for what my business can be. If left up to my own devices I may come up with a Jump To Conclusion Mat*.

Also, in other news, I did it. Yup. I registered for the Kona 24 Hours in Old Pueblo race on February 16th. So what this means is that I am going to try to put off having knee surgery until afterward and what this also means is that I am going to try to ride somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to 75 miles in one day with no ACL. Doesn't that sound like fun! I am excited but also nervous because I get knee pain & swelling pretty quickly right now. I think I will have to train up to the mileage as best I can and then during the race it will be gut check time. I can't really hurt my knee further so it will mostly be just sucking it up and pushing the challenge. Challenge = PAIN.

One last thing. I am going to say something that you will never hear me say again. GO SOONERS! Oklahoma needs to beat Missouri this weekend in fb for Ohio State to return to the National Championship. And the reason this is important, besides the obvious reason, is that I have a flight scheduled during the Rose Bowl and I don't want to have to pay a bunch of money to change the flight so that I can watch OSU beat USC on Jan 1st. I would rather watch OSU beat UWV on Jan 8th or whenever the Natl. Championship is. So I am going to be a huge Oklahoma Fan on Saturday night only, then I am going to laugh at all you doubters.

[Update: Oklahoma totally won so OSU is totally in the Natl Championship game in New Orleans vs LSU. Great matchup and a totally winnable game. Bring it SEC.]

*awesome reference to the best movie ever, Office Space. Told u I love this movie.

Thanks Colorado, for a great Thanksgiving.

Well I am sufficiently able to breath again enough to try to write a blog. That high elevation stuff really does make you feel light headed.

We spent about five days at 8000 feet elevation and above (way above) which is pretty hard for us desert lowlanders. It is very interesting to see elevation's effect on one's body. Shortness of breath, lightheaded and easy wine buzzes are just the start.

We left at 6am on Wednesday morning for Colorado with Durango as our evening's destination. We stopped at the Sunset Crater National Park north of Flagstaff for our first little break. I have driven by it several times but never stopped. It was pretty cool really, but not as cool as the volcanic fields we saw recently in Hawaii. I did take some pics and we hiked about 2 miles through the lava fields and up a steep hill to see a crater valley.

Sunset Crater National Park, Flagstaff Arizona

We hit the road again and drove through some of the weirdest landscape in Arizona called the painted desert. It is a lot of wierd rock landscape with equally odd reservation towns and just seems so inhabitable. We stopped for a minute at Four Corners, which just may be the biggest joke ever. You hear about this place all the time, where you can stand in four states at once, but once you get there you realize it is just that: a man made geographical landmark marked by a plaque. And the best part? They charge you $3 a person to do it. It is the biggest rip off since Glitter.

Our final stop of the day was at Mesa Verde in SW Colorado. Now this was totally worth the $0 entrance fee. We got a free guided tour into the Bird House Ruins. It's so easy to image life here since the cliff ruins are so well preserved. I totally recommend visiting as the preservation here is incredible. We spent that evening in Durango with Tom's uncle and aunt and went to the coolest old cowboy bar.

Thursday, we decided to take the scenic route to Tom's cousin's house in Breckenridge which was our final destination that evening. We took the "Million Dollar Highway" which goes over the San Juan mountain range and through the towns of Ouray, Silvertown and Telluride. Interestingly, there was very little snow which is unusual for this late in the year, but still it was cold beautiful and its a fun drive.

By the time we neared Breckenridge, there was much more snow on the ground and the temperature had dropped steadily. We followed directions to the summit of a mountain pass which then led up a dirt road further up the mountain and we began to realize that we were going to be staying very high. Near the top of a 14,000 foot mountain to be exact. The house was one of those cool wooden cabins with the two story windows that was located at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. Totally beautiful and awesome. It was surrounded by 5 14ers (a term for a mt higher than 14k feet) and had trails leading up the mountains from their deck.

Thanksgiving was great food and great company. I met Tom's Colorado family (3 cousins, their spouses and kids plus his aunt and uncle we had met the night before). There were all well traveled and intelligent and told a lot of funny stories of Tom as a kid. Overall, I really enjoyed meeting them and hope to go back to visit again.

Five Fourteeners surround the house in Breckenridge.

We took two different hikes on Friday up the mountain because the first one just wasn't enough. The day was freezing with temps from zero to 15 and a steep wind. We hiked from the house up the side of the mountain to some beautiful views overlooking steep white real mountains. We could even see a frozen waterfall across the way that people were ice climbing up. I can't imagine living in a place like this, it is too much of a dream. I may not be able to concentrate on things like work or breathing or eating if I was surrounded by this much beauty all the time. The second hike, we went up about 1000 feet in a snow storm to the top of the ridge just to feel the freezing cold wind hitting our face. It was so painfully cold within a minute, it was amazing. I am so not used to the cold, which made me appreciate it all the more. I have a slight fascination with Mt Everest (by slight I mean I have read everything ever written about it) and mountaineering in general and this reaffirmed my commitment to climb a couple of the ice mountains in California some time. Oh and trek around the lower Himalayans in Nepal, really really want to do that sometime.

So after hanging out in Breckenridge, we took off for Fort Collins on Saturday to meet up with my friends Craig and Kris who I graduated from high school with who are now married and live in Laramie, WY. Kris is very pregnant (due in 3 weeks) but is one of the best very pregnant people I have been around: laid back, not stressing, no complaining even though she is one of those tiny people with the huge bowling ball belly. Can't wait till see a picture of the little munchkin they are going to have! Good luck friends!

On the road from Breck to Fort Collins

We left FC at around 5pm Sat. and decided to drive four hours to Raton, NM to get a head start on the 14 hr drive back to Phoenix. We had another 10 hrs on Sunday but made it home in time to hit the gym since we both felt a little fattened by too much good food. I even was able to run 2 miles on the treadmill with minimal pain. Yeah!

Since we drove exactly 2000 miles in the five day trip, we didn't really stop for scenic picture taking which is why many of my pics have interesting "car features" on them such as bugs, water drops or just wierd glares as enhancements. Taking pictures out car windows while moving 70 mph is a skill I have mastered over the years. Sometimes I will even take pictures while driving but shhh. For some reason however, I was terrible at taking pictures of the people we were with and mostly just forgot to get out the camera. I do this a lot actually.

I love Colorado and mountains and snow and beauty and good food and company and overall had a killer time on our mini vacay. Back to the desert now where temps have seriously dropped to in the low 70s...brrr. LOL. JK. LMAO. Other random laughing digital acronyms.

Goodbye P. Godspeed.

Well the P of ODP is leaving tomorrow for her two month expedition. My amazing and wonderful friend Sarah, aka Crazy Rower #2, is taking off for a second attempt to row the Atlantic Ocean in a rowboat. She and our other friend Crazy Rower #2, both from Phoenix are joining two other foreign women in a four person rowboat team called Unfinished Business to compete in a race from the Canary Islands to Antigua. I have so much admiration for both of the Crazy Rowers since I know that their last attempt ended in a very dangerous capsize and 16 hour rescue in the middle of the Atlantic. Video of this below. I met them both when they decided to come out for the club rugby team in Scottsdale and we quickly realized that anyone willing to row across an ocean at 21 years of age, will probably be good rugger. I later got to appreciate all of Sarah's talents as an adventurer who always finds a way during our many trips backpacking through various locales and the creation of our adventure racing team Team ODP. Believe me if anyone can make it across an ocean, its these women. Unfinished Business's website can be found at www.rowformeningitis.com. They will be blogging there periodically throughout the race. You can also follow along on the official race website located at www.atlanticrowingrace2007.co.uk.

Anyway, here's to great weather, fast currents in the right direction, lack of sharks, teamwork, and celebrating Christmas on the Atlantic. See you back in Phoenix by end of January Sarah. ODP will miss you P (Sarah), but since O (me) is lacking an ACL, you've got some time.