Bald Eagle Sighting and Snowshoes on Christmas

Awesome day today! Besides it being Christmas, I was able to go snowshoeing for a quick hour up in the foothills of Lone Peak. As I was getting out of my car, I noticed this Bald Eagle in a tree not more than 50 yards away.

I could hardly believe my eyes and got within about 50 ft. of the tree that it was perched in before it flew away.

I did some brief research and confirmed that Bald Eagles in Utah are extremely rare with 11 nesting pairs in Utah in 2007. It sounds like the population is making a comeback, so keep your eyes open for them when you're out and about.

Climbing in my new 25" MSR Lightning Ascent snowshoes was a blast. They are super light at 3 lbs. 12 oz., have great traction for climbing and I think the Omniture green paint job on them is an added bonus. I'm looking forward to using them frequently this winter to stay in shape and mix it up when not riding the bike. If anyone wants to go snowshoeing, let me know. I think we could have some good lunch meetings while hoofing it in the Timp Foothills.

Lunch Ride - Road Bikes Now

On Friday at lunch, a group of us met at Omniture's parking lot and rode to HWY 92 and back. It was fun to get back on the road bike after riding the mountain bike solid since October. I really needed that ride to help offset all of the extra calories I've been consuming lately.

I don't know if it's like this at your home, but on our kitchen counter top there's a variety and seemingly continuous supply of "neighbor gifts" such as frosted sugar cookies, Sees chocolates, candy cane bark, etc. Since I seem to have very poor will power, I end up consuming my fair share of these items. Also, I had a business trip to San Francisco earlier in the week during which we ate some great food, including dinner one night at the Slanted Door. It's a phenomenal Vietnamese restaurant overlooking the San Francisco Bay. We ordered a wide variety of dishes family style. I highly recommend the japanese yellowtail, crispy imperial rolls and the niman ranch shaking beef (cubed filet mignon with lime sauce).

What else is new? Well, I took my 3 sons on a hike in the snow today up in the foothills of Lone Peak. We started at the base of Hog Hollow and hiked up one of the jeep roads for about a mile and then turned around. The snow off the trail was about 8 inches deep and crusted over. We saw probably 50 deer and my boys had fun exploring. I was most impressed with my 4 year old who climbed pretty well and didn't once complain. I'm looking forward to exploring this area more on snowshoes this winter. I'm thinking it will make a good before work cardio workout, since the trail head is only 5 minutes from my house.

Sad Day Indeed

We've had some fun times riding the timp foothills at lunch this fall/winter, but I'm afraid biking the dirt this year has come to an end. At lunch today, I drove up to the shooting range to take the above picture. Time to get some snowshoes? cross country skis?

We enjoyed one last ride on Friday (yep, December 4th). We had a good group of guys show up, probably 10+, and ended up riding from the shooting range up the water tank road, down Bramber (fun downhill)* to University, climb up to Indian Springs trail head, Indian Springs to BST, descend BST to highway and ascend dragon's back. Aaron, myself, Brandon and a few others bailed at this point (check out Brandon's video of us climbing dragon's back - yup that's me 2nd to last....). The rest of the group** continued up Frank to Altar and down Dry Canyon.

*PHAST Dan and Mike Y. collided at the bottom of a particularly steep and loose section of this trail. I shouldn't talk though, I came oh so close to flying off the trail myself. In fact someone behind me yelled out, "stay on target."Like I said, there were 10+ riders and we were all amped to going riding, so it was a bit jumpy for the first part of the ride.

**must all be either self-employed, out of work or on vacation cause at this point we'd been riding for an hour and a half. I was jealous I had to get back to work.

Btw, as a side note, the above referenced Mike Y. (Steve Young's brother) is my 2nd cousin. Mike doesn't know that and sometime when I get a chance, I'll let him know, but it's true. You see, my grandma is sisters with his grandma. Small world.

11:45 AM - Best time of the day

Lately, I find myself feeling extremely antsy to get out and ride at lunch time no matter how busy things are at work. For example, last week was the year end accounting close (yes, Adobe has a November fiscal YE). Typically this means I'm glued to my desk staring at spreadsheets all day and I end up working through lunch and eating something at my desk.

Despite it being hectic with the accounting close, I found a way to fit a few mountain bike lunch rides with the local Utah County crew (Rick, Ricky, Aaron, Dave B, Jon, Nick, Miles, Brandon, Dan and Adam [sorry if I left anyone out]). I actually think these rides have helped me be more productive. You see, knowing that I'm basically cutting out 2 hours (desk to trail and back to desk) means I have to be more focused in the morning in order to get all of my work finished. Then in the afternoon, I'm wide awake due to the cleansing effect (no not that type) that comes from redlining your heart rate for 60 minutes.

It's been simply awesome lately and I'll be sad when this all comes to an end soon with winter approaching.

Here's the route we took today (shooting range, water tank road, betty, lower belt, frank, dragon's back, gravel road, race track, betty, roller coaster, water tank road, shooting range):

You'll have to check out some of the video footage of the lunch ride scene that Miles posts on his blog. He has an awesome helmet camera that's been capturing it all. I may have to ask for one of those for Christmas....

Thanksgiving Day Road Ride

Since I bought my Superfly in October, I've been riding on the dirt non-stop. I wanted to ride the "Turkey Trot" on Thanksgiving morning, but it ended up not working with the family schedule (am I the only one with this issue?). Instead, I dusted off the skinny tire bike and left the house at 7 AM for a climb up the south side of Suncrest, with the thought of returning before the family rolled out of bed.

I'd forgotten how much I hate the pain of the first 10 minutes of the steep part of that climb. I live close to the base of the climb, so despite my efforts to try and warm up and get my blood flowing before the grade ramps up, it never seems to be adequate and I end up gasping for air. Once I was in a good groove though, I just enjoyed the rest of the climb and didn't push it too hard. I made it to the top in around 25 minutes, which is a long shot from my TT personal best back in August, but like I said, I wasn't pushing it. Actually, to be honest, I've gained a few pounds lately and it felt like I had lead in my wheels.

As I was going back down, I had to stop and take this picture of the sun rising over the mountains.
I'm thankful for many things*, but on this Thanksgiving ride, I couldn't help but to be grateful for the beautiful mountains and valleys here in Utah and of course for the bikes that I get to ride through/up/down/across them.

*At Thanksgiving dinner later that day we each had to say what we were thankful for. I really wanted to say I was grateful for bikes, especially my new Superfly, but I showed restraint and expressed my gratitude for more important things.

Got my fix

I went to the BYU vs. Airforce football game Saturday night with my father-in-law. It turned out to be a decent game. I was glad when BYU was up big at the end of the 3rd quarter as I was planning to bail early in order to beat the traffic and fit in a mtb ride before my "committed time" to be home.

I should have just left at the end of the 3rd quarter, but as it turned out, Airforce scored 2 touchdowns in the fourth, so I stayed around longer than planned.

I've never left a football game in such a hurry. I pretty much jogged the whole way from the stadium to my car.

Once on my bike, starting at the firing range, I rode up the water tank road and took this picture of Orem and Utah Lake at the top of the climb above the race course.

I headed up Betty, then turned onto Crank. I love climbing Crank as there aren't too many rocks, yet there are some steep enough spots to make it challenging and fun. By this point it was dark, so I turned on my headlight. Most all of Crank didn't have snow except for this stretch of 50 or so yards:

Shortly after taking this picture, I startled some animal that was about 5 ft. from the trail. It was probably just a bird or a small rodent, but it jumped and I jumped too.

I finished the ride descending on Ireland and back down the water tank road. It was a short but fun ride. Probably one of the last of the season.

Pinewood Derby

A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to get an idea from my oldest son Austin of what type of pinewood derby car he'd like to build. We looked on the Internet for ideas and saw an abundance of different car designs. There was one shaped like a hot dog, another one like a pencil and so forth. I asked him if he liked any of the designs. He said, "No Dad, I don't really care what it looks like...... I just want to win.....I want the trophy."

Wow! Nothing like a little bit of pressure to put on the old man. I mean, I learned a trick or two from my Dad when I was a cub scout and we built some pretty fast cars back in the day, but that was 25+ years ago (yikes!! I'm getting old).

Well, I'm happy to report that we (I mean Austin) did not disappoint. His car won every heat. It really wasn't even close. What can I say, it was a blast to win. Austin was beaming ear to ear the whole night. Okay, I admit, I was beaming ear to ear too.

Here's a pic of the cars we built. The pink one is Austin's and the purple is mine (actually now, my younger son Isaac officially has title to it as I "gave" it to him).

You're wondering why two cars? Since I'm a den leader, I had the opportunity to build a car too. For the most part, I used my car as the "guinea pig" or test car. For each step of the build process, I'd do the work on my car first and let Austin watch. Then, he'd work on his car. Believe me, we worked together hard and pulled out all the stops to build the fastest car. On the wheels and axles alone, we spent probably two hours grinding and sanding and polishing until late at night.

My pet peeve is when it's assumed that I built the car and that's why it won. Sure, I was very influential and involved in the build, but Austin was there at my side participating in every step of the process, including the initial design discussions, driving around 1/2 of last Saturday together to purchase the supplies we needed, measuring, marking, sanding, painting, grinding, straightening and baking (yes, we did bake and it's a secret that I won't reveal....sorry).

Anyhow, we both really enjoyed the time we spent together building the car, learning together and to see the hard work pay off with a win was very rewarding. Sometimes in life hard work doesn't always directly translate into a victory, but when it does, how sweet it is!

(no trophy, but Austin wasn't complaining about the 1st place cert.)