Vanna, I'd like to buy a vowel...

Riding my bike the other day, climbing a hill I got to thinking. What is the difference between the two pics here? Other than one a cat, one is not? A vowel, that's it. Feeling a like a rotund, slow decrepit individual wallowing up Clark's trail in what was clearly too big of a gear on the singlespeed, I began thinking about how ironic the difference is between the words FAT and FIT. Just a vowel!! As simple as a quick stroke of the pen or keyboard, yet requiring hours of workouts and exercise! All to make the difference from this cat to this man. After an annoying crash (boy I have crashing!!!), which has taken most of the skin from my hip, some of the knee, shoulder and elbow, I am now dedicated to asking Vanna for an "I"!!

48 Hrs in St. George & 36 Hrs in Moab

Rich and I have been out of town the last two weekends, enjoying the desert and some mountain biking. Last weekend, we headed to St. George, about 5 hours south. I was supposed to run the Red Mountain 50k but had to bail due to some plantars facitis in my foot. I couldnt run for a couple of weeks so thought better of running 30 miles! Because we had a room reserved already, at a discount rate, we decided to head down anyway to take advantage of some warm weather to bike and hike. The weather WAS beautiful... mid to upper 70s both days. We arrived on Friday, took an easy run after picking up my t-shirt from the race (hey, I earned it but doing all the training!) and then had dinner and went to a movie: Date Night - VERY funny movie! Saturday we hit the trails and rode 21 miles on a big loop that was ridiculously fun: Gould's/JEM/Hurrican Rim. Such flowy, fun, fast singletrack! That afternoon we headed to Snow Canyon for some hiking and photograpy. We enjoyed a VERY nice dinner out at the Painted Pony restaurant (a bit of a splurge, but well worth it!). Sunday we hiked to the top of a cinder cone that erupted 27,000 years ago spewing lava all throughout Snow Canyon. A great little mini vacation!

This weekend, we headed out for a short but very enjoyable weekend in Moab. We headed out after Rich got off of work, and got down there about 10:30 pm. After an hour of searching for a place to camp, we finally got settled and crashed. We met up with our group the next morning and headed out to Behind the Rocks to set up camp. Once settled we headed out to the Sovereign Singletrack trail to ride. After finally getting there, and an hour of lunch making, preparing and farting around (testing Rich's patience for sure, and mine as well) we finally got going. The trail is super fun, with some challenging climbing and descents. After a few hours, one bruised hip, and a sprained wrist (not ours!), we finished to settle back at the trailhead for a beer. Back to camp, a great dinner and comaraderie and home the next day!