We got up at the crack today to head up to Winter Park for a MTB race. I’m not exactly sure what the race is, but Vincent and Bill are racing. It starts at 10 am, so we’re leaving in just a few minutes, 6:30 ish. Trent Newcomer, the vet I took Bromont to up in Fort Collins, is also doing the race, so we’re just gonna meet him up there.

Today is also the Mt. Evans Hillclimb. My other team mate, Brian Jensen, is doing that. He just won a road race in Salida, CO last weekend. He and Bill are staying out here until Leadville in a couple weeks. Brian works for our sponsor, TradeWind Energy, and can work remotely from here. Also, it turns out, my friend Don Sutton, from La Jolla, flew out yesterday and is going to race Mt. Evans. Then he’s going to do a credit card tour up to Breckenridge, then over to Winter Park, over Trail Ridge (the highest continuous paved road in the United States), then to Estes Park and back to Idaho Springs. I think that is what he told me. I wish I could ride with him some, but I’m not hardly up to it.

Hopefully we’ll all meet up later this afternoon in Idaho Springs and get a chance to catch up.

I’ve ridden everyday since I got out here, but am not bringing a bike today. I plan to get an x-ray soon, probably Monday. I’ve been hobbling around the last couple days and my hip is aching pretty good at night. It would put my mind at ease just knowing everything is aligned correctly and healing properly.

Thursday we did a urban ride around Denver. It was pretty fun and just about the only ride I can do. We rode 50 miles, mainly on bike paths. I am having a new IMA battery built to put into my Honday Insight and wanted to check out the shop that is doing it. It’s just a little North of downtown, on York Street, it a pretty industrial area. The guy there, Eric, seemed nice enough and he took Vincent, Bill and I back to his battery assembling place to see what they do.

The new battery is going to be 8 amp/hours and much lesss resistance that the original battery. I sort of kicked around taking it apart myself and repairing it, but decided that I’m going to keep the car for a long while and might as well put in a much better and stronger battery. It is nice having a car to do errands in around town that gets close to 60 mpg. The original battery is completely dead and I still got 41 mpg coming out here, but the engine is only 1000 cc, so it lags pretty seriously without the electric assist.

We watched the 30 on 30 thing last night on the duel between LeMond and Hinault in ’85 and ’86. Slaying the Badger was its name. You can get it on Apple TV is you missed it last week. It was pretty good. I should probably do a post on it. I was just one degree of separation away from that whole mess. It didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. A few weeks later, at the Coor’s Classic, it didn’t seem like LeMond had any trouble helping Bernard win.

Okay, I’m bikeless today. Hopefully my hip will quit hurting so badly. I plan to walk with a cane, all day, to take some pressure off of it. I’m getting pretty sick of the whole thing. I realize that it is going super fast for an injury like this, but it’s not nearly fast enough for my liking.

Last weekend, I kind of just limped around friends as they did fun stuff around the state of Colorado. I ended up in Winter Park at the Colorado Freeride Festival. I thought I was just going up there to watch Bill and Vincent race an x-country MTB race from Frazier to Winter Park. Little did I know that there was a leg of the Enduro World Series being held, along with a ton of other stuff.

I realized when we got there, right around 7 am, that the race venue was way bigger than a local MTB race. There were way too many team support and factory trucks for a local event. The venue was sort of abandoned before 8 am, then guys started rolling by. I went over to a Redbull tent and they were starting a morning session of the enduro. Virtually all the guys there were speaking a foreign language. That is when I figured out that the race was big.

There are two events of the Enduro World Series held in North America. In Winter Park last weekend, and then in British Columbia in August. I really didn’t get to see any of the racing, it was all up on the mountain and definitely not accessable by a gimp like me.

Pretty soon, people started showing up. I knew a lot of guys there. I saw Scott Daubert, from Trek, Steve Blick, Oakley, Joe Parkin, Bike Magazine, Brad Cole, Niner, and a ton more. One of my favorite guys I ran into was Jesse Gascon, from Shimano. I hardly ever see Jesse anymore. He used to travel the MTB circuit when that was my full time gig, but now I think he’s flying back and forth to Asia more than attending races. It was nice catching up a little.

The best part of the day for me was watching those guys on Slopestyle. That sport is insane. I have no idea how you get to the point of being able to ride that course, but it would take me years to get to the point of just going down it, let alone throwing tricks off the jumps. It was amazing. Check out the video at the bottom of the page. It is from Martin Söderström, who finished 2nd. Nuts.

I realized how little I know about these aspects of the sport. I couldn’t even tell you which event a rider was competing in by looking at their bikes. That is disturbing to me. Really far removed. Most of the guys I listed above were at the event just checking it out, not working in a official capacity. They were just trying to get a read on what the sport is all about and where it might be heading. It didn’t have the vibe of a 90’s World Cup, but it was much better than any x-country race I’ve been to in the US the last decade.

Anyway, Vincent won the expert class of the x-country. Bill finished 11th, which was pretty good considering the altitude. Brian ended up 14th at Mt. Evans, riding 1:56, so that was a good race for him. He and Bill should be acclimated for Leadville in two weeks. Don Sutton finished Mt. Evan in 2:18 or so. Pretty good ride too.

I did get to ride 35 miles on Sunday with Bill and Vincent. My hip is feeling all weird, so I’m going to try to get a x-ray done today to put my mind at ease. I have to take my Insight over to downtown Denver to get a new IMA battery put in. I’m excited to see how much different it drives.

Lisa, Vincent’s wife, is 9 months pregnant, so she is due any day. She actually asked me yesterday to start my timer on my phone. I didn’t have any idea what she was timing until I looked over. She was timing contractions. They headed over to the hospital, but it was a false alarm. But, anytime now.

I’m going to head up to Steamboat Springs to hang with Kent Eriksen and Katie, either later today, or tomorrow. Kind of depends on the car and hip deal. They just rode the Laramie Enduro on Saturday. They rode a tandem, and won, of course. Kent is the most amazing athlete for a guy that doesn’t ride nearly as much as he’d like. I think he has less than 500 miles for the year, and that might be really generous. Katie must be fit and made up for his form.

The Tour? It’s over. I can’t say I really am going to miss it. I wasn’t that into it this year. I’m not sure why. Too many guys falling down I think. Whatever the reason, I didn’t wake up this morning missing the race like I have previous years.

Trudi drove to Park City yesterday and had dinner with Cadel Evans. He’s here just for Tour of Utah, not the Pro Challenge. I think he has been at altitude for a week, so I bet he rides pretty good in Utah. Trudi said he was super relaxed and very entertaining last night. Cadel can get pretty intense. I think he rides better when he is relaxed and carefree. Don’t we all.

Tandem results. Pretty long time on the bike.