God, The Aunt Eater

So lets see, Summerhaven is pretty cool...
72 miles, 7,914 ft climbed, over nearly 5 hours of riding.

Wow, Thats High!

There was a fire awhile back (10 years or so) which sucks, but it made some really awesome views possible.

A pretty classic Lemmon View.

It was a good ride. Originally starting off with a good bunch of people, Shelby, Rico, and Rafael (all from Performance) were there. But, also in attendance were some people from the UofA cycling club. Well, unfortunately Shelby drop out pretty early, Rico and Raf had to get to work by 9, and I still had a good deal of pedal power left over. So I tried to keep up. It didn't work out for long. I kept it up though and eventually made it to the Cookie Cottage! it was pretty neat place with a bunch of cyclists just chilling.

The 'halfway' point

When I eventually began to think about all the other stuff I had to do that day (such as sell Brian the Roomie's storage unit for him) I decided it was time to turn on the metaphorical hair dryer and speed off with hot air blowing in my face. Well, it was then I happened to notice the slight bulge. In my rush to deflate it, I neglected to take the invaluable photo. Instead you are left with this hard to see cut in the side wall.
Luckily some kind people happened to have a floor pump. I pulled out my granola bar wrapper and patched it back up in no time! Now I simply have to hope that its still holding... or I just need to go skidd a bunch (I just hope I wont be as pissed as Gordon-Levitt was!) until it explodes and then i'll have no choice but to replace it!

And less recently. It rained awhile back!

Eventually I did dare. My foot did get a tad wet but I survived. It was good fun.

 And then last Tuesday (awhile back) Rico, Burt and Liz and I biked Gates Pass:

Cool clouds, no rain.

At least not on us anyhow.

Ricardo taking the lead against a great back drop!

And then there was this! Darlene and I got to enjoy it on a nice ride back to my place.

But, despite all these great pictures, despite some awesome rides, meeting some new people and fun planning for Brazil, despite all of the greatness of life, I'm just glad there's at least stuff like this keep things interesting!

Yep. Its a car. Stay tuned for more details...

Not any car, my dear reader, this car is... well. I dont even know what to say!

Come up with the wittiest caption for this picture and you'll win!!!

Brakes, Housing, Work and Biking!

I bled my brakes early this past week. It was a fun time. Getting bubbles out of brake fluid sucks. Otherwise though its great and makes for awesome braking power! unless of course... you contaminate the pads. In which all the sqeezing in the world doesn't do much. After spending much of the week lamenting the cost in both time and energy required of these marvelous pieces of cycling engineering and getting myself mentally prepared to maybe spend even more! I have come to find that my brakes seem to starting to work again... its really weird. But hey, I'm happy!!

In housing news, I might be moving out of the shed here in a bit. I found a guy on craigslist who needs help with his rent (even though its a one bedroom house) so I'll be taking the living room and we'll set up curtains or something to make it a regular ol' room! The guy seems like a cool dude and it'll be nice to have a kitchen right there with real sized burners and a full sized fridge and counter space and silverware utensils and pots and pans! and a bathroom!  Anyway, I think it'll be well worth the ~$80 bump in rent.

Work... I probably actually should say too much, especially not out here in the interwebs. I mostly just want to complain about slow progress and the difficulties of starting a new program. There's a lot that needs done although too often I've found myself with nothing to do!

Most interestingly though! I finally went mountain biking! My newest biking buddy Derek and I went out to the Tucson Mountain park and did some good old fashioned exploring. Although it took more time than it should've, we eventually realized that hiking our bikes straight up the side of a steep slope with loose gravel and cacti attacking us was a sign that we were not on the right course any more. Once we corrected our ways we tore off! Although soon the thrill of the ride proved too much as Derek ended up trying to eat the handlebars. Which, as it turns out, is a bad idea. Three stitches on the lip will help us keep that in mind. But, between a busted a lip and some bruises on his part and a flat tire on mine I think we can call that first short foray into desert mountain a relative success. especially when compared to not biking at all!

Once again, I find myself sadly apologizing for the lack of pictures. I guess this edition is one of the boring ones. I'll do better next time.