Bella 1997-2009

The least fun event of the summer was putting Bella down. I never thought I'd have to make the decision to put one of my dogs down, I just assumed they'd die of old age or violently at the hands of a vehicle. Life is full of surprises. Bella had had a rough winter and was having a hard time keeping weight on. We figured it was old age, made some diet changes but worried little as she still had the same energy she'd previously had. We decided to have Bella stay with Jarred's mom for the summer as I was going to be living in my horse trailer with Shuksan and Gretta and Jarred was biking out to Idaho. Bella was never much for long car rides or travel, so we figured she'd enjoy Noni's quiet backyard. I was due to head back to Washington for the weekend mid-July and the week prior to my departure, Noni called about Bella. She was not eating and her energy level had dropped. Noni took Bella into the vet, blood and urine tests were done but the results for both came back normal. Noni suggested to us that we may want to consider putting her down unless we wanted to spend money on x-rays and ultrasounds. We decided to wait until we saw Bella and talked to the vets ourselves, to make our final assessment of her condition.
I've never quite known what to think when people say, "Oh, you'll know when your pet is ready to die." I'd never seen a pet "ready" to die until I came back and saw Bella. It wasn't that she could not get up out of bed, it was more that she'd lost a ton of weight and just wasn't herself. She wagged her tail when she saw us and then went directly to her bed. It was at that moment that we knew that ultra sounds and x-rays weren't what she needed, nor did I want to wait until she couldn't get out of her bed. I wanted her to die fairly happy, just as I'd like to die. So later that morning, Jarred and I took her down to the local vet and had her put down in the yard behind the clinic. We buried her under a pile of rocks in the Palisades, a beautiful area between Wenatchee and Ephrata.
Bella was a funny dog. She wasn't affectionate like Shuksan and Gretta but she knew who her people were and was the ever dependable trail dog who always led us back to the car, even in the dark. She was a kick ass mama dog who diligently showed both Easton and Shuksan what it meant to be a good dog and how to weasel oneself onto the couch. Most importantly, she showed Jarred that having a dog can be easy. If it weren't for her we wouldn't have Shuksan and Gretta. Hats off to the Little Juka (ie Bella).

Reason Number 17 Not to Do An "Epic" Ride With Jarred

I love this photo. It reminds me that it's ok to say no to the vast number of Jarred's mountain biking escapades. While in Idaho, Jarred kept wanting to do this "epic" ride up to Pioneer Cabin and around back to Ketchum. Not only is this ride long (over 20 miles) but it's also grueling with a huge amount of elevation gain (remember, we were already biking at 5,000 feet). While Chris and Megan were visiting, Jarred convinced Chris to join him on the "epic" ride. Chris and Jarred are matched in ability while biking but I think Jarred may have had the one up on acclimation because he beat Chris up this hill and still had the energy to take this great photo. I also love this photo because I've NEVER seen Chris tired. We biked the 24 hr. Round and Round with Chris and he had endless amounts of energy at all hrs of the day.

The big bad world

Nic is a show horse and he has pretty crummy feet so we don't get to trail ride much. Plus I think trail riding is boring, I'd rather be on my bike. I did want to get Nic out though as trail riding is a great way for him to relax but get exercise. I spent much of the summer riding with my great friends Lori and Meghan, luckily Lori and I can spend hours riding in an arena. After Jarred left at the end of July and my whirlwind biking vacation ended, Lori and I spent the mornings riding. It was fun to have riding buddies this summer.

What stairs were really meant for

Sun Valley's urban mountain biking

Megan the Trooper

Is summer really almost over? Time sure does fly in the summers and I just can't figure out why it crawls by in the winter. I spent all of time time off this summer in Sun Valley, Idaho. As many of you already know, Sun Valley is my favorite place in the entire US, especially during the summers. I love my Sun Valley friends, my fun Sun Valley tack store job and the beautiful valley which holds endless hours of outdoor fun. I have a number of stories to share about my summer but I'll start with one. Our friends Megan and Chris Brannen from Washington came out to visit us in July. Both mountain bike, like Jarred and I but Chris, like Jarred, has a slight mountain biking obsession so when Megan and Chris left Washington, Chris reminded Megan that this was to be a "biking" vacation. To people like Jarred and Chris a biking vacation entails biking as much as possible until you're either too tired to bike or you somehow break a part on your bike and must take a break so the bike can be fixed. Jarred and I had already started our "biking" vacation three weeks earlier so I was already slightly acclimated to biking at 5,000 feet nearly every day. Jarred seems to never really need to acclimate as he has special lungs that allow him to talk and bike uphill at 5,000 feet while I huff and puff behind him figuring out how to answer such questions like, "If we added on to the house how big would you want the kitchen..." in only one word.

We met Megan and Chris for a beer the night they arrived. I'd already decided that Megan's first biking experience in Sun Valley would be a fun easy trail of moderate length, BUT upon seeing some of our gnarly Sun Valley biking friends, we all decided to head up to Galena Pass to try a 17 mile loop. Our gnarly mountain biking friends assured us they would go at a leisurely pace and I assured Megan that this would be a hard trail but "not too hard for her first time in the area." Mind you, I'd no idea where the trail was or what it was like, I think a little bit of Jarred was wearing off on me.

To Megan's credit, she was a trooper, she's actually always a trooper. In fact the last time we biked together we did a 100 mile road ride and she wore the skin off her butt cheeks to the point where she couldn't sit at work the next day (luckily she's a PE teacher). I knew Megan could hack it but wanted her to have fun. The trail was super hard (hence the lack of photos) and we walked our bikes up a number of hills. Megan shredded most of her arm and leg while going down hill and even I spent some time sliding down a hill on my stomach while trying to keep my chin off the rocks. We then decided that we owed Megan some easy rides and only pushed her to do one good but harder ride, which is shown in the photo above. This is my favorite ride in Sun Valley. It winds up the south side of the ski resort and around the back side. It's one of the few trails where the downhill feels as long as the up.

I hope Megan and Chris come back to Sun Valley. We love sharing our favorite place with friends.

HOW MUCH ABUSE CAN YOUR ARSE TAKE?

Sarah says I'm obsessive. I don't know that I could disagree. When we met I climbed all the time, then kayaking was something I couldn't live without, now I seem to love my bikes. I think I would make a superb retiree. My current accomplishment was the 2009 RAMROD (Ride Around Mt Rainier In One Day). This ride entails 159 miles and 10,000' of elevation gain (and obviously loss.) The ride starts and ends in Enumclaw, WA. I stayed at my friends house the night before and awoke at 3am in order to get to the start, register, eat breakfast, meet some friends, and begin the longest day ride of my life to this point.(I seem to suck at making captions, if you know how to do that in blogger, email me.) Here I am at the start of RAMROD 2009 approximately 4:30am.

I've known I wanted to ride RAMROD since I found the description on the internet one day when looking for challenging things to do on my bike. I registered (it's a lottery system as the Natn'l Park only allows 800 participants) and was lucky enough to be allowed to ride as part of the supported event. The support was great as this would be a very hard ride to do solo. I rode with a few friends and we made short work of the first 80 or so miles. Here I am at approximately mile 50, feeling great! Below is the typical view of the aid stations, lots of people wanting food and drink!

The fun really started when we left the trees and headed up Cayuse Pass. This was a really long climb, the rolling uphill lasted probably 10 miles before the real climbing began. I stopped to take one quick picture as I entered the park and immediately lost my friend. I quickly caught my group, passed them and made catching Scott my goal. After 5 miles of fast climbing I realized he must have been pushing just as hard as I was because around each turn I would search for him and he was never there. I finally caught him at a water stop and sure enough we had maintained almost a minute distance as we both pushed hard up the hill. Interesting that one little picture can really change your place in a group. We weren't racing, but it's interesting to see how everyone performs when compared to each other. As we left the water stop I was delighted to learn the top was a mere 4 miles away, a cinch. Below is me experiencing the "cinch" of a climb while the heat continued to push toward another record high! Cayuse is big, 2688' of elevation gain over 11 miles with the last 4 being the steepest. The top of Cayuse Pass marked 102 on the mileage for the day. Great, that was a nice century, now let's get to those remaining 58 miles.

Rainier, what a great mountain!

All in all I am super stoked to have completed RAMROD. It's been a goal since early spring and much of the riding I've done since then has been training for the big day. Who knew the big day would be during the hottest weather on record for the PNW!

I would definitely do RAMROD again, not so much as a personal goal, but to do it with friends. I would also like to do a lot more riding in the Rainier area, it's beautiful. I think the ride itself wasn't amazingly notable, rather it was the sheer mileage and the scale of the mountain we were circumnavigating. Rainier dominates in a way few other mountains do, that's it's mystique! It was great to ride with so many other people, all sharing one common goal of completing this epic ride for one reason or another. I had never ridden more than 102 miles in one day up until RAMROD, it hurt my arse. It also made me second guess my dream of one day being able to hang with the randonneuring crowd. They ride amazingly far, 400k, 600k, 1000k, for those not in the know that's between 250 and 650 miles, roughly, in one stretch, with minimal rest, it's seriously cool. A day later I was feeling better and two days later I was on Mapquest dialing in directions for long rides this fall. RAMROD is the beginning, not the culmination. What is possible for me as an individual is always the question.

Get out there, surprise yourself!