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.