Where does time go??

Holy Cow! I can't believe how badly I've slacked on the blog. I've pretty much neglected to inform all ya's on the totally radical Cyclocross season that has just ended. So to make a long story short, the cyclocross season was totally radical!! In addition to the Newburgh race we could also be found at the Saratoga Race, Tymor Park Race, Hidden Valley Club Race, Whitmore's Super Cup and finally Staten CX. We had tons of fun and Rick did great racing the Cat 2/3/4. He pretty much secured top 20 in all the races, with even coming as close as 5th at the Tymor Park Race!! And I photographed each and every race, spending my fabulous evenings uploading and uploading all the photos onto flickr. So with the end of the bike race season we get to start thinking about the upcoming ski season! We head north in less than 2 weeks to hit the trails of Jay Peak! Just need the temps to get colder and get some snow round here. And I'll try to be more diligent with my posts, I promise! Here's some pictures from the last few races.

And we have a winner!!!!!!

Congratulations Rick!! Last weekend my totally Radical hubby won the Cat 2 men 19-29 New York State Mountain bike Series!! We are so excited!! He's been training non-stop 7 days a week for the past year, so I'm super happy to see all his hard work finally pay off! The Series was so much fun and we made some good friends this year too! Normally I'm pretty stoked for the approaching ski season this time of year, but I have to say that I'm kinda bummed to see the cross country season end. Oh and by the way.. yours truly came in 2nd place overall for Cat 3 women 12-34! And my little friend Gili won!! Way to go girl! 12 years old and the overall winner is a great accomplishment! Thanks to the guys at the NYS MTB series for doing such a great job and to the rest of our XC crew - see ya's next year!! Great job everybody & congrats to Rick again!

Cyclocross Season is Underway

Rick raced his 3rd ever cyclocross race this past Sunday and boy did he do great! I'd say a 6th place finish out of 40 guys ain't bad for only somebody's 3rd time racing cross! And I love it!! I even got my own cowbell this time - and the picture opportunities are endless. A big thanks to the City of Newburgh in lovely Orange County NY for the use of their beautiful park as well as a great job by the NYCross guys in setting up a great course and of course how could I forget Wafles & Dinges. I have never feined for a Belgian Waffle so much in my life as I did this week! Looking forward to more cross races in the next 2 months, but first and finally we need to survive our NYS MTB series championship race this weekend at the wonderful Reidlbauer's resort in RoundTop NY. The forecast is calling for 6 inches of snow by Sunday (prime conditions for a MTB race right?). So that should call for a good story (and a good blog post). Wish us luck, I'll be lucky not do freeze to death, but Rick can clinch the championship!! Good luck Rick - beat Yandeau!!!

Sea Cliff Mini Mart Craft Fair

This past Sunday was the annual Sea Cliff Mini Mart Craft Fair. I love the mini mart and so do so many locals around here! Its always a huge blast with vendors, beer, live music & tons of people. I decided this year that I would have a booth selling my various crocheted goods ranging from headbands to hats to cowls to coasters! I did pretty good, I did have to sell my stuff rather cheap, but that's okay because it was a beautiful day and we had tons of fun!

Woodstock

I guess I never mentioned the outcome of our last mountain bike race. Well to put it mildly, I totally sucked ass. It was definitely the worst performance I've had on a bike yet, and I was really upset with the fact that I walked my bike more than I actually rode it. Sooo to let ya'll know I placed last in my category. But what really aggravates me is that this college mtb team shows up and they were good and they all raced cat 3. And the reason they do this is so they can win. Those girls should have raced cat2, but then they'd actually have to be competitive with the better riders. I'm happy to say though that Rick placed 2nd and his #1 competitor Ben placed 3rd, so Rick is still leading the series. He just needs to beat Ben in the series final next weekend at Reidlbauers and victory is his! At the least the scenery at Woodstock was pretty, so I enjoyed that part.. after the race was over of course. Better luck next time for me, but I better go out and practice.

Could it have been....

A Big Foot?? While preparing for an upcoming craft fair last night, I received a phone call from Rick urging me to immediately put on the History Channel. When I did, I was shocked to find an episode of their series MonsterQuest totally dedicated to a possible Big Foot roaming about in remote areas of upstate New York. I was dying! After all the jokes we were making about possibly being harassed by "Big Foot" that night at the Evil Lean-To, this show comes on less than a week later. I did a little researching via the all trusting Internet and stumbled across this website http://www.bfro.net/news/roundup/newyork.asp. Its a Big Foot expedition located in NYS and guess what?? The expedition is sold out and theres a waiting list! I never would have imagined that there would be a Big Foot craze in New York. But heck why not?? It makes for some interesting camp fire stories, and I guess I've got one to tell now. Next time I'm in the back country, I'll be sure to have my camera ready, just in case I see this guy strolling by

The Haunted Lean-To

So Rick and I spent 2 nights at the Beaver Point Lean-to on the shore of the Lake Colden in the High Peaks region of the ADK's. We were so stoked to have scored a Lean-to let alone one with such amazing views! A sign on the side of the structure described that the Lean-to was erected in 1983 by the Cazenovia High School Environmental Study Group. So that makes the Lean-to 26 years old, only 3 years younger than me and Rick! Also inscribed on the inside of the Lean-to were the words "Evil Lean-To" left behind by some camper who I'm presuming had a not so wonderful experience there. Thinking nothing of it, we settled into sleep around 8:30 pm, only to be immediately awoken by such incredible gale force winds blowing straight thru Avalanche Pass, over Lake Colden, directly into our sleeping bags. Whatever I thought, at least I won't hear anything walking around with such loud winds. Yeah right... I basically didn't sleep the entire night because about every 10 minutes or so the entire Lean-to would shake and rattle with incredible force. I was assuming it was Rick shaking his leg and moving around, but in the morning when I asked him about it, his reply was "I thought that you were shaking the Lean-to last night". Yikes!! Rick being the more practical one then went on to speculate that maybe a tree was hitting the structure in the wind and upon further investigation found no trees or branches within striking distance of the thing. Luckily for us, our second evening in the Lean-to was less eventful, but that may be due to the better sleep we both had after hiking for 10 miles that day. I don't know, but whatever it was its kind of creeping me out the more I think about it. My sister is convinced that it was Big Foot and she's now on a mission to research "bizarre" experiences around Lake Colden. It did seem like somebody was hitting the side of the thing, and I really don't think the wind alone would rattle a structure like the way it was moving! I just keep thinking back to the written words left behind by a fellow camper many years ago "EVIL LEAN-TO"

Adirondack Camping Trip

On Thursday 9/24 Rick and I hiked into the backcountry of the Adirondack High Peaks. Starting at the Adirondack Loj, we hiked 6.4 miles into Lake Colden, spent 2 nights in the Beaver Point Lean-to, then Friday we climbed Mt. Marcy (highest peak in NY state at 5,353 ft) and Mt. Skylight (4th highest peak in NYS). On Saturday we hiked the 6.4 miles back out to Heart Lake spent the night in Lean-to #7 with a few friends and finally on Sunday it was back home. All in all we hiked a total of 28 miles in 3 days, slept in 20+ degree temps at night and had some of the best views we've had in a while. That being said we had a total awesome time. Can't wait til next years trip and on our way to being 46ers!!

Woodstock Race

This Sunday is race #3 of the NYS Mountain Bike Series http://nysmtbseries.com/ in beautiful Woodstock NY. Totally tubular! Theres already 7 guys pre-registered in Rick's category so he needs to haul ass to hold onto his series lead and I'm up against my usual rival, 13 year old Gili Rusak in my category!! Maybe for once I'll beat her, but I think that unless she has a major bike malfunction mid race, than the little chicky's got my number! Don't get me wrong though, I'm so amped to see this young girl so into mountain biking. We need to keep the sport alive and keep getting more and more girls and women involved, so come on ladies, man up and hit the saddles cuz we need ya! Plus there's a lot of cute guys in the MTB racing scene, so for all the single ladies maybe ya should consider it! Also, we purchased a brand new digital SLR camera this week! So expect way better pictures to be posted in the future! To check out more photos of the race series (and to scope out some of the cuties) hit up their Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nysmtbseries/

Heres a sample of what you'll find at the races:

And heres a completely irrelevant picture of my dog Joba

909 pics of me!!

I'm so stoked. Our race buddy Rob was kind enough to send a few pics from this weekends Taconic 909 race and one of them was of me!! I guess the reason I'm so excited is that since I'm the photographer in the family and since Rick and I race at the same time, its up to other people to snap action shots of me racing. I also found another photo of me on the NYS Mountain Bike Series Flickr page which is a rad photo too!! Thanks guys!!

September love

Yay for September! I love the fall! Bike races, festivals, craft fairs and camping trips are all in store for us this month. Super excited. Yesterday Rick and I raced the Taconic 909 race in Pleasant Valley NY. Rick came in 1st place AGAIN! And with this win, he's now leading the State Championship, so all he has to do is win the next 2 races and victory is his! I wasn't as fortunate placing a meager 5th out of 7th, but I'm not that disappointed. I'm always happy to finish a race with a smile on my face. Check out our new jerseys representing our bike shop!

Cyclocross Rocks!

Rick raced his first ever Cyclocross race last weekend and he loved it! I have to admitt that I thoroughly enjoyed it myself. Spectating cyclocross is way more fun that watching cross country racing. You get to see the entire race, ring cowbells, take tons of photos and yell words of encouragement (other things were being yelled too)! Total awesomeness, or as Rick refers to it... Awesomecross!

Victory at Last!!

Well Rick finally won a Cat 2 XC mountain bike race! At Plattekill Mountain in the lovely Catskill Mountains. All his training and hard work is finally paying off. Afterall, the boy gets up everyday at 5:30 am and pushes 35+ miles each day before heading to work. Now thats dedication and its obviously paying off. That course was a beast! I raced my 1st Cat 3 race that day as well and was happy to just to have finished. I did manage to pull off a 2nd place victory, but it was sort of a given being that there were only 2 girls in my class. But heck, its better than not racing at all! Check out the course map, oh and did I mention that it was pouring rain like crazy?? Yeah, try descending down a ski mountain in basically a river, throw in some wet rocks, cold weather and thick mud and you've got yourself a race. Great times though and way to go Ricky!!

09/10 Big Ski Trips booked!

Ahh theres nothing like planning ahead! And to help survive the summer heat, we tend to book our upcoming ski trips way in advance. Unfortunately we won't be exploring any new terrain this season it looks like, but I'm not complaining. At this point I'm beginning to run out of new terrain on this continent anyway. But that's not to say that the places we'll be skiing don't have tons of terrain that I haven't touched my skis down on, even if I've been there more than once! We've got Jay Peak lined up for mid December. Boy I love Jay Peak!! Its hands down the best place to ski on the East Coast! We're talking big mountain and tons of powder along with inexpensive slope side lodging via Hotel Jay (which has lived to survive the resorts expansion for yet another year). Just need to be careful of the extreme cold, and yes I mean extreme cold. Jay Peak is definitely the coldest place I have ever skied. In fact its definitely the coldest place I've ever been to I think. But as long as you bundle up and ride the tram, you'll be just fine. I find chugging beer in the lodge in between runs helps build up my tolerance level as well. Rick often refers to these 22oz's as Anti Cranky Juice. Ahh how I love thee!!

Also in the books is our annual Long Island Ski Group trip, and this time its back to Jackson Hole Wyoming. This will be my 3rd time shredding that monster! And each time that mountain manages to kicks my ass just a bit more. They've got the new tram up and running, with no real issues in its 1st year on the ropes. They could probably tighten up the tension on the cables a bit, but otherwise that baby's a beauty! Gets 100 die hard skiers / boarders up that beast of a mountain in just about 8 minutes! Last year Rick and I were blessed with a foot of powder, which in turn made for one of my all time best days on the slopes! Hope we're as lucky (if not luckier) this year! Also plan on making a day trip over the pass to Grand Targhee to shred the backside of the Tetons! Needless to say, the last time I was there it was a complete windstorm, which in turn resulted in a full day at the bar after a few attempted runs. My yard sale in the kids fun zone helped secure my spot at the bar shortly after it opened at 11am as well!! Lets hope for a better day there this year!

And finally we'll be back in Utah. Often referred to as the Holy Land by the Mormons, it also is referred to that by skiers and snowboarders, only for different reasons. They certainly have every right claiming the 'best snow on earth', that's for sure! Utah also is where Rick & I celebrated our honeymoon. But instead of staying in the mecca that is Park City, we'll be residing off the beaten path in a little city known as Ogden. From there we'll access Snowbasin (probably one of my favorite mountains ever) and Powder Mountain (home of some of the best cat skiing anywhere, and for $7 a ride I'd say its a bargain, especially since a train ride to NYC is more expensive than that these days). I mean come on, check out this picture of Rick tearing down the Men's Downhill run at Snowbasin. It hadn't snowed there in almost a week and look at all that white fluffy goodness! Can't wait! Just have 5 more months to get thru and then I'll be back in my element!

'til then... Peace & Snow Yo!