Sundance Has Been Redeemed

To celebrate my independence I went mountain biking at Sundance and was very happy to find it had been liberated from the caterpillars. My downhill skills have improved quite a bit over last year, Jen has even stopped making jokes about me calling her from the ER. I'm going faster than ever and with much more control, especially through the turns. Some of this is probably due to the fact that I've been mountain biking in Provo Canyone several times a week. The Bonneville Shorline Trail (BST) is a beast to ride uphill but you're rewarded greatly on the downhill. A lot of great corners with just enough back tire sliding to keep things interesting. Mucho Funno! I'm going to hit Sundance a couple of times this week to prepare for the Super D race that's coming up. Sundance just needs to figure out if they're having it on the 12th or the 19th, if at all. I may just end up racing at Deer Valley, we'll see.

Later in the evening we celebrated the 4th by doing what Americans do best, we ate a big hamburger dinner(actually it was a bison burger, mmmm) then set a bunch of fireworks on fire on the street. There's nothing that Americans like better than getting fat and blowing stuff up. Here's to beating down the old enemy.

Bummer and a Surprise

I was stoked all last week to do some downhill mountain biking at Sundance. They were scheduled to run the lifts on Saturday. When I got there I found the bike shop closed and the lift standing still. Major Bummer!

Since I didn't want to go back home I drove down the canyon to one of the parks and unloaded my bike. I found the Bonneville Shorline Trailhead for Provo canyon and started up. Since I was planning on doing some downhill riding I just had my platform pedals and no my clipless. It really made the rock uphill riding pretty hard. I was able to make it up most of the hills but between my wheel spinning out and my feet slipping off the pedals I had to hike-a-bike a few times up the hills.

The surprise came on the way back down. It was a lot of up and down, but mostly down, fun corners, kinda loosey goosey type stuff.

Downhill vs Down hill

Since it's cold and raining and I can't ride my bike and haven't been able to all week I thought I'd write a bit about the awesomeness of downhill mountain biking. My downhill is a wussy downhill since I have neither the length of travel necessary on my bike, nor the lack of concern for bodily harm to do serious downhill. So for me downhill is just that down hill, perhaps I should separate the the two words from now on just to differentiate. With that said, I should redeem myself a little and state that I am no stranger to speed and quite enjoy it. I have a 5" full suspension K2 Lithium that I bought used from Sundance. I put on a new front fork and Avid Juicy 5 disc brakes and it is now a sweet bike. I love shooting down the trail, floating over the bumps and carrying speed through the turns, it's an awesome feeling. I used to be one for catching a lot of air but the full suspension is still throwing me off a bit so I need to get a little more used to it before I really let go. Anyway, I'm all about riding the lifts and dropping down the trail, letting gravity do the work.