Never Trust Women

So...my sister, Elizabeth, moved out a few weeks ago into a house with 3 other girls. They were having a house party with a Mullet theme. They encouraged mullets and said there would be wine and cheese in the front and beer in the back, along with some flip cup stuff.
Well, I get there to find that I am the only one in a mullet and the girls are all dressed up and the pony keg is in the front and they don't even know how to tap it. What kind of mullet party is that?!
In the true form of my family, even the youngest members show up to keg parties. My sisters grew up doing it and now my nieces and nephew are learning the same. (Actually, they just happened to be there for a bit in the beginning but not the whole night. And they didn't try to steel the keg and run off like on of my sisters did back in the day.)

My family of little Joe Dirts.

Triathlon

Saturday was the Buffalo Creek Xterra Triathlon. It was a sweet day with good temps and overcast skies, the way I like it. Sometimes, the direct Colorado sun is more than I need when biking and such. Christie did the full tri, 1 mi swim, 20 mt bike, 5 mi trail run. Me and Pam did half that. It took me and Pam about 2 hours and Christie about 4 hours.

Pam thinking..."We are going to do what? I thought we were here for pizza!"
Smooth water, 61 degrees. Not too bad at all.

Christie and Pam in their shower caps getting ready.

Not quite Aquaman.

Pam, asking what I think of her with a shaved head.

All those birds on the water are actually arms. Mob swim time. It actually wasn't too bad, only a few feet in my face. The hardest part was swimming in a straight line. I think I covered a about a 100 extra yards zig zagging.

Pam summing it up.

Pam thinking of a smart answer to another one of my smart questions.

Christie, heading out for her 5 miler. It started to rain right after me and Pam finished. Lucky for us, not so lucky for her. But it wasn't too bad. Just another day in the life.

The widest bars with bar-ends on them. I think this guy was from Texas and used to the long horns.

...and DONE.

My swim was better than I expected, the bike should have been a few minutes faster, and the run had my guts all twisted up and having to walk a bunch. I didn't feel so good for a bit after the run, but the cramps finally passed and I got a free lunch, well it was included in the entry fee anyway.

I'm thinking about the full Xterra next year, but that is also a long ways away.

On another note, I was trying to think of how to create my own type of triathlon. I was thinking of a white water swim, trail run, downhill bike, something maybe like Downieville, a 18 mile DH/Super D run. Then Christie found this, guess I wasn't the only one thinking of such things. I will have to get some more info on this one.

http://www.usmultisport.com/EventDetails.aspx?EventID=2089

Then for yet another alternative, there is the Beer-Bike-Bench that is held in Golden each year.

Timed Road bike, Bench press as much as possible, then timed malt liquor chug. Wayne was there this year and said it was pretty sweet.

http://www.beerbikebench.com/

Sol Vista

I went to Sol Vista on Friday with Jeremy and met up with CT and some other buddies. It was a great day of riding, no one was there because of the race at Crested Butte. Intense was there doing bike demos, so I took a few runs on their new 951 and an Uzzi. The 951 felt pretty crappy due to soft rear shock and stiff fork, terrible combination, not to mention the less than stellar Kenda tires on it. I wasn't impressed, but that was hardly the conditions to be evaluating a bike frame, but none the less, pretty lame of intense to not have any other setups available. But it was cool to get a few runs on someone else's bike. The Uzzi was a ripper. I felt like the bike was WAY faster than I was, it was ripping the berms and floating the doubles. Definitely a fun bike.

Me on the 951.
Jeremy on the 951, he said he didn't really like the suspension either, but he really liked the bike.

Here is what not to do...misload the bike rack and cause the chairs to stop and damage your bike and the one next to you.

CT on the ski jump.

Jeremy on Ski Jump.

Same dude that misloaded bailing on Ski Jump. (He is getting famous here.)

CT.

Jeremy.

Finally, had a chance to hit the jumps on Cougar, they were always there under the lift but I never made it there til Friday and CT helped me through them. Here is Jeremy on Stiletto.

Me.

CT, setting it down smooth.

Jeremy on Edgar.

Me on same.

CT, making the long double into left berm look so easy, but I still haven't sucked it up yet and tried it. Maybe when Loo and Ziska are here provoking me.

Jeremy clearing the table at bottom.

Shock Rebuild

I sent my 5th Element Shock off yesterday to get rebuilt and remove the SPV for a shim mod.

http://www.thebrokenbike.com/progressive_fifth_coil_rebuild.html

His sister site is pretty good too...

http://www.mtbshock.com/shock_info.html

...but still under some construction.

Pics of me

Well, I guess I need to hand off my camera more or get Pam to actually send me some of her pics that she takes. Everyone mentions it, I finally really saw it when I went back to look at my blog, there are not many pics of me in it all. But, I guess everyone reading this already knows what I look like and can figure that I am doing pretty much the same as everybody else in the pictures, except for crashing, I do it even more!

Laramie, WY

At the beginning of June, me and Pam headed up to Laramie for some biking and some skiing. We went to Curt Gowdey Park which built about 25 miles of new single track since I went to school there. The trails were all pretty fun and flowy and a few of them were pretty technical. The best of these for me was riding EL Alto counter-clockwise. There plenty of huge rock slabs to ride on as well.

Trying to ride one handed and take pictures, like I have seen Wayne do. Not a good idea when things get technical, but I managed to survive.

They even put cows on the trail for us to ride through, but they do leave a few obstacles behind. Pam yelled at me for chasing them so I had to turn around and leave them alone.

The corner assist.

Waterfalls.

The western way of keeping 29ers on the trail and from making go-arounds.

Wyoming Vultures.

Sweet car on the side of the road on the way to Christie's.

The next day we headed up to the Snowys and hiked on Meadicine Bow Peak. There were some crazy snowmobilers high marking on Old Main, which is pretty steep and they were up pretty high.

Then we got some hail on our way up.

We did two runs, one we had to hike the rocks a bit, the other was straight up the face in the snow.

Pam is in this picture hiking but hard to see, center leftish.

We were able to ski all the way back to the car which is on the road at the top of the picture below, but we had to do a lot of zigging and zagging and a few small climbs to stay on the snow.

The exit lead us thru a few bushy sections, but it was better than hiking out.

Super fun trip. I always look forward to these in Wyoming at the start of summer.