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Friday, May 01, 2009

EVERYBODY PANIC!!!

Man I am so tired of hearing about the pig flu. The media hasn't had much negative to say lately, the wars have settled down (mostly), the economy is starting to recover, the president isn't a moron...so what do they do? A few people came up with an exotic version of the flu so we better completely blow it our of proportion. How about a few real facts for our current pandemic:
- A 22 month sickly Mexican in Texas has died of the swine flu
- Mexico's infection and death estimates continue to climb
- 36,000 people die every year from the regular flu.
- Since Monday 1 person in the United States has died from swine flu.
- The tally in the last three days: Swine Flu: 1, Real Flu: 295.

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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

RAWROD '09


So some of you may already know this, but on Saturday I went to Moab and completed a goal that I've had for several years. Riding the White-Rim in one day. The guys we rode it with refer to this as a dirty century. In the road bike world a century is a 100 mile ride or race. A dirty century means you do it off-road on a mountain bike. To make things more interesting it has about 6,000 vertical feet in elevation change to go along with the 106 mile distance. There aren't many things that I've done in my life that I'm proud of, but this is one of them. The weather wasn't perfect (30 MPH headwinds for most of the rids), but overall it was a good time. The views are spectacular, and the people we rode it with were awesome. I can't say enough about Kenny Jones and his willingness to setup this non-event. Kenny calls it the RAWROD - Ride Around White Rim One Day. My friend Bob and I went down Friday expecting there to be 20-30 people for the ride, but it was somewhere north of 70 that showed up. It was really the whose-who of Utah mountain biking - I felt a little out of place being around so many fast people. That is one of the things I love about the mountain bike community. From Heather and Steve, to Kenny and Brad they all made me feel welcome. Overall I did well, I didn't complain, and I finished in the middle of the pack somewhere (it wasn't a race, it was just nice not to be the last one up the hill). I made a few mistakes on the ride... I didn't take enough pictures, I put my food and extra water in the slow support vehicle so Bob and I had to wait an hour+ for it to catch up to us, and I went two hours without eating.

And just so I don't think I'm a hard ass for completing this ride, about 1/2 the bikes that rode the RAWROD did it on rigid single-speed bikes - yes, that means no suspension and only 1 gear. Wicked!

If you want to see the rest of my pictures they can be found here:
RAWROD

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