March 2019

At times you gotta kick your way through this bitch.
                                                                           - Brother Ali

It's been a chronological year since my last post...a lot has happened since then. Most notably the loss of my Dad. I spent roughly 6 months clearing up stuff with his estate with the final act being the sale of his house in November.  The distraction of all the work before me, tempered the intense pain of losing my Dad. That would catch up to me as we entered late fall, outdoor activity drops off and it's dark and cold all the time. The depressing lack of sunlight and constant cold coupled with lots of downtime let the reality sink in....my Dad is really gone.....my dad was not going to die this soon.....fuck....I miss him.    I still enjoyed most of winter this year, although many times activities felt forced by my own will to push aside the dark curtains that are shading everything. As winter has subsided my attitude has gotten better, the sunlight really helps and now I'm feeling like getting some of my summer back from last year. I'm picking this blog up with march because it was fucking awesome and winter pretty much has it's ass kicked.





       

warming up with some hiking with ice ax assist 

Fat-biking before headed out to camp later in the afternoon

Second weekend of March was Man Trip, we pushed it a week due to intense cold. We want to enjoy ourselves not spend all our time trying not to freeze our balls off. We had a good crew and my oldest son came along as a right of passage, in truth he could have kicked all our asses. I was glad to have him and hope he enjoyed his time with the big boys.

Stumpy

Giegle and ArcFlash

On our way down river for a camp-out

Team meeting

ledges were common as well as our sleds falling off of them 

We dug out about 4 feet of snow to build a fire 

Good morning

Breaking camp

The rappel is always fun 

Skiing trails at Onion River 

A little night time fat-biking 

 Just a week later I was down in Oklahoma for the Land Run 100 with ArcFlash and O'Neil. Never before have I felt so unprepared and out of place at a race/event. I had maybe 30 miles of riding in, in the previous couple months and seriously wondered if I could even finish 100 miles. I carefully controlled my pace, brought lots of food and water and enjoyed the hell out of the entire day. I finished with nary a twinge of leg cramps and great satisfaction of going from couch to century ride. I even got the super cool Chase the Chaise patch from Salsa Cycles and my picture taken with my old pal Kid Riemer on the chaise.

I don'y have any pics from land run because my SD card is MIA.....here is my proof and prizes for completing the race.....damn it was fun  

I only have a couple pics of NW Arkansas for the same reason as above....missing SD card 

With a week and a half-ish in between travels, I finished up our DIY camper , crafted from a 6X12 enclosed trailer....... I call it the Teardrop XL.  It sleeps 5 and has a little kitchen in back. With the final touches going right to the wire and trimming the cushions to fit, moments after being dropped off by the FedEx guy, we were off to NW Arkansas. We would spend 4 days mountain biking the awesome trails in Bentonville and Bella Vista as well as three day kayak trip down the Buffalo National River. By the time we got to the kayak portion it was April so I'll cover that in a later post.

D Rider........................................out