Not the greatest day.

Man I knew this would happen. I have been meaning to send in my broken fly rod, but at the Fly Fishing Show last weekend, Moj worked and let me do a bit of shopping. I got a new 3 weight rod with an Orvis reel, a fanny pack, and some flies from The Allen Brothers.

I drove to South Boulder creek tailwater this morning. I was not sure if I should fish at all or do important normal life things (work, laundry, etc.). Decided that the weather was too nice and I should probably just get a couple hours on the water. I mean I haven't caught a fish the last two times I went out. I need a fix. So my alcoholic neighbor is sauntering home from the supermarket, and maybe the liquor store at about 9 this morning and I told him I was going fishing. He wanted to join me so we drove the 45 minutes together to the river. We get there and there are no cars in the lot. Score. Lando is bounding down the trail as happy as can be and it is colder than it is supposed to be. The creek has snow and ice on both sides and the hole where I pulled a 13 inch rainbow out of last week is empty and barely moving. There is ice everywhere so we decide to call it a day. Maybe we can hit Eben G. Fine back in town. On the way out while going over the windy dirt road I get a flat tire. Cranking the jack up, I drag my knuckles on the ground. Dirty, cold, and now bleeding we finally fix the tire and limp home. I drop off my neighbor, eat lunch, and take Lando to Discount Tire. Not my first choice due to online reviews, but apparently the only place that stocks the model of tire snow tire that I currently have. We wait around for an hour while they charge me a hundred bucks for a new tire that will supposedly ruin my drivetrain unless I buy four new ones. I will take the risk as the other three are pretty much new. When that is finished, I take Lando to the Humane Society to get four shots. He wasn't too thrilled. At least by the time I got home, I was able to do some laundry...
The weather was nice, I got outside, and things can always be worse.

Car trouble.

Friday night we went crazy and met Ed for some movies at the Boulder Film Festival. We saw Gum for my Boat and Tibet: Murder in the Snow. I liked the first one more (which is why it gets the link) and made me realize how much I love traveling. On the way there the car died. I have been borrowing Mom's car until she can drive again or we get our own. That would require the Craigslist people to respond. So we got a jump and made it a bit further. It died again so we got another jump start. The third jump got us to a parking spot where we could leave it overnight. I had to move it before 9 Saturday morning so I wouldn't get ticketed or have to pay for parking. I called a friend of my moms to help me figure out what is wrong. I am not mechanically inclined. I would have AAA tow it to a mechanic. But that isn't how my mother works. Her friend showed up with a tow rope. Great. I make fun of people in a car that are being towed with another car using a rope. Now I was the guy in the second car. The rope seemed very short and I was scared of rear ending my tower. Or hitting something. Or the rope breaking. Or the rope coming off my car. Or anything else!

It was kinda like this.

Eventually we made is to another friend of my mother's house. We parked the car and hoped that it wouldn't start snowing yet. We took out (I watched) the battery and took it somewhere to get charged. Apparently, we couldn't find out the real problem until the battery worked. Maybe the battery was the problem. We dropped it off and they told us to come back in two hours. I went home and worked on team stuff. A couple of hours later we went back to the mechanics to pick up the battery. Apparently, they didn't do it correctly and it would be a couple more hours.
So I am still tagging along with my mom's friend. He took me to a radio station, KGNU, where we hung out. A couple hours later (after wandering in and out of studios) we returned and picked up the battery. Now it is 2 in the afternoon. This all started about 8 in the morning. The battery is charged. Now it has begun snowing. We take it to the car and the car starts. However, when we turn on the lights, the power gets low. The windshield wipers might kill it again. So we leave the car and go to buy a fusible link. Apparently, this car has had this problem in the past. We buy a couple fusible links and return to the car. Despite only being 4 in the afternoon it is dark, snowing, and feels to be about 20 degrees. We decide that it is not a good time to work on the car. (I didn't want to stand in the snow and watch.) It has been snowing all weekend. I have two new fusible links sitting here beside me. Maybe someone will put them in the car tomorrow. Then they can follow me to see if the car still dies when it is being driven.

AZ.

I drove a couple of days to make it to Phoenix. I actually drove past Phoenix to get past the utterly insane suburban sprawl that is Phoenix and all of it's incorporating towns. I am staying in Apache Junction. I thought this was interesting when learning about AJ on Wikipedia.
There are a total of 51 RV parks in Apache Junction. 1, the Lost Dutchman, is a state park. 9 offer wireless internet connection. Note that only two of these RV Parks have indoor plumbing, the rest rely on a network of outhouses scattered throughout the park.
I am glad that I chose one of the right places to stay! Thank you KOA. I rode my bike toward the Superstition Mountains thinking that it was a cool place. Turns out that the rumor is that there is a cursed gold mine that nobody can find. If you go looking you will probably die. Luckily, gold doesn't interest me that much.
With SOMA in a couple of days I am excited to get racing again. I am even more excited for the off season. We found an apartment in Boulder that seems to be perfect. It is across the street from an Indian restaurant and a fly fishing store. Could I be any happier? I just remembered that Silverman is 16 days away. I may have just told them that I want to enter. What am I getting myself into?!

Kirland and last WA races.

We are now in Los Angeles. The only thing nice that I have to say about it... well we are leaving in 3 days. I can't wait to a) get out of here b) go to Hawai'i. We drove for 3 days straight to get here, have been busting our butt at work and tomorrow I get to race the LA Tri.

This is from the sprint in Kirkland a couple of weeks ago. I was laughing with my new friend Cody. He used to be stationed on O'ahu so we got to talk about Hawai'i while racing. I think that it made me faster, but he still beat me. I like talking to people while racing. Sometimes they like it too.

The following week, I ran a half marathon. Here is the only (bad) picture that they took of me. I think that every race should have plenty of photographers and a coffee truck. I don't drink coffee, but they make a killing at every race where they show up.

My first time.

Beautiful Breckenridge.

We left Boulder yesterday after going for a bike ride with David of BimBamBoo. We slept in the Wal Mart parking lot in Frisco with no problems. It was our first time just pulling up to a place and going to sleep. This morning I got to get up and ride to Vail Pass. It was raining, but I didn't want to let anything stop me. The rain was intermittent and after being wet and cold for an hour, I made it to Copper Mountain. The weather looked worse ahead so I decided to turn around early.

Here is the path up to Vail Pass.

It was stunning. I followed a stream (with I-70 on the other side) uphill for a long time. I was in awe of the views every minute. There are great paved paths all around Frisco to all of the small towns nearby.

Copper Mountain from a bike.

We left Frisco and headed for Breckenridge. Walking around cute mountain town #2 (Breck) was fun. Busy, but fun. There are lots of tourists here in the mountains. We expect a lot more over the next couple of days. We were looking for a place to have lunch when we saw a fly fishing shop (Breckenridge Outfitters) giving away free Bratwurst. That enticed us in. We bought some flies, got some advice, and were on our way. The Blue River goes right through town here in Breck. We drove 5 minutes out of town and walked past a dozen other people fishing. We saw lots of fish and I thought that I was going to have to name this blog "If another fish spits out my flies...". Happily I don't. I caught my first fish today. Well I have caught lots of fish while fly fishing, but always with a guide. So this is my first fish without a guide. Mojdeh nailed one before we left Taupo. I hooked one, but never landed any. Today was my day. We even had a camera.

The walk along the river.

Hanapa'a!

Brook Trout.

 

The release.

In the rain.

The rain absolutely POURS when it rains here. We tried to stick it out, but the weather got the best of us. We will be going out later to try and hook a few more this evening. Thanks to Fishy Steve for teaching me so much during our trip to New Zealand. For those that care, we saw the fish becoming airborne trying to eat their food. They might have been going for some emergers, but the technique to mimic the emergers sounded difficult. I caught this Brook Trout using a #20 cannon bunny dun.

Wildflower

Rudy Garcia-Tolson.

Wow. Leaving Yosemite, our next event was Wildflower. What a great, crazy, busy, fun few days. I got to see Terenzo Bozzone, Chris Lieto, "One Arm" Willie Stewart, Andy Potts, Luke Bell, Rudy Garcia-Tolson, Sarah Reinertsen, and many more heroes race.

Me and Luke Bell.

Mojdeh cheering on Terenzo Bozzone.

We are back in Buellton where we are having transmission trouble again. Tomorrow, they might tell us what is wrong. Then we are going to Tempe, Arizona for a week.

Stranded.

We left Sunset Beach yesterday. We drove 9 hours up to San Jose. We stayed with Mojdeh's aunt again. It was a quick overnight stop. This morning, we ran to Costco, the post office, Trader Joe's, the gas station, and Safeway, then we were on our way. We packed most of the bikes into the trailer and hit the road. We were excited to get away and start a small vacation. A couple of hours drive into our trip the car died. We pulled over and called AAA. They picked us up and took us to the nearby Chevy dealer. The manager there is a cyclist that moved to Sonora (where we are) California. He was very friendly. He had their mechanic take a look at it, but they couldn't figure out what was wrong. So now they are going to look at it in more detail tomorrow. Turns out Sonora is a cool little town. Some of the people wear overalls and have long beards and some own wineries. We had a great dinner at the Diamondback Grill. I hope that we get to go to Yosemite tomorrow, but if we don't we have a new favorite place to eat. All organic greens, free range beef, and pesto and gorgonzola burgers. The table next to us found a grasshopper on their salad. That is organic!