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Genevieve gets owees, or hurts, or boo boos, or whatever you want to call them, all the time. This is mostly due to her preferred method of locomotion, which is the sprint, followed by the faceplant. She executes this maneuver on a regular basis, particularly when we go out to walk the dog in the desert.

Our outings normally go like this:

1) Unbuckle the baby from the car seat and carry her over to the trail. On the way to the trail (aprox 20 yards) , she starts squirming and kicking.

2) Put the baby down. Upon making contact with the ground, she takes off like a wind-up toy, sprinting at full tilt towards something only she can see.

3) Yell careful!! several times in her general direction.

4) Watch as some unseen crack, rock, stick, pit, or other desert-related hazard causes G to eat it. She hits the ground, thinks for a second, then decides, based on various indicators (mom’s reaction, her actual pain level, ect.) what to do. Normally, the reaction involves some combination of crying and yelling “oweee” in her plaintive, sad baby-voice.

5) Go over, pick the baby up off the ground, brush of dirt, rocks and other debris, and find out what part of the baby is hurt.

6) Kiss the hurt part(s) to make them better. Crying now stops.

7) Go to step #2. Repeat process.

This goes on for about 20 minutes, then G gets tired and wants to be carried back to the car. What is most interesting to me about the entire process is how her and I have fallen into the “kissing and making it better” part. I don’t really remember when I started doing it or why, but it really works. Now, whenever G gets an oweee, she cries until she gets a kiss, then she stops. I have even caught her making up owees just to get a kiss. Faker.

Byron & me; my office up Javalina up National to BV and back; like many other rides. except i got a whole lotta shit going up i have never gotten before. the Heckler going up is like one of those Cave trolls or mechwarriors in a movie – it makes a big power move, recovers, repeats. Riding it up goes BUMP, push off the rebound, CRANK! so different from the Blur. Soooooooo sweet on tech stuff. it is also the big leveller – I can climb like Byron and now am just as slow . i almost want to list the things i got over that i never get over, so i remember them fondly as soon they will stop being things i never got over. they’ve haunted me so, for so long, that i have a Helsinki syndrome thing for them. The big 4 rock lift near the start of the ridgeline – made it up to the 4th one for the first time. the big rock face – i think some people call it Bermuda Triangle, not that hard down, but I finally got up it. Byron was standing on it when i rolled by and said “dude I’ve never made this”. cool. the first big up step after the Mormon\National split – I make it about 50% of the time on the Blur, just rolled up and over easy today. and many more I can not recall, many bouncy and chummy sections that I make irregularly — all rolled under my wheels. WOW! very very cool. And of yeah, the rock on the way down that i have never made without sparks, i made without nothing. bash guard rules. it was a very quiet cruise down the ridgeline to the end, no claaaaaanging whatsoever. The only thing holding me back was the dark. We left about 5:45 and hit our lights about 7 at the Waterfall on the way up. Next time…i can’t wait to go faster next time.

This cherry done gone, all that remains is the bottle opener. Beckie better get her ass in gear and ride with me. My one gripe is the bike is collecting scratches and dings. and i’m so far up in the saddle the fork is taking a beating, and i need to get some stanchion guards. damn…its like talking about plastic surgery already. I need to get over this. But I don’t want to, it was so pretty. So very pretty and new.