chollaball.net

Rancho 6 was a mulligan, Alex’s re-decorating year. Hard to believe its been 2 years; hard to believe its been 7 years.

Just me and James were able to make it, and we three made a tight little ManClan.  Alex’s riding is so much like mine that he easily fit with James. James is so much faster than us and likes fiddling with his fancy camera. I made salad.

Friday was Highline in Sedona. My pics suck, the ride was so good i spent no time with setup or light. Kinda pointless anyway when Maad has his fancy glass and makes me look like a rockstar.

My 3rd time on Highline and the DH has totally slowed down, which makes it even cooler to now reflect on just how intense is the 5-minute unbroken string of challenges.  Steep roller, steep slot, steep chunky staircase, 10 nasty switchbacks.

It was too hot for late September, over 90. Buddha Beach was wonderful.

despite James refusing all weekend to smile cause it hurts his CORE-ness.

After a night of Rancho shenanigans, Saturday was going to be a big day. Schultz->Little Gnarly->Jedi->AZT all the way to Aspen Corner. 30 miles and about 4.5 hrs spinning.

It took us almost 2 hrs from Jedi to our stopping point along the AZT. By the end I was cracking, but the rest stop was worth it. Slack bike, flat pedals, and almost 9k altitude made the long climb hurt. The new stretch of AZT is absolutely fantastic; bermed and benched and armored in all the right places.  I let it hang out on the 5 mile descent as The Bird got payback for all the suffering on the climb.

Steaks and shots back at Rancho

James’ fork seals blew up at the very end of our ride on Saturday, and Alex found out he needed to leave much earlier than anticipated. So we opted for a sweet little hike Sunday morning to end the weekend.

4 rides, 4 wrecks. All of em climbing.

$4000 and another grand in swapped parts — i really wanted to lurrrrrrrrrrvve it.

I’ve got painful dingers on both elbows, right butt cheek, left ass crack, and right wrist. The Bird is beating the crap outta me.  Yesterday i flopped over backwards doing a manual, much to the delight of the assembled masses.

The Bird’s taller fork, shorter stem, and slacker geo all make climbing harder. The DW link performs better under strain, vs. the Heckler’s single pivot which took the punch then eased into a rebound.  I need to recalibrate, pull my weight up on my feet and over obstacles, frequency-sync to the suspension’s shorter wavelengths.

Maad and I climbed a couple hundred feet above the Valley, then lazily took in the aurora of the megalopolis, Summer finally revealing a hint of weakness in a gentle breeze. A little positive feedback for an easier climb than going up National while its 105. The Bird and I needed some quiet moments together.

Paradise Wash is a new trail on a 6.5inch bike. Deflections, wheel grabbers, and precise steering ignored in favor of gravity’s pull on a squishy stable platform.  The closest I’ve gotten on a bike to snowboarding through trees. 8:28 – fastest time in 50 tries. It almost completely muted the pain of the falls.

I rolled into the Hill Park and launched a 5 stepper in the dark, didn’t see the bottom til i hit it.  Without letting the wheels stop rolling I dropped the rockface next to the curvy slide and then the steep boulder into the sand pit that I’ve been eyeing for 1.5 years on every trip to the park.  These trials do not lend themselves to bike trailers. Then we ran from Security, slaloming down suburban streets through the non-light-polluting glow of McMansions.

Stay tuned while I polish the route and come up with a diversion for the security guard.

sunset bike ride to the grocery store for treats

1st day of school

2nd day of school

James, Doug, Dara and I, with guest appearances along the mountain by probably 10 Phoenix peeps. Getting up at 5 sucked, but the family outta town meant I had the whole day to enjoy with my friends.

Schultz-> Dogfood-> Pipeline-> Yo Moma’s Secret-> Secret-> Supermoto-> AZT-> Schultz-> Lil’Gnarly-> Brookbank-> Sunset-> Lil’Gnarly-> Jedi-> Schultz-> Be​er and pizza from Fratelli’s.

4 hrs riding, 25 miles, 4k vf. Beautiful weather, no traffic, the only bummer was Doug crashing on Jedi and needing 10 stitches at Urgent Care. It didn’t phase him, which is why we love Dougmore. Meanwhile we hung out at Erik’s awesome house in downtown Flag – thanks Erik great to see you again.

i have no clue what this is, but it gave me a break on the HAB up Brookbank

top of Sunset

Dry Lake Hills

Jedi

Go see some far better pics over on Maad’s site.

The title is kinda poaching, but I can’t be blamed if its licensed users bail and leave me with the intellectual property rights.  John joined James and I out in east Mesa, that makes the copyright infringement ok.  The route was Fenceline->Power Road->Phon D to the River, then the back way along the canal into TRW, to the Red Mtn Ranch golf course. I can’t believe i never thought up this route before, chasing eachother crit-style sprints for 20 miles. This route needs to be hit more than once every 11 years. John did it all on his CX bike, my suspension was locked out the entire time. It was all about sunsets and water, fast rolling on easy terrain during another 100 degree evening, sailing in shadows through sand and sprinklers.

GrowAZ is a newish grassrootsy collective of bike geeks who think acting with one voice might get us somewhere. Black Power and whatnot. The park manager of McDowell Mtn Park is extremely bike friendly, recognizing the majority of daily traffic in the park are bikes. The PT got built last year, tucked into a corner where no one but other bikers go. Ahh…fences make for good neighbors, even the equestrians kvelled when i paraded G out at a planning meeting and said how free-riding is family-friendly. Props to LateDropBob and others who have been working hard to make things happen with powers-that-be.  Today was our first rebuild workday, and hopefully the first of several cool features added to the Park. The Park matched our 20 volunteers with a water supply and a loader.

First samples on the backside were gnariffic. I can’t wait to try the jump line after it dries.

Kiefer and G alternated riding and DVDs. Somewhere is Kila who wandered around and about and under the EZup for 4 hrs. and look, its my laptop sitting right where i left it! Thanks KennyB for saving it, and building your S-curve.

KIDDIE BIKE PORN BELOW!
you’ve been warned…

Authority Zero – Get It Right

I gave 3 weeks notice at work. 2 to do the right thing and wrap up a release, and an extra to burn down vacation. LiveNation stopped paying out vacation balance; all in all just another brick in the wall.

I had only ~4 days of work to do in that time, and the spaces in my Outlook calendar became a methadone program. The first day i forced myself not to check email at 9pm i got tremors. Other days i filled with bikes, house projects, trips to the pool. I finished Project Firebird, and tried new restaurants. Maad and I kayaked Saguaro Lake in the morning then installed blinds in the rental house – it was like a regular weekend day, including doing all the grocery shopping and not really feeling off work at all. I re-read my Java textbook – all 670 pages and a few of the indeces. It weighed more than my laptop, but i hauled it on commutes to work, to snatch some passages during the day and train a little. I slogged it on walks with Kila. When i was in Tent City there was this skinny, greasy dude passed out on his cinder-block sized bible during nearly all 7 hours in holding. I saw him the next day at kickout for another 3 hours, still wearing the dirty windbreaker, whispering his words, carrying his bible. Takes a junkie to spot one, i guess. A clean break, a payout, and a week off would have been smoother, but i’m not so sure better. A wean is more holistic.

I borrowed a big bike for a week, and hauled it up Mt. Elden, having so little fun i thought i’d skip replacing the Heckler entirely. It payed off on the downhill. I got this rock on Wasabi for the first time ever (pic, not of me, ganked off MTBR. thank you unknown photographer).

We daisychained onto Beckie’s Arizona Economic Roundtable Conference for 4 days in a nice hotel in downtown Flag, and didn’t move the car for 91 hrs. I couldn”t stop checking work email between trips with the girls around NAU, to Thorpe Park, the library, and Sunset Crater.

Cybro and I spent a lot of time together.

The 3 hrs I’d be in the office every other day, I mostly hid in my cube or scurried to the kitchen with my eyes down. Once I started shutting off, it was easier to continue distancing myself. The day after i dropped the bomb was filled with heavy conversations, which mercifully slowed or i subsequently managed to avoid . You get closer than you think after 7 years, and i struggled to balance closure with the reality that we hadn’t ever hung outside of work and weren’t about to start. Freedom to delete any incoming email that struck my fancy balmed a lot of the burns. All the shit i’d wanted to blow off i could, and tossed one deserving dilhole under the bus.  I went back for thirds on donuts and meeting leftovers and waved 6 times. I worked until 2:30 on my last Friday on an emergency release. Respect for great teammates. Then i wiped my drive.

My final week ‘at work‘ was about as much fun as you can have in Phx in summer. I commuted, then took the kids to the pool. I drank beer and got up at 4am for shuttles on Somo. On our first drive up the mountain we watched a cat bolt across the street with a dog right on its ass. It hucked itself up this saguaro, but was gone by the time we came down Geronimo. Pic courtesy of LateDropBob.

3 rides in armor and a full-face had me dizzy after the short climb on National to the dropin on 24th Street. It was worth it, to just geek out on trying the big bike. It was too big, literally, i needed a S not a M, and 4-5 lbs overbuilt for me. I liked it on the rock slots, where the wheels pushed back against everything that bucked me. I cleaned Trip to the Dentist on Holbert for the first time, and rolled the rock bridge and its exit and half of the boulder garden. It was partly me, partly the bike. The Heckler was a 4 yr old single pivot with a flexy rear, a 32mm fork and shitty rims. How can the next bike not be better, even if its not a 38 lb chro-mo sled?

Pro’s Market reopened their Central Avenue location. I brought home queso, pork, and a sack of roasted jalapenos.

I drank beer and got up at 4am for my first ride to Bartlett Lake. 65 miles, 4.25 hrs, and a lot of climbing. It started with a ~19 mile gradual ascent punctuated by a 3 mile climb up to Seven Springs Road. The drop into the lake was almost 14 miles, all but 4 of them down, and those 4 hurt. Statistically, the ride compared closely to Tortilla Flat, but felt little like it. The road was designed for cars with no speed limit less than 30. I hit stretches where I went almost 40mph for a minute at a time with no fear. It would be long slow death coming back up, with no switchbacks or narrow walls to distract me from my suffering. The three climbs out hurt, hurt less, and hurt more. I sailed home in under an hour.

hey buddy, there’s bacon a mile north!

The last day at work I commuted in, cause it was my idiom, and i was going to a happy hour. Another group of coworkers took me out to lunch. The 2 nicest places i’ve been in downtown Scottsdale. Outside of work, doing day-to-day things, watching people eat, i was overcome with melancholy. Work, workout, kids do not leave a lot of bandwidth. You miss out on good friends that way.

I see an Onion article out of this:

New Employee Won’t Stop Talking About Awesome Old Coworkers. Said new teammate Cybrothavan Gupta: ‘He’s sharp and easy to teach. We had a great lunch at the indian buffet. But he kept inviting us to a ‘street’ taco place near his old office. 15 years in software development and he ‘forgets’ about Hindus and cows? What a dick.’

Peter Gabriel – Solsbury Hill

Project Firebird is a contract job I took on. I’ve been outriding the Heckler, and needed a new bike to progress. Such enablement tools cost about $4k, and I am a godlike-better QA Engineer than I am a bike mechanic. I need to clean Holbert, i need to push it at NRA, i need a rematch on Hangover.

I needed professional validation, i was losing focus and fight, slipping into the lukewarm pool of above-average nominal-commitment that my path at Ticketmaster carried me down. The raise and promotion i thought 2 years ago would come hasn’t come, the position in Dev would be a 50% paycut, and my lead developer was leaving. I wasn’t worried about my job, for at least the next 2 years, only that i would be doing exactly the same thing i was now. Stagnation = death in software. Eventually i would be expendable, with Live Nation having no more commitments to the Ticketmaster team. Shredding gnar is an expensive indulgence and daycare is not cheap. A festering clockpuncher’s acceptance of no-bonuses demanded a countermeasure of fiscal responsibility, along with a howl at the moon. Fuck yeah. The reward would be my first ever guilt-free bike, a nice bullet for the reso, and growing stronger from something not killing me.

I have done so many new and challenging projects in my career…I can solve a muthafuggin problem. I’m Duke Nukem with Rambo with an extra nut with a tesla gun. And yes, you diagrammed that sentence correctly; there is a functional energy canon blasting away off the extra cajone. Drop me into your program i will unwind it and break it and wash everything in arterial spray and get it ready for production. But being great within the structure of other top teammates is one thing; contracting you are alone. People are strange when you’re a stranger. Would 7 years working for The Man in the Big Leagues prove my shit the hardest?

Actually, yes.

Just about everything was easy, in stride. When it wasn’t, working through it or around it was not that hard. Worked up a good sweat, but not that hard. Nothing is as hard a TicketMaster’s 6-layer cake. The tech challenge was larger amounts of nominal, the real problem was the void – people who didn’t know what they wanted, how its built, or what acceptance criteria were.  I used new tools, parried verbage like ‘stakeholder‘ and ‘resource‘, defined, consensified, redefined and reconsensified and rediscoverd. I could still do an all-nighter, especially for $500. I learned a new tool and new language and was functional in 40 hours. I could cleanup good and write bloated spreadsheets explaining details in painstaking detail. I wore a tie and setup a LinkedIn account. The reward was creating a job for myself, a tax-writeoff, an empowerment. 3 months later I had 3 job offers. Fate and irony and opportunity all conspire, but after 1.5 years of fishing, 3 months later I had 3 job offers. I had a contract before i made the jump to Ticketmaster too, 16 hours at $100 an hour set me and Beckie up with full snowboard kits, and I’d say the whole TM move worked out pretty well.

At first it felt like an ATM machine. Need some money, go work on the contract. Maids coming, knock out some contract. Grocery store = contract. Overtime, bonuses, found money are the American Dream. They were in no hurry, and neither was I, and I banged and floated along enough for a drivetrain and 1 leg of a fork, taught myself MS Test Manager and Visual Studio in a single day, and whined about having to sit down and work for .17 hours of email and project management. The problems of startups showed themselves: amateurs and limited experience, talented people working alone instead of together, small-town mindset. Weeks went by with my hardware not working, timelines crept up, the reality of hacking through the weeds of a V1 program, coding test code around failures. Eventually I had to deliver all by myowndamself, which is pretty much how i knew it would be, which was why even though i loved the $bling$ i had a pissy attitude about it all along. Bush leagues. The level of tactical strategicness needed equaled that of a complex environment, so much shit did not work everything i did was an escher path through a barren network.  MS Test Manager is the worst thing i’ve ever smelled, in 2 hours I was the in-house expert.

Meanwhile, I got in the pipeline for 2 positions with huge potential, and an internal position requiring a move to LA. I went in heavy, striding up up with my 2 pistolas.  I was oddly calm and confident in ways I’d never really been about delivering a message, highlighting my strengths, and connecting with their needs. QAing a product was the easy part. So this is PR? I didn’t hate it, it was just boring, and stressful – finding ways to steer conversations back to examples i wanted to explain, contexts to provide, skills to demonstrate. I actually ate NOTHING (well, almost nothing) at a free lunch, I was so focused on proselytizing.

11pm on a Monday night i was getting the Heckler ready for a dawn National ride when I saw it – a crack in the weld between the chainstay and the triangle. My first thought was relief. Finally i can get rid of it. Then i cried realizing I’d be riding Desert Classic in the morning instead. My annual trip to the Helipad brought it all into focus: close the contract, close the new job, buy a new bike.

In the next 2 weeks I put in 35 hours on the contract, and did face-to-face interviews with Apollo Group and Paypal. The first I had no idea how it went until a follow up call with the Director where we hammered out the role.  The interview for Paypal was harder than a dirty century:  7 45-min 1-on-1s back to back, and then a phone screen at night from India.

Project Firebird ended with an evening of flashbang code generation reported as a failure, to spare us all when we’d gotten to the point of garbage in garbage out. For under 2 weeks billed they got a huge test plan and 300 bug reports, automation scripts to validate acceptance-level functionality, and working samples for a toolset they had limited knowledge about. It felt fair, and I was feeling the finish when i topped my target of $4500. I got to my mark after 6 pay periods, it ended up as 17% overtime for a quarter, I did the final report and meetings during a slow afternoon at my day job during my last 2 weeks. Nearly a perfect landing. I’m pretty sure I don’t want another contract ever again, but i am shopping for a new snowboard…

I continued to ride the Heckler on dog runs, to remember its touch upon me like an influential lover.  It became intolerably leaky on its last beer run home, forcing Kila and i to walk and shuffle and ride on the rims with our 30 pack of beer. As I drank and contemplated, the tire went completely flat. 

‘I was feeling part of the scenery, i walked right out of the machinery‘

I quoted that song for the Princeton yearbook too. Some days I’ve regretted it, some i haven’t. I’ve felt much the same about giving notice at Ticketmaster.

naturally, i had to change my FB avatar to this:

The day i did this jump, i held off until a local guy showed me where to land and how to get out. Once I had the plan, the rest was all on me to execute. The stakes are the challenge, the puzzle solved is not — the bike pointing down a boulder-garden, steep trees on the snowboard, AES races. It mental. I think I can do it, which means i should, knowing how much better i’ll feel coming out the other side. I try to choose well, liking to only go a little big while taking my talents to south beach. During the marathon interview with PayPal i said about 12 times ‘there are a lot of good engineers, and i’m one of them.‘

They bought it. I’m owning it. I started on Monday.

Burgeoning confidence in my ability to knock out a long day has begat an addiction to big adventure rides. After the PMC, I was fired up and full of aplomb for this ride. It was largely on jeep roads, so an easier 100 than singletrack. The concept of dropping into Sedona from Flagstaff and climbing back was seductive.

I didn’t do any particular training, just my normal routine, and initially intended to do the 50 (nee 60) one way into Sedona.  Chump change.  But the overhead started to creep in: leave home the night before, get a ride or drop a shuttle car in Sedona, back to Flag, all to only ride 50 miles…  James decided to go big about when i did, and our goal was set.

Maad and Gordon get their game faces on in the Safeway parking lot

Nacho Libre es mas macho!!! Noel and his family put me and BrianC up at their cabin. Close proximity to the start made the 6am launch tolerable.

16 riders started, most of whom were faster than me. This ride was, ostensibly, a group ride, but I had no expectations of that happening. Neither the fast guys hammering to Sedona nor the touring guys heading to Oak Creek Brewery were a fit. I felt much better when i let go of the pack and turned on my music, trading company and a draft for a pace i could maintain. Losing the push to keep up with others was a vulnerability, so i broke the ride down into splits to keep on pace for finishing in the 13.5 hours of daylight. 6 hours to Sedona, 3 hours out of Sedona and up the rim, and 3 hours back to Flag left me 1.5 hours to rest, resupply and puke.  This translated into about a 10mph moving pace, Shnebly Hill aside, which became my metronome – each swing of speed, each slowdown, i had to target at least 10 mph or I’d never get done.

The first 25 miles were surprisingly tiring fireroads, ripples of washboard and strips of sand forcing constant activation instead of easy-spinning.  I quickly got hungry, which was a huge red flag. Driving north during dinner and getting up early set me down at least 1000 calories, and suddenly managing my hunger became as big a deal as hydrating, but harder, since I usually pig out at home and don’t think much about food while riding.  Experience helped me adapt, which wound up saving me. I finished all the food i thought i wouldn’t need by mile 70, but carefully avoided bonking the whole ride.

a tornado came through here last fall

hello, welcome to my Happy Place. Can i get you anything?

After 2 hours and about 25 miles, we neared the end of the Mogollon rim and got a glimpse of Casner Mtn.   Vistas of Red Rock Country surrounded the steep powerline road across the ridgeline.  When I saw this stretch on the topo profile, i thought it was a mistake in the track since the pitches shot straight up and down in rapid succession.

powerline roads are mountain biking’s Martin Luther King Jr Blvd

somebody ran this guy over. I’m blaming my friend Raybum, who I saw at mile 15 and then again at mile 70

wildflower season in the Valley has been pretty tepid, but looked good in the high country

throwing my bike down in frustration on this gang-banged hike-a-bike led to the above pic

approaching the 2k descent

these endurance rides bring out different kinds of riders and bikes, which is part of the fun…seeing others’ styles, strengths and weaknesses, goals and ambitions for a given day, how each person solves the problem of  The Perfect Ride on The Perfect Bike.  This guy (forgot his name) was on a rigid single-speed cross bike, and had us thinking of a Medivac as he slipped side-to-side down the babyhead-filled ruts. I was at the back of the fast pack for the entire approach, but led our group down, then got smoked again by the guys on CX bikes.

James in the switchbacks on the 3 mile descent off Casner

behind James, the switchbacks are scarred into the mountain

We were still only 35 miles in, and elation from the descent quickly turned somber, then got smacked in the mouth by the heat radiating off the red rocks during the 15 mile approach to Sedona.

By now the group had irreparably fractured, so James and I re-synched for the long haul as we began 10 miles of singletrack through West Sedona.

Sedona singletrack is slow, sandy, rocky and roasting.  My last few years of Sedona renaissance has been on the spectacular all-mountain trails like Hangover and High on the Hogs, not the XC stuff that I largely ignored for 10 years. After 4 joyless dry creek crossings along the Corkscomb trail, I voted we eject onto a road asap and get to our resupply at the Burger King in town. Another 30-60 minutes of slogging would have a big ripple effect; I was already aggressively managing Team Chollaball to finish the day.

20 minutes of adding this and discarding that in the BK’s AC, and we marched out to face the ride’s biggest challenge. At 1pm. Which dumbfuck thought that up?  Shnebly Hill Road goes up 2200 feet in 8 miles. Its a tolerable grade, but the surface is full of embedded rocks and puddles of powder.  The geologically accurate term for this terrain is ‘suck-ass‘.

We went about 2.5 miles, took a break, went another mile, ate, repeated. 1.5 hrs and 1600 feet later we got to the lookout, and had our pic taken by a dude from Florida who had flown in to attempt the Coconino 250. That put our day in perspective. The cool thing about guys like that, the AES races, my buddies today who were faster or slower, is that this whole scene is about the effort and the journey. If yours is legit, so are you, and will find gracious company.

I sunk into a pool of shade on the roadside at the summit, and ate everything left in my pack.  The end was in sight, but where? Neither of us knew much what to expect other than 25 miles of mild elevation over dirt roads. more washboards? 2 hours? 4? A couple fast miles down and onto the shoulder of I-17, where easy spinning outweighed the windblast from passing trucks.  We hit a convenience store at  Munds Park, then an awful ATV-sculpted double-track. 5mph, 7mph, 4mph…3, 3.5 hrs til finish…7:30 sunset, temps rapidly falling…click clicking in my head. James counseled me to stop looking at the garmin. He has a point. He is also much stronger than me. I require reminders to drink every 15 minutes in cool weather, every 5 when I’m tired.  I need progress reports cross referencing mileage and time and vf. If I rode more and worked less, riding would be zen and effortless, and work would be so hard. If I worked more and rode less, I’d be rich, live in Silicon Valley, and have kids writing sonatas in Montessori kindergarten. Instead i flail at each, and a descent into the depths of my endurance leaves me so empty i find a rare moment of peace with both goals.

Mile 77, my music died.

Mile 85, after 30 min of gravel roads just deep enough to be bland and awful and utterly uninspiring, I stumbled off the bike and held a safety meeting with myself. Emptiness flowed into my numb hands and feet. We saw a gift from Noel and Amy’s kids. I sang to myself, angel’s wings won’t you carry me home. No shit, it was on when the mp3 player died.

We had just packed up the signs and rolled out when Noel drove up the other way with chocolate-covered donuts that sugar-coated the last remnants of pain and frustration.  The road turned down, and paved, and for the first time in almost 13 hrs we saw the Peaks. Breckenridge Vanilla Porter awaited.

94 miles, almost 9k vf, ~10.5 hrs moving

And a few more pics from James’ trip last year, and from Yuri and Gordon’s blogs.

A cool guy named Fish built a pump track in his backyard. Thursdays are party nights. I finally visited when shopping for the Malice, to try some other bikes and a different track. The crowd is mostly from Cactus Bikes near Somo, since Fish is a mechanic there and lives in the neighborhood. Cactus is a premiere shop, but somewhere i’ve never shopped, with Rage just down the street.  I knew a bunch of the regulars from here and there, more of a DH\FR crowd that I rarely ride with, but I showed up with a 6 pack and fit right in. I’m good like that.

The Fishbowl is very different from the big moves at Rage. Its all about rhythm and speed, so everything is smaller except for one bowl at the end, which is setup to allow 2 options and passing.

Fish is a great guy, with a 4-yr old boy, and if you get there early before the party turns much more adult, its a kid-fest, with a track that is kid friendly and a yard full of kid toys!

The first time I brought G, I brought Fish a bottle of Bacardi Anejo. Welcoming  a new friend into the party is one thing, letting me bring my monster is an entirely different level of hosting.

She did at least 50 laps, undismayed by a couple hard falls, blowing everyone’s minds with her energy and her stoke. Hi I’m chollaball, and this is Hurricane G. When she wasn’t knocking out laps on a track suited to tinyRiders, she was playing with new children and new toys. I had to drag her away. She kept asking for a week when we could return. I couldn’t wait either. Everyone there had kids, and kept eyes out for all the others, and yielded to all riders smaller than 4 feet. At moments I’d jump on and maybe get 3 good laps before some child or another would break all rules of traffic safety, but there was so much happiness and laughter no one minded.

By her second visit she was a pro, stayed out of the big bowl, and barely fell. There was a birthday party being held, and G sang and had cake and rode with a new friend. I got some tips for getting over the front wheel and looking at the exit as soon as i enter a turn. Excellent times.