Staying Alive - with Mike

I've blogged about Mike before. He's part hero, part funky but mostly a good excuse to party like a chicken with your head cut off. Literally.

I wasn't going to miss Mike the Headless Chicken Festival this year. Too many years had passed since I had stood in the square outside city hall to "celebrate a long history of open minds."

The air in Fruita was a sweet mix of Russian Olive trees, desert dust and cheap beer, but the festive vibe of hundreds of people gathered for disco influenced line dancing with a man in a chicken suit was the perfect backdrop for the eclectic experience this town is known for....It was good to be home.

I sat back and reminisced with Sally, my talented aunt who is one of the founders of the festival and the hired guns behind the artistic themes for each year, trying to guess how many Peeps would be consumed and how the festival has grown. Stopping buy Mike's Store, I made sure to pick up a Mike Wear tank top with the official USDA Funky Chicken Grade trademark stamp.

My camera did not make the trip this year, so I was forced to try and capture the evening with my trusty iPhone. The results, not as I'd hoped.

But even if I did have a commercial grade camera at my side, this is an experience that could never be captured with a lens. This trip is a must do.

And if you are going to venture to Fruita to celebrate Mike, do yourself a favor and take your bike to experience the best mountain biking in the west. Or go see my friends at Over the Edge Sports and rent one. You'll be glad you did.

Good memories come from bad ideas

There are two phone calls I look forward to every year. The first is my dad calling to sing me "Happy Birthday." The second call is my dad calling to ask me if I'm going to take my small sedan to Jeep Safari Weekend in Moab, UT.

While the first call is obvious, the second deserves explanation. You see, I'm the poster child for the phrase, "There's a time and a place for everything. It's called college."

To demonstrate. In the spring of 1997, I loaded up a couple of my Utah buddies, copious amounts of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer and headed to Jeep Safari Weekend driving one of these:

Not one of these:
Which was no big deal for the portion of my journey that was from Price to Moab. Where I began to have troubles was when I used the 1985 Toyota Camry to negotiate jeep trails in Moab. After three days of driving from trails, to campsites, to town; I knew I had scraped bottom, but was otherwise not concerned about the state of my car.

After said weekend of testing my mad sedan driving skills, I went back home to Colorado. I was enjoying sleeping in at my parents house when the door burst open and my dad entered the room. "What. In. The. Hell. Happened. To. Your. Car?!"

I mulled it over, decided to come clean and then found out that the undercarriage and suspension had sustained over $1800 in damage and I was lucky to have made it home in one piece.

Now, every Easter weekend, on Friday, my dad calls me. "So. You heading to Jeep Safari this weekend?" and we laugh about my adventures as a college kid.

And you know what? It never gets old. That phone call is as important and joy filled to me as the happy birthday song I get every year in Feburary.

Inspiration from the Sun

A week after being on the White Rim trail, I'm still reminiscing of the sun on my face and the dirt in my teeth. While at times grueling and quite often cold, I would jump at the chance to hop on my bike and do the trip all over again (and again, and again).

I am inspired when I'm in the mountains, but this trip was exceptional. My riding pace often put me in position far behind the rest of my fellow riders, but far enough ahead of the support vehicles, that I was alone to take in the beauty of my surroundings and merge my body and mind into the ride. With skies as far as I could see and snowy mountain tops in the distance, I whispered to myself, "It's good to be alive."

Joy and excitement were accompanied with muscle fatigue and the worst case of ass pain I have ever had to negotiate, but it was all part of the experience. By coaxing myself through the tough stuff, I was able to mark my milestones of accomplishment....Riding a majority of the trip, climbing big hills and weathering the cold.

After four days of being surrounded by amazing friends and making new ones along the way, Matt, Arikka, Jared, Jason and I were all riding in the truck back to our car. We climbed, then coasted the rolling hills with big smiles on our faces while Eddie Vetter sang to us about the "Hard Sun."

At that moment that Jason said, "There are credits rolling behind us right now."

It was perfect. The perfect ending to the perfect trip...which provided me inspiration for this.





Photos Courtesy: Jared Hargrave, Jared Anderton, Adam Tolman, Arikka Fullmer, Matt Walker, Dave Hert.
Music Credit: Into the Wild Soundtrack

Ego is my copilot

Next weekend I'll travel with my bike and gear to tackle the White Rim in Canyonlands National Park.

It has been almost two years since I've seriously ridden a mountain bike. In fact, last weekend I took my new Specialized MTB for its christening run and succeeded in also providing the bike with it's christening crash (my new body mechanics are seriously messing with my center of balance --- clumsiness ensues).

I know my legs are not at peak performance, but I'm going on this trip anyway. I've had a couple of friends ask me how I'm going to ride 100 miles of trail when I am admittedly not quite ready.

The answer is this. I'm counting on my ego to keep my pedals going in circles while we ride along the desert floor.

I live to succeed and am powered by the drive to win. However, if I am not able to ride the entire length of the trail, I will take comfort in the fact that I have challenged myself to ride farther than I've ever ridden before.

My new challenge - Bikram

I made a strict promise to myself at the beginning of the year to find a physical outlet for both body and mind. To find a place where I would be able to challenge myself without feelings of inadequacy and competition.

I have found that challenge. It is Bikram Yoga.

It is not the relaxing, bendy yoga. This is 90 minutes of focus or die yoga in a 105 degree room with 40% humidity. It could be described as a breathing exercise consisting of 26 postures done in the same sequence.

I'm using it s a tool to reconnect my mind with my body and bring back the flexibility I have lost from the new hip replacement. My body still feels very foreign to me and it's important that I be able to feel more of the transitions it is making.

While I am still easing my way into the practice I have learned a few very important lessons. After completing a class, I feel completely cleansed and giggle at the way my body oozes steam as I walk outside on a cool morning. I had my first yoga religious experience through Camel pose a couple of weeks ago which sent tears streaming down my face...Now when I reach in to Camel, I smile and my entire body fills with joy and satisfaction. Most importantly, I have learned that a cluttered mind in this environment makes the practice impossible to complete and that lack of focus will bring waves extreme nausea and dizziness over my body.

It's 90 minutes of discipline, but at the same time it feels like an escape. I love the similarities to the dojo in that everyone in the room is stripped of our careers, houses and material things and for the class we are merely students.

While I'm there, the only mandate is that I dedicate the time to myself and that is the kind of challenge and activity that makes me dig deep and get to know myself better. And I'm really liking how it feels to dedicate this time to me...