The Good Stuff

This has been one of those weeks that's been full of the good stuff: good people, good rides, good vibes, good food, good times. On Monday, Kathy and I said our goodbyes to the other Kenda-Tomac-Hayes folks, packed up the suby and headed to San Diego. Kathy's family is putting us up for the week in La Mesa, CA and the situation couldn't be more ideal. They are terrific, welcoming hosts and are a real joy to spend time with. They are taking very good care of us and are amazed at how good we are at being complete slugs when we aren't training.

Ryan took us for some hot laps around Fiesta Park for our post-race day recovery ride Monday evening. Low traffic and it was directly on the water. Hel-OOO California!

This bike made me giggle, so I stopped to snap a photo of it because it reminded me of the S*#t bike mentioned so often in Bike Magazine. Turns out its owner, Pete, is also a member of the Kenda family. He stopped at our car after our ride to say hello and to make us laugh. He also invited us to his birthday party later in the week.

On Tuesday, I had a list of errands to run and an easy 1:30 mtb ride. Perfect day for a bit of exploring. Ryan pointed me towards Mission Park and after driving all across town looking for a rack replacement for my bike rack that broke the morning of the xc race (no bike involved ;) I found miles and miles of random, unpopulated singletrack.

Before my ride I spent a good 30 min. chatting in the parking lot with my new friend, George. He approached me asking if he could borrow a spoon so he could eat some kale salad. He said I looked like a traveler because of the sheer volume of stuff that came pouring out of my car when I opened the doors. I helped him out with some silverware and from there we were fast friends. He is a foraging expert and raw foods chef and we got talking about health, nutrition, recipes, and food dehydrators. He is a cancer survivor of the same kind of cancer my mom survived a few years ago (non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) and was just a wealth of information and good, positive energy. He fed me SO many different samples of his raw foods concoctions, I didn't think I was going to be able to ride comfortably afterwards. I left our conversation with his business card, some great ideas for both myself and my mom and a new want: a food dehydrator.

Today was a hard day of intervals for me, so I set out looking for some steep stuff. The Anderson Truck Trail in Alpine didn't disappoint. Really fun, fast singletrack on the way up and down. The legs felt great and it was one of those days that you wanted to ride forever...of course, 75 and sunny didn't hurt either.

Traveling is one of the greatest things about being a pro racer. You meet the darnedest people and see the most incredible things when you have no idea where you are going. It never ceases to amaze me how inherently helpful people really are. This trip has been amazing like that. Plus, this year's team is jam-packed with incredible individual people. I think I laughed and smiled more with my teammates and mechanic this past weekend than I did all of last year combined.

The rest of the week is just more chillaxing in the warm weather, getting ready for the Kenda Cup West race on Sunday, the sagebrush safari. Of course, daily runs to Trader Joes and perhaps a trip to some shopping malls. Don't laugh. We don't have those in my neck-of-the-woods.