Life is so great with dogs!

It's only Wednesday and it feels like a long week already. I am most certainly still recovering from the 500 mile week last week.

Today I got up early and took Lucie and Kayla for hike. I met up with my friend, Annie, and we hiked the trails near the house. The "Girls" were really good and stayed relatively close to us the entire hike with only a few excursions to chase a bird or ground squirrel here and there. We got in about an hour and a half hike and it was good to catch up with Annie as I have only seen her a couple of times this summer.

We hiked near an old mine site with a huge apple tree near by. Two days ago there were so many apples in the tree I thought it would snap the branches. Today, it appears that the local bear has munched on most of them and there are very few left. I'm so glad that all of the fruit trees in the area have plenty of food for the bears this year.

It was hard to get back out the door for a ride but I wanted to test a different combination of tires. Today I traded out the Hutchinson Python Gold for a Mosquito Gold. Up front I ran a Primal Raptor. I raced on the Mosquitos in years past and even though they are mud tires I found them to be pretty fast in all conditions. A little sketchy but controllable except with hard breaking. I hear the mud on the Soggy Bottom course is running silty stuff and I figure I'd rather have a set of tires I have used before in all conditions than a tire that might pick too much mud, especially since I have a full suspension mountain bike, my KHS XC Team.

So by mid afternoon Steve and I went riding and decided to head up a nearby gulch. The tires turned out to be a good combo. Steve and I headed up a gulch/trail and although there was a bit of hike-a-bike, the two tires held on pretty well. It was pretty loose but gave me a good idea of how my tires would hold if I find myself in any kind of loose conditions. The ride down was on a wider jeep road and had larger rocks and roots and again, the tires did fine.

There are only a few more things Steve wants to do to the bike to make it ready for anything. I think he mentioned something about new rotors and a few other things.

I'm getting pretty excited about going and can't wait to take a bunch of photos to share. even though it's a quick trip-four days- it should be a lifetime of stories.

I also want to add in a special thanks to Rudy Project for sending me and Dan off to Alaska with new Kontact helmets and Rydon eyewear.