Heather and I rode the trails north of Hidden Springs and they have this great trail marker post that’s just perfect for setting up a camera for a timer shot. The trails are kind of timid, but coming down the long main climb you can get some pretty good speed!

It was nice to finally get Heather back on a mountain bike and go riding with her. It’s been a while since we’ve mountain biked together. The main reason is that she didn’t have a bike to ride. But I managed to convince her that I needed a new bike and she could have my Santa Cruz Blur…as long as I could borrow it for the handful of XC mountain bike races I do during the season. I ended up getting a Yeti AS-X with 7″ of travel! I never thought I’d own a bike like this, but after putting bigger tires and a 100mm travel fork on the Blur (RockShox Reba Team) I found myself wanting to push it more than it was intended for. So I figured I’d go all out and get a bike that I will never reach its limits (some people use this bike to race downhill!). With my new bike, I can’t wait for the ski resorts to open for lift-served mountain biking next summer! In the meantime, I figure that I won’t need to go to the gym and do squats this winter if I just keep riding this beast up and down all these hills! The bike weighs 37 lbs with “light” tires on it!