This past week has been really hectic. I was on vacation between jobs and had to get my new office set up and started to work on some presentations. I'll be teaching at The College of St. Scholastica this next year. I am really fired up.

I also gave a free women's mountain bike clinic last night in duluth. (at Hartley). I think there are about 12 women that showed up. Alise, from the ski hut rides, organized the event. It was really fun to work on skills and give the women some technical advise. I was really impressed with how everyone improved. There are some women that plan on continuing to meet on Tues evenings at 6pm for casual riding. I may show up to some of these as time allows, or have additional free clinics.

I also learned how to take my motorcycle's carburator apart and fix it (sorta) last week. It died on me during my endorsement test multiple times last week. The instructor made me reschedule for a different date. I was pretty upset that it didn't work. After getting it home and having Irv (father-in-law) walk me through how to take the bike apart, etc, we saw the air box was loaded with fuel. No wonder I couldn't get it to work. I felt a little better about myself after that. The endorsement test is all done in first gear around cones in a parking lot. My bike works fine on the road, but can't handle slow speeds or idling well enough to get me around cones. I may just use the full year of my permits eligibility.

This last sunday was the Powdermonkey race at Spirit Mtn. The course is really challenging. I was a bit disappointed in how my body felt. My legs get really heavy fast and then I can't push and go hard like I like to. I got passed by men I usually never see in a race. The women started 30 sec behind the expert men. I was passing men within the first 5 min of the race. There is a group of men that will not let me pass. This has happened in several races, and its the same group of 2-4 men. A few of them crashed (hard) in front of me. Another one I kept trying to pass on singletrack and he'd speed up and not let me by, or we'd get to two track and he'd go gangbusters to get ahead. I would catch back up on singletrack and the game would start again. Oh well, that's racing. I should just get faster and then not have to worry about them at all. This racecourse is probably the toughest in the midwest and its easy to go out too hard and explode, or implode. There were lots of crashes from what I heard. The toughest downhill on the course is similar to a downhillers course (it was used as part of the downhill race a few years ago). There is so much trail at spirit mtn that hopefully in years to come we will be able to make one big loop. This year was only 3 for expert men and 2 for expert women/comp. It was fun and nice to have a race close to home.

Next race: likely seeley hills prefat.