Love the Life you Live, Live the Life you Love

First mountain bike ride = SUCCESS! Rex and I rode 18 miles this morning. We did the Logan river trail for about 14 then we rode around town stopping into some bike shops looking at pedals and mountain biking shoes. It'll be a few weeks before I actually buy a pair but I want to get an idea of what's out there - just like road cycling, clipless pedals change everything. With regular pedals, the rider can only get movement forward by pushing down. With clipless pedals, the rider's foot is attached to the bike so you can push down and pull up, which makes climbing and accelerating completely different. I absolutely love my pedals on Mr. Mac so Rex should have a pair, too. The ride was awesome though. The thing I like about mountain biking is that it's a nice blend between trail running and road cycling. You get to the distance of cycling but you get to be close with nature like you do running. It's absolutely perfect. I even had my very first crash today! I w...

Just woke up like a kid on Christmas morning! 8 am on a Friday when I have absolutely nothing to do and no alarm set. Why!? IT'S MOUNTAIN BIKING DAY! I bought my Gary Fisher Trek Marlin yesterday, so far I've been calling him Rex. It might change. But here he is! The latest edition to my small yet ever-growing bike family: Isn't he beautiful!? And he matches Mr. Mac, which is always important. I love him! We're about to head out now for our first ride! -Katie

Well hey there loyal fans, been a while. How you doin? How's the family? Let's be real, most of you ARE my family, so really I'm just asking you to report back on how I'm doing. And that's just silly cause I'm doin' just great. Except for the fact that right now I"m typing with 9 fingers instead of 10 due to a nasty run in with a cooking knife yesterday. Don't panic, it's still attached. It's just covered in 2 inches of medical gauze and band aid. And no, it's not a princess band aid, much to my dismay. This is why I don't cook. Right now I'm doing everything I can to avoid my very last questions of my take home exam due Friday. I answered all except for the most beastly one, so, naturally, I'll push it off until later. For the most part grad school is still going great, except for the fact that I have a constant dark cloud of anxiety hanging over my head most of the time. It's that constant weight of case studies, ex...

I would like to officially retract a statement/admit I was wrong. Chris was right...Sir Henry has a bacterial ear infection. My poor baby... Did everyone read that? I admitted Chris was right and I was wrong. That will NOT happen again. Love, me

I have officially found the perfect, most reliable test to see what type of parent a person will be: give them a dog. Chris is absolutely cracking me up right now. I would have never guessed he'd be such a worrisome parent - but you should hear how worried he is about Sir Henry right now. Who, by the way, just has a bad case of itchy ears. Chris is practically putting a hot towel on his head, throwing him in the car, and speeding to the emergency room. Meanwhile, I'm in Utah rolling my eyes saying, "Is he bleeding out? Are limbs missing? He'll live." A while back Chris told me his dad was the type of dad who would never let his kids "cry it out" and his mom had the "they're fine" attitude. If one of them cried in the middle of the night, his dad would sneak out and hold them until they fell asleep - meanwhile if his mom was just home they'd sit in their crib crying all night until they learned to self soothe.  If someone wou...

Dear worldly citizens, I am now officially accepting donations for my mountain bike fund. Feel free to donate any amount that your heart tells you. And if that doesn't tempt you? Perhaps this puppy will pull at your heart strings in a way that makes you just desperate enough to do something a little crazy - like send me some full suspension and some carbon. I actually that's what my face looks like when I see people riding by on a really nice mountain bike.  It's either that puppy, or this bird: Probably because all the people that ride past me on a $1,000+ mountain bike are 1 of 4 things: chunky, not riding on a trail (which is where mountain bikes are meant to be...duh), retired, or looking like they're going to keel over on their side any minute from moving so slow.  My thoughts? "GIVE THAT FINE PIECE OF CARBON TO SOMEONE WHO DESERVES IT! Ohhhh hayyyy!!!!"  *sigh* ...one day. Until then, I'll enjoy my bike rides with my o...

Real quick post! Last night I got home from class around 4:30, passed out until 6:30, woke up and went for a run. I was planning on doing around 4 but it felt so good to be out in the fresh air and moving I went ahead and added a few miles. So I'm around mile 6 in this really nice neighborhood, just joggin' along the sidewalk having a merry old time - jammin' to some Talking Heads, not really paying attention. And I'm runnin' and runnin' and looking at the houses. Now people in Logan have the oddest things in their front yards- lawn gnomes, scarecrows dressed up like high school graduates, gardens that could put Martha Stewart to shame, horses, cows, pigs, etc etc etc. So I'm lovin' looking around at all the stuff. At the last second as I approach this house I notice these 3 plastic ducks sitting around a mail box, and I oogle at how realistic they look. So I look down and stare as I pass, obviously. Well, they looked realistic because they were real. ...