It’s been a long week. Not as much fun, and too much work, but some weeks are like that.

I did get out on the bike wednesday night for about 3 hours in the dark down in sedona. It was a lot of fun. I rode a ton of different trails, and generally had a great time. The heat wave of this week has been melting the snow and also making for short-sleeves and shorts in sedona. Sometime during the wednesday night epic I climbed about 2/3 of the way to the lookout up Schnebly Hill road and came back down the munds wagon trail. That trail is pretty much a train wreck right now. It criss-crosses the creekbed coming down next to Schnebly Hill Road, and there were at least half a dozen downed trees over the trail, not to mention the washed out crossings and the gnarly looking piles of sticks and rocks that piled up from the torrent of water which must have rushed down there. Thus the cycle of trail maintenance begins.

I also got out for a long ride yesterday down in sedona. I was on the bike for just about 5 hours straight. I stopped twice, once to eat a clif bar, and once to chat with a couple people from flag. Total stopping time was probably under 10 minutes. You name it, I probably road it. I felt good, amazingly good. My legs were still feeling good, and I wasn’t all that winded by the end of it, but I was low on water and getting hungry, so I bailed after 5 hours. Oh yeah, and I forgot the vaseline, so that was a limiting factor for my rear end on the ride as well.

Yes, I am a petroleum jelly man on long rides, and damn proud of it. None of this chessy chamois butt’r stuff. I want the real deal. . . . .

Maybe I took that a little far? Never mind. . . .

The bottom line is that I feel good enough right now that I can safely make public my goals for old pueblo.

The first is simple: don’t sleep. I didn’t sleep during 24 hours in the sage, and I have no reason to believe I can’t do it again.

The second is equally simple: break the 200 mile mark. I was 8 miles short at the sage, and my previous bests have hovered around 130 miles. By the numbers, that means 14 laps. That’ll put me at a clean 210 miles in the saddle.

If I make those two, I had a great race. If not, I’m sure I’ll be equally as sore, so it’ll work out in the end.

Rumor has it that Big Jonny is going to be DJing an FM radio station during the race. Interviews, announcements, music, and an insatiable wit. FM 105.7 Tune it in. I usually don’t even ride with an iPod, so I doubt I’ll be hearing much of it, but the hallucinations should keep me company.

I only have one more parting piece of advice for all the readers out there: go rent snakes on a plane. It was an amazingly bad, but amazingly entertaining movie. If you’re still not entertained, read up on it, and you’ll understand. Not just a movie, but an internet phenomenon.

peace out.