Man, oh man.

It’s been a week to remember already, and it’s only thursday. Too much work, too much beer, and not enough playing.

I got in a nice little ride down in sedona on sunday after witnessing a slow-speed tip-over of an SUV in front of us on the way through oak creek. It was snowing in flag, raining in sedona, and for about a mile of 89 on the way through the canyon, it was sleet/hail/freezing/slippery as hell. The guy directly in front of us tapped his brakes, fishtailed into the guardrail and when he rebounded ended up tipping his giant ford explorer onto it’s side about 20 feet in front of us.

The whole think looked like slow motion as it happened, and I truly can’t believe that he didn’t pull out of the fishtail (it looked pretty harmless at first). In hindsight, it actually was somewhat slow motion since the exploder couldn’t have been doing more than 15 when it tipped onto it’s side. I jumped out of the car and proceeded to pull a couple kids out through the (now broken) back window/gate of the car. They were hanging by their seatbelts in the third row of seats. It was pretty crazy.

As I sat there and directed traffic for the next 45 minutes (until the fire department finally showed up, WTF?) I thought to myself: man, if those guys were in a car or even a minivan they would be sitting sideways in the road with a dinged up bumper, and probably on their way. Instead, they’re staring at the underside of their SUV waiting for the cops and a tow truck.

I see the appeal of SUVs, don’t get me wrong, but watching that thing tip over at about 15 MPH because of how top-heavy it was just made me think: “WTF?”. I can’t really knock people for making their decision on a car, to each his own. I just don’t think I’ll be buying an SUV anytime soon.

So it goes. Everyone was wearing seatbelts, and thus was OK; I filled the karma tank for a while; and even though it was cut a little short due to the events, I got in a rippin ride on the damp, sticky trails of sedona sunday.

Unfortunately, that was followed by a couple 11 hour days at work. I hate having to pull that shit, but sometimes it’s the way these things go.

I’ll redeem those hours this friday when I take off for Salt Lake City to go to The Big Lepowski with Maadjurger and J-money. I love me some backcountry, but I’m jonesin for some free vertical, and Utah is a great place to do it. Just gotta make it through a couple more days I owe the man before then….

Finally, I’ve got a few links I wanted to pass along to any interested parties as well.

Have you heard about our dear boy Shawn yet? Shawn just got a job workin for the man (some big oil, not sure who) and is in Houston currently, but his eventual employment destination is deep sea oil rigs. He’s gotten to do some pretty bitchin’ training thus far, and I’m sure it’ll be even more entertaining once he makes it out to the rigs. He’s started a blog to chronicle the happenings and it’s right here: www.themudblog.com.

There are also a couple other folks here who have started up some more educational blogs/websites. Pete Prebus has been at it for a little while (but I keep forgetting to plug it, sorry Pete!) with www.mountainbikeriding.com. He’s got a constantly growing wealth of knowledge up on the site already which is well worth taking a spin through. The general jist seems to be more oriented towards somebody just getting into mountain biking, but I think his plan is to do articles on everything A to Z.

The third is Adam, who’s stillborn blog dirthugger.blogspot.com has gone by the wayside in favor of another internet endeavor www.adventurebikeriding.com. It’s along the same lines as Scott’s www.bikepacking.net, but looks to be more oriented towards touring than multi-day racing than Scott’s site. He’s just getting it off the ground, so there isn’t a lot of info on there yet, but keep an eye peeled if you’re interested in those sorts of things.

Anyways, that’s all I got for today. Peace out.