Well, it's been a long time since we've posted, and a lot has happened. Emily has left Kimberly-Clark in May and passed her massage therapy national test on Wednesday and will be getting her license in the next couple of weeks. I started a new job at Fresenius Medical Care in May. We've taken trips to Moab, Zion, Michigan, the High Uintas, and the Wind River mountain range. We've raced in a marathon relay, Winter XTERRA, bike races, and the XTERRA off road triathlon. We even sold the Evo and bought a Miata. It's been fun and we'll try to cover it all.
The week after our previous post I raced in the first ever Winter XTERRA World Championships at Snowbasin resort. XTERRA always seems to put on a great event and this was no exception. The race started with a 10K mountain bike on cross country ski trails, then went on to a 5K run, a 5K snowshoe, and a 10 K ski mountaineering leg. I ended up 3rd out of 4 in my age group. I had a lot of fun and the race was very rewarding. Here we are after the finish.
We had been looking for a low milage, cheap, and reliable car for awhile to save some money on Emily's commute. If it's fun it would be an added bonus. Yeah right what are the chances of that! Well we lucked out when Dad Pontius located a mint 1990 Mazda Miata just 3 miles from their house in Pheonix. We had already been planning a trip down in early April, so we bought the car and picked it up while we were down there. No good pictures of the car yet...sorry.
While we were down there, I raced in a NMBS marathon bike race (43 miles) and finished 3rd of 4 in my age group. The course was a very fun desert course with lots of sweeping turns and dips. It was a really, really hard race though and I was cooked by the end.
In late April, we took a trip down to Zion with our friend Jen from K-C. We camped just north of St. George as all of the campgrounds in Zion were full. It worked out very well and there was some great exploring just outside of the campground.
The next day we wetn into Zion and hiked Angels landing and also headed up toward the narrows, here's a pic of Angel's Landing.
The next day we were lucky enought to hook up with Jason Dionnes brother, Ryan, who just happened to have 3 extra backcounrty permits. We hiked back in to Keyhole falls, it was simply amazing.
Soon after I got my job offer at Fresenius. I decided to take a week off between jobs, Chad had just finished his Spring term of school, and Jim had some vacation days built up. So off the three of us went to Moab, UT and Fruita, CO. It was an awesome trip with lots of riding we rode Procupine Rim, Slickrock, the Fruita loops, and some trails just outside of Grand Junction.
After arriving home, I earned my first Podium finish in an expert class mountain bike race...yeah!
After this the Carlson's came out to visit. Dad was here for just over a week and Mom was out for 4 days at the start of the week. It was awesome to see them again and we got a ton of help around the house. Dad taught us some basics about painting and even helped paint Emily's new commuter bike! It's beautiful.
Em's since built it up with moslty new parts and she even put cork bar tape on the moustache handlebars and finished it with hemp string wrap on the ends. We don't have any pictures of it assembled yet, but we'll put some up soon.
