O' dark-thirty

The only time that I can call "mine" is early in the morning before the Family wakes up and work starts piling on. During the summer it's great, sunrise is about 5:50am so as the days get shorter it puts my normal early morning rides in jeopardy. I remedy this with the use of lights, really good lights. One on my helmet and one festooned on the bars. Last fall I purchased a set and it has really lengthened the season for me.

This was what I wanted to buy, the Lupine Tesla 4, price tag $384


This is what I bought; the Magic Shine, price tag $85




So they may be cheap Chinese knock offs but I have to say, they have been great. And for 1/4 the price they are almost disposable.

One of the benefits to starting in the dark is that you get to see the sunrise, my photo skills and equipment are veeerrry sub par but I hope you get the picture.

Stucki Springs looking back to St. George, light setup on the bars.

Looking into the Virgin River Gorge and the town of LaVerkin.

Sunrise over Zion NP. There is a wildfire up on Cedar Mt and the smoke made the colors really spectacular.

I also did some exploring the other night and above St. George City, trying to connect a couple of points on the map for a project I will disclose when I am further along. I nearly got lost and that's not a feeling I can ever remember having. As well as being a life coach I have an internal GPS.

Maybe I should bring my heart rate down before trying to take a picture.

Movie Night

I have put together a little video of cool stuff (cool to me) I did and things I saw this Spring and Summer. I am not sure why it shows up so small, I will work on it.
Get the popcorn.

>

Spring / Summer from El Scorcho on Vimeo.

Week in pictures

Good stuff this past week, take a look at the calender

So out of order we have the Great Salt Lake as seen from Elephant Rock up Mueller Park Canyon.

D and Stella arriving at Elephant Rock. Fun fact: D and I have been friends for 30 years.

A view of Elephant Rock from the trail.

Sunrise over St. George from Stucki Point. That's Zion NP in the faaar distance.

The only picture I took on Thursday morning, I was with Rusty the new guy - he just got a bike so I was showing him some of the trails in the area.

Out of respect and the fact that I don't know him all that well I did not photo him with his pants down picking cactus out of his keester. It would have been a great shot and I have a little remorse that I was so kind in the moment.

440 Update

Some of the local race organizers (see above) here in the St. George area have caught wind of the 440 and decided that no such event should occur. They have enlisted the help of the St. George BLM office to have them crack down on the unsanctioned event.

Somehow they are threatened by it, I think it might have something to do with......

Who's getting it or not getting it and we can not allow such shenanigans to effect their bottom line. So they are throwing up various and sundry reasons as to why I have to shut it down.

They cannot however kill my dream, so all four of you that have paid me, (you know who you are) will be getting your money back. The fun police have spoken and I accept their ruling but now I HAVE to ride it.

So some guys will be getting together for a plain old ride on October 23, all are invited, come one come all to ride the public trail system just like we do every weekend. Only this time we can stick it to the man.......... just a little bit.

Sing it Dewey.

233 is the magic number.

I am now onto my 6th Garmin 305, every little while they just decide to stop working. Garmin's customer service has been top notch and I usually have a new one within a couple weeks.

This years swap over coincided with me having to scrub the hard drive on my computer. Due entirely to user interface I lost all the data for Virtual Mark, we may never know if I could ever beat him.

I may take some heat for this from some of my "peers" but this year I have begun training with a heart rate monitor. I do this mostly because I am old and can't go hard every day like I used to, I need a recovery day or two mixed in to keep me going.

So this morning I riding along, slowly, trying to keep the HR under 142bpm and I noticed that whenever I went down hill my HR would jump thru the roof, usually it goes down.

I took a screen shot off the Garmin Connect, click it open and check out the max heart rate;

Just so you know, I have tested my max heart rate while on the bike and I know that at 184 bpm I start to black out. Tough to stay upright while seeing stars.

Q: So what time is it when you see a max HR of 233?

A: Time to get another heart rate monitor.

Taco Town

That's what I call a taco.

Mmmmmmm.....guacamolito sauce.

Do I know you?

About once a week I get a random solicitation for friendship on my Facebook page. Yes I have one, doesn't everybody? It is almost always girls and I find it sort of pathetic and sad. I myself have one FB rule, NEVER SOLICIT FRIENDSHIP! If they ask me, (and I know them) then I probably won't turn them down. But complete strangers??

This is what I got today:

Readers, meet Pearline Worthington.

No, I don't know her, or anyone else in the skank of the month club. Why is it cool to take your own picture and squintch your face into some rediculous smirk? Nice lid and ensemble by the way Pearly, I can't tell if you are on your way to the beach, the bar or snowboarding.

Goodluck finding friends Pearline and call me if you want to work on your image, I'm a life coach.