Los Alamos, NM

Todd and I headed up to Los Alamos for a local race. I was born and raised in Los Alamos, but had never ridden a mountain bike there. It was a great course, a little harder than I expected. The event organizers did a great job, especially with having course marshals in all the right places and running on time. My only complaint with the NM races is that the courses are not marked ahead of time (making them kind of "locals only" races). The best thing about the Los Alamos race was the payout.

Todd raced singlespeed, he beat me. He started just in front of us, I caught him twice, but he got me on the major singletrack climb and I never saw him again. I raced most of the race with three gears (large ring, mid ring, small ring), my rear cable pulled out of the derailleur, it happened slowly and I kept playing with tightening/loosening the cable, getting a certain rear gear to work for a little while, then finally figured my rear derailleur was damaged when I couldn't shift at all. I even laid the bike down and tried to figure it out, not till after the race was over did I finally yank on the cable and it came loose in my hand. Todd's first comment was " that was a 30 second fix!". duh. Oh well.

Nina Baum and Jen Wilson were there; it was cool hanging out with them after the race. Jen had a great race.

After the race I had Todd drive all over town so I could see my town. There was a big fire (~50,000 acres, 200 homes) in 2000. short version. At the time we were visiting family in Santa Fe and volunteered at a shelter set up in a Casino between Santa Fe and Los Alamos. I had not been back to Los Alamos since. It was pretty sad to see the burned areas; luckily the fire somehow missed the ski hill.

This picture is the house my Dad built, the one I grew up in. The White Rock Canyon is just behind. The Red Dot trail starts at "our" property line.