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A Magic Carpet Ride

This was the first phrase that popped to mind tonight when I tried to come up with a description of the past month. It didn’t start out all that magical. We were hit by Boulder’s 100-year flood square in the face, our garden-level apartment flooding that Thursday night while I was home alone.

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Out of the Maze

I get in these moods sometimes.

One came upon me recently while I was out on a ride, alone with my thoughts. I had had a couple of bad falls in the past week and it seemed like I kept spilling on the same side, making the same mistakes. I was feeling shaky on the dirt, like I had lost something important but didn’t even know what it was.

I was up close to the top of the Nelson Loop at Hall Ranch. The clouds had rolled in and covered up what had been a beautiful sunny afternoon. I heard thunder in the distance and inside me the weather turned too.

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Super Walker

When Steve and I first moved from Aspen to Boulder almost two years ago, I was still learning how to mountain bike. For our first ride in Boulder, I picked Walker Ranch based off of trail descriptions I read on the Boulder Mountain Bike Alliance website. I had no real concept of what an “advanced” […]

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Winter Park

“You can’t hold on to people any more than you can hold on to a cool breeze on a hot day, or a break of sunshine in the clouds that warms your bare skin. A real connection between two individuals is a natural phenomenon not unlike the 360-degree view of from the top of one […]

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On “Finding” Yourself

Three years ago, I went on a bit of what my hippie friend Kelly and I call “a spiritual journey”. After five years of working in financial services, two of which I was one of the firm’s youngest vice presidents, I quit my job, left San Francisco and all my friends and family behind, and […]

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On Coming in Last, and Living to Tell the Tale

A couple weeks ago I decided to enter myself into the Crested Butte 40 on a whim. I’d never ridden 40 miles up to that point and I knew it would be a long 40 on some of Colorado’s “best” (read: tough) singletrack. There was no sport race, just Open Women’s meaning I’d be racing […]

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The Art of Saying Goodbye

One of my good friends recently moved from Boulder, and when he did we didn’t say goodbye. Part of it was an honest miscommunication, but I suspect that a part of it may have been purposeful on both our ends. The day he left, I texted him: “Are you gone?? Dang, I thought you were […]

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Home

Got back yesterday from a 9-day trip that included 4 flights, 5 cities, 3 states, 2 weddings, 2 national parks, and a road trip to boot. No doubt, watching two of my very best friends get married, spending time with my best girlfriends, and catching up with my family in some beautiful settings was an […]

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Ward

Sometimes you don’t so much as conquer that mountain, as you just keep going a little bit further every time that voice inside you tries to tell you to turn around. Sometimes you push on more dumbly than heroically, with nothing but the certainty that when and if you make it you’ll be glad you […]

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Gratitude Ride

I’ve added a ride to my training schedule, slotting it in among the “Easy Rides,” “Tempo Rides”, “Endurance Rides” and the like. I’m calling these “Gratitude Rides” and essentially you just ride around for an extended period of time, feeling thankful as hell. Rather than try to explain what they’re about, maybe I’ll just describe […]

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