This morning, Jeff, Yuki, and I got in the FJ and headed to Utah. Driving across Wyoming on I-80 is sooo boring, but today it was a little more eventful… we saw a cloud of smoke. Well, more like a huge dark cloud of smoke. As we got closer, the smoke was raging… something was definitely on fire…

I took a pic with my phone, but Yuki’s pic was better.

On the way to Grand Targhee, I made fun of the Little America signs. This time, Yuki and I got our damn 50 cent cones!!! YUMMY!

We headed out with local racer, Nate Miller, and rode some trails for about an hour.

It’s so beautiful in Park City….

The trail we rode today was so lush that you could barely see the trail! The singletrack was narrow, tight, with technical spots. Super fun!

My legs are still not feeling very spunky… Come on legs, please hurry… you don’t have much longer before Saturday!! The final count for the Park City Point2Point is 14,000′ of climbing and 75 miles. Bring it on!

Yuki and I headed to Jeff’s house in Fort Collins on Wednesday night to get in a short night ride to test out our light set-ups in prep for Vapor Trail.

Here are a few pics…

I was glad Yuki came with me!

Hey Yuki! Wait up!!

YUKI!!! WAAAIIIIITTTTT!!!!!

We ended up getting lost and started riding up some technical trail behind the stadium. It kept getting more rocky. Good night practice!

I’m still trying to figure out how much light I want to use. The only lights I have are the Topeak HID Moonshine lights, and a Nightrider Minewt from a few years back. The Topeak batteries only last 2.5 hours, so for next weekend where I will need battery power for 8 hours straight in the heart of the mountains. The question is how many batteries do I want to carry…?

Regardless, it will be fun!

I haven’t done a night ride since 24 Hours of Old Pueblo in February, so I decided to break out the lights. Eszter and I do the same races, and we both are getting ready for Vapor Trail (although she’ll be trying to kick butt and win, whereas I’ll be trying to just to survive after all the upcoming chaos) When I said I was heading out to do some night riding, she came along (which is good b/c I didn’t want to go alone!).

We just headed out to some local trails (Marshall Mesa), and rode some of the newer stuff across the highway that I haven’t been on yet. The best thing about the ride was the sounds. The crickets were really loud. The worst part was all the bugs flying down my throat. haha.

We talked about how scary mountain lions are, and fortunately the worst we saw was a bunch of cute little toads. I caught one that was the size of a nickel!!

This was a big one. I used to catch toads as a kid!

It was so fun that I didn’t want to stop! I’ll be doing a night ride a little further north tomorrow night with Carney and Yuki!