The weekend

Good morning.  I hope you had a wonderful weekend.   Ours was very rainy and  definitely  memorable.  I did my first ever mountain bike race yesterday with my husband.  This was the inaugural race for the Pertnear 20  (because its pertnear 20 miles!) which was put on by our local bike shop (and our neighbors), BlueDog Cycles.  This weekend we received somewhere between 2-4 inches of rain, I haven't heard the official report yet, but it was pouring rain at the start of the race and of course stopped just as we were about to finish.  Amazingly there were 45 riders that came out in this miserable weather.  The race was a combination of road and single track.  As soon as we hit the single track, the excitement began.  I wish I had some pictures to share.  It was so incredibly muddy out there!  Within minutes my legs were burning from biking through thick mud and leaves.  The going was slow and slippery and eventually my tires were locking up because they were  packed with mud.  So many of us had to keep stopping and removing huge piles of mud and leaves out of our chain, derailer, brakes, and frames.  A section of the trail which normally would take maybe 5-10 minutes took us at least a 1/2 hour.  There was a lot of walking and even pulling of my bike.  At the end of this section many of us put our bikes in the creek to wash off as much as we could before continuing on.  We ended up not doing the whole race because it was so ridiculously muddy, I was soaking wet and very cold, the wind was kicking up and there were sections that had a lot of rocks and very narrow trails that we figured wouldn't be very safe in those conditions.  So even though we didn't do the whole thing, we still ended up riding for 2 1/2 hours.  What an experience!  These are the times I'm so thankful to have a hot shower to come home to.  As Pete (who owns Bluedog) said in regards to this race,  "you will never have worse conditions than this, so it can only be better next year"  and then we all celebrated with beer and pizza.

Here's another fall piece I finished that really has nothing to do with my bike race.  I'm loving this fall palette of colors, I have 2 more pieces that are similar to this that are in the works after this one.  Even while riding our bikes with the pouring rain blowing in our faces, I couldn't help but to notice how beautiful all the leaves, trees and bushes were.  It's such an amazing time of year.  The colors are so vibrant and just seem to pop against the dark backgrounds.

"Autumn's Silhouette"  available here

 ps.  it's a clear blue sunny day today without a leaf blowing!