I find it easy to get in to journal and blog mode when sitting in an airport lounge. Whether writing about an upcoming trip, or reflecting after one gone by, an airport is the perfect spot.

My alarm went off at about 5:30 this morning; the idea was to give myself some extra time for traffic getting to the airport, and or getting lost. Neither of those happened, but when I returned the car, the guy said the bar code on the rental wouldn’t beep with his little remote check-out device, so he sent me inside to the Budget counter to get my receipt and check out manually. So I left the keys with the guy and made my way in to the building and to the registration counter. After waiting in line I was told that I rented from Thrifty not Budget!! So I ran all the way back with my luggage in hopes that they hadn’t driven it off to the car wash already…. fortunately it was still there, and I managed to find my way to the correct drop off area. Sheesh!

Two days of riding in the desert was a blast. The trails are so different in Bootleg Canyon. Not a tree in sight of course (makes it hard to find a pee spot), the air is hot, the sky is blue, and the dirt is bone bone dry - the complete opposite of Caryn’s compost dirt at home.

My role for Norco was to hang out at the booth, meet up with dealers and media, and go riding with them. Nice gig eh! I rode a couple short cross country loops, probably 20 minutes long each; but most of my riding was up the shuttle. They had two flat deck trucks hauling bikes and riders up the dirt access road. I always seem to think that the drive up is more dangerous than the ride down, and it certainly seemed like it on one ride up. After one of the two shuttle rigs broke down, the shuttle I was one (after waiting over an hour for it) stalled out half way up the steepest hill. So the driver did a sketchy back up job down the hill, and proceeded to try his restart a few times on the hill unsuccessfully, rolling backwards quickly each time. We eventually were backed down to the flat and managed to get going with enough oomff to make it up (helped that he didn’t up shift at the steepest point this time though).

I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face on all the rides down. The trails are so much fun! My favorite was a fairly simple trail called Girl Scout because it was full of beautiful berms, natural whoop de doos, and little boulders and features to goof around with and pump through the whole way down. The trail isn’t so steep that you have to brake the whole way, but you could coast down no prob without much effort, but if you want to have a lot of fun, then powering a few pedal strokes along the way makes it a roller coast ride, good times!