1st Day of 1st Grade Timmerman

Ha, look at that, 1st day of Kindergarten and 1st Grade all posted on the same day. Trying really hard to do a much better job at making posts here....

Today was Jack's first day of 1st grade with Mrs. Bradford at Timmerman Elementary.

Jack and Mama walking to meet the Teacher Day, what a pretty flower arrangement, glad it didn't melt in the 104 degree heat of the day.

Jack seeing his new teacher, Mrs. Bradford for the first time.

Jack at his desk with his name on it, he was proud!

He we are waiting at the bus stop to go to 1st Grade (August 23rd, 2011). New Bus driver (Mr. Marks), new bus number #46, Mr. Perry last year was bus #77. 

Hugs before the school day

Tonight's first homework assignment - 5 Things to bring to class that will help us get to know you better.

1. Tae Kwon Do Belt - Yellow belt now!

2. Soccer Medal

3. Family Picture

4. Ninja-go lego figure (Jack is crazy over these things)

5. Small Southwest airplane, we like to go on trips.

1st Day of Kindergarten

Jack's first day at Kindergarten at Timmerman, yes this post is over a year overdue, but I really have been thinking about it that long.

We dropped Jack off at School for the first day, man he was so excited!

I came home early from work to take pictures of Mr. Perry (The bus driver) bringing Jack home on the first day.

Getting off the bus, GUS!

Some Home Work - what an artist!

Jacks teacher is Ms. Kathryn Vagalatos (meow). A great teacher and taught Jack much this year. we also had lots of homework to do too as parents for the class

Jack's 1st Swimming Lesson

    Here we are at Jack's 1st swimming lessons in Pflugerville, Texas on June 8th, 2010

Here he is sitting with his 1st class and swim instructor and walking over to get into the pool.

  

Sitting with his Class...

Floating on his back...Jack says she was holding him to help float..

Here he is at the end of class playing "Motor Boat..Motor Boat". Class was 30 minutes long today, 4 days a week for 2 weeks and then to the next level of swimming lessons.

2010 AZT 300

Snow at the start at Parker Canyon Lake

This race was a truly life changing experience for me, in just about everyway. I feel very proud of what I accomplshed out there, pushed well over my limits, broke many of my personal cycling records, learned to deal with advertisity in the middle of nowhere.


Day 1 - Snow at the start, huge mental aspect coming into play here with me and everyone else. That picture they took of everyone at the start that is on bikepacking.net, when they took it, everyone was silent. There weren't any "yeeh haws!" or "Yahoos, let's go ride!", just silence. Strange and eerie. It was very easy to follow the track/course with the fresh snow. If you got of course by a little, the snow on the side of the trail would pull your bike tire into it. (I ran Nano's front and rear). I was also having major chain suck issues for the first two hours, which caused me to push the harder/steeper climbs and started to fall back in the group. After a few hours, the snow started getting less and less on the trail and we rolled into some very sweet single track. The trail was nice and tacky and in great shape and it just flowed for a long time. It was hard to stop riding just to take pictures.



Me and Corey made it into Patagonia after a few more hours. We stopped to have some hot food at the Velvet Elvis. We refueled, stocked up on water and headed back out for the long climb up Salero Road.

I started to get pretty tired after the mentally tough day of snow, the days leading up to the start of the race, and just being out there. So we decided to find a place to rest for the night and get up the next morning at 4:30am and head out by 5am. As we were setting up camp, Mary rolled up on us and asked if she could share out camp and we both happily obliged. We made a small fire, talked with Mary for about a hour or so and we all hit they hay.

Morning came very fast, I slept good and was ready to roll. But it was hard to get my legs moving again. I kept thinking to myself of all the training and riding I did and I feel this like this! Corey had much better climbing legs than me, but the hills were steep and the trail was long, we finally made it to top of the Pass on Bull Springs Road by the junked cars and was able to look down into the Valley below.

Corey had a big sideway cut in his rear tire the previous day about an hour before we hit Patagonia. He was able to get it repaired, but I think it concerned him alot. After we started going back down the top of the pass, he had another flat.

I was really starting to get good and warmed up, but was riding my pace. Corey kept asking why I didn't have a smile on my face. I figured out a day later that my focus and determination to get to the finish were taking my mental attitude of those goals towards the front of me. I assured him, that I was having fun, I did enjoy it, even though I wasn't physically showing it.
We rolled up here on Ian, from Helsinky, Finland. I drove him down from the Pheonix Airport on the Thursday before the race. Great guy, stronger rider. Rolf hub in the rear, dyno light on the front, trekking poles for the snow in the Grand Canyon (as planned). Heavy setup with other gear.

This shortly after I passed Ian, my look of determination, focus, sprinkled with pain.

The third flat in less than 24hrs. Not good, Corey was not happy. Somehow, someone offered him the advice to [b]NOT[/b] bring tubes on this trip, except a road wheel tube. I finally convinced him to take one of my tubes, which he did. I really wanted to him finish this ride with me into Superior, AZ.

Heading up the back side of Elephant Head.

After a few more hours of climbing, Corey had another flat at the top of FS4073. We looked at each other and we had to make a decision. We had one tube left between us. We decided to part ways, Corey was having none of me saying I'd hang with him bullcrap. It was hard to say adios, but we both came out here to finish. We could see Green Valley, AZ from where we were. He decided to just hike out of there and call his wife. I said adios and continued on to Madera Canyon along Madera Trail. It was a hot day and luckily the fresh mountain water sigot was turned on and I dunked my head all over that. This was where I caught up to Mark Caminiti. A 2x CTR finisher and various other MTB exploits that he was more than happy to share with me. He definietly had an interesting setup. We rode together for a ways along FS 62 (Box Canyon Road). Here he is up the road up after about 2 hours of climbing.

The view from the top of FS 62 before dropping down into some super sweet single track. There is always a pain vs. reward while on the AZT 300. Once you get totally sick of climbing, it almost magically gets to the top and you get a reward of 45 minutes of rolling down hill. But you get used to this day in and day out, so it sort of messes with your mind.

I kept think about Corey and hoping he was doing ok, I just kept moving forward, hour after hour, time flew by on my watch. As I was getting closer to the I-10 colvert, I was getting excited that I was making some real progress today. I had almost 13 hours in the saddle, 11 hours the previous day, and I was feeling good. I had food, water, knew the direction I needed to go and I was actually doing it. Then I had to lock up my brakes, hard. This Bull was standing right in the middle of the trail, just glaring at me. The AZT is all along Open Range land. All animals roam free. I was pretty nervous of this bull, hoping he would just move. So I backed up and waited for like 10 minutes. He finally moved a little off trail when I took this picture. I jumped on my bike and peddled as fast as I could to get by him, hoping he wouldn't chase.

I came upon the I-10 Culvert

Crossing through

The other side

I was hoping to make to Tucson this night and the sun started to set. I made it to this Ranch House, on my queue sheet it said there would be food, water, etc down there. I sat and looked at it, seeing if I could see any activity. I heard some noise of people, but didnt really feel confident I would find anything down there. Against my better judgement, I made my way, off course, so see what I could find. The only freaking thing, I found or I should say that found me was a spastic barking dog. He was coming after me fast. I stopped, jumped off my bike, took off my helmet and yelled as loud as I could "GO HOME! Fxxking DOG! It echoed in that little valley and the dog ran away. If there were people down there, they certainly would of said something. So I found the small water source and I filled up my water bottle and MSR bladder and headed back up hill to get on course.

This night I made it to the La Sevilla Picnic area. I was wiped out. Almost 15 hours today and a lot of ground covered. I was really hoping to make it to Tucson, but just couldn't. I didnt sleep as good, but I was here for way too long setting up camp and taking it down. Tim McCabe rolled by sometime around 11pm or so asking who was here in the tent. He said he was continuing on to Tucson tonight. I almost got up and joined him. That's thing about these kinds of races. Knowing the course is critical. If I knew how fast and flowy the trail was from La Sevilla to Tucson I most certainly would of rolled out. So the next AM I woke up and could tell it was gonna be hot.

The major mountain pass off in the distance. Try? There is no try, do or do not.

I caught back up to Mark having breakfast talking to his girlfriend Layla on the phone.

Right after we finished eating on Old Spanish Trail, Mark had an issue...

Wearing all of your bikepacking gear in 85+ degree heat was not fun. Tucson was hot on Sunday, lots of climbing today. I had stopped off route at the Circle K, loaded up with 6L of water and food for Sunday/Sunday night/Monday AM climb up Mt. Lemmon. I had a heavy load on me. After 112 miles and 15,000 feet of climbing already under my belt with full gear, it was hard. Here is a shot of the lower slopes of Reddington Road. It should be called Red-neckington Rd. I rode/walked, mostly walking in the 1pm Tucson heat, seemed like every person in Tucson that had a Jeep, Toyota, Dune Buggy or whatever 4x4 vehicle was going up hill. Each time someone passed, they would cover me with dust. Did I say it was hot out? A large blister was starting to form on my right heal and all of the dust was preventing me from deep breathing and had a sharp pain everyonce in a while on my right stomach. Body was showing signs of wear, but my mind was very clear.

This was about the time that Corey decided, "Hell, I am on vacation, I am going to go ride with Jackson." So he tracked me on my SPOT and rolled up with a friend of his in his truck. Corey slapped on all of his gear and continued to ride with me. I thought it was pretty cool. It kept my motivation high too! I kept asking how it was to have a hot meal and sleep in a nice bed. Here I am acting like I've been in the desert for months already and it's only been 55+ hours or so. Almost at the top of Red-neckington Rd. there was a huge explosion. Turns out the Tucson Fire Department had a controlled blast or something. They had closed the road for about an hour which held up Tim McCabe who just finished the 300 yesterday afternoon. Once we rolled through the top and out into the Valley things became more peaceful and quite. The best single track of the entire trip (that I rode), was though this valley, Bellota Trail. If you can one day, go ride it.

A 4-5 hours later, the sun started to set, running out of water, [b]HUGE[/b] hike a bike section over the Molino Saddle back.

If you do this, be prepared for pain. As I said before, once you get up and over this 1+ hr hike a bike with full gear, you'll get your reward of sweet downhill.
We made it down into Prison Camp campground, filtered water, ate, etc.

Started to get dark...

We stayed in camp with us this night after about an hour or so of night riding. The next day would be a huge 17 mile climb, 5000 feet elevation gain, just to start.I slept horrbily, couldn't shut off my body after another 12+ hour day in the saddle. I believe I got about 2-3 hours of sleep. The Mt. Lemmon climb took 5+ hrs. It sucked, hard. My blister was killing me when I walked and I still couldn't take deep breaths. Were were getting higher and high in altitidue.

and more climbing...


and more climbing...

A funny pic, for those that know me..

I was in good spirits, but my pace was really slowing, I had two medical issues that made me caution going down into Oracle, back into the heat. We had lunch and rested/refueled. Breathing still hurt, blister was worse, hard to even walk, heat on the final 100 miles. It was time to throw in the towel. I did [u][i]not[/i][/u] want to put myself into jeoprady and be that guy that pushes the SPOT emergency button knowing all well of my issues before heading out. It was the best decision and the safest decsion for me to stay healthy and be able to ride another day. Not an easy decision at all. Not easy at all for something I worked hard for. A decision that has to be considered in this type of event. My head is held high.
This last picture of the last I saw of the trail.

Oracel Ridge Trail

Recovering now, eating like a horse, sleeping like a log. Be more than happy to talk about my gear setup, prep, course, desert, mountains, anything that comes to mind. You can even call me crazy, but I'd line up again in the 300.
Jax