TEVA Games - Sunday

After a good 9 hours of sleep, I woke up and met TJ and Chloe Forsman in the parking lot of the hotel. Luckily they had some extra food I could have for breakfast because the breakfast at the hotel was...well...there was no breakfast offered, I was not aware of that. Chloe was gearing up for, and which turned out to be, an awesome race in the road TT event. I'd like to try a TT sometime...actually any road race for that matter. TJ and I had other things planned for the morning. Apparently we didn't get enough of all the climbing in the race on Saturday so we decided we needed to go all the way to the top today.

TJ had a good run in the Pro race on Saturday and my race was good overall so we were both pumped to find some great riding in Vail that was not part of the race course. We followed a route called the Village Trail which was essentially a service road that wound its way to the top of the mountain, higher than racealtitude, and ended at the Eagles Nest where the people that took the gondola up getting off. Our ride up took about an hour and we had a spectacular view of the snow capped mountains above the bright green spring grasses. It was a perfect day for this!

Then from here comes the downhill. The maintenance guys on the way up gave us the advice we wer looking for "the trails are there...the top parts might be somewhat covered in snow and some might have signs that say 'Do Not Ride'...but...just go around the signs." We grabbed a trail map at Eagles Nestand headed back towards the Village - the fun way ;) We had to 'one foot in and one foot out' through parts of the trail with snow to start but after a 1/4 mile in it was clear. We were able to bomb some sweet gnarly decsents with a little air here and there and some near vertical rooted and rocky chutes to blast down and pass the 'Do Not Ride' signs into some tight but flowing berms that were just awesome! I did not know that Vail had mtn bike trails like this! About 2 1/2 hours after we started the ride we get back to the parking ramp in the village.

I met up with Mom and had lunch at Blue Moose Pizza in the Lionshead Village (which is an amzaing area of Vail). After this...I had to drive from Vail back to Omaha. Should've been about a 9 hour drive total which would have put me back by Midnight or 1AM. Well...this was in my way...I took this picture with my phone going down the highway. It touched down almost directly over the highway I needed to be on...approximately 12 hours of driving later I finally roll back to my place at 5AM. Crazy drive!!