cartwheelsandcake – Page 8 – Cartwheels and Cake

Mount Evans Success ??‍♀️

Well, a bit belatedly, I’m excited to report that Mount Evans ended up being a wonderful ride! Here’s a quick recap and some photos:

We were up early and out the door before sunrise so we could get a reasonably early start to beat both the people and the afternoon showers. It’s about a 50min drive to Idaho Springs, the jumping off point for our ride. Around 6AM we pulled into a small parking lot and spent several minutes putting on socks, long sleeves, sunscreen, and the like.

Around 6:15AM we headed off. The sun was still low and it … Continue reading

July – The Biking Saga Continues

Well. I’m currently super lucky to have this week off work. Hearken opted to give the entire team the week off in honor of everyone’s huge push to close the merger (completed June 12th!) as well as the general state of the world. The team was (is?) tired, and that included me. There are a couple things I’d like to do to prep before next week, but honestly it’s been so delightful to be offline most of the day I haven’t really been motivated yet. I’ve read two books, done some cooking, gone on bike rides (though, always before 6:30 … Continue reading

Everesting: The Half

Last Saturday I attempted and completed a half Everest on my bike.

For me, at this moment in time, it was one of those goals that I felt both fairly certain that, barring unexpected hiccups, I could definitely do and equally that it was never going to happen. Here’s how it went down:

I’d heard about Everesting a couple years ago. It’s the simple concept of biking (or running ?) up and down the same hill, in one activity (breaks allowed but no sleeping), until you’ve climbed 29,029ft (the height of Everest). You can do it on any hill, at … Continue reading

On taking it a bit slower

I’ve been thinking about this idea of reduced effort for quite a while before I read this article by Derek Sivers: https://sivers.org/relax

In it, he talks about how he’s going super hard on this bike route and it’s making him exhausted. It’s not really that fun anymore. But when he dials back the effort (quite a bit in his case), his time only suffers slightly. His all out effort was only gaining him a 4% percent faster time.

I think about this on the bike a lot. Mainly because Paul tends to ride about 1-2mph faster than I do on … Continue reading

It’s gonna be May

So. It’s May. Turns out it’s been a while since I posted. This is mainly because, shortly after that last post, I spilled tea on my computer and it officially kicked the bucket. It was 5 years old, and while it was still limping along I had been planning to get a new one for a while. Still. Long story short, it took about a month to get my new Macbook during which time Paul kindly leant me his personal computer for work. But that meant we shared a computer in the evenings and on weekends, and so I … Continue reading

This entry brought to you by… Procrastination.

Whelp. I could be: making lasagna, organizing my desk supplies (currently dumped out on the floor where they’ve been living since March), finishing my side work project that I need to get done tonight, or cleaning the floor and bathrooms. All things on my list for today. As are a number of other things. But, I don’t feel like doing any of them. So, blog post!

The past month has been a whirlwind that I haven’t written about because… pandemic. So, some word vomit of the highlights:

Paul broke his clavicle. Just six days after the last entry … Continue reading