Return of the infrequent blogger

Getting a dog down in a Cave with a backpack may sound like a great idea, but I now know - DON'T TRY THAT!
Packing out the Elk - Nov 27th

It's been 3 months since the last post and all of that time was during the offseason., so I've gotta get you caught up. In that time, I've had two major breaks - a 9 day Thanksgiving break and a 12 day Xmas break. During that time Jami and I managed to get in some serious road trip time. We went north both times (Lewiston, Kendrick, Weippe area). We did some crosscountry skiing, lots of hiking, catching up with old friend (a.k.a. drinking) , the traditional eating too much fine food - one of the turkeys was smoked in a newly drilled steel garbage can (highly suggest trying this), and many other miscellaneous things including keeping our little beagle, Lucy, in line. The rest of the time has been spent finding little local outdoors adventures, the best so far being the Kuna Caves and a natural hotsprings near Banks. As for the offseason fitness, I've spent the least amount of time on a bike of any offseason - ever! The redeeming feature is that I've burned many an hour in the YMCA doing all sorts of aerobic and weight work. For those that don't know, the Y has some pretty sweet equipment, not to mention 3 pools, hot tubs, saunas, rock climbing walls, indoor track,... anyways, it rocks for keeping the offseason form. Another source of workout that I wasn't expecting was a trip packing out my dad's cow elk from the Riggins / Salmon River area - 1900ft vertical in about 1.5 to 2 miles with 80+lbs on the back = very hard.
As for the team news, we just recieved our new Giant TCR Composite frames in, but I've yet to pick mine up. Turns out that we get to do some serious racing this year - travelling to New Mexico (Tour of the Gila), Pennsylvania (Elite Nationals), California (Sea Otter), Colorado (don't know what race yet) and the usual Oregon and Washington. Should be fun.