Vacation #1

As I think I mentioned in a previous post, we booked our first vacation of the year. I'm pretty sure that was the start of the twinges of shoulder pain I've been experiencing . . . because, as usual, it's a little bit more complicated than most people's vacations. The decision to book the trip was an easy one. Normally that's the hardest part for us–to just make a stinkin' decision already. But this time we found a trip and without much deliberations at all, we were both sold on it. We figured the details could all be ironed out if we just committed. So we did.

We committed to a bike trip in the middle of March. Are we insane? Normally I would freak out over a bike trip in say May or June (like we did last year). That barely gives us enough time to train and prepare. But March? March is just plain crazy. And of all of our bike trips (OK, maybe not all, but most) this one is very challenging. This one requires lots of climbing every day and not the kind of climbing that we are used to . . . the short, but steep, rolling hills not exceeding 1,000 feet above sea level. This time we are talking about hills that go on for several miles at a clip and elevations that reach over 6,000 feet. For those of you not familiar with elevations, it gets hard to breath over 6,000 feet. If your lungs are not accustomed to high altitude, you simply can't get enough oxygen. So tell me, how are we going to have our legs, backs, and more importantly our butts in shape for climbing AND acclimate our lungs to altitude? There's an easy answer . . . we are not!

And so begins our training . . . for our vacation. I know, I know. We have it all wrong, but we are simply not normal. And of course, this trip comes with complicated logistics like shipping our bikes, or flying with them on the airplane, and carrying a bike rack to transport the bikes on the rental car, and figuring out how to secure bike boxes to ship them back. Uuuugh, more details than I wanted to deal with. I don't have time for that. I'll be too busy working out like crazy from now until March 10th.

So where are we going anyway? We are going to Moab, UT, the mountain biking mecca of the world. Funny, we are going there to road bike, but still it should be beautiful. Here's the little video that sucked us in.



Another reason that I wanted to do this trip was because it's actually a fundraiser for cancer research and surviorship. If you're gonna spend money to go biking, why not put that money to good cause. Karlo and I have a fund raising page set up at http://www.active.com/donate/livestrong2011/teamapro. If you would like to make a small contribution to Team Apro we would certainly appreciate it.