Boulder

"Hey, do you have any scissors?"

"I always just use the meat scissors."

"There it is. That's your new nickname. Samuel the Meat Scissors Morrison."

"But I don't like that. Waaa."

"Too late Meat Scissors."


Colleen and I have spent the last three days in the home of Old Meat Scissors Morrison, where only one thing is holy:

Most conversations around here go something like this:
"Dude, I gained a half a pound last from eating at Smashburger night. Now I weigh 134.5."

"Oh man. Fred got the stomach flu and lost eight pounds. He's got his best beach body."

"Yeah. We should congratulate him. Let's look at girls on Facebook and decide if they're skinny or not."

"Sweet. Let me go weigh myself before I drink this cup of water." And so on.

But in between all the weighing, everybody around here does ride a lot. Sam and Deidre took us on a sweet loop outside of Boulder on the second day we were here.



It took me a little bit to get used to all the loose sandy corners again. The trails are all so fun and flowing. We rode for about two hours, then headed back to Boulder.

As I write this, Meat Scissors Morrison is asking his roommate Nate what he weighs this morning.

On Wednesday, Meat Scissors convinced me to do the A race in short track instead of the single speed race. That was a horrible, horrible idea. Almost every guy on the start line was 6'3",150 pounds and hairless, which made me feel like a fat hobbit.

Half of the course was a big flat slab of dirt, so I got dropped immediately. Every lap it got worse and worse. I could keep up in the twisty sections, then we would hit the flat part and everybody would shift up and crush it at about 30mph. Needless to say, I did not win that race. Sam lapped me going about three times the speed  I was.

After the race, we went to the bike house where everyone was drinking gin and tonics and discussing the merits of steel cut vs. rolled oats.

On Thursday Colleen and I ran up the mountain outside of town to the top of the Flatirons. Those massive rocks jut out from the hillside, completely separate from the rest of the land. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen. At the top, it's clear enough to see all of the snow covered mountains to the west. There might be 3 days a year that are that clear in Western PA.

I was so impressed with the place, then on the way down, we were subjected to this conversation that brought me back to reality:

"She wouldn't want me to tell you this, but she's baking at Whole Foods now. She trained in France, and she doesn't feel like what shes doing there is real baking. Now she's just putting icing on frozen cakes. You know they out-source all their pastires?"

"That's terrible," said a guy in a straw fedora. "Yesterday they were grilling corn outside of Whole Foods, you know, just traditional Monsanto corn, and people were like 'Wow this is the greatest thing ever!' and this macho dude was like, 'Hey how long did you grill this?' And it was just regular Monsanto corn! Isn't that ridiculous?"

After the Flatirons hike, I started thinking about how much hiking I'm going to be doing at the Breck 100 later this month. Then I started thinking about how ill-fitting and falling apart my riding shoes. After much thought about all those things, I decided it was finally time to retire the old denim reinforced cruisers and buy some classy new brown riding shoes:

At the store, the sales person asked me if I was looking at men's shoes.

"Well I don't usually wear ladies shoes." I said.

"What? Ladies?" he said.

"Ladies shoes? I don't wear ladies shoes. Oh forget it." I said dismissively. I couldn't understand why he was too dumb to understand my simple joke.

But as Colleen informed me after we left the shop, the conversation actually went like this:

"Are you looking for mountain shoes?"

"Well, I don't usually wear ladies shoes."

I think it's time to leave Boulder.

Colleen and I are heading out to Breck today. I'm pretty pumped to start doing some rides in the big mountains.