Anything Dad can do...

Well, I looked at the title to my last post and it made me laugh out loud. It has been over a month since the last time I have written. I need to remember not to title a post like that unless I intend to stay caught up.
This has been an incredibly busy summer. Maybe busy isn't the right word because things are always busy around here. This has been an action packed summer! It seems we have spent more time away from home than any previous year. For the most part I would say that this has been a blessing. It has given us the opportunity to "de-stress" (Is that a word?) but not necessarily given us the time to relax.

Our latest adventure took us to the Rocky Mountains. My girls all say that it is their favorite place to go on vacation. In previous years we have gone with Karen's family but this year we agreed to go with mine. We rented a house with 7 bedrooms so that we could all be together. This allowed us to plan our activities easily and afforded us the chance to play games together in the evenings.

Let me give you a rundown of the players:
Mom and Dad (Mary and Joey)
Ben and Melissa (My brother and his wife)
Chad and Janna with 4 kids (My brother and his family)
Brian and Gina with 3 kids (My cousin and his family)
Karen and I (me? What's the rule mom?) with 3 young ladies (My daughters)

We were gone from August 2nd through the 9th. What a tremendous vacation! Everyone got along splendidly. We were active from sunup to long after sundown! The neighbors even wrote us a message in chalk on their siding. It said, "some of us sleep around here, quiet hours are from 10:00 pm to 10:00 am". If they really slept that long, their week was 42 hours shorter than mine! I can get a lot done in 42 hours. (6 hours a day times 7 days)

We took 5 ATVs, 2 dirt bikes, 4 mountain bikes, and our disc golf discs with us. We wore them all out. We spent two days riding above tree line and got some great pictures of mountain goats and bull elk. We drove up and down roads (trails) that forced my mom and dad to get off and walk. (After we went up or down the particular section, Emily would get off of her ATV and I would give her a ride back to where my mom and dad had left their ATV so that she could drive it up to a point that they were comfortable enough to continue.)

Turn about is fair play. By Thursday my dad had convinced me to join he and Ben on a mountain bike ride from Breckenridge to Frisco. This was supposedly much safer than 4 wheeling. My mom agreed to drive us to Breckenridge and drop us off.

When we got out of the car at Breckenridge, Ben proceeded to show me how to don the body armour that I had borrowed from Chad. Hint: If you need to wear body armour, it is probably not a "safe" sport. Yet, I am a gullible man and if my dad can do it, why can't I? Anything Dad can do...

After getting gussied up, I rode the bike around the car a few times just admiring how much I looked like a serious biker. Ben quickly put the damper on my exultation by saying, "even in all that gear, you will never look like a real biker". I glanced down thinking that maybe I had put the shin guards on backwards or something. As it turned out, he was just referencing the fact that I had piled all of my 260 lbs on two tires. (Actually, I do that quite often, the difference this time was that the two tires were propelled by two pedals)

We said our goodbyes and proceeded to the trail head. At the trail head we read the following information: Frisco, 10.5 miles.
Anybody that has done any mountain biking in Colorado recognizes useless information. They should have said... Frisco, uphill 9 miles (337' elevation gain); downhill .75 miles (1853' elevation loss); .75 miles (flat). You see, that information is useful! I would have gotten back in the car with my mom.

Anything Dad can do...

I'll skip over the long part of the story. It is pretty boring and just involves me walking uphill. The good part comes when we hit our first little downhill section. Ben was the leader, Dad followed a close second, and I brought up the rear. It felt so good to be moving without having to pedal that I forgot all about the fact that there was a reason I was wearing body armour. I cruised down the trail intently trying to mimic what my predecessors were doing. Ben rode across a narrow wooden bridge and the made a sharp turn to the right. Dad rode across the bridge and made a sharp turn to the right. As I rode across the bridge making a wobbly turn to the right, I heard Ben yell back but I could not make out the words. I completed the turn in time to see my dad ten yards ahead. His front tire was missing from view, but his back tire was coming off the ground at a terrific pace. The bike would have gone over his head if it weren't for the fact that my dad had left the bike and was flying through the air, perfectly horizontal, with his hands outstretched. This was the most spectacular face plant that I had ever seen. I was enthralled.

Anything Dad can do...

I snapped out of my enchantment with the realization that I needed to stop before I ran him over. This is where things got a little dicey. You see, going uphill, I never needed brakes. As a matter of fact, I never even asked for a lesson on riding this borrowed bike. I was too busy parading around in my fancy body armour. On a four wheeler, there is only one brake. It is on the left handlebar. It turns out, on the bike I had borrowed from Ben, that there are two brakes. One on the right handlebar and one on the left. The brake on the left handlebar only works on the front tire. It also turns out that Ben bought the best brakes he could. They were disc bakes. They have much more stopping power than the brakes that rub against the wheel rim.

As I am sure you have figured out by now, in my panic, I reached up and clamped down hard on the left brake. Only the left brake. My front tire came to a sudden and horrific stop. This was the moment that I proved, unequivocally; anything Dad can do, I can do better!