Yesterday was my 37th birthday. I wanted to do something fun with my boys and create memories together. I had read about a new Mountain Bike park in Park City that was created specifically for mountain bicyclists to practice on. (Like a skate park.) As long as our family is trying different activities, I really wanted to try this out with them! Besides mountain biking has always been something that has intrigued me since I was in college and started biking.
Trailside Park opened in May of 2011 and there weren’t many people here on this Labor Day. It was a gorgeous day. Dave was our pit crew and Jacob’s playmate on the giant playground nearby.
The first thing we saw was a “pump track”. Hills designed for the mountain biker to learn how to get forward momentum without having to use pedals. We each tried this and were a little shaky, but we got better as we continued. James, Samuel and Benjamin got tired of this and went back to where dad and Jacob were. Anthony and I were pumped about this new adventure and we biked up the hill to see what other things there were to tackle.
Running cousins this morning for Spanish Fork Fiesta Days celebration. After Benjamin not doing so well in the Tour de Donut on the bike, I wanted him to experience something I knew his was good at – running. So Benjamin and Samuel did the 1 mile fun run with Matt. Benjamin’s time was 8:27 and Samuel’s time was 14:05. I started running with Benjamin, but he took off when Samuel and I were slowing him down. Benjamin also decided that he wanted to run barefoot, but did opt to run in socks since that would be slightly more comfortable. This was because he wanted a pair like my Vibram 5 fingers shoes, but they are too expensive for growing feet!
The older cousins ran the 10k. Brandon with his good friend Matt, Jared, Alyssa and Holly. In fact, I think after Brandon finished his 10k, Matt’s 1 mile fun run started and LaMont wasn’t ready to run with Matt, so Brandon jumped in the race to run with Matt. What a fantastic big brother!
Our First Family Race - Tour de Donut held in Pleasant Grove/American Fork on July 16, 2011
Our first family bike race!
Yesterday we participated in the Utah Tour de Donut. A spoof on Tour de France, and not nearly as long! It was for charity, and a lot of fun. I stumbled across this event as I was helping James with his Bicycling Merit Badge. He needed to look up the state laws regarding bike safety and this event was listed as an upcoming event. When I clicked on the 45 second video showing last years event I laughed out loud so hard the rest of the boys came running into the kitchen to see what was going on. (Apparently I don’t laugh very often, and when I do it’s a major event!) They watched the commercial with me again and I asked, “Well… should we do it?” “YES YES YES YES, Pleeeeaasssse?!”
To sum it up: 3 laps of 7 miles each. At the completion of each lap, eat as many donuts as you can. For each donut eaten, get 3 minutes shaved off your final time. All the funds raised went toward charity stuff.
So we entered! Dave was a volunteer since he hasn’t been doing the biking as we have. While he is at work, we’ve been biking a lot – anywhere between 5-10 miles every 2 days.
Samuel (5) is one strong kid!
Interestingly enough, it is Samuel (5) who is the strongest of all the brothers in regards to stamina. (And of course Anthony.) Samuel was actually the first one in our family to complete the 1st lap.
Sadly, Samuel had an equipment malfunction with his Camelbak (a drinking apparatus to drink water without dealing with hands and bottles). In our hurry to make it to the start line in time, I didn’t help him put it on his back, and he put it on upside down. So the water wasn’t coming down the tube when he wanted a drink. So he rode 7 miles without any water, and still came in 1st! That kid is amazing. He was also the youngest registered child that actually rode. (Jacob was registered, but wasn’t riding a bike. He was in the trailer I was pulling.)
Next was Anthony who was 10 minutes behind Samuel!
Anthony quickly eating a donut before getting back on the road. Dave's phone camera accidentally had a weird setting of a blue tint. But at least we got this picture of him as he just took off on his own!
I never even rode with Anthony because he just took off! He LOVED this event and wants to do more. He completed all 3 laps, but we won’t know his exact time because on the completion of the 3rd lap he didn’t go across the finish line for the computer to clock him. He went into the donut lane instead. We figured that he was about 15-20 minutes ahead of James and I. So when we get our times, I’ll calculate that in. Anthony says he ate 5 donuts total.
At the end of lap one. Benjamin (7), Samuel (5), Jacob (2). Picture taken by MARK JOHNSTON/Daily Herald
My mom is here for a couple weeks and she came along to watch. She thought she’d just stay for an hour and have Lynette come get her. But really enjoyed it and stayed and watched. After the end of the 1st lap, the 3 youngest were ready to stop. So they stayed with Grandma Leavitt while Dave was doing his volunteer job. They mostly just played in and around her and the bushes, watching the bikers come in and eat donuts. Benjamin ate 2 donuts. Samuel ate 2 donuts and Jacob had one. (1,500 donuts were made by Maceys the night before. And they were ALL eaten too! About 600 riders were in the event.)
James eating at the end of his 1st lap. Same strange blue tint on the camera settings. Oh well.
James at the end of his 2nd lap was getting exhausted but since he had to complete 25 miles that day for part of his Merit Badge, he said, “I HAVE to keep going.” I did some quick plugging in of affirmations, prayers, and energy work for him. About a quarter way through the 3rd lap he caught his second wind despite his gears not agreeing with his wanting to upshift. James only had one donut because he didn’t like the regular glazed. He wanted chocolate cake with chocolate icing. Gross. Makes me sick thinking about eating something that heavy!
Dave was a volunteer helping to put donut tally marks on participants tags as they came in and out. It was pretty much non-stop of 2 hours for him.
As for me, I really had a lot of fun and we’re looking forward to doing another family race soon! Oh, and I ate 3 donuts 🙁
As a “treat” that evening we went to see the movie Cars 2. The boys loved all the action and the spy angle. Anthony observed, “they call that a rated G? There were machine guns, cars blowing up, and cars dying! That wasn’t a rated G!”
Since the Tour de Donut was only 21 miles, James had to go still another 4 miles to fulfill his 25 mile requirement. So he and I went to see the Spanish Fork Pioneer Cemetery that has recently been upgraded. Very nice place. (FYI – the Cycling Merit Badge actually is 100 miles total. So we’ll be doing some more riding!)
Last night we all slept very soundly. 🙂
Love,
~LaReita
p.s. For those detail people, wanting to know how we all got ourselves there with our bikes… I absolutely love our van. We folded down the back seat, took out the “2nd shotgun” seat, and were able to put in 3 big bikes as well as the trailer. In Dave’s car we put in the 2 smaller bikes and bungee corded the trunk down. Perfect! And there was a seat still for everyone without having to double-buckle.
Relaxing at the end of the race, waiting for results to be announced.End of the race. Found some shade while waiting to hear results. James (12), Jacob (2), Anthony (9)Benjamin (7) is tired. Waiting in the shade for results to be announced.Jacob (2) wanting to grab the camera from me and take pictures. He's a little upset I'm not letting him have it.
Sometimes I look through the “Hometown Mailer” that has coupons, etc. They recently added a calendar section which listed the World of Speed 2009 on the Salt Flats. I thought that would be a really fun activity to do with the boys. Since it would take 3 hours to drive there, we decided to make it worth our while and make it a Friday activity (since Sat was a shortened day). And yes, we did take the boys out of school, and Dave did his Friday workday on Saturday. Fortunately we borrowed the Lewis truck so we could haul all the stuff needed to make it a fun day on the salt; Bikes, trailer, Sun Oven, coolers, shade tent, water.
Samuel and Jacob
We wanted to leave at 5am to be there by the 8 am record races (those that had the highest from the previous day). But we didn’t get away until about 6:30am. We had so much fun talking and imagining what it would be like and telling stories. We arrived right at 9:30am. The boys were so excited when we reached the entrance, they were hanging out the window like little puppy dogs. (We did bring Ruxpin with us, but he didn’t have as much fun as we did.)
We passed the pits and got set up 1/4 mile away at the spectator parking. The boys got out of the truck and said, “This is salt?!? It looks like snow, but it’s hard!” Anthony even tasted it. He said that it was REALLY salty. 🙂
Streamliner - one of many that we saw. This picture is actually cropped, so it appears closer than it really was.
When we first arrived and watched the cars zooming out on the ‘track’, I had a big smile, excited to be there watching this fun event and sharing it with my boys. I started crying because I could tell that my dad was there too, smiling along with me!
The boys immediately wanted to start riding their bikes around, but we still had to set up the shade so we didn’t fry. (Which wasn’t too bad, but that was because we were in the shade in the heat of the day!)
Thanks to the Lewis' for use of their truck. And also thanks to the Leavitt communal property for the shade tent!
We brought quite a few chairs, but really only needed 1 out because the rest of the time kids were either biking, or just sitting in the truck bed. It was a pretty good set-up. A note on the hat Dave is wearing – it says, “Pushing 40 is exercise enough”. James really wanted his dad to wear it, so he did. What a good sport Dave is by driving 3 hours to a really dirty, grimy place to please his wife and wow his children. 3 cheers for Dave!
Anthony Anxiously awaiting the fix
Anthony’s ‘new’ bike needed the back tire replaced, so today was a perfect day to work on that. Once Dave got the rusty bolt budged, it didn’t take too long to finish the job, and then Anthony was off!
Beautiful day for bike riding
Dave getting his exercise in for the week 🙂
Once we got the bikes fixed and the lasagna in the Sun Oven, Dave took the boys to the pits and the starting line to see the cars. Anthony said that he pumped up the tires in my (grown-up) bike, and in the kid trailer. So Dave took off with all the kids (and Ruxpin), while I stayed back to nurse Jacob, and get him to take a nap.
James
Jacob napping in the trunk bed
When the others got back, Dave told me that the tires weren’t really pumped up. So he nearly passed out biking 1/4 mile with 80 pounds of kids (plus his own weight) doubled by the weight of the flat tires! Poor guy!
Samuel liked playing in the salt while waiting
I decided I wanted to go check out what they just saw, and took Samuel with me. Everyone we saw was so friendly and loved to answer questions. Samuel mostly liked playing in the salt, especially while we were waiting for a launch to take place. There was at times some downtime while either course (there were 2 courses) had to be cleared when vehicles leaked oil, or dropped something. When we were at the starting line waiting for an Aston Healy to take off, this was the case. We waited about 20 minutes.
It was fun listening to the announcer – I heard one car, driven by a husband/wife team, with their kids as the pit crew, that it was “sponsored by Mastercard and Social Security”. Dave and I chuckled over that one.
While biking back to our camp spot, my cell phone rang twice in a row. I didn’t answer since I was biking, and wondered what the big emergency was. Found out that James had chipped a tooth, and was in severe pain. I had brought a few of my oils, but didn’t bring Clove to help deaden the pain. I gave him the choice of trying Basil, which does take away ‘stinging’ pain, but he whimpered and whined instead, and begged (!) for a dentist. We called Julles to see if she could look up a dentist inWendover, NV (just 5 miles away). We found one that could see him. However, James decided after about 30 minutes that he was ok, and could wait until we saw our regular dentist. (Which is a good thing, for many reasons!) I think he was also pretty hungry which made him even more whiny. So we ate our now finished lasagna, courtesy of the sun and the Sun Oven. Pretty yummy! (Though next time I will be sure to rotate the pan every 30 minutes or so.) And we even cooked some Toll House cookies on it. Though not very many, as Dave was ready to go and wanted to pack up.
We said good-bye to our next door neighbors, whom our boys became friends with their 5 year old boy named Hunter. He was pretty sad to see us go and take our bikes and scooters. (Benjamin did get some bike practice in.) I also talked to his dad about his foot-glove shoes he was wearing. Very interesting!!! I might see if I can find a similar pair to help me with my sore right foot.
We left around 4:30. Which it was a good thing we did leave earlier than expected, because by the time we got home and got everything unloaded, washed/scrubbed off, and kids (and adults) showered, it was 10:00 pm, and we were exhausted!!!
Though it was a really fun day and we are definitely making this a bi-annual event. Anyone want to join us?
Samuel and Jacob
Streamliner – one of many that we saw. This picture is actually cropped, so it appears closer than it really was.
Thanks to the Lewis’ for use of their truck. And also thanks to the Leavitt communal property for the shade tent!
Anthony Anxiously awaiting the fix
Beautiful day for bike riding
Dave getting his exercise in for the week 🙂
James
Jacob napping in the trunk bed
Samuel liked playing in the salt while waiting
Aston Healy – one of the first to race here 50 years ago
The Purple Buffalo being towed back to the starting line.
A Streamliner going across the flats
A street legal car, a bit souped up. This is what I want to do!
Watching a streamliner get pulled back from the wonderful shade of our tent
‘Smoking Dragon’ because it really pushed out the smoke when racing!
Human Speed Luge – went 208mph. Talk about a rush!
