Lance Comes to Town

The Xterra National Championship race was held near here this past weekend. It's a short but rather extreme triathlon - 1 mile swim in Pineview Reservoir, 20 mile bike from the lake to Snow Basin Ski resort on a steep and rugged trail, then a 6.2 mile trail run through the beautiful woodsy hills where we ski in winter.

When we learned that Lance Armstrong was running, we decided to go and try to catch the finish...in particular, HIS finish. Lance just turned 40 a few weeks ago, and hadn't run a triathlon for about 20 years. Nonetheless, he's super fit and a true competitor, so we figured he'd be arriving at the finish pretty dang fast. We were right about that, and in fact,  we underestimated his performance, and almost missed seeing him.

He has a loyal following, so the finish area was crowded, his fans dispersing quickly once he came in. Had we arrived 5 minutes earlier I would have been able to position myself for a better shot, but oh well. I got what I got.

Lance finished a very respectable 5th place coming in at 2:29:25 (the overall winner finished in 2:24:25)...I'm not sure Lance  thought it was all that respectable, but I was impressed.

We stuck around long enough to see the first of the women come in. Watching them was inspiring. 

The women's winner, Melanie McQuaid from Canada, finished strong (2:43:0) but not without some pain. 

She didn't seem the least bit fazed by it.

 

The second place finisher, Leslie Patterson, also finished strong and with a huge smile on her face.

One of the XTerra favorites, Shonny Vanlandingham, tore her ACL shortly before the race, but competed anyway...wearing a brace..and smiling from ear to ear!! I'm sorry, but am I the only one who thinks it would have been a crazy race WITHOUT such an injury?! And how did she finish? 7th with a time of 2:54:16! I probably would have just been getting out of the water at that point...haha.

At events like this, spectator watching is nearly always as good as the event itself. This was my fave...Bette Midler meets Stephen King's "IT" ...frightening. And if you look closely, another tat behind her ear...I want to interview her. Really, I do. "Tell me, dear, what WERE you thinking?"

It was fun. It didn't make me want to go out and do a triathlon. It did make me want to come back up to Snow Basin and photograph the rapidly changing colors...which we did this afternoon. And so now, if you've had enough of XTerra, fall colors coming your way....

Working on my abstracts, as you can see, and too tired to pick just one or two favorites...

 ...a hornets nest the size of a cantaloupe

...and at the end of the day, one pooped pup...G'night Jake. G'night all.

Twin Sons of Different Mothers?

I walked by the TV a little while ago. A taped episode of SNL was on. I didn't sit to watch it, but I couldn't resist shooting a photo of what was on the screen...

If you've ever seen my hubby or my step-daughter's husband, you'll know why! (Be sure to click on the photo to get the full effect.) There's a definite resemblance...personalities and all!

Stumped

If you've been following this blog, you know that I like to use Jenny Matlock's Saturday Centus as my "inspiration" for what I shoot on Saturdays. Saturday Centus was started to inspire writers who followed Jenny's blog by giving them a weekly cue from which to write. And usually I'm able to pull something out of the hat, visually, to make it work. So it's been fun.

But this week, well...Jenny wanted her followers to write strictly dialogue, with the cue "Are you seriously having another martini?"  Not being a drinker and never having been a drinker of martinis, I'm finding this challenge...well...a little challenging. I've seen plenty of beautiful martini glasses, and gin and vodka bottles that could be interesting enough subjects, but I have to say I'm not inspired enough to go out looking for any to photograph. C'mon people, I live in Utah...not the land of abundant liquor stores, if you know what I mean!!

So, if you're perplexed by what follows, hopefully my explanation above will make it all clear...as mud...or as the morning after one martini too many, for those who are familiar with that experience. So, here goes, dialogue and all:


JM: Hey writers, do I ever have a fun challenge for you. I can't stop laughing when I think about what this is going to do to your Saturday.

me: Funny, Jenny. Haha. And how did you happen to come up with this little ditty?

JM: Oh, just sitting around with some friends last night sipping on martinis...waaaayyyy into the night.

me: Really? Waaayyyy into the night? As in, you were still thinking about it when the sun broke through the clouds this morning?

JM: Haha. Yup. How'd you know?

me: Oh, just a suspicion. So, what's that you ordered from the waitress? Some good strong black coffee?

JM: Nope, one last martini to welcome in the new day. Can't wait to see what everyone writes today!

me: One last martini? Are you seriously ordering another martini?!!


JM: Yes, I am. Have a wonderful day!

Color My World

Ahhh, so much color around me. I have to enjoy it for as long as I can because before you know it, I'll be back to shooting white on white again for months on end. Have I told you yet how much I love the fall? Yea. I thought so.

Welcome to the 'hood. 

This is just the FIRST day of fall, mind you.

It was so pretty that I decided to take a little drive... 

 We'll be skiing here before long...

 After my "fall color tour", I had to run to town to do some errands. Since I had my camera with me....

...I got to collect some more textures to play with later...(when the cold comes...)

All in all, a pretty satisfying day.