A Date, Unexpected Cheerleaders and Sports Beans

Picture this.....Dave and I are out mountain biking in Logan Canyon. Dave climbs a killer uphill, it's steep, gravely and has rocks jutting out everywhere. As Dave reaches the top an older couple out hiking moves off to the side to let him pass. They stay planted assuming I will be following shortly. They start tapping their toes a bit and looking around at the scenery. They look at each other and I know they are trying to figure out if they should just go because I am taking a very long time. I am sweating, out of breath, swerving everywhere and keep getting bumped off my bike every time I hit a big ol' rock. They take pity on me, and instead of leaving, start cheering me on. I wish you could have seen it. This sweet little old Grandma (mid-to-late 60s, I'm guessing) starting hopping around energetically and pumping her arms up and down and cheering, "Push, push push...you can do it!" and my favorite, "NO! Come on...stay on your bike, come on, you can do it!" Well, with their encouragement I made it to the top, where I was greeted with, "Is this your first time honey? And to think...all for a boy!" I didn't have the heart to tell her that, no, this was in fact not my first time mountain biking and that I had actually been begging that "boy" for a mountain biking date all summer.

I tell ya, getting back on a trail after road biking all summer was interesting. Everything felt weird. I felt low and squatty. I kept stopping to see if my tires were flat. My hands felt like they were miles apart. Anyway, good news, I did, finally, get the hang of trail riding again and Dave and I had a great time biking the Jardine Juniper trail. It was a tough 5 miles, straight up (meaning all uphill of course). It led to an old Juniper tree and an amazing lookout. Get this...the tree is 3200 years old. I know it looks mostly dead from the picture but there is still a bit of green at the very top. Wow...go tree!

At the top, we had a nice time catching our breath, reading all the entries past bikers/hikers had left in a notebook and downing some leftover lemon-lime sports beans from LOTOJA. The way back down was a blast! Most of it was tight single track, which is the absolute best.

It was kind of funny to note that Friday we went out on a 20 mile ride, on our road bikes, with the little ones. It took us an hour and was a nice, leisurely, ride. Today, we did 10 miles and it took us over 3 hours and was a heck of a workout (at least for me). Anyway, for me....it was the perfect date, with the perfect man (I know, sorry about the sap but I couldn't help myself).

Dave and I have been trying to make it a priority to go on more dates. We are usually pretty good at getting a temple date in once a month but we also try to throw in an adventure date every once in awhile too. Once we get past missing the kids, we always have a lot of fun. I am starting to see that dates are important in a marriage, hehe, who would have thought?!

BTW-we passed the sweet older couple as we were headed back down, they were VERY impressed to see that I had made it :) HaHa, I adore them.