Tour de Enzyte 2007

This is Smiling Bob, you may recognize him from every other commercial on Versus coverage of the Tour de France. Evidently the geniuses at Versus think that the target audience for the Tour are middle aged men who have trouble getting their man parts to work. I am typically not a prude...for the most part I really am not but when my 9 year old daughter (who we want to encourage to like cycling) is whistling the song to the Enzyte commercial I get a bit annoyed. Thank god she has not yet asked me what "natural male enhancement" is. We have actually started to time the occurrences of this commercial and it is about every 20 minutes. I guess I had a hard enough time getting excited about the tour this year and I am very dissapointed with the coverage that Versus is offering. I miss Lance and I miss OLN!

Now that I have that off my chest, here is a funny story from Madison. We were watching the tour the other night and she (age 9) says to me "Mommie, why aren't there any girls in this race?" So I turn to Brent (who know this subject is near and dear to my girls-can-do-anything-boys-can heart) and said "would you care to explain that to her". His response was basically that there are no women that can do this race but someday maybe there will be. Madison's response to this was "my mommie could do that race". It was so dang adorable! So of course I set her straight and explained that while mommie rides her bike these guys ride 4 times the amount of miles mommie does in a day and do it for 3 weeks straight.

I still think she thinks I could do it and that RULES!

Diamond Valley Loop

One of the other things we have been doing with ourselves is playing with our new toys. In February Brent got his road bike and in April I got mine. Oddly enough we rarely get the time to ride together due to logistics of the kids and all that. However, we did get a chance recently to do the Diamond Valley Loop.

The ride can begin in several locations but we chose to start in Genoa at the
Mormon Station park. One of the most beautiful State Park bathrooms I have ever seen. They had HOT water, a stall with hooks on the wall and a bench for changing along with a full length mirror. This is great for after the ride to freshen up before heading to your next destination. Ours just happened to be Costco.

You head south from the park on Foothill Road and follow that along until you hit HWY 88 and cross over to Diamond Valley Road. You take this road around and end up at the Woodfords General Store. This is where you stop and refuel if necessary for the last leg of the journey. From there, you take Carson River Road for a stretch and that connects you back to the start of Diamond Valley Road and you then cross over back on to Foothill Road for your trip back to the start.

It is a beautiful ride with nearly zero traffic once you get on Diamond Valley Road. When you start from Genoa it is about a 45 mile ride in total. There are really no big hills to speak of, one gradual switchback but that is about it making is a pleasant spin.

On Monday after work I did this ride with my friend Kathy who is recovering from knee surgery. Instead of Genoa we parked at Kingsbury and rode to the intersection of Diamond Valley Road and took Carson River Road and then looped back to Diamond Valley road since she is not allowed to climb just yet. That ride was about 31 miles.