new helmet sunday

You should probably buy a new helmet every 2-4 years, depending on how much you ride (i.e., are out in the sun).  It's been about nine years since I bought my current helmet and H's is even older than that, not to mention that he rides a LOT.  Suffice it to say that we were overdue for new helmets.  On Saturday, after our respective road ride/Alta hike, we cleaned up and drove into Sugarhouse (a hip Salt Lake City neighborhood) to our favorite bike shop, Fishers Cyclery.  We chatted with Wayne for a while and then both decided on Giro Radix helmets in bright colors.  Mission accomplished!  And then we went to Grid City Beerworks for beers and lunch.  Mission accomplished!

Sunday was the clearest day we've had in weeks - it was breezy and the wind's direction must have cleared out all the local and blown-in wildfire smoke we've had.  We waited a little while for things to warm up (it was 36 F in Park City at 8:30) and then we hied ourselves on over to Round Valley.  As we were getting our things ready, we had a long discussion about whether we should take Milton with us.  He wanted to go (obviously) and it was cool enough now; the real problem, aside from his tendency to overdo it, is that he's still pretty oblivious on the trails and we didn't want him to run into a MTBer or a MTBer to run into him.  In the end we decided to leave him behind, pouting on the bed; H noted that because we decided to leave him home, it probably wouldn't be busy.

Terrible photo of me but NEW HELMETS

As it turned out, it wasn't that busy and we could have brought him, especially since I was SO SLOW because my legs were still fatigued from the prior day's hike (because I am not in particularly good shape).  There were lots of trail runners, and lots of dogs, but we only saw a few MTBers out on the trail, except for one section of Matt's Flat where H had to navigate eight MTBers and six dogs all together.

Action shot (note pink gloves lol)

I had been hoping that my fabulous new helmet would magically make me a better MTBer.  Alas, no, but I think I looked marginally cooler and I will totally take that.  We climbed from Quinn's Trailhead to PorcUClimb, then down Rusty Shovel.  From there, I headed back to the front side via Rambler to Matt's Flat while H did a longer climb up the first eight turns of the sixteen Rambler switchbacks, then doubled back on Kari's Trail, to Matt's Flat, to meet me at the bottom of Down Dog.  We then climbed back up and did the whole P-Dog loop, and I actually rode the bottom half of Down Dog better than I ever have (magic helmet).  My puny legs were tired at that point so I rode out via the double track and H went back on Matt's Flat, giving him about fourteen miles on the day, with some good climbs.  I was just happy that I didn't have to break in my new helmet with a crash, so thumbs up all around.