A Working Woman

Good Morning Ladies and Gents. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years. I definitely did, it wasn't super relaxing, but ate lots of wonderful food and had lots of good company. Did lots of xc skiing, climbing and even managed to take my Level 1 Avalanche course with Dallas.....really excited to go out and play in the snow.

For anyone who hasn't heard, I've taken a geo job...yup, my first one...up north, just south of Fort McMurray. I've been here for a week today, it's been a little bit of an adjustment, but I do have to say, things are going pretty good. They have us living in camp, and eating camp food...which for anyone who doesn't know, that can definitely be dangerous on the waistline. I've managed to get a room with satellite tv though to set my trainer up in, and pack my snowshoes, so I'm hoping that the cakes don't hit me too hard.

I'm going to have to get some pic's of the rig I'm working on, it's a really neat experience.

No, I haven't given up racing, definitely not ready to do that yet, but I thought I was in need of a little bit of a change of pace. I guess it's public knowledge now that the Trek VW team has folded, crazy news, they've been the largest most dominant team on the North American series for so many years. All good things must come to an end...I know, a little cliche.

This season I'm really happy to be riding with Barry Near's Trek Toronto team, based out of the Trek Toronto Store. He's got a great group of racers lined up, Emily Batty, Eric Batty, Adam Morka, Peter Glassford and coach Steve Neal....so I'm pretty excited.

Well, have to run, gotta go log some surface cuttings. Ciao for now.

This past weekend Dallas and I got away ...wow, it's been a while. We headed out to Lake Louise in a desperate hunt for snow. There's only about a foot of the white stuff but the xc skiing was awesome. We had a late start to the ski on Sat, because we didn't leave Calgary till 12, but managed a good 2 hours of skate skiing. I must say Dallas, despite taking last ski season off due to knee surgery, you're skate technique has inproved immensely....I think you're a closet skier. We book a room at the Lake Louise Hostel, it's pretty nice, really log cabinish and cooked a huge gourmet pasta dish with chicken sausage. I was somewhat dissappointed with the food market in Lake Louise...I was expecting to find more then just sausages and hotdogs....then again, it's Lake Louise in not quite the winter season.

Our grand plan was to do a night snowshoe, but after skiing and supper we were both just about comatose. So we opted to tromp around in the snow until we found a big snow pile and proceeded to play "King/Queen of the Pile". Hehe, how old are we...yeah, I know. But there's something really fun about just goofing off in the snow.....I think I won.

Sunday was supposed to be an early start, but we didn't managed to hit the trails til 10, which suited me fine because it was a pretty frosty morning (-14). Because we had our classic skiies today, we went all the way to the end of Morraine Lake Road, right to the lake. I've never been down there but it was really beautiful and majestic. After returning to the car to pick up more water and drop off Dallas I headed out for another hour on a little side route that I'd never done before...day of exploring for me :) This trail ended up only being groomed for the first km or so...then it turned into rough backcountry...hehe, well kind of. There wasn't quite enough snow cover so a couple of the downhills were a little sketchy, but I managed to make it down white knuckled (not quite the body part used for skiing) and sore from the whole body tense trying to slow and steer my classic skies.

Have to say I was pretty tuckered when I got back to the car 4 hours after the initial departure....but for some reason decided it'd be a good idea to go climbing for 2 hours that night back in Calgary with Grant and Heather Eastman. I do have to brag though :) I lead my first 5.10b.

Chocolate for Life

Many of you know that cycling and chocolate go great together...match made in heaven. But what would something like healthy chocolate be like?? Is there really such a thing? And is it really possible to make money by eating chocolate....hehe...that'd be really cool.

Acai Berries

I know I put a link up for my parents chocolate sight earlier (http://www.mmmxocolate.com/) and to tell you the truth, I was really skeptical. It's multilevel marketing, which is a foul word to a lot of people (really, in truth, everything is multilevel marketing to an extent). But the more I've learned about the product and the buisness, the more excited I truely became...and now, I've joined up too and now I'm selling chocolate :)

"What do you do for a living???......I sell chocolate"

Unprocessed Cacao

http://mxi.myvoffice.com/micaledyck/index.cfm

The cool thing about a chocolate buisness is that billions of people crave and eat chocolate everyday. This past weekend there was a conference in Alberta and they sold over $400,000 dollars worth of this healthy Xocai chocolate...crazy chocoholics!!!

Healthy you ask...right. Actually it's true. There have been many labs and doctors working on this product, and repeatedly testing it and discovering new health benefits everytime. And lets not forget...it's chocolate!!!!!!!

If you've any interest in learning more about the product or about starting your own buisness center, just drop me a line (mical@shaw.ca) ...I mean, how can you go wrong with healthy dark chocolate sent to your house every month.

HAPPY HALLOWEEEEEEENNNNNNN

Alberta Pyschocross

Photo courtesy of the very talented photographer Patrick "not Doyle".

Everyone did however miss a shot of me landing flat on my face :)

A Healthy Chocolate!!!!

Who'd a thought....but it's great. For all you chocoholics out there:

www.mmmxocolate.com
www.hclpro.com/dbdyck

Bow 80

Despite the 2km of calf deep mud/cow poop slogging, the Bow 80 was yet again an awesome race. I'm so glad that it mad a come back this year. Pepper Harlton from Juventus and I rode together for the majority of the way to the first feed zone. From the first to second feed zone I managed to put a little time gap on her on the climb, but it was never a very big gap, so the pressure was on for the whole race. The last third of the race consisted of lots of mud and lots of pushing your bike through the mud...yuck. I finished in just under 6 hours, almost an hour slower then my time two years ago when it was dry. Crazy to think that the mud may have slowed me down that much because I honestly believe I'm stronger then 2 years ago. My only consolation is that I finished up in 14th position overall, and took my first "Queen of Kananaskis" belt buckle :)

I'm now recovering from my third gut bug hangover of the season, I know, awful stats, in hopes to finish the two cross races this weekend in Edmonton..only four weekends till cross nationals.