Fecundity in the Rainforest

Been in Costa Rica for more than a week now. It´s like the garden of Eden.

We plan to stay for a month, and wish it were forever.

I decided this year that I wouldn´t enter the La Ruta De Conquistadores which is a really inspiring personal experience...you start racing at 4:30 AM in a small beach town on the Pacific Coast, climb over mountains, cross streams, whack through jungle, endure torrential rains, skirt volcanoes, bounce along old railroad tracks and finish three days later in a small beach town on the Caribbean side.

At the airport I bumped into Walker Ferguson while waiting for our very expensive bikes to be dumped down the oversize baggage shoot.

The night before the race started I ran into Joe Lawwill, a former teammate on both Schwinn and Yeti, who last year when I was racing talked a lot smack. This year he did look ready to rumble even though he recently underwent surgery to clear up an impacted colon.

Hung out with Jeremiah Bishop, a star from the movie, ¨A Road to Athens.¨ He said he was just doing the La Ruta for fun, but he looked really fit.

Frischnecht was there too. Of course, he too said he would be just riding for the "Pura Vida" experience, but I knew that he would not be able to stop himself from winning. Which, I read a few days later, that he did.

Lou Corbin won the women´s division for the third time. I heard that on the first day she was racing for eight and half hours. On that day where I was single speeding in the jungle it was raining warm buckets of water, and my tires were circus-sized wheels of red clay. I was relieved that I wasn´t racing against her!

The La Ruta is great. And I would have done it this year, but I have a pretty good excuse. You might have heard the little rumor. Mark, my husband was adamant that we not take any risks. We recently were married and have been working on another project. That´s right... we´re planning to open up a mountain bike park in jungle somewhere down here.

So, over the next few entries I´ll keep you posted about how many howler monkeys I see on the trails while we search for the right slice of single track forest. If anybody with Costa Rican experience has any suggestions, let me know!