Birthday: Rest, Gadget, Crank, Sushi

It was my birthday today - on a Saturday, no less. I didn't have many set plans, but it worked out to be a nice day. I'll start with this photo of the tree in our front yard - I hope this means Spring is here.



After the good ride on Clark's trail (and others) yesterday I was looking forward to resting Saturday morning. Just slept in and relaxed. I helped (a little) Jolene get ready for the 5-Mile Pass race at 10 am. Then just hung out at home with the kids.

A few days ago I (finally!) received my government $40 coupons (more info) for purchasing a digital TV converter. I decided I'd buy one today and have fun playing with a new gadget. I did some research and found the Zenith DTT990 recommended as a good converter with decent features. I was tempted to buy the Digital Stream DTX9900 with it's longer program guide, but reports of it chopping off the bottom of the picture turned me off. I picked up a DTT990 at Radio Shack.

On the way home I stopped at MAS Computers to ask about home theater PCs (I'm going to build one soon) and general look over the computer gear and geek out (LCD monitor lust growing).

At home I hooked up the DTT990, and thanks to it's easy setup wizard, was watching the digital channels in minutes. The picture is noticeably better, essentially DVD quality. And there are more channels. KSL 5.3 is a nice local weather channel. KUED and KBYU, the local PBS stations, have 3 and 4 channels so I'm happy to have more of these programs available. qubo is on 16.2 so the kids are excited to have more cartons to watch. Nothing really exciting, but hard to complain about free (well, the converter box after coupon as $23).

After Jolene got back from the race I went for a ride. I haven't been on the road bike for a while, but the call of the dirt won out. I headed up into the foothills near my house with only one plan: to find and ride the Crank trail. I went up the service road and turned off on Betty. Last time I wussed out and stopped in the trench not far from the altar (pile of rocks), but this time I toughed it out and made it up without stopping. At the altar I turned left and kept going - making it all the way to the turnoff for Crank without stopping. I had a pretty good idea where the turnoff for Crank was, but I wasn't sure and kept looking left to make sure I didn't miss it. I spotted a trail and lots of tire track and figured it was Crank. I get a big kick out of riding new trails and this was no exception. It's a nice descent on some less than buff single-track (I like the rugged trails). There were several trails branching off, but I stayed general left. At a fork I went left hoping it would take me down through a few small meadows on a trail I had biked up a few times - it did and I enjoyed cruising down it and arriving back at the top of Betty. I'm looking forward to revisiting Crank and exploring some more of the branches.

Looking down Betty with the service road and cliff trail in the background.


I decided to go down Betty since I believe I've only come up it. Arriving back on the service road I spotted a trail going down and decided to take it. It brought me down to the race track so I took a lap. I could have bailed out and taken the Provo River parkway trail home, but I wanted some more riding so I went back up to the top of the race track and climbed up to the road via a different trail (to the east).

Looking down on the race track.


Then I took the road back to Betty and up to Reverse Frank. This section of trail flows so nice, I enjoy riding it. Back on the service road I decided to try a different way down. I'd spotted this thin trail off to the side on my way up. It was a nice downhill ride and dumped me out near the Cascade Golf Course. I took the city streets home, ending a really fun ramble of my backyard trails. Ride stats: 2 hours, 14.6 mile, 2,300' of climbing.

After I took a shower, we went out to dinner - Jolene, my two oldest daughters and myself. We went to Yapona in American Fork for sushi. We had 6 very tasty rolls - Vegas, Citris, Sundance (my favorite), New York, Spicy Tuna and California.

It turned out to be a nice birthday.