Last summer, I got off the bench and got in the game for a thrilling adventure race with my daughter. The good news is that I survived it. The challenge was called the “Darwin Dash,” a name that suggested impending doom. Imagine a blue rubber mat the size of a […]
Getting Wrecked at Copper Mountain
July 14, 2017 by Leave a Comment
And I mean “wrecked” in a really good way. When the kids go back to school, our July 4 weekend will be the trip they write about in that obligatory “What I Did this Summer” essay. In front of us, grey pads the size of lunch trays were suspended […]
Adventure Racing for Kids
August 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
From mud pits and ziplines to mountain biking and rappelling down a cliff face, this year’s kids’ adventure race at Vail boosted self esteem and suppressed the usual bellyaching. Here’s something I love about kids adventure racing: Kids bike, run, and climb—and I mean hard—for nearly two hours and they […]
Keen Vail Kids Adventure Race
September 20, 2012 by 7 Comments
Adventure racing requires teamwork. What happens when serial squabblers (kids, that is) compete? My children bicker incessantly over the most inane things. Who goes first at piano lessons. Who gets the blue water bottle. They argue over cupcakes, radio stations, pizza slices, hunks of watermelon, stuffies, lacrosse pads, and ski […]
Mountain Bikus Interruptus
June 26, 2012 by 4 Comments
I have a burly dual-suspension Proflex mountain bike that dates from the late 1990s. Amazingly, I now see this bike characterized on the Internet as “vintage.” Mine is in mint condition. In the first few years I owned the beast (the bike weighs about 7 million pounds), I did […]
Nature Detectives on Wheels
June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
This summer, after a decade-long hiatus from mountain biking—and when I say mountain biking, I mean the blood-on-your-knees, dirt-in-your-teeth variety—I was thrilled to find myself navigating roots and rocks and whoop-de-doos on a dirt trail with my two boys, ages 8 and 11. Until this point, my kids hadn’t done […]
