Exciting Friday ride

Now that mornings are cooler and the days are getting shorter, it’s getting harder to find time to go out on a good bike ride. So, nearly every Friday I ride during my lunch hour, usually up the Southfork road in Provo canyon. It’s a great ride.

My most recent ride was pretty exciting for three reasons:

1. I ran into a freaking cougar!It’s pretty rare to see one of these bad-boys outside of the zoo, but there it was — just lying along side of the road.

Fortunately for me (but unfortunately for him, I suppose), it was dead. I thought it might have been a bad omen for my alma mater (turns out it wasn’t — BYU absolutely destroyed UCLA 59 to 0).

I was pretty nervous while approaching the big cat. I didn’t want to disturb him if he was just taking an afternoon snooze.

2. Fall colors are starting
Fall is my favorite season here in Utah. There is just something about the leaves changing colors and having our beautiful mountains speckled with red, yellow, and rust-colored trees.

3. I felt great and set a personal best
One of the great things about doing this same ride over and over again is that I can race myself and see if I’m improving. Well, I did. I rode with two other guys from work who are pretty hard-core riders, so they pulled me along much of the way, which certainly helps. I ended up getting to the top in 46:40 (my previous best was 50:32) and my total time was 1:19:10 (previous best was 1:26:44). Just don’t tell my boss I’m taking a long lunch, because I plan on doing this for many Fridays to come.