We love you Kara! Kara's friends and family have begun a "Click-it for Kara" campaign to encourage people to buckle up. I think this is just about the only way to deal with such a tragedy-turn it into something proactive; much the same as the MADD concept.

The countdown to Boards begins today...10 days till USMLE & 13 till COMLEX.  I can't wait until it's over!!!

Heartbroken

On Sunday Steve's cousin Kara, almost 16, was in a terrible car wreck. She was thrown from the car she was riding in and airlifted to the hospital in Daytona. The only injuries Kara sustained were, unfortunately, to her head. Yesterday Steve flew down to Florida to be with his family and say goodbye to Kara. Her life will continue on through the amazing gift of organ donation. I don't really feel like getting super personal in this blog, but I wanted to ask people to pray for Kara's family and friends as she leaves behind a whole ton of people who love her very much.

Please be careful on the road and buckle up.

Due to the fact that all I do every single day is study for boards, I have nothing the least bit interesting to blog about...so it will be about 3 more weeks before I resume being a normal person again. 

I did race the St. Joe mountain bike race a couple weeks ago (which was super duper fun and my Paragon is the best freaking bike a person could ask for) and I managed to have a really good race even though all I do is sit on my behind and read all day long. I've decided to follow in Dan Larson's training footsteps by expending as little energy as possible throughout the day so that I have everything saved up when I finally do get to ride my bike (I may keep using both sides of my mouth when I talk though). So the St. Joe trails were insanely twisty-turny and my Paragon tore that junk up. I think I made a couple guys who don't like to get beat by girls cry on their way home...how rewarding.

At the moment it is really "raining it's ass off" as Steve just eloquently put it so the Landahl race might be a no-go.

So Steve got a job at Wheat Ridge Cyclery and will be heading out in a couple weeks to find us a place to live (preferably not in the Mexican ghetto-apparently Denver is the capital of Mexican gangs, SWEET). We are totally pumped about the relocation, but sad to leave some good friends here in KC. I will be staying thru most of July and August, and then my 1st rotation starts September 2nd!

Okay, that's the extent of my boring update-ciao.

2 years from today.

This is my ridiculous dog last year on one of his many trips to Mission Med Vet...I think this is the time he got attacked by the mean neighbor dog...what a doofus.

Today is KCUMB graduation and I'm at school pseudo-helping with the event. It's exciting for me to think that my classmates and I will all be back here graduating in exactly 2 years! I found out yesterday that I passed my cumulative exam for 1st & 2nd years so, aside from boards, I'm officially a 3rd year. I've found that in med school it's the small achievements that keep you going. We're continually counting down to the completion of something...it doesn't matter how big or small it is, we need to be able to feel relief from crossing things off the checklist.

So speaking of 3rd year, Steve & I are off to Denver on Thursday to scout out houses & jobs. The trip can also double as a celebration of our 3 year anniversary! I'm super excited to see all the houses that I've been checking out online for the past few weeks, and I'm also just excited to get out of KC for a couple days and think about something other than board exams. We're staying with the Shuldas and I can't wait to finally meet Saige!

The forcast looks perfect for the mountain bike race tomorrow in St. Joe! I'm not quite sure what the course will be like, but it sounds pretty fun. I'm hoping that I can pull out a decent race even though my training has been less than desirable. I did do the Wednesday night hill ride and managed to chase back on enough times to end up with the main group...can that count as a whole week's worth of training?

Czech capital of Kansas.

This past weekend Steve, Jackson and I packed up the mom-mobile and headed west to Wilson Lake, Kansas for the Midwest Fat Tire Festival hosted by Doug Chambers & Golden Belt Bicycle Company. We didn't get to the park until after midnight on Friday and were greeted with 30+mph winds that made setting up a tent very interesting. We got very little sleep due to the constant whipping of the sides of the tent in the wind and Jackson's paranoid neroses, but (irregardless-which is in fact not a real word but all too commonly used by intelligent people as if it is) were excited to be out of Kansas City in a place with fun, dry trails. I did the hill climb on Saturday morning (twice b/c I stuffed up the 1st run) and the short track in the evening with a XC trail preview ride in between.  I was really loving the trails...lots of fairly short climbs, fun fast sweeping descents, random technical spots, longer stretches of  minimally technical trail that you could pedal hard through. 

No other expert women showed up for the weekend, so I was the lone gal on the short track start line with the expert men. They, along with a few sport guys, promptly pulled away from me from the gun, but I was able to slowly get up to and around those few sport guys by the end of their laps and I was obviously the last finisher of the 8 expert laps. I really love short track races because they're fast and intense like a road crit but you probably won't be in a big group of sketchy riders with the risk of unexpectedly smashing your face/body/bike into the asphalt. I love that you get the encouragement of the spectators on each lap vs a XC race where you might see a person or two every 30 minutes or so. It's also cool because you can see things changing in the race and feed off of the suffering of other riders (that sounds bad, I know) whereas in a XC race (which I really do love as well) I have an uncanny ability to convince myself that everyone else is riding strong and steady the whole time.

Saturday night after the races we hung out, roasted smores and got the best sleep we'd had in days. The wind died down to almost nothing and the skies were crystal clear. The next morning we ventured into the town of Wilson (which happens to be the Czech capital of Kansas) for a homecooked breakfast at a local joint called Made from Scratch-yum! 

The XC race began at 11:30 with the expert & sport racers going off together. I ,again the only expert woman, fought my urge to let everyone pass me at the start and I actually headed into the trail in front of some of the guys. I don't know what my deal is, but I hate to feel like I'm holding people up and I spaz out and mess up a bunch when I feel like this, making it worse. Anywho...the race course was gorgeous, the sun was shining and it was warm enough to sweat. I tried to keep myself in race mode even though I was only racing against myself, but many times I found myself just spacing out and enjoying the ride. 

We headed home after the race with our worthless dog who had the most fabulous weekend of his entire life. Great times were had by all and I have decided that I love Kansans.

This is our tent's inaugural adventure and this is Ivy-the smartest 2 y/o in the world who wanted to play house in our tent.

This is Jackson with marshmallow on his lip...and he and Cam breaking the wishbone stick.

XC Race

Curse the Kansas weather...

So this weekend was supposed to be our debut for the MTB season, but alas, it became the 4th race to be cancelled for the year. It seems that most of those that were planning on racing ended up doing a similarly beneficial ride/workout, but Steve & I were super lazy and took a day to relax. I decided that I would go ahead and not study since I had already marked it as a day off on my Boards study schedule. We started out with a Pancake breakfast (I feel that my pancakes are worth bragging about, along with my homemade pizza creations) then took Jackson to Loose Park and threw the frisbee for him all over the park. The day was absolutely beautiful! Jackson has finally learned not to run away from us and he actually brings the frisbee back when we throw it rather than running in the opposite direction. Since Jackson was so good at the park we drove down to the Plaza and stopped at the Three Dog Bakery. The gals that work there always feed Jackson about a million samples and he shows off his good dog behavior-anything for carrot cake & peanut butter cookies. We strolled around the Plaza for a bit and then hit up Smoothie King on the Way home. Later we decided to get our exercise by riding bikes down to the Plaza to have dinner at P.F. Changs because my wonderful dad sent us a gift card. He also sent us a Cold Stone gift card so we got some ice cream to go and rode back home with our ice cream in our bottle cages. I'd say we had a pretty fabulous day even though we didn't get to race. Now it's back to studying...

Procrastination is my game...

This is the tick that I brought home with me from Perry Lake the other day...don't worry I used tweezers and got the head out.

This is the view from where I've been sitting for what seems like 48 hours straight studying for my Reproductive final...

This is Jackson's way of helping us fold laundry. He has an insanely sneaky way of finding each and every dryer sheet...then he eats them.

And who watched The Office tonight?? Holy freaking hilarious.