About Me

  Who am I? What am I doing here? What is the meaning of life? Well, I'm still working on that, but this is what I've got so far...
   Currently living in north Lake Tahoe, CA, I've been a ski instructor, mosquito abatement technician, apprentice carpenter, and commercial seamstress. I recently discovered the fascinating world of botany in a search for employment in the environmental science field--finally getting around to using my college degree--and I plan to keep moving in a plant-related direction for the near future. Outside of finding a career in science, my focus is planning and going on climbing, skiing, or bike adventures, mainly with my boyfriend Kit, who somehow still happily follows me all around the mountains even after being dragged through some questionable circumstances.
  I grew up in beautiful but soggy western Washington juggling several different activities: 4-H horse showing, running track and cross country, and racing bikes XC and cyclocross. I was a horse-crazy little girl for quite a while, but my dad's love for bicycles fueled an obsession with mountain biking that has lasted to this day. My high school best friend introduced me to both rock climbing at a local gym and ski mountaineering around Mt. Rainier, and I became hopelessly hooked on both, spending many long summer days getting lost to some extent trying to make turns on high alpine snowfields.
   Following a brief winter season in Jackson Hole to ski bum, I wound up in Lake Tahoe to attend Sierra Nevada College in 2005, where I studied Environmental Science. Tahoe pulled me in and refused to let me leave, so here I still am. I also happened upon the collegiate cycling conference and tried my first DH races, finding some success with 4th place at 2007 Collegiate Nationals and 1st in 2008. From there I was drawn deeper into the world of gravity racing, finding it an incredible amount of fun, filled with awesome people, and something I could be pretty darn good at!

Love the mud!
Racing 'cross in 2004 in Seattle, WA

   Climbing and skiing also went from occasional hobbies to serious interests after moving to Tahoe, with ridiculously easy access to so many climbing areas and more or less backyard ski touring and cross country access. I love the freedom of moving through the mountains on skis or scrambling up rock to places a bicycle can never take me.
   As far as bike racing, spending much of the past several years dealing with various injuries has given me a lot of time to ponder the meaning of life and racing. As much as I love DH, I'm going back to my XC roots a little more since I apparently miss the suffering, and also trying to enter a handful of enduro races every season. Having done just about everything from adventure racing to BMX, enduro is the one tough nut I have yet to crack, and I'm alternately excited to try and do more of it but then scared by the fact that I'm sometimes riding downhill bike trails on a smaller bike without all the extra padding I usually have on... That said, I LOVE riding my DH bike and will probably be riding laps if not racing every now and then back at the Northstar bike park in the summer.
   Several years ago I added dirt biking to the mix, as you may gather by reading some posts on here. I've dabbled in desert racing a few times and found it incredibly challenging, and also much easier to keep a beginner's mindset and not get upset with myself when I struggle with some hard parts on a trail. It's yet another sport to add to the list of things that are way too much fun... and I thought I had too many hobbies already?
   When not on a bike, I like to further entertain myself by being terrible at fishing, puttering in the garden, getting into an Iyengar yoga practice to undo all the weird things outdoor sports do to my body, experimenting in the kitchen, sewing dog jackets, and learning clawhammer banjo.