Weekly Newsletter: August 25th - September 1st, 2025

This week, we checked out a new hot pot restaurant 🍜, Lindsey flew home to go on a trip with her mom and Thea 🛫, and Keith rode the Snowbird Big Mountain Trail with his friends. 🚵

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

Post 2: Banff: Canyon, Cruise, and Captivating Landscape

Keith and Lindsey explored Banff, Canada, before the start of the Tour Divide Race. This included hiking, biking, and a cruise!

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

Hot Pot Dinner Date 🍜 🥩

Lindsey and I have found that we both really like Chinese Hot Pot restaurants. If you aren't familiar, these are similar to fondue restaurants but with a focus on various meats, seafood, vegetables, and noodles that are cooked in a hot stock pot at your table. So, we decided to check out the Mr. Shabu hot pot restaurant in Orem, UT.

The variety of options was great. There were numerous thinly sliced cuts of meat to choose from, as well as a wide variety of seafood options. The serve-yourself bar also offered a nice assortment of vegetable and noodle options. Mr. Shabu even dedicates an entire wall to various forms of Ramen that you can pick from.

The food was delicious, and the price wasn't too bad for everything that you are getting. The only downside to Mr. Shabu is that there are other similar restaurants close to Salt Lake City that offer both hot pot and a table-side grilling station for the same price. Not providing a table-side grilling option limits how you can cook the various meats. All in all, we were still very happy with our meal, and it is super close to our home, which makes it very convenient for us.

Lindsey is on another trip! 🛫 🏖️

Lindsey has been traveling all over the country this year! 🧳 This time, Lindsey is off to a week-long Florida beach vacation with her mom and their friend Thea. But first, Lindsey is spending a few days in Indiana to catch up with our families before heading to Florida. I'll let her tell you more about this trip once she returns. For now, here are a few pictures that she sent me of her trip so far.

Riding Snowbird Big Mountain Trail 🚵 🔧

Keith has finally converted his bike back to a normal mountain bike. He has removed the aero bars, additional hand grips, and all of the comfortable bar tape. Why did he decide to finally make the swap, you might ask... to ride the Snowbird Big Mountain Trail with his friends! 🚵

Keith is very excited to spend more time mountain biking and less time focusing only on distance riding. It has been nearly two years of dedication to distance riding, and he is ready for a break.

Keith met up with his friends Brandon and Anna to tackle the Snowbird Big Mountain Trail. Everyone did really well on the roughly 2,500-foot (762-meter) climb up to the top of Hidden Peak. After a short break, we all started the 8-mile (12.9-kilometer) singletrack descent. This is truly an amazing trail to ride as it offers incredible scenery, fast flow sections, rough technical sections, and everything in between.

Upon reaching the bottom of the main Big Mountain Trail. The trio headed further down the mountain via more singletrack towards the Baby Thunder lift area. From there, they continued to traverse several singletrack trails and a small section of Little Cottonwood Canyon road before eventually connecting to the Quarry Trail. They then rode out this trail back to the shuttle vehicle that they had left at the base of the mountain.

Overall, the ride was great but not without incident. Brandon faced numerous punctures and flat tires throughout the day. Anna crashed a few times, one of which was pretty spectacular (see above), and Keith's Jeep wouldn't start once they got back to the top of the mountain (more on that in a bit). Thankfully, Anna was not hurt in this wreck. 😅

Jeep Troubles 😔 ⚠️

After finishing an incredible day of mountain biking, the group shuttled back up to the Albion Basin parking area at Alta where Keith had left his Jeep. Unfortunately, the Jeep wouldn't start! Keith initially thought it was a battery issue, but after numerous attempts to jumpstart the Jeep, he knew it was probably something more involved. So, eventually, they had to leave the Jeep there to be towed down the mountain so that a repair shop could take a look at it.

Both Keith and the repair shop technician initially thought that the starter had gone out. However, after the technician investigated the starter, he found it to be working normally. The technician then discovered that a key cylinder security feature had been enabled, thus preventing the key from turning far enough to actually run the starter motor. So, the fix will most likely involve some sort of electronic key security system replacement. Keith should find out more later this week. 🤞

Upcoming posts and videos 👷‍ 👷‍♀️️

We are finally returning to our scheduled weekly newsletters and posts! 🙌 Keith will be working on posts covering his 2025 Tour Divide experience. Lindsey will be working on posts covering her trip through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks with her mom. Subscribe to our blog so that you don't miss out.

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletters. Summer is in full swing! How has your summer been so far? Are there any particularly memorable moments that you would like to share with us? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬