Weekly Newsletter: January 6th-12th, 2025

This week, Keith took his bike in for much-needed service, we checked out a local Greek joint, and we finally got some serious powder days at Snowbird! 🥳

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

How to Prepare for Your Camino: Physical and Mental Prep

Lindsey needed to create a training plan to prepare her for the 170-mile Camino de Santiago. The training plan included physical and mental prep.

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

Major bike service 🔧 🚲

Keith has put many thousands of miles on his 2021 Intense Sniper T mountain bike over the past few years. As you can imagine, this amount of riding wears out a lot of moving parts on a bike. Keith performs most routine maintenance himself unless it requires specialized tools and/or has a high risk factor of damaging something.

The Fox 34 Performance Elite front suspension fork and Fox Float DPS Performance rear shock were both not working right anymore. Neither would "lock out" when closing the damper valve. This meant that Keith was unable to stiffen up his suspension for the smoother sections of his rides, such as on pavement. The result was wasted physical effort that was sent into compressing the suspension rather than propelling Keith forward. The components involved in the fix are very intricate so Keith decided it was time to call in the professionals.

Keith took his bike to Bike Peddler in Lehi, UT. This shop has done excellent work for Keith in the past so he knew that he could trust them to help out in this situation as well. They were able to quickly rebuild the compression damper in his front fork and also rebuild his rear shock. The result... a nearly better than new performance from both the fork and the shock! 😄 Keith also had them replace the rear shifter cable as it had been previously damaged by a rock strike.

Going Greek at Padeli's 🥙 🇬🇷

Since we were in Lehi picking up Keith's bike, we decided to check out a nearby Greek restaurant called Padeli's Street Greek. This counter-serve restaurant is known for serving huge portions of authentic Greek fare.

Lindsey ordered a falafel bowl and Keith ordered a gyro. Both meals were delicious and, as expected, HUGE! We also shared a side order of their Street Greek Fries which were also amazing and more than we could eat. Keith somehow managed to finish his gyro but had to take most of the fries home. Lindsey ended up making almost 3 meals out of her falafel bowl. 🧆

Walking to the coffee shop 🚶☕

Prior to our Camino de Santiago trip, Lindsey was walking/hiking nearly every day in order to prepare for the 170+ mile (274+ kilometer) trek across Portugal and Spain. We both drastically reduced our walking schedules after returning from that trip for various reasons. However, Lindsey has recently restarted her daily walking schedule. 🚶‍♀️

On Friday, Keith suggested that we go out for a cup of coffee after work. Lindsey then suggested that we walk to the local Beany's To Go coffee shop. This walk is about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) round trip. So, after Keith logged off from work, we grabbed our jackets and headed out on our trek to the coffee shop.

We have only walked this route a couple of times before and it was the perfect Friday evening activity to rejuvenate us after a long week of work. Along the way, we saw beautiful snow-capped mountain views, a spectacular sunset, and a small herd of deer! 🦌

Powder days are back! ❄️ 🥳

Temperatures have dipped and the snow is flying in the mountains... it is finally starting to feel like winter in Utah. 🥶 After last week's failure to get any ski time in, we were both looking forward to a better experience this weekend and man did it ever deliver. We had back to back powder days on Saturday and Sunday!

We decided to leave our house about 30 minutes earlier than usual in hopes of beating the canyon traffic. This meant being in the car by 6:30 AM each morning. 😴 The early morning departure time definitely paid off both days. We were fortunate to snag some of the last, close to the lifts, parking thanks to a particularly nice parking attendant that made room for us.

It absolutely dumped snow all day Saturday. This made for back to back to back powder runs which quickly wore both of us out. Keith even got basically first tracks on an untouched area of a double-black diamond run known as Restaurant Roll. He was grinning ear to ear after that one! 😀 All of that snow made for a treacherous drive home though. As we crawled back down the canyon, we saw several vehicles sliding out in front of us. Keith also witnessed a possible slide-off/wreck a couple of vehicles behind us. After that occurred, we didn't see any other traffic behind us for the rest of the descent out of the canyon.

The storm on Saturday went all the way through the evening and eventually cleared up on Sunday morning. This meant that we were blessed with even more fresh powder to play in. We both immediately headed to the upper mountain to bask in the glory of all that fresh snow. After a few quick laps off the Little Cloud lift, Keith headed to the Cirque Traverse to track down some powder stashes. We then met up with a couple of our ski friends and spent the rest of the day hunting out more powder.

The Road to Provo section of Gad Valley opened; for possibly the first time this season. Keith and Anna deviated from their plans to hit the Cirque in order to get some of the untouched powder off the Road to Provo. In theory, this was a great idea. The reality though was a mixed bag. The "road" section to the runs was a complete 💩 show due to a mix of inexperienced skiers and a very treacherous cat track cut into the mountain. The run itself was sketchy due to the vast amount of hidden rocks and giant ice chunks from prior avalanche debris. All in all, they were both just glad to make it out of that area unscathed.

Upcoming posts and videos 👷‍ 👷‍♀️️

Lindsey has recently wrapped up a series of posts on our Quick Trip to New York City. If you haven't seen that yet, you should check it out. Lindsey has also started working on the post series from our three-week adventure along the Camino De Santiago, Portuguese Route! Those posts will be published soon. We also have several prior trips that we haven't yet shared, so be sure to subscribe to our blog if you haven't done so already.

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletters. Winter is in full swing, how are you spending your winter season? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬