Can you believe it? Me a gardener??? Yep, that is right, lettuce, cucumber and peppers all from my garden!!! Can't take all the credit though, a good friend helped me choose the soil, a mixture of 3 types, including an organic mix, and look at how my garden grows!!!

Now it's time to eat the salad, mmmmm, fresh veggies and tofu!! Nummmy for my tummy!!!

Can you find me??? What a day for a great 3 hour road ride, just decided to take a picture because of it and luckily there was a foreign guy just about to take the same picture, I asked him to take mine and walllaaaa!! He happened to be pretty hot too, lucky me!!! Ha, great day today!!

Today, despite the rain, we toughed it out and trained on the San Osaka course (XC that is) for the upcoming race in July. Nasty climbs but great single track on the descents. It was a great ride today, and the rain was actually nice!!! We rode mostly in the trees, so we didn't get totally drenched, but were able to practice our riding in the wet skills!!! Great work today, Ya-Chan and Kouji. Team Sweet Riders is back on track!! K.

Here it is!!! 100% natural home grown broccoli!!! Made a vegetable stir fry with my broccoli and some green peppers from the garden as well. I never knew how much fun a garden really was until now. I am growing lettuce, broccoli, eggplants, green peppers, cucumbers, asparagus, blueberries, tomatoes and other various herbs and spices!! It is great fun to watch them grow and then pick'em and eat'em!! Yum, yum, I recommend starting your own garden if you don't already have one, and if you do, any tips would be great since this is my first season ever.....

ARRRRGGG, I have injured my Sartorius leg muscle. I am copying Ya-Chan's idea of using this kind of diagram. When I fell on my right hip the other day on the bridge, I bruised that muscle in particular. Thank goodness it is not a major muscle and it only takes 3-4 days to heal. I am off the bike until this Friday. Whew!! That's a relief, I found all of this out when I went to my trusty masseuse, Yamazaki San, last night for a somewhat painful healing massage. Just a note for when you get injured!! Make sure you get a proper diagnosis and allow the appropriate recovery time to take place!!! Take it from an expert "learned the hard-way" person!!! I am looking forward to Friday though!! Cheers! K.

check out some of Hideyuki Suzuki San's fantastic shots here!!

Can you see which cheek is bigger???? Remind you of Popeye at all??

Well we had a killer weekend weather wise, but riding wise, we had some good crashes. If only the event would have been this weekend we would have had blue sky both days!!! Oh well, you never can tell with the weather. Saturday was a photo shoot at Aokiko for Bicycle Club magazine. It was a perfect day for it and can't wait to see the pictures. Unfortunately, for my good friend Ya-Chan, it wasn't her day. She had a couple of bad crashes and she is out for a while resting it up. Have a good rest girl!!! Sunday saw some of us back at Aokiko for just plain fun. It was my turn to have a bad crash. First run of the day and I came off Jason's Hangover bridge. I lost my balance and couldn't get my foot out quick enough and bam, on to the planks with my cheek, arm and hip!! OOOOOH, this picture is of the primary colors, should get more interesting tomorrow. So the Sweet Rider chicks are gonna have to rest a bit and recover. What can I say??? It is all part of our sport!! Cheers, hope you had a great weekend!! Later, K.

Check out the fantastic pictures taken by Hideyuki Suzuki!! We rocked even in the rain!!

The cross country was hot and so tough!! But I finished 3 laps before getting timed out. Really wanted to be timed out after two laps but that didn't happen! I was last!! I gave it my best shot, my legs were dead from the DH race the day before. In a way, I was satisfied because I knew I had given everything in order to win the DH the day before, so I was doing the XC for training purposes only!! MORE RACE PICTURES HERE!!

Getting my gold medal!!


Myself, Tomoko 2nd and Kyoko 3rd!! Yeah, I am sooooo haaaaaappppy ! I really wanted to win this race and I did. The day before during practice, I crashed and smacked my head in the crazy new rock section. It was quite challenging, like something I would ride in Canada level wise. So I figured I'd better ride like the true Canadian I am and win!!! The night before my head hurt and I was feeling like someone hit me with a baseball bat in several places from the rocks I had landed on. I was even contemplating whether or not to race the next day. I decided to wait and see how I felt in the morning.

I didn't sleep super well because of the baseball bat issue but decided I wanted to try a practice run and see how it went. In the practice run I cleared the rock section and decided I could do it and rested up for the qualifier. In the qualifier, I came in third, I was all over the place in the corners and went off course twice but cleared the rock section. My time was 3:26. I knew I had to pull up my socks in order to win and smooth up in those corners!!! In the final, my foot kept coming out of the pedal but I managed to pull off a pretty good run and knocked 7 seconds off my qualifying time!!! Super stoked, elated, on top of the world were the feelings at that moment!!! Soon to be 40 but still able to put up a good fight with the youngens.....



Me on my winning run!

Tomorrow I have another battle, I will race the XC in elite class, my goal is to have fun and get some great training in. I will be smiling thinking of my win today!!! Later, K.