Weekly Newsletter: April 9th-14th, 2024

This week, we enjoyed the outdoors in American Fork Canyon, Lindsey got some springtime skiing laps in, and we found a couple of delicious local restaurants.

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

Utah Adventures With A Friend: Part 3

Yi visits us in Utah for a road trip. This is part 3 of the multi-part series.

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

Driving up American Fork Canyon 🏔️ ☀️

The weather was beautiful this week! Temps soared and we were both craving some outdoor time. Keith is somewhat limited in what he can physically do right now since he is trying to let his knee heal. So, we decided to take a drive up American Fork Canyon to check out Tibble Fork Reservoir.

This is a local drive for us that we have made several times now. Keith has even ridden his bike up this canyon! 🤪 However, the awe-inspiring mountain and lake views never get old. We drove up to Tibble Fork Reservoir first so that we could check out the state of the reservoir. The water level is extremely low right now! We were both surprised how low the water level was but we are assuming the reservoir will fill as the spring snowmelt continues.

After enjoying the views at Tibble Fork Reservoir, we headed further up the canyon until we reached the end of winter maintenance gates. These gates shut down vehicle access to the roads that continue further up and over the mountain. This area has a nice pull-off and spectacular views of Mount Timpanogos and the surrounding canyon.

Lindsey enjoyed some spring skiing ⛷️ 😎

Lindsey's flexible work schedule allowed her to ski with her friend Stephanie during the week. They met up for a nice Thai lunch before heading up Little Cottonwood Canyon to ski at Snowbird.

The skiing session was short but fun since they started a bit late in the day. One benefit to starting later this time of the year is that you avoid the early morning icy conditions. So, they were treated to some excellent "corn" and "mashed potatoes" skiing conditions.

An excellent coffee and donut shop! ☕️ 🍩

Lindsey is always on the lookout for good coffee shops. Those can be hard to find in Utah County though since a large percentage of the population doesn't drink coffee. Thankfully, more and more coffee shops have been opening over the past few years.

This week, we checked out Lighthouse Donut, Coffee, And Dessert Co. in Provo, UT. This is a very cute coffee shop that offers excellent coffee and large, handmade donuts. I do mean large... they are twice the size of a traditional donut. We both ordered a latte and shared a small selection of their donuts. The lattes were amazingly creamy with delicious espresso flavor. The donuts were also quite delicious. This shop will definitely be on Lindsey's top coffee shops list.

BBQ tacos and nachos 🌮 🍖

What do you get when you cross Texas-style BBQ with a taco? Well, we had to find out. So, we ate dinner at The Smoked Taco in American Fork, UT. This local eatery takes a unique twist on traditional Mexican street tacos by loading them with delicious BBQ meats and flavors.

We shared an appetizer of chips and loaded queso to start the meal. Keith ordered an assortment of tacos including two pork-based and one shrimp taco. The Kansas-style pork taco was to die for! The BBQ meat was fall-apart tender and the sauce had the perfect combination of sweet and heat. Lindsey ordered the nachos platter with shrimp. We were both shocked when the nachos arrived covering an entire sheet pan! 🤯 Needless to say, we both left stuffed and happy.

Tour Divide training update 🏋️‍♂️ 😅

Keith is continuing to focus on his knee rehab. He applied some KT Tape to help stabilize his knee and take some of the stress off the strained ligament. The KT Tape definitely helped ease his soreness which hopefully means that it will also help speed up the recovery process.

Keith has also started performing a set of knee rehab exercises based on his previous knee rehab experience from his prior ACL surgery. These exercises are designed to increase muscle control and stability around the knee thus hopefully preventing future knee pain once this specific sprain heals. Keith also decided to stay off the bike most of this week to allow his knee more time to heal. He will attempt to ride his indoor trainer again after his second round of Shockwave Therapy this coming Tuesday.

What if Keith doesn't heal in time? 🙋 🫣

At this point, we are hoping for the best but planning for the worst. Keith has set a sort-of cutoff date of May 1st. If he is not fully, or nearly fully healed by that date then he will most likely need to cancel his planned 2024 Tour Divide attempt. This is very disheartening and frustrating for us both to think about. However, due to the nature of this race it would be irresponsible and unsafe to attempt to ride this 2,700 mile (4,345 kilometer) route on a potentially weak knee.

We spent some time talking about what we would do if he isn't fully healed in time. One option is to delay his departure date until he feels ready to ride again. Unfortunately, this would mean that he would miss the "grand depart" and the opportunity to connect with the other racers and riders. There is also a short weather window to ride this route so delaying his start date would mean potentially riding through New Mexico in August which is not ideal due to blazing temperatures and monsoon season.

So, our current backup plan is to simply delay his Tour Divide race ambitions until 2025. This will be a big logistics change for this year and next year. However, after talking everything through, we both feel that this is the best fallback option.

We are both keeping our fingers crossed that he will be healed in time to resume his training. 🤞 Hopefully we don't have to rely on this fallback plan.

Upcoming posts and videos 👷‍ 👷‍♀️️

Lindsey is working her way through the series of posts covering our friend Yi's visit to Utah last summer. Be sure to subscribe to our blog so that you don't miss out. Keith has been extra-focused on recovery efforts so he is unsure when he will be able to work on any posts in the near term. 🥺

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletters. What do you think about our fallback plan? Do you think we are making the right choices about Keith's recovery process? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬