AUG. 18 -- O'Neil Pass/Dan Crain Memorial Road Race. Starts at Spearfish City Park, travels up O'Neil Pass and finishes on Highway 14A near the Chophouse Restaurant. Entry is $20, $10 for students. Registration begins at 7:30 a.m. at Spearfish City Park. Race starts at 9 a.m. For more information, call Betsy Cordes at 642-4277.SEPT. 8 — Brookings Domestic Abuse Shelter benefit ride. Departs at 7:30 a.m. from the Sioux Valley Bicycles & Fitness store in Brookings. Ride travels 17 miles to Schade Vineyard. For more information, call Sherry Oswald at 692-5022.OCT. 13 — Breat Cancer Research Foundation benefit ride. Two rides, one of 10 miles and another 25 miles in length. For more information, call Sherry Oswald at 692-5022.GolfAUG. 10 — Fellowship of Christian Athletes Four-Person Scramble. At Hart Ranch G.C., Rapid City.

Carnegie man guilty of killing roommate

A jury convicted a Carnegie man today of fatally stabbing his roommate and then beheading, dismembering and eviscerating him and concealing the body in a shallow grave.

The victim's parents said the family has been torn apart by the tragedy. His father, Craig Martin, explained he had attempted suicide five times since Brendon died, and had been assigned a service dog to monitor his mood swings. The victim's mother, Sarah Memel, has suffered a heart attack and other health ailments which she said were related to the trauma.

Photo by Matt Stensland

Confluence Energy co-owner Mark Mathis has been stockpiling lodgepole pines this winter at a piece of property in Kremmling, where he is building a wood pellet production facility. Mathis is hopeful the new plant will be turning the beetle-killed timber into pellets once it is finished in four weeks.

Tracking the cycle - a topsy turvy year in M&A

Downtown, almost the very tip of the island. It's a freezing grey day outside. Sat in the twentieth floor of a deep-carpeted office of a leading M&A lawyer. For all the talk of the shift in power to London, this is it. This spiky concrete jungle is still the hard-wired centre of global money-flow and still knows it. Like the steaks – they still do it bigger and better here.

Talk in the meetings is of covenant-lite deals, EBITDA holidays, and private equity and bulge bracket clients tearing up the rulebooks. Barbarians at the gate? More like the barbarians guarding the gates. ‘But how long can the rule-bending last?' says my interviewee, his caution rings in my ears as I rush to my gate at JFK and the Christmas break. The New Year, however, will bring yet more record-breaking buyouts: TXU ($44bn), First Data ($27bn), and Alltel ($27bn).

Check your workout personality

The trick lies in finding your workout personality. This means accessing that secret bit of your subconscious that knows you need to exercise, and wants to help you do just that. And its not difficult to make this secret bit a part of your daily life. So which of the following describes you?

Are you a solo artist or groupie?
Try to figure out what exercises suit you and your body. When coming to terms with this hefty task, it is equally important to consider whether these exercises suit your normal personality. If you dont like flexing with others, then choose sports such as swimming or cycling, that are more solitary. If youre a social butterfly, then aerobics or yoga are the ones for you. Find the exercises that are most compatible with your personality, and youll find it a lot easier and more comfortable getting fit.

Forty-nine miles per gallon for this car

MT. VERNON REGISTER NEWS (MT VERNON, Ill.)

MT VERNON, Ill. — High gas prices? What high gas prices? It takes Russell Davis less than $20 to fill up his car, and he can drive it up to 500 miles before needing to refuel.Davis, of Mt. Vernon, last year purchased a "hybrid" 2005 Toyota Prius, the environmentally friendly car that gets in the neighborhood of 50 miles to the gallon at peak performance."The technology just boggles my mind," said Davis. "There's a computer printout and it said that I am averaging 48 miles a gallon for (my last) 100 miles. "It varies, really, but I average closer to 49."Hybrid cars — vehicles that combine two or more power sources — were popular when they first came out about five years ago, but lagged in sales — at least until the recent upswing in gas prices."They were very popular when they initially came out," said Trevor Moore, manager at Tyler's Motors, a local Toyota dealer that orders the Prius for its customers.

New Pima Canyon parking too tight for comfort

The idea was to revamp Pima Canyon to prevent visitors from parking on the dirt in the park and to make sure there was room for emergency vehicles to get to the trail head. But in protecting the park, the number of vehicles that could be parked was severely reduced and the newly-striped parking spaces are so small that pickup trucks and sports utility vehicles can barely fit in. "You have to be really careful when you park," said Ryan Page of Tempe, who was in the park last week preparing to hike into South Mountain Park. "The spaces are just too small and people don’t know how to park." The spaces are small because Phoenix has a double standard when it comes to parallel parking spaces: 21 feet long for a metered parking space downtown and 18 feet everywhere else, including Pima Canyon.