So Amy and I were in the car yesterday and she was like "is that dude wearing a time trial helmet?" So like an old couple in a national park that had just spotted a deer, we pulled over. Sure enough this dude was rolling down Friendship Ave rocking a TT helmet with built windscreen. Lucky for us, he had to take a phone call (have you ever seen somebody in a TT helmet talk on a cell phone? NOW YOU HAVE)...
Amy said that I was not allowed to post it to FB/Twitter/Blog. She is maybe the nicest person alive and would feel bad if somebody was made fun of in public. However, I am going to post it, and tell the dude to own it. There is a guy who rides around with a bike helmet that he turned into a Devo helmet, which I freaking love. So if this dude wants to be known as the dude with the LAS aero helmet with tinted visor, I am simply helping his cause without passing judgement.
I like cyclocross. This morning was the first morning that I could see the steam coming off of my coffee in my kitchen. Its like fall.
Team this year is C3 - Athletes Serving Athletes. They are a rad group of dudes (dude is a non gendered term). I think that I will fit in well there. I know that I will, since I am buddies with them already. I am excited to race with them. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Bikes this year, I am going to race on a Blue Norcross again. This is rad, cause I got one last year and it is a rad bike. Stoked. This year I will have two. We are going to be running Specialized shoes and helmets, which rules because it is what I have already chosen to ride.
I am getting coached by Chris Mayhew at JBV coaching. He has has been a source of advice and ghttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifuidance since I was a Cat V, but this year I have a plan. Last year he advised me a lot, but instead of ramping into cross, I did a 1000 mile bike trip with Stubna during August. It is going to be a REALLY long year, and I hope to have a lot left for nationals, so I think a third party strategy is going to be key.
The MAC has rerouted their schedule, putting the Killer B race right after the A race. I will finally have the chance to pay back Brody and Mayhew by actually pitting for them. THE PIT THE PIT THE PIT THE PIT (ill see you) IN THE PIT!!!!!!!!!!!!
So Amy does some work with her old full time employer, the MGR foundation. They are into doing good stuff for kids or whatever. Pittsburgh public schools got stimulus money to put on summer programs the past two years. Anyway, I got roped into helping again this year. The trip was WAY longer and had WAY more kids.
The plan: Take 50 inner city kids on a 50 mile bike ride Saturday. Camp out. Ride home 50 miles Sunday. Kids are all 11-14 years old from what I could tell. A lot of the kids live in a housing project that is literally surrounded by barbed wire fencing and has a gate to enter/exit.
Day 1: Roll out of Pittsburgh. It is drizzling from the start, but the kids are stoked. They all are on comfort bikes with 21 or so gears, huge saddles, grip shifting and V brakes. As we approached our lunch stop (30 miles), the drizzling turned into torrential down pouring. I could not see out of my glasses. Morale was low. Like real low. I think maybe 6 kids did not finish Day 1. Most of those 6 made it 30 miles.
The last 20 miles were a muddy (crushed lime stone mud) 1.5% uphill grade. We started riding at 8am, and I think the last finishers got to camp around 5 or 6pm. This includes some stops.
Luckily, the later afternoon was great. After spending up to 8 hours to finish the 50 miles, the kids could swim in a pool, in the river, catch cray fish, shower, snack, etc. The rain let up and it was hot. The kids had fun. Dinner was catered pasta, followed by Smores and hotdogs on the fire.
4am. FLOODING rain. I heard kids talking, and I went to speak to them about keeping it down. As I approached their tent, I realized that the whole area was a puddle. I heard a kid say:
"I think the river came up to us," talking about the river 100 yards from the camp site. They were totally submerged. It kept raining.
Woke up at 6:15 to more rain. A lot of "I aint riding." We did breakfast / motivational speech under a pavilion. There was 2-3" of standing water in the pavilion. THE RAIN LET UP! The kids shredded their way home. I think all but 2 or 3 finished the 50 miles the second day.
So: Like 40 kids did all 100 miles. Like 45 did at least 80 miles. Sick.
Awesome quotes: Some random 12 year old girl that I told could not shower Sunday AM cause she took too long to pack up her sleeping bag:
"That half bald guy is always grumpy."
My man Moleek after I told him that he could not have coffee cause it could stunt his growth (he is in 7th grade and was like 5'11 and like 180 lbs)
"Is that why you stopped growing?"
Observations:
Kids this age can eat anything. Like if you put a buffet in front of them, it will be gone. Its just a matter of how long.
Some college kids look like middle school kids.
Some middle school kids look like college kids.
If you are reading this, you probably ride. Imagine doing an 8 hour ride on a 30lb hybrid in the pouring rain on a dirt trail. Imagine putting in back to back 8 hour days wearing jean shorts (they were told to wear gym clothes but I dont think some had them).
My girl Lakin would sprint at 15 mph for 20 seconds then coast for 45... she did this for about 100 miles.
This has nothing to do with bike racing or is even political. Its just insane that these people are in charge of a city that is pretty big and kind of successful.
This is Darlene Harris swearing into something or another. She pretty much embodies Pittsburgh. Kind of old. Kind of overweight. I see like a million people like her daily sitting in their cars, with their windows rolled up, smoking cigarettes, and just being miserable. I dont know her personally. I DO know that she didnt approve funding for a public school band to get lunches bought for them when they played in front of the president like a decade ago. She thought that was a waste of money, make them pack lunches right? HOWEVER she did buy herself an air purifier so she could smoke in her office with city money. Good for you Dar!
This is the Mayor of Pittsburgh. His name is Luke Ravenstahl. He is younger than me. He first became Mayor when a freshly elected one suddenly passed away. He won an election because the city is crazy divided. When the Steelers went to the superbowl a few years ago, he changed his name to "Steelerstahl" because the local team was playing against the Baltimore Ravens. This essentially translates to "steelersteel."
Here is a picture of Luke with his buddy Ben. This is a huge parade downtown after the Super Bowl. Ben won it. Luke happened to be the mayor of the city in which the team plays that happened to pay Ben. In Luke's mind, this makes him one of the cool kids and he gets to ride along and celebrate. Remember when Ben like raped a couple of women? I am not sure if you can tell from this photo, but Luke is a fucking douchebag.
I would not have thought about doing the 101 this year if a bunch of fun, cool guys were not up to it. Eddy Krall, Says, and Geronimo all had a room and Eddy gave me a ride up, so what the heck.
Short: Rode hard, its hot, no bad luck, best finish ever.
Long: Registered on Thursday, got my stuff together Friday.
The usual prerace craziness / nervousness was all around. Somehow I ended up being the experienced guy in the room. That was kind of nuts to me. Geronimo has been racing forever, but has somehow never done a hundred mile mtb race. His second is going to be Leadville. Haha.
-Up at 5am. Walk to the gas station for hot water for my french press. Cant stomach any food.
-Nerves.
-Race starts. Good pace on the first climb.
-First descent, some dude elbows me off the road. I make it back on. Dude is a dickhead. I facebook stalked the dude when I got home. He is a conservative christian and is into christian rap and christian contemporary rock. Yet he had no issues bumping me off a wheel at 35+ mph. I guess it is kind of ironic being that I would never do that in a million years and I have listened to little other than Venom for the week leading into the race. I seriously hate bike racers sometimes.
-Stay with front group until the third climb. There was a bottleneck that I was last out of and I never saw them again.
-Rode with freaking Mark McCormack for 20 miles. He was pulling like a freight train. We slowly dropped the companions of our group. I had to announce to the whole group that he is the only dude who has won USPRO and Cross nats. Duh. He had a frame pump! A FRAME PUMP! I told him about how my friend beat his brother for a preme in a crit where mark led his bro out. "impressive." was all he said. It ruled.
-Had to say goodbye to mark on the big climb. From this point on, I was on my own. I manged to catch 2 or 3 more dudes and just go through them. I figured that I was in 12 place or so. I based this on the fact that I am usually around 12th place.
I rolled in, cleaned up, swam, ate, drank and signed up for a massage before I checked to learn that I got 6th. I was stoked.
I must say that the 101 was one of the best put on races that I have ever done. At one point I simply rode up to an aid station, people put bottles in my cages, and food in my pockets. Seriously the best volunteers ever. I highly recommend this event to anybody looking for a sick adventure or a rad race.
Garmin File (I think the GPS has trouble in the trees)
Maybe I should listen to some christian rock if I wanted to turn into some sort of homicidal asshole.
Forgive me. I am typing this from my iPhone while sitting at an open house.
So Amy and I got married. That post was a few months ago. There is a picture on that post of how we had the north park lodge set up. We had rope lighting and doilies hanging to give it a cool vibe. We rented it out Friday to set up for the wedding Saturday. At one point the grounds keeper for north park stopped past and told us that it looked beautiful.
Anyway the lodge is a big wooden building with wooden beams and walls. Each beam has about 2000 staples and 50 nails in it from 90 years of birthday and graduation parties. We continued this and used a staple gun to put up decorations.
Friday night, after 12 hours of setting up, before leaving for a snack/drink thing for friends and family, we got a call from our friend who was running the kitchen. She said that the police were there to lock up and freaked out because of the staples. He told her that he was maybe going to pull our permit for the next day because of the damage that we did to the property.
So we went to bed hoping that we would have a wedding the next day. I woke up early and the kitchen help called me shortly thereafter. She said the police were back and were taking photos. They would not speak to her. I sat on the phone with her while they walked around the lodge and inspected it. Well there goes our wedding and most of my money. Awesome.
The cops finally come out and are willing to speak to me, as I held the permit. He asked how I was doing. I told him that I was scared. He said that they would not pull the permit but he was going to cite me for destruction. This was good news.
The whole wedding when I told people the story, they literally didn't believe me. I had to sternly say " I am NOT joking". This is because the lodge basically looks like a shooting target for staples.
Anyway we get the citation a few weeks later. 375 dollars. In the grand scheme it was just another wedding cost. However I was kind of upset that this was so blown out of proportion. I plead innocent and waited for the court date.
Going into court I figured that it would be pretty obvious that we had no ill intentions, that we followed the norm that had been set by users before us, and that nowhere were we told that staples were unacceptable. Also hedged bets on the cop maybe not showing up.
I took photos of the thousands of staples in place. I took a photo of the giant sign telling users that confetti is forbidden. I brought a lawyer friend. I was ready to go. Amy and I both took the day off of work. I figured that we could go and it would be a non issue to a non partial judge.
We didn't get to see a judge. We went to a magistrate. This is basically an elected person who takes a three month class and can put people in jail. The office was in a strip mall behind a kfc in suburban hell. We got there and the cop was hanging out with the nonjudge in his chambers. It basically went like this: they have the burden of proof. We did what everybody else did. The photos didn't show our actual staples and we did reuse some hooks and nails already in place. We were not told not to use staples.
The cop was a moron. It was unreal that somebody so dumb has the power that he has. He literally said at one point "there aren't any signs saying that you can't use a jackhammer bun you didn't do that," and the winning statement "there are not any signs that you can't launch a missile". Wow.
Anyway the judge berated us and told us that we have no common sense. I can't image how shitty he would have been if we didnt have a lawyer with us.
Before he gave his ruling or judgement or whatever I said " no matter how this ends up, I would really like to see the people in the park office tell people not to use staples, so this situation can be avoided in the future."
At the point the non judge yells at me again saying that I have no common sense and I should not have to be told not to (do something thousands of others have done?!??!) At this point I just gave up and realized that us being there had nothing to do with preserving the lodge, as the cop stated, but was just about power and authority.
The non judge then said "I am going to knock 200 dollars off of your fine in hopes that you go away. I am SURE (shitty smarmy voice) your lawyer will tell you that you can appeal this."
Fuck you strip mall judge.
Add in: "you can die at their hands, but not at your own"
So I couldnt sleep cause I could not get comfortable cause my body hurts. Apparently people are awake and all walk dogs at 6:30 am. What a world.
Six hours of power: Ride around an 8 mile mountain bike loop as many times as you can in six hours. If you get in before 6:00, you go out again.
We prerode Friday. We took it easy on the first (and longest) climb. This made the rest of the course seem REALLY easy. However, when racing up the first climb, the rest of the course is hard.
I went solo. I was just hoping for no mechanicals and I figured I had a chance. Ernie from Ohio was there. I had read his blog last week and he hinted at an upcoming enduro. He is good at the long stuff and I figured it would be between us, unless some ringer showed up.
I dont know who invented the "le mans" style start, but it is horrible. This is in mountain bike racing all the racers run for a bit before getting to their bikes. I seriously think that I am super sore from the run and not the racing.
Lap 1: World cup start up the climb. Like crazy fast. There are solo's and team racers all mixed in together. By mid lap I was on my own, with Ernie a few seconds down.
Lap 2: Suffer fest to build a gap. I was out of sight. I was trying to kill the climbs and rail the the parts where I thought he would put time on me on his fancy soft tail bike.
Lap 3: Felt like quitting
Lap 4: Told myself that if I did not quit I would not have to do the 101 in two weeks.
Lap 5: Realized I would have to do 8 laps.
Lap 6: Finally got an accurate time split and had a good gap. Every other time, it was "5 or 6 minutes."
Lap 7: cruise control. Dont flat, dont crash.
Lap 8: I was not sure if Ernie made the cut off (if you do 7 laps in 6 hours you go out for an 8th), so I still had to race. Cramps. Pain. Etc.
This was my first enduro that was not a 100 mile race. The 100 milers generally have a lot more dirt roads. This was probably 90% singletrack. This was the first mountain bike race that I won since like 2007, which was on Gary's bike. Garmin file.
Thanks to Bret and Nicol for handing me bottles every lap, despite the fact that they were also racing their duo category. Thanks to Bret and Probikes for sealing up my tires tubeless with Stans. They are sick.
A few weeks ago I got an amazing email. I have sworn not to share any parts of it for awhile. I got a pair of sweet socks though. I cant wait to tell!!!
Race Rut: I realized that I have been racing for awhile now. Like I can remember doing the same races over and over and over. This is kind of monotonous. I enjoyed the Hilly Billy as something new. This weekend I tried racing mountain bikes to shake it up a bit. I made it 40 minutes until my tires would not hold air. Then I hiked through freaking vietnam to get out of the woods. It was 95 degrees and humid as hell. Then I swam naked in the river. I drove 5 hours to race 40 minutes and swim in a river. Hell.
In my ideal life, I would just race mountain bikes a ton. The races are hilly, there is no wheel sucking, and its not just power to weight that determines who wins. I like that. So every year I buy a mountain bike that is light and fancy. This year Probikes found me a carbon specialized 29'er. Its fast and light and awesome. However, every year I freaking break stuff and then hate mountain biking. I think it was last year a rotor ripped off of my hub. This weekend I flatted twice. I honestly dont think that I have ever finished a WVMBA mountain bike race (without a mechanical)? That sucks.
This is a song from the 90's. They were a great band. I saw them like 20 times over 4 or 5 years. One of my best memories is watching my best friend watch them. He was barely able to stand cause he was so drunk. It was a month or so after getting stabbed a bunch of times to save my life. My memory is pretty crappy, but that has stuck with me.
Short: 73 mile Dirt Road race. West Virginia. 7000' of climbing. 4th overall.
Long: So I had no idea what to expect. All roads are supposedly West Virginia "state roads."
I got my bike cleaned up at the bike shop, new cables, new hanger, new rear derailer. I figured it was an early jump on the cross season... right?
Then somebody was like "yeah until it is wrecked again at the end of the day." I didnt believe that it would be super gnarly.
The race basically unfolded like a horror movie. There were like 8 of us, then the course grabbed a few and killed them. Some dude stacked it crazy hard through the mud, and Gunnar flatted. Then we kept running. Then Pflug cracked his rim on a gnarly hole, and flatted. We kept running. My shifting broke and they kept running. Gorski flatted and the two leaders (Mihalik and Ruggs) rode away. I hope they have some sort of survivor's guilt.
The race was super well done. Of all endurance events I have done, I believe it was the best marked (coming from a dude who gets lost a fair amount). The Iron Cross is a close second, but I remember there being a panic moment during that race where I was convinced that I was lost.
Everybody should check the event out, its pretty rad.
So we got this washer when we bought the house. There is just two of us, and I have been a dirtball until I got a real job this year, so the washer gets minimal use.
However, between cyclocross, mountain bike racing other bike related stuff, I think it is getting pretty beat up. Here is a photo of everything I found at the bottom of the washer after doing a load from this weekend's Tour of Washington County stage race. How the eff did I not use that hammer flask during the race? How was it still in my pocket? It seemed good to go, so I will just reuse it this weekend. I hope that doesnt cause me to die or anything.
I dont know where the other wrappers come from. I freaking check every pocket and sure enough with each load there are more clif shots and hammer packets than I remember eating during the race.
