Navigation

Archive | January, 2014

Ciao Bella

By on January 11, 2014 in Cycling, Random

ciabellarace

Oh mama mia, I could use more traffic furniture like this on my rides.

Side note, for some reason my son (B-Man) has been using “ciao” for “yes” and “no” these days. I corrected him, but he didn’t seem to care. Now I find myself doing it. Maybe I shouldn’t do things like misuse the word “girth” when talking about speed. As in “holy shit, that kick had a lot of girth on it.” Beds of stupidity were made, now I’m lying in it (as per usual).

*By the way, I blame my old friend and current Florida Man Dave for teaching me how to misuse the word girth. Thanks.

A Bit About Noel

By on January 10, 2014 in Random

The Noel Gallagher Essay You Never Knew You Wanted

Today I’m not even going to pretend to talk about cycling, I am gonna straight up waste your time talking about music, actually a musician. In particular Mr. Noel Gallagher. Yeah Noel, the talented one from Oasis, the older brother to nut job Liam. I dig him and here’s why, starting from the beginning…

photo : alan clarke

Continue Reading →

Getting Back To Guinness

By on January 9, 2014 in Food & Drink

pintOguin

Back 1991 or 92, when I used to go out with friends, my beers of choice were Coors Light, Rolling Rock or if I was lucky Yuengling Lager (I know, right?). I would experiment here and there, but it wasn’t easy, I was making shit money and living in a small town in Western Pennsylvania at the time. Hell, if you were at a bar and even ordered something as “crazy” as a Yuengling there was a good chance they wouldn’t know what you were talking about and then probably question your sexual orientation (even though it was brewed just a few hours away in Pottsville, PA). Oh well, when in Rome (or at least a small town in Western, PA in the early nineties with no money) drink shit beer.

Continue Reading →

Sponsorships & The Isolati

By on January 8, 2014 in Cycling, Random

giroIso

When I was racing around five or six years back, I found myself thinking a lot about sponsorships, teams and that sort of thing. Looking back on it, I am pretty embarrassed about all that. I mean on one hand I worked hard at being a bike racer back then: I watched what I ate (or didn’t eat), I drank less beer, trained harder and rode a ton more. Regardless of that, I was–and still am–very much an amateur bike racer. I did OK-ish in the then burgeoning endurance mountain bike race scene, not winning per se, but not embarrassing myself like I do now either. I guess I thought that having a team or sponsor throw me a discount justified all the work I was doing, or maybe it just made me feel like I was being accepted into some sort of bike racing fraternity. Still, looking back on it I wonder why the hell I cared. Did putting logos on my blog make me faster? No. Did getting tires at cost win me any races? No. Did it make me look like a douche bag for blathering on about products or blogging stupid things about what I got in the mail today from my sponsor rather the talking of the true spirit of riding and racing? Yep.

Continue Reading →

Mandatory Polar Vortex Post

By on January 6, 2014 in Random

jake

Most of the U.S. is dug polar icecap deep into Jack Frost’s frigid anal vortex, and as you can imagine, we here in Michigan are tickling his nether regions REALY good (of course we’re making Detroit do all the dirty work). I mean shit is Fargo ass COLD! So, I figured I would jump on the “IT’S FUCKING COLD, LOOK HOW HARD MY NIPPLES ARE!” bandwagon today with a pic of Jake The Dog out doing ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING in -25˚ winds while I stand there like a frozen fucking idiot. Fucking dogs… Fucking dog OWNERS. Morons.

Continue Reading →

Being A Fat Virgin

By on January 5, 2014 in Cycling, Mountain Biking

meatpandob

In my old job at XXC Magazine I was a big supporter of fat bikes, it was hard not to be as they were often the chosen steeds for the races and adventures that many of my contributors wrote about in the articles I had the pleasure of working on. Having said that, for my riding I often shunned the idea of riding a fat bike, I never owned one, I still don’t own one, and earlier this year when I bought a new bike I opted for a 25 pound, full suspension 29er with little or no consideration given to purchasing a fat bike.

My entire fat bike history was one short spin on a two sizes too small Surly Pugsley in a driveway. I had never ridden–let alone raced–a fat bike until this past Saturday when I did both for the fist time on a borrowed bike, that while a capable enough machine, is not exactly considered top-of-the-line. That was OK with me since I am not really considered a top-of-the-line racer, rider, employee, husband, father, person, etc., etc., etc.,..

Continue Reading →

Fat & Borrowed

By on January 3, 2014 in Cycling

IMG_0988

Today I went down to my LBS and picked up a demo fat bike to race with this weekend. It’s a cheap, very heavy (and very fat) Charge Cooker Maxi (Charge is under the Cannondale umbrella… sort of like Huffy or some such brand). While this bike would not be my first, second or third choice if I were to ever by a fat bike, it should do just fine for my little fat bike experiment here.  Of course, I haven’t even sat on it yet, let alone taken a ride on it, so for all I know I might love it.  What I do know, is that looking down at the ridiculously sized four-inch tires is freakish to say the least. I bet you the spin up real fast.

Continue Reading →

Newer posts

Powered by WordPress. Designed by Woo Themes