Some days it’s fun to go out and pedal through the drizzle, mud and crisp fall winds; the past two days were not those days.
Archive | September, 2014
Neffness X
And she did it: Jolanda Neff won a third U-23 World Championship to go with her 2014 UCI XCO Series title. Well done Jolanda, well done. You done us me proud.
That Meadow
It’s set to piss down rain all day today in Michiganderburgh, so I headed to the basement this morning and dug up a disc of film scans from a 2002 trip to Crested Butte, Colorado. The shot above is another (better) view of the mountain meadow I mentioned in yesterday’s post.
I could seriously look through the photos all day. That area–and much of Colorado in general–really is heaven on earth to me. No wonder Wifey and I found our way out there about five summers straight.
Here are a few other photos that I dug:
Feeling Lucky
With yesterday’s stomach bug seemingly gone, I embraced my chance to get out amongst the corn and bean lined dirt roads of central Michigan today.
Resting The Gut
Monday’s for me are usually pretty stacked with real life duties, so riding takes a back burner. As (bad) luck would have it, today was also the day that I got hit with a bit of a stomach bug.
This is the second time in two weeks that I’ve been hit in the gut with multiple bouts of stinky leakage and I am starting to think it might be coming from my bottles; the Camelbak ones to be specific. The insides are easy enough to clean but the nozzles are sort of a bitch and I am starting to think that despite my best efforts to clean and soak them, the multiple layers of plastic and rubber that make up the nozzle are harboring the ushers of the my bowl hovering, intestinal distress. Then again, it could be from a skank batch of my White Trash Mexican food. Either way, I think I’m gonna star fresh with a new batch of bottles.
I’m hopeful that my gut will be back in running order tomorrow and I’ll be able to get a ride in. I might pack a bit of t.p. in the saddle bag, JUST in case.
Photo: by me. Taken post-ride last week when I was trying out my buddy’s Farley. Well soiled tires inside the xB, and a soiled chamois on the outside. Trying to remember if I had pants on or not when I took the photo…
The Second Season Part II
My “seconds season” of riding has kicked off and I am fairly stoked with the results: ten hours and forty-five minutes in the saddle of a borrowed fat bike, a shit cross bike and two different (excellent) mountain bikes on pavement, gravel roads, dirt roads and singletrack.
Adequate
I mentioned in an earlier post today that I was off to ride, try out the WTB Nano 700 x 40c tires I picked up and try to make peace with my Kona Jake The Snake. Well, you may or many not have seen my afternoon edit on the post, but if not I will mention again: the tires were most excellent and well worth it, but I think my time with the Jake is done. I just don’t feel good on it… it’s almost painful. I doubt I’ll sell it (unless you want it?), but it may become a townie or a two-wheeled paperweight.
New Meats
For some reason, earlier this summer, I fell out of love with my four-year old Jake The Snake cross bike (which has never been used for cross, only gravel riding). I’m not 100% sure why, but after putting literally thousands of miles on it, I’ve been opting for my Ti El Mariachi mountain bike whenever riding gravel and dirt roads. Not wanting to see the bike sit idle, and knowing that if I tried to sell it I would get very little for it, I had the cassette, chain, cables and pulleys replaced (something that should have happened about a year ago). Now I am making a last-ditch attempt to save the Jake from becoming a two-wheeled clothes hanger and my El Marichi from becoming nothing more than a flat bar Fargo. I also picked up some new meats from WTB: the Nano 700 x 40 Comp.
It appears the Nano’s more aggressive than most cross tires tread, girth and added volume will get the job done on our shit Michiganderburgh dirt, gravel and paved roads and maybe add some comfort. From a short spin around the block yesterday they seem to roll pretty good on pavement and look meaty and delicious on the Jake.
In about twenty minutes they tires are going to get initiated into gravel and wet cement-like Michigan dirt roads, I suppose after that I will have a better idea of what the future holds for the J.T.S.
POST RIDE UPDATE: Sometimes it is about the bike. The tires were great, but I think my relationship with the Jake The Snake is over. Wanna buy a cross bike?
Bullet Points
I’m lacking time for my normal verbal diarrhea of a blog post, so I’m going all crap sales meeting Power Point presentation on you [not really] and doing it all with bullet points of random information nonsense. The only thing missing is a wig wearing sales director in a bad suit, bored as hell employees doodling sketches of him being chased by an angry bear with a knife and poor slide graphics (not designed by the in-house graphic artist, but instead downloaded from the web at 72 dpi and enlarged stretched to 900 dpi for that cool, “What the hell is that a graphic of?” look).
Bad Ideas Turned Good
As I mentioned the other day, my buddy at the shop lent me his Trek Farley* to ride for a few days and see what I thought. I did a lap on singletrack last Saturday and thought it felt a bit harsh compared to my Pugsley and made the pre-mature decision to shelve any ideas of considering one in the future. Then I got to thinking: whether I buy one or not, I think my assessment was a bit rash and not all that fair, given that while I have ridden my Pugsley on singletrack, I have only done so for 10-12 miles at a time to mix things up after I’ve done a “real” lap or two on my Superfly, or when conditions were shit.
I’ve love the Pugs in the snow and on the deep sand ORV trails, so I figured I should give the Farely another go before I return it this week, and ride it on surface that would be more akin to what I would actually use a fat bike on. The trouble is (thank God!), there is no snow on the ground and this week won’t really allow for me to head north to those ORV trails. So I had an idea– I would use the Farley for my dirt road ride today. Afterall, some of those roads are pretty sandy and pretty shit… It was a bad idea; sort of.