bring on the gravel

it's been gravel roads for the last three weeks. it's important to hit a convenient store at the turn around for some hot coffee and day old donuts to warm up the toes. i think it approached freezing today. 70miles of cold weather fixie drop bar gravel road action.

Grasshopper #1 2010

G.A.S.#1 done with no bloodshed outta me on my 47th. Others suffered scuffs and dings. I heard tales of gore. A great time had by all. Congrats to Shane and his leadout man!

The seasonal do-gooder.

I read an article a couple of years ago that mentioned if everyone who rode Mt. Tam gave up just one hour of trail maintenance a year, there would be something like, 150,000 surplus hours.
I am of the opinion that if one is to ride off road for say, 40 or 50 or 60 hours, at the minimum 4 to 8 hours should be committed to working on trails. I'm not an IMBA trail building genius, but I know how to divert water, and cut downed timber to make bridges through mud holes. It really seems to be a small price to pay in exchange for all of the many hours of pleasure that trails provide us..
All you need is to throw a folding saw, and a collapsable shovel in a backpack, and take an hour in the middle of a ride to do a bit of good.

Besides, as I've said in the past, 'drinking beer in the woods is drinking beer in the woods', and that's never a bad thing.

*

"How much you wanna make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains? Yeah. Coach woulda put me in fourth quarter, we would've been state champions. No doubt. No doubt in my mind."

1st race of the year

Yeah it's January, and all I've been doing is cross-country skiing and shoveling snow...but it's race season in Phoenix already! Skiing must have paid off, though, cause I pulled out the win! Great weekend coupled with gorgeous desert camping and sunset, campfire with friends, and listening to coyotes all night. Big thanks to Daniel Christianson of Take You Photography for the great shots!

getting warmer

after a few weeks of fog, it was nice to see some sunshine today. we only got a few miles of gravel before we deemed it too soft. thanks again to cornbread for the pic.

Spinning Toward Success

The Casa Grande High School Mountain Bike Team is rolling out the 2010 race season with an extra day of practice each week thanks to the generosity and sponsorship of Club One in Petaluma, and resident spin instructor Andy Eber. Last night we had our first team "spin training camp" with over 14 CGHS riders, 4 coaches and 3 parents. As I pedaled I was struck by how, in my four years of coaching, we've never truly ridden side by side as a team due to the spectrum of ability and fitness on our weekly training rides. Riding together in this spin class allows us to do just so. We are excited that the spin sponsorship that Club One hooked us up with will make us all much faster on our bikes and much closer as a team.

As a matter of fact, I believe unique is what I seek.

This website is wearing on my patience. Everybody is all "eeeewwwwee, Seeean's so keeewl.. Soulcraft bikes are sooo exceptional... " Well I'm goddamned sick of it. Nobody, in the entire existence of this weblog has made so much as a mention of Redd Foxx's love of Colt 45.
Are we all going to sit here, blindly ignoring the elephant in the room, or is somebody going to grow a pair and take charge on the matter?
As usual, it looks like I'm going to have to grab the bull by the horns, twist, and snap the neck;


Secondly, if Soulcraft was as badass as we all sit here and exclaim day after day, then I suppose we would be seeing more of these coming out of the Petaluma barn, no?


I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I know that I want one. So to Sean, and my compatriots in the trenches of all things Soulcrafty, consider this a challenge.. A thrown gauntlet if you will. Is today going to be a new day filled with the same boring breakfast cereal, or are we going to step up and make the world take notice? I opt for the latter, and it's going to start just as soon as I have some pants on.
Yesterday is a wash, but the future?
The future starts starts right now.

a cold 60 miles

i'm registered for transiowa and the dirty kanza. not really worried about my fitness, i just have to ride when i can. today we hit it early and it was cold. i don't think it got above 20.

Finally.

Between injury, insult, a different kind of injury followed by more insult, these last couple months have not been super kind to me.
However today I threw caution to the wind, defied my doctor's orders and went on a rainy road spin.
It was perfection. The hours spent on rollers and running along side my better half have seem to have paid off, as no lungs were dislodged on my outing.
I kept reflecting on just how much I love riding bikes. I will never be the strongest, or the fastest, and the older I get, the easier that is to accept. If I can only ever take a gentile spin through the rainy woods, with nothing in my ears but the wind and my breathing, I'm ok with that.

bike ski bike

been doing some x-country skiing since mid december. well...more like flailing with some forward progress for me, but, yeah, we got enough snow for it, and the kick glide kick is fun fun fun and a great workout. biking to the normal ski place takes less than a half hour, but it's nice to pedal before and after.

'09 Year in Review

2009 was more than a little rough for much of the world, but pretty freaking good from the bicycle point of view.
For example:Gorgeous new trails like Black Canyon city to ride
A 'cross state championship win over my friend/nemesis
Endless dirt road ridingComplete with wildlife
And all-day singletrack epics
And that, my friends, is the Great Pinecone Drop of 2009. Welcome to 2010!

Riding in 2010

Riding in the mossy green mountains of Marin through the redwood needles, the swollen creeks, the open ridges and the dripping Spanish moss was a fabulous way to celebrate the new year. Here's to riding our mountain bikes a lot in 2010!

Questions of 2010

Registration opened at midnight last night. Do I have enough airline miles saved up to go? Party Animal registration? Do I convert (not for this necessarily, but in general)? Where can I stay? What's it like to spectate or maybe course marshall like my friend Emma who did so in bikini last year? This was the topic of our NYE conversation after some tasty sushi. Case in point - we were googling it on my iPhone to start figuring it out while at dinner, and then afterwards while walking to the bar.

And THANKS Emma for the coozie from 2009. It was the first present I received this year. My coozie collection wouldn't be the same without it. And your purse probably wouldn't have missed yours since I kept claiming it was mine. What a true friend - one that carries an extra just in case. :)

Hmm. Well, if these are the types of questions that will come my way this year, or this decade, it's gonna be s-t-e-l-l-a-r! High tens all the way around. And yes, that's a reference to it being 2010.