Ouachita trail bike packing

Two days bike packing on the eastern portion on of the Ouachita trail in Oklahoma.. picked this up along the way

My hair smells like vanilla.

Race Report, District RR: Crashing wasn't in the plan

It was a fine day for the District RR in Fort Ord, Ca. Heavy fog at the beginning made for some wet roads and the need to dig out the arm and knee warmies, but this is de rigueur in the Monterey Bay area. If any of you bikies have made it out this far to ride at Fort Ord, it is mostly rolling-type terrain, with a few sharp climbs thrown in here and there. Pavement is a 5 on the 10-scale; a few potholes, cracking, but everywhere the roads are covered in heavy chip-seal. Not much for building up momentum on the climbs. After playing it smart, and holding my own with the gunners up the loop's most significant climb, I made the 12-15 dude cut on the last lap for the run-in to the finish. The course turned in to a headwind, so people were trying to tuck in w/ about 1 mile to go. Then, after one near crash in the group, it happened: 4-5 guys hit the deck at 1K to go. The accident developed right and continued left across the road-I tried to veer even more left, but I couldn't get out due to another rider on that shoulder. (He later said he missed the whole thing by bushwhacking on the left side of the road.) So, as a bike flipped through the air on my right, its owner, presumably, rolled on the ground in front of me. Somehow, my front wheel missed him (bunnyhop?), but then my back wheel tagged him. When it did, I did a pitchout (more BMX terms), and my back wheel severely taco-ed-but I stayed upright (YEA!). I took it off the bike and tried the old MTB beat-it-on-the-ground-until-it-will-pass-through-the-frame maneuver, but alas, it was way too gone. I rode the last kilometer in the meat truck with some of the other carnage. Could have been worse, but after making ir the whole way and stacking it in the last K, it was a bit of a bummer. As Liggett says, that is the way the cards fall. "Til next time-next up is University RR and then Winters RR.

Not the worst way to spend the middle of a Thursday...

As long as I am one of the 400- some thousand people in California who were invited not to come back to work last week, I may as well take advantage of the situation and see if the dirt is any tastier in the middle of the day. As it turns out, it is... And as I rounded a final corner in my adventure I came upon a couple of young women on a mid day walk. One of them said as she passed, "I heard you coming and I thought you were a bear." I said in response " I generally only get mistaken for one of those in the Castro with the exception that I'm too thin..."
Puzzled, she smiled and kept walking.

Man, if I only had a bike like this...

I saw this beauty at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco a couple weeks ago. Part of some Eco exhibit with examples of ways to reduce global warming. I love it when a bunch of smart people try to figure out ways to get more people to ride bikes by focusing on the bike. "What if we made it super-duper butt ugly, with a bunch of crap on it to make it actually harder to ride, and then put the bars on upside-down? That will totally work!" I told my wife right then and there that the reason she is married to a portly and unkempt man is that I don't have one of these. Then I would be a portly, unkempt, and mildly retarded man. There isn't a bike made that's going to save the world all by itself. We need parents (who themselves didn't ride much growing up) to get out there with their kids and show them that it's not a death wish to ride a bike. Otherwise, another generation of riders will be lost. If we leave it up to the smart people, we're fucked.

Guy turns 40 and his friends buy him a rug

I own the company, and I don't have one of these...

SSWC09 FRIDAY NIGHT

Friday night of SSWC09 is shaping up to look something like this scene from HFF 2006. Good. Bad. Ugly as sin!