2009 new years day ride

10:00 a.m. at decorah bicycles. start hungover. ride to bluffton. return drunk. try not to crash. if you haven't made it for this ride before, it is guaranteed to be a riot. we ride regardless of weather or conditions and ride gravels to bluffton, usually spend a couple hours getting food and refreshments, then ride back. roughly 15 miles each way. easy/no-drop pace. the only way its not guaranteed to be fun is if you're as hungover as wild bill was last year. it kinda hurt just watching him try to ride.

last night in pictures

essentials

spinner jabber in snow
spinner explaining the finer points of...something...
wild bill
link between the two log rides in little big horn provides a nice sitting place. the picture ends up a bit small to see the flask but we were able to carry a six pack of beers and 2 flasks of rootbeer schnapps. no pictures of the gravel portion but spinner should have some here soon.

blizzard

depending on who you listen to we're supposed to get somewhere between 5 and 12 inches of snow tonight. jesse and i are riding at 7 and i'm hoping its started by then. tomorrow should offer some good gear testing for triple d.

ohbytheway...check this out for the truth about good old santa claus...

ouachita

looks like i got in to the ouachita challenge this year which will be my first non-snow related race of 2009. i'll be headed back to dubuque for lance's triple d race again in early january. hopefully gonna have scotty and spinner along for that one. plans for '09 are coming together and i'm pretty excited about travelling to some bigger races this year. anything to help stay motivated is nice when its 3 degrees outside with some ridiculous wind chill.

necessary suffering

rode into the dark tonight. just before the sun went down i swear i saw rune standing alone in a snowy ditch in the middle of nowhere. she stood there just watching me ride by.

yeah, today hurt. some days should.

wednesday noon ride

got out for a couple hours with jeff yesterday. a chilly wind out of the south that we managed to avoid for most of the ride. plenty of ice out there but not enough to throw studs on and happy the plows have let us back out on the cross bikes instead of the mountain bikes.

jeff
vassago fisticuff

wherever you are...

i hope you find a reason to smile. three and a half hours of this worked for me today.

triple d training

not just for toes any more...

spinner, grawin, wild bill, ogara, gunner and myself headed out in single digit temps (windchill probably pushing the negatives) for some dark, snowy, gravelly goodness and the bluffton bar. not completely convinced the bar would be open by the time we got there we were surprised to see the parking lot full of cars. imagine a town of a couple hundred in the middle of nowhere iowa...now imagine a bar full of residents of said town...now imagine six guys walking in to said bar in tights and balaclavas on the coldest night of the season so far. yeah, we got stared at, and questioned, and laughed at, and everything else that goes with riding bike around a group of people that just don't understand the culture. after putting down our share of pbr's and highlife we somehow convinced the bartender to fill both of our flasks for the ride home for $10. not sure how we worked that out but i'm not complaining. a little more comfortable ride home with a tailwind and a few stops along the way to make sure the flasks were empty before hitting town. shut down t-bock's just cause it seemed appropriate. back to the moral of the story...not everyone was as well prepared or overdressed as jeff so there was a lot of discussion on how to stay warm during the bar session in bluffton. by the time we left the bar grawin had proven that adhesive chemical toe warmers aren't just for toes anymore and can in fact remedy frozen appendages.

my bike is bob barker approved!

yep, fisty got fixed again. following a weather (snowy roads) and health (2-week chest and head crap) related bail out on jingle cross (which pissed me off a bit too much to write about it) my race season seems to be officially over. so, fisty got the rear wheel flipped as well as the 17t boone cog put back on the freehub side (just in case). the snow we have right now is allowing me to still run 32's but much more and it will be time to get started on the wtb interwolf 38c snowy gravel road project. kinda curious to see how they perform. less tread/more float...not sure. just got done with a hard fought 25 miles with wild bill in a cold headwind through fresh snow. a lot of fun but and a lot of work. i definitely need to spend some more time on the bike.

it is a proven fact

1/4 pound gas station hot dogs with copious amounts of ketchup and mayonnaise for breakfast cure hangovers. yes. fact.

weekend review

spent the weekend in the quad cities completing the DICE cyclocross race series. race #3 was saturday and it was cold...damn cold. a fairly long, stretched out course with a couple fast downhills and a mean run-up that was frozen to the point that my toe spikes couldn't dig in. i felt pretty good and had a really tight yo-yo battle for 5th/6th which i eventually lost. the guy that beat me was a strong rider and it kinda felt like my weeklong head/chest cold finally kicked my ass on the last lap (at least that was my excuse til he beat me worse on sunday). pretty cool course that was a little more wide open than races 1&2 of the series. sunday brought warmer temps, the biggest field of the series and my favorite course of the series. it was fast, a little soft and muddy in spots, had another tough run-up, and had a super fun downhill to a jump. can't say i really expected to be jumping fisty but you kind of had to try to NOT jump off this thing so you might as well put your head down and head right for it. top ten again (9th i think) which ended up getting me 5th overall in the points series. i think i ended up winning half my entry fees back over the course of the four races...not bad for a whole lot of fun. oh...and the vassago fisticuff continues to rock, and making the switch to wtb crosswolf tires is something i should have done a long time ago. these things have tons of traction. for me, cornering at speed is all about confidence. you don't have to ride a set of tires too long before they either give you that confidence or they don't. i won't be racing any other tires for a while. next up...hopefully gonna make it down to iowa city for the single speedo (not a typo) race on sunday of jingle cross. picture low 30's, rain/snow, and a nice blue speedo that goes with the color scheme that fisty is already sporting.

cold and running and jealous of the warm people drinking

sometimes racing is just fun

i really kinda sucked at barriers this weekend

grampa and larsson checking out the action

productive weekend

this weekend was spent working on trails rather than riding them and some pretty good progress was made. spent about 3 hours saturday with alex the scout finishing the construction phase of the structures to be placed along the river trail. now ready to install 2 teeters, 2 skinnies and a jump/drop. will most likely clean a new trail for these sometime this week and hopefully get them installed before a hard freeze makes it tough to dig. sunday i drug larsson out and met up with the group for close to another 3 hours (many of the others were out much longer than that) working on the new section of trail. for a long time we've focused on building harder and harder and more technical trails. this time around they're all about speed. there's a ton of off camber that's getting dug in and some pretty good ravine work as well. should be a pretty rippin fast section when its done. people i saw out busting their tails...deke, doug, jimmy, ogara, spinner, folke, kirk, larsson, sarge, deneb...sorry if i'm missing anyone.

doug, jeff, larsson, jimmy, me, deke

doug and jeff taking on a tree...yes, it really was that off-camber when we started

larsson pitching in

3 hours of trail work and he was toast...took the edge off the pain of watching the bears

thank you colin

THIS is worth watching. if you don't agree with colin's statement, i apologize. sort of. otherwise, "for those about to rock..."
yeah, you know where i'm going with that. hope paulios has seen it.

so it begins

again. i'm on the list (thanks for the heads up ari). seems appropriate that my registration gets posted the day after spending 3 hours in a freezing drizzle that eventually soaked my gloves and stole my hand function for the last hour of the ride. brakes froze over, hit something like 36 mph down a gravel hill that was starting to ice over, ice collecting on gloves, boots, jersey. it was a perfectly miserable day on tuesday...the kind of day that made you damn sure you were training for something.
on another note...i'll finally be starting physical therapy to do something about the shoulder i beat up in vegas. its nothing debilitating but i've certainly lost some strength and range of motion and just kept thinking time would heal it. not so much i guess.
to everyone getting ready to put in a winter's worth of suffering in preparation for transiowa v...happy training.

this week in pics

old towne vande-cross...fun but didn't race great
race #2 of 4-race DICE series borrowed spinner's chameleon/leaf blower...above is trail already ridden

above is trail yet to ride...this thing is actually awesome

a few too many lunchboxes and some good looking flamingos

well...what...happened...uummm...maybe they're just resting?

dropping science like galileo dropped his orange

first off...i'm pretty much a metal head and i'm a sucker for any sort of rap/rock fusion. despite this, i listen to a variety of music and have been listening to jack johnson and martin sexton almost exclusively for the last few weeks. but a few days ago i came across this...

so today after dropping larsson off with his grandparents i spent about an hour in the car rocking out to paul's boutique. i don't even know where this cd came from but its amazing how you don't listen to something for years, throw it in and immediately remember most of the words. here's the point to this post...eggman is an instant party. classic and still righteous. put the cd in and you're just waiting for that song to come on. not that the rest of the album isn't fantastic...but eggman is just where its at.

it comes from a chicken not a bunny, dummy.

good times

this weekend brought halloween, friends, bartending, luther soccer alumni weekend, partying, riding, and a mohawk. saturday's alumni soccer game took all of about 10 minutes to remind me why i've finally retired. at least i made it through without injury and i'm starting to walk a little more normal. scotty crashed for the weekend and we got in a good ride on sunday before he took off. monday brought adam and an older trek 4500. he showed up early and we started tearing into his bike immediately. the rigid fork didn't work out but he's now rockin a single speed, riding pretty well and showing lots of potential for someone who basically just started riding. oh, and he's completely sold on single and 29's. still sorting stuff out after the move back from phoenix, he'll probably be crushing a new jabber by this spring. we got in a couple long rides before it was time for him to head out on tuesday. somehow his trip up here coincided with mid 70's and absolutely gorgeous trail conditions. icing on the cake...i realized that when i hit that tree in the night race my jen green vassago headbadge went missing (yes, it was put on with jb weld). over a week after the race i went to where i thought i had crashed and in full needle-in-a-haystack style i found the headbadge buried in a pile of leaves after searching for less than 2 minutes. sounds like a reason to party. or at least lunch and a beer at t-bock's before heading to the bar for work. hope everybody enjoyed the weather cause its time for booties and tights...and time for me to try out my new pearl izumi barrier winter boots. mmmmm...warm.....

a quick stop for some post-crash adjustments

what a day to ride...

adam doing his thing in palisades

yeah, i let him have a couple minutes on the jabber...pretty sure that's all it took

chuck liddell

says happy halloween

i need to spend more time at the bar

yesterday was officially my last day working at the shop. all in all it was more of a necessary decision than a good or bad decision. i certainly wish travis and the shop all the best in years to come and have yet to meet someone i trust working on my bike more than him. as for me, its back up to the bar i've been at part time for the last year but now i'll be there full time as the bar manager. a couple of positives in all of this...i'll be keeping larsson out of daycare two days a week so we can either party at home or i can use his slave labor to help maintain the trails and it means i'll have more daylight hours during the winter to train. hooray sun. random thought for today...black licorice gummy bears and grape gatorade taste like crap together.

how not to end a season (night race recap)

everything was perfect for the night race. the organizers and volunteers had done a great job, the trails were in perfect shape and the weather was holding just well enough to not have to dress very heavy. a little over 50 people showed up and everyone was in a great mood. group rollout to the start, ogara says readysetgo and we're off. climb the long gravel, left into van peenen and head for the single track. trevor olsen was first onto the singletrack at fred's with me in second and max anderson in third. pretty happy with my position at this point cause i know trevor's had some great results in expert wors races this year and i was right on his wheel. didn't know who was in third but felt like the three of us were starting to pull away. knew trevor was down to just his handlebar lights because of problems with his helmet light so i almost asked to get around before the downhill but chose not to. fuck. start bombing down fred's (less than 10 minutes into the race and maybe a half mile into the singletrack). we were moving. and just like that the race was over. wrapped my bike around a tree. i remember the instant recognition of what was happening when my bars hit the tree, and i remember getting to my feet and realizing i was a good ten yards from my bike. don't remember anything in between. apparently it was so bad trevor, who was in front of me, heard it and stopped. max (in third) stopped to check on me. nothing hurt but the bike which is yet to be assessed (hoping nothing's broken, but definitely unrideable). max and trevor rolled on around the hairpin halfway down fred's then trevor slashes a sidewall at the bottom of fred's. max had a good run after that and took the race by something like 3 minutes. huge congrats to marc folkedahl for reminding everyone that he's still one of the fast guys in town with a second place finish. congrats to sarge and brad crawford for third and fourth, respectively. trevor rockwell, eric clement, jimmy tripp and travis grawin made it 7 locals in the top 10. spinner finished the race pedaling with only one leg after breaking a pedal off. biggest congrats of the night goes to garrett mcalister for deciding to do this race on a borrowed bike, borrowed light and only his fourth mountain bike ride ever. dude is a total roadie and finished in the top half of the field...couldn't be happier for him and the rest of the locals that showed up and threw down. as for me...last mountain bike race of the year as far as i know. coming out of the debacle that was september i was really looking forward to finishing the season on a good note and had very high expectations for myself going into this. i know i should be pretty happy that i walked away from what was one of my worst crashes in a really long time but its pretty hard not to be frustrated. but, so it is. been putting my schedule together for next year and there's plenty to be excited about. in the meantime, travis will be working his magic to make sure nothing's seriously wrong with the jabber (broken black sheep fork? trashed king headset? cracked carbon bars?). gonna overhaul the whole thing while he's at it...thanks travis. maybe a few more cross races and back to the gravel grind.

NIGHT RACE TONIGHT!!!!

cold and windy...dark and twisty. how can you not have fun at this thing?

vassago and transiowa!!

man this makes me happy...just got the heads up from misty and went over to check out the transiowa website. vassago has worked out a deal with guitar ted and transiowa to give away a fisticuff at transiowa 5. as of right now i'm still rocking the prototype i was allowed to debut at transiowa last year and it will undoubtedly be my weapon of choice again this year. now...here's hoping a few people finish so somebody can walk off with this gem. yeah, i might be biased, but vassago and the people behind it are pretty fucking cool.

devil's cross

traveled down to the quad cities for the devil's cross race put on by local riding club D.I.C.E. honestly, this course was awesome. there wasn't one thing that was totally outstanding, but as a package it was just cool. a beautiful park, gently rolling, tough cornering over walnuts and acorns, well-placed barriers, downhill turns through soft mud, a tough but manageable run-up and a spectator friendly course of which about 90% could be seen by barely moving. as i lined up for the 3/4 race i looked around and instantly felt a little silly for wondering if there was going to be a single speed category. i was the single speed category. not one other ss seen except what another guy was just rolling around on. oh well, nothing wrong with having my vassago fisticuff stand out in a crowd. ready set go and we're off on a flat, paved sprint to the first corner. the shifty riders big ring it and i'm somewhere mid-pack. the big run-up was about 2/3 through the lap and the first time we got to it i realized that it could be big for me. i ran my way back into the top 5 at the top of the hill, then got picked off by a couple guys and found myself looking at the backs of the top 5 as we got near the end of the first lap. a muddy downhill corner ended one guys race and put me into the top 5. a quick look around made it obvious that we had pulled away from the field, but the top 4 had split into pairs and pulled away from me. one and two were running a tight race and i started gauging my gap to three and four. by the end of the second lap i had a decent grasp on how far behind i was. halfway through the third lap (of seven) i saw fourth falling off. i put everything i had into laps 4 and 5, making up big chunks every lap on the run-up. i passed him at the start of lap six but couldn't shake him. i was afraid i had put everything into passing him and not left enough to hold the pass. the run-up on lap 6 gave me less than 10 yards of breathing room so i just kept hammering. through the final lap he didn't seem to be closing the gap so when i hit the run-up i shouldered the bike in stride, put my head down and dug in. by the time i got to the top and doubled back i was pretty confident all i had to do was keep the bike upright. i finished fourth in the 3/4 race as the only single speed in the field. considering i still don't consider myself much of a cross racer, terribly inexperienced at best, i'll take it. the bike rode flawlessly and the getting rid of the carbon seatpost for the thomson masterpiece with a wtb carbon devo saddle gave me a bit more confidence hopping back on the saddle. anyway, race was awesome. thanks to dad for the hand-ups and trudy for hanging with larsson so julie could take pics. say andy for probably the last time before he heads out to colorado...probably for good. he's a great guy and its been awesome racing against him for the last however many years. favorite memory...check out the picture of him and kyle sedore stopping to pose DURING a race like 4 years ago. during the pose i made my final pass and finished the last 2 miles of that race on a flat front tire. the only reason andy didn't pass me was because he rode the last 2 miles on a blown up wheel with only one break and a handful fewer spokes than one should. we still had enough time to stand at the finish and laugh about the way it ended while waiting for third place to come in a few minutes later. good luck in colorado.

mad barrier skills
finally catching fourth near the end of lap 5
run-up on lap 6...you're still f-ing there?!?!?! damnit.

fisty can fly!!

devil's cross race this sunday in bettendorf was an absolute riot. race recap soon.

soul rides

they just aren't something you can plan. pretty hard to define too. sometimes its about hammering for an hour and making every climb and just putting down the fastest time of your life. sometimes its about riding dabless over your most technical trails. sometimes its hours on end of riding until you forget about the world. regardless, its always about a ride that leaves you with nothing but a smile and a reminder of why you do this. today was somewhere in the middle of all that. 4 hours of riding on literally 99% singletrack without leaving city limits. it was cold...damn cold last night and that left the leaf-covered trails nice and slippery. spent the first two hours of the ride practicing my two-wheel drifting technique and hammering out a real common loop for the locals, then rode it backwards and did a few more things then headed back to the apt for some leftover chili. the apt is about 2 minutes from the trailhead which is fairly convenient when doing this long of a ride over the lunch hour. then headed back out for another 2 hours. this time the trail was drying up and carrying speed was easier, but climbing got way harder. climbing here is always hard...3 hours in it gets brutal. but the weather was amazing. the color in the trees and leaves is almost gone but the sun was shining and it was somewhere around 40 degrees when i started and 50 when i ended. that and the day started out picking up a couple new goodies from the shop for the jabber. in the 4 hours i rode i saw probably 8 deer, never more than two at a time, two pairs of turkeys and the biggest "oh shit" moment came as i railed through a corner, i pod blasting, eyes looking too close to my front wheel when something caught my attention just in time. a flock (gaggle? i don't hunt) of about 10 turkeys right in middle of the trail. pretty well locked up the brakes and skidded to a stop and the turkeys scattered in every direction. i'm sure the look on my face was comical, so i had a short laugh at myself and headed on down the trail.

almost 3 hours in, about to climb larson's. yuck.

one of my 17 required pieces of flare. i'm working on 32.

if the bike was clean and you could see it in person, its almost as if crank brothers should have named their iodine color molten brimstone.

yes, its a road stem. get over it. its light, not carbon and the "red" is pushing an orange tint that also works awesome with the paint. the carbon wrap on my titec pluto stem was actually flaking of like shitty paint.

thoughts on transiowa...in october

its been almost 6 months since transiowa. my last post and ari's comment got me thinking more about it again. i'm not sure i've spent many days without at least a fleeting thought about it. yeah, its easy to be disappointed in how it ended this year, but luckily its easier to be excited about next year. there are many, many stories from transiowa...some of them very personal and some of them involving the awesome people i spent time suffering with. however...one moment will always stand out...one moment burned into my memory. one that i won't ever forget, but hopefully one that will soften when...yes WHEN i finish this fucking race. after everything i'd gone through fighting the wind, getting lost, paralyzing cramps, then the graciousness of the group of single speeders that i met up with as i killed myself trying to get back on schedule...the feeling of hitting the pavement at the top of that small rise on the final gravel road. hitting the top of that hill and looking down into wadena, then looking at my computer. we could see all of wadena and had it not been for a row of houses, we could have seen the group gathered at the checkpoint. look back at my computer...2:00 p.m. i was standing on the edge of wadena, blocks from the checkpoint, only a third of the way into the race but having already gone through hell...and it was over. a calm acceptance hit harder than i expected, but my race was over. going into transiowa i knew my race would end when i finished, my bike broke or my legs stopped functioning. a time cutoff was never in the plans and i had no idea how to handle it. it was a strange feeling standing on the top of that hill looking into wadena...one that i can still feel everytime i think about it. somedays its still a tough feeling to manage...its certainly a feeling of something left unfinished. somedays its a feeling that makes me smile knowing i will have another shot at this thing. yeah...that definitely makes me smile.

had an awesome conversation

with brother chris last night. dude finished his first marathon at the chicago version this weekend. you see, chris was an all-american when he ran track at luther and was a damn good cross country runner. its always been his thing and when he has/makes the time to train you can tell it comes back pretty quick. being a principal with a family including three young boys hasn't always made training easy or a priority (understandably). but this summer he started busting his ass and he was seeing the results. then the school year came and his miles started dropping off. then a chainsaw went after his knee. not terrible, but the stitches dictated he couldn't run a step for the last three weeks leading up to the race. when he got the stitches out the doctor was about 50/50 he'd rip the knee open again during the race. chris being chris...those are pretty good odds. apparently the race was almost as hot as last year and the first half of the race went well, followed by the easily anitcipated cramping and other ill effects the heat can cause. yes, easy to empathize. but he stuck it out. he finished and spent the next however many hours still battling cramps and the physical beatdown a marathon puts on the body. he couldn't even finish a beer for like 24 hours. damn. point being...i love hearing these stories. obviously being family makes it more meaningful, but these are the stories that get me out there. these are the stories that make me want to ride, want to race, push myself, see how far i can go. if you push yourself you might not make it...you might not finish that marathon...i might not finish transiowa...but i'm sure as shit gonna find out what i'm made of. just like chris did...congrats man.

just so we're all on the same page...

cross racing hurts. hating it is easy, racing it is miserable and you can't help but smile everytime you think about it. the fisticuff got its first taste of a true cross race today. i'm still not sold on single speed cross bikes IF you're trying to be competitive with fast geared guys. really hard to find a gear combination that will allow you to accelerate, climb, and hit a high top speed over and over again. regardless, marty and friends put together a course that can easily be described as challenging. maybe a bit longer than what some might consider traditional, but brutal climbs, a steep run-up and high speed descents into sand pits made for a good time. the temperature spiking this weekend made things a bit more difficult after getting so used to the nice cool fall. big thanks to marty and everyone involved in putting this race together. oh...i finished somewhere mid-pack in a pretty small field but was the only single speed. what that means is...um...the damn hot weather made the high life warm by the time the race was over. fisty gets another shot at cross racing next weekend down in bettendorf. gearing will be contemplated repeatedly between now and then.

brother adam

and his fam are finally back from the desert. well...they've been back for a few months but finally made it up to the north country from the state of des moines. they showed up yesterday in time for us to grab some mabe's and a beer then get ready to head up for the monthly dhpt time trials. julie was out of town with soccer so heather stayed at the apt with caden and larsson while adam joined me for the festivities. this months twist...you randomly have to ride someone else's bike with whatever pedals they brought and whatever shoes you brought. i showed up with my 3-speed/69er/coaster brake/trek comfort bike. awesomely not the only coaster brake at the event. a couple of urban bikes showed up, some "real" mountain bikes and a couple of "used-to-be" mountain bikes. i ended up on a 16" trek 3700 with plaftform pedals in my spd shoes and was unprepared with a light of the wrong bar clamp size. so i rode most of the course totally in the dark and like most people ended up somewhere between cheating and improvising. it was an absolute riot...best time trial yet. i think somebody won, nobody got hurt, adam got to see a group of avid riders reduced to social degenerates as the fire raged and the beers got emptied. at some point we ran out of fire wood and beer so adam and i headed for t-bock's. eventually we left t-bock's after closing it with spinner. took them out for a nice hike this morning then got on the road bike for about an hour to blow some of the lingering crap from sunday's ride out of my legs and to push some of the remaining toxins from last night out of the body. most of my bikes are now completely trashed or not fully assembled. looks like saturday night will be spent in the garage acting like i know how to wrench on bikes, definitely focusing on prepping fisty for its first actual cross race sunday.

still racing...

the last couple of races haver certainly taken their toll...both physically and mentally. luckily the ups help conquer the downs pretty quickly. the body is certainly recovering, the weather is turning cold and kinda shitty and i'm finding more time to ride...all reasons to get excited about getting on the bike again. then there's the upcoming schedule. marty from prairie called and gave me the heads up on a cross race he's hosting this sunday so i'm definitely headed over there, then headed down to the quad cities for another cross race next weekend, then its time for the night race. this is gonna be a fun stretch of races. low-key, tons of fun, high intensity...took a while but i'm definitely excited to get back out racing again.

sunday long day

85-ish miles. just under 6 hours. 2/3 gravel. 45 degrees to start. 2 hours in the rain. 20 minutes dodging lightning. cheeseburger halfway (not zach's hamburger-a-lap theory but always good on a long ride). 2 roads closed totalling probably 5 miles of gravel/mud that used to be pavement. great ride, closed roads were good cross practice, still feeling good on the bike on long rides. fisty got trashed and needs a bath.

I FOUND MY LEGS!!!

weird thing is they were somewhere out past the lower dam. not sure how they got there but i found them on a 4 hour gravel ride yesterday up to dorchester and back. luckily found them before i got to balsam hill otherwise i might've been in for a nice walk. weather was gorgeous, leaves are just starting to turn, and i felt pretty good. yeah, it feels good to feel good again. a note on some stuff i was riding...i still can't get over how much i love riding the fisticuff. i think the general public is in for a treat when this thing hits the market. i never thought it was possible that my favorite bike wouldn't be a trail bike...i'm not saying it is...i'm just saying. also, got some new stuff on there from wtb that i thought is worth mentioning. rocket v saddle...still one of my favorite mtb saddles ever. i'm sure it would be just fine for cross racing but that's just not how i ride this thing. i'd love to get another devo for it and if i wasn't doing endurance training with this bike the rocket would be back on there. dirt drops...i ran midge bars since i built this and this is my second real ride on the wtb dirt drops. my first one left me scratching my head and after doing some math i'm now running a slightly shorter and taller stem. impressions...this bar set up is way stiffer. i'm sure some of that is the 31.8 clamp diameter but i really dig it. definitely feels like more power transfer, the wider hand position feels better climbing and the drops feel more natural. don't get me wrong...i really liked my midge bars. at this point, however, they might be hitting ebay sometime soon. also got a set of interwolf's...fast rolling for their size. i'll probably take them off when i get ahold of some crosswolf's to try and save the inter's for the snow and see how they hook up then.
and...on a happier note, my ambulance ride to the e.r. only cost me $1200. i sure am glad the emt's wouldn't let misty take me (especially since as it turns out she would have had me there sooner and on i.v.'s sooner). really lucked out on that one.

phx/vegas highlights

-the people...tom, zach, misty, darrin and the rest of the vassago-supported adrenaline race team
-congrats to tom and zach for destroying the 12 hour solo field
-huge thanks to misty for the support which became a caretaker role
-felt good for a while, definitely didn't go out like i did in boone, ended up 3rd ss 12 hour but suffering from pretty severe dehydration
-zach's mcd's hamburger every lap is the most awesome nutrition plan ever
-this will be an interesting nat'l champ. course next year
-rigid forks suck some places
-vegas seemed even hotter
-met up with zack (different zack) and rebuilt fisty
-dropped fisty off with dane from wtb to be used in the dirt demo
-rode the shuttle to the top to ride big bikes all monday...i love riding that stuff but maybe shouldn't...big crash with a lot of desert style road rash
-spent tuesday on cross country bikes and trails
-indoor show wednesday then cross vegas cyclocross race...definite highlight for me
-big names i either got to talk to or was close enough to spit on...nat ross, brian boyko, ryan leech, cam mccaul, tinker juarez, lance armstrong
-i am beat down and exhausted
-gravel ride yesterday was necessary but brutally difficult for the short route i took
-doctor said nothing competitive for a month...looking toward some cross races and the night race at the end of the month

phx day one

flight to mpls was fine, super short layover, descent into phx sucked ass, chipotle is yummy no matter what state you're in, went for a shortish night ride, tom's fast. didn't feel great but lots of reasons (excuses) that will hopefully be remedied before saturday. trying to stay relaxed...

the plan

drive to roch
fly to phx by way of mpls
meet tom, build bikes, ride?
eat, drink, sleep
friday-
ride?, visit shop with misty, head to payson
meet team, socialize, sleep
saturday-
wake, eat, race 12 hour solo, party
sunday-
watch end of 24 race, party, fly to vegas
monday/tuesday-
demo ride, enjoy vegas
wednesday-
interbike show, enjoy vegas
thursday-
fly back
hopefully have some pics and stories to share

perfect fall morning

so i grabbed a saw and some gloves and headed for logjam. i've recently started working with a kid on his eagle scout project which is going to involve him assisting our trail group in getting some beginner style features put in along the river trail. since we've been approved to build bigger stuff in logjam and now that alex's project has gotten my interest up again i decided to get some work started. this will end up being a 40' planked log ride/ladder bridge with some sort of a drop at one end. got almost everything cleared today, just need a chainsaw for one spot then some wood, tools and hardware and we'll be good. also saw some evidence of horse traffic on the main trail in pali. i love horses.

this will be the start of the log ride...most of the brush is gone now but the batteries died in the camera so no pics

side view...to the right the tree goes down to the ground and is where the first pic is from

the two trees just left of center will act like goal posts and support the structure as it turns off the tree and does something fun that is as of now undecided

humbled, but not surprised

took larsson up to watch the monthly dhpt time trial last night since my bikes are in the care of big brown on their way to phx. got convinced to borrow moffit's bike and gear and had a good time once again.
rode pretty much my first ever road ride today. 4 hour tour of ne iowa with flip, novian, garrett, terry and lee. got my ass handed to me. held on okay (because they let me) but i got beat into the ground. now on a mission to eat everything in sight.

Dr. Wocky, Jabber S.S. Mt.B

spent a dark, cold, rainy night riding my bike alone in the woods last night. fought a couple demons and got chased by the boogieman once. how much do you spend on therapy?

weekend

scotty showed up to put a squishy fork on his jabber and trevor was back for his almost weekly visit to decorah (rumor is he may even be headed back this way permanently next summer). trevor's optimus ti hasn't arrived yet but should be here before he makes it back again. the three of us got out for an entertaining ride saturday. no hammering, just riding, chatting and lots of crashing. scotty had a couple good ones and ended up with a bloody face and trevor took a trip over the bars just to make him feel better. the night ended with a few towers (100 oz. of beer with a tapper...these things are awesome) watching ufc 88 at t-bock's. if you didn't see liddell get dropped by rashad evans...wow.
found out that fisty might be making a guest appearance during the dirt demo at interbike this year so sunday was spent tearing it apart and trying to clean the crap off that's still on there from transiowa (yeah...i haven't cleaned it since april). in the midst of doing this i found out the bottom bracket is blown up...hopefully get that resolved in the next couple of days. might even get a ceramic upgrade.

trever on dead pet
scotty's face bleeding
trevor's fast
scotty being helped out of the ravine he fell into (yeah, this wasn't his best ride of the year)
a little help with fisty
i suppose i could lower the stand for him...
this was the extent of scott's help (seriously, thanks for the help scott)
fisty actually is green

back on the bike

felt good. 55 degrees and rain. felt real good.

fisty
spent a few hours getting some more work done on my sleeve...the sun and clouds are new but far from done
crappy pics