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.