transiowa tinkering

the hand is doing fairly well but the island certainly took its toll. made it obvious that the transiowa modifications under consideration were now a necessity. so today brought the first trial run with the ergons and mary bars. partially because i can't ride the jabber now that all hub bearings and brake pads have to be replaced and brake calipers had to be entirely disassembled and overhauled (big thanks to ouachita and the island :))

one ride and no doubt i'll be running this set up for transiowa

awesome day for a ride

sylvan island

the stampede=mud. crazy, crazy amounts of mud. the last time i raced in anything like this was at seven oaks a few years ago. the difference there was it turned into clay and there was enough climbing that it forced you to walk a lot. the island is so flat that everything was rideable, it was just a beast to ride through some of it. lots of two wheel drifting through corners. lots of outriggers. ended up 5th overall in the expert race. two years ago i never thought i'd be in the expert class so i need to keep things in perspective. in that sense i'm happy enough. no ss class in the expert field but had there been i would have been second. not thrilled about that but when aaron (pretty sure i'm finally getting names figured out) passed me he looked crazy fresh and i was attempting to slog my way out of a mud filled pain cave. congrats to him on this one as well as finishing the 80 down in arkansas. ran into adam who was down in arkansas with aaron and i almost didn't recognize him. 4 days after ouachita dude was on his bike and went through a windshield face first. intensive care and shit ton of stitches in his face and he's happy to be walking. perspective. i'm happy i can walk. i'm happy i can ride my bike for two and a half hours through sloppy mud and feel like a little kid for a while. good luck with the recovery man. good to see them and the rest of the iowa city crew, chatted with cam a bit about squirrel rockin the bone bender (huge congrats on first overall 6 hour on an ss), perkins (who got on the podium in the ss race), neipert and kingsbury who controlled the sport class...huge thanks to the organizers and volunteers. it was a mess out there but an absolute riot. there's gotta be pics somewhere, unfortunately i don't have any of them. i'll try to find a link eventually. my own dad couldn't even tell me apart from the other racers after a couple of laps. time trials this weekend and transiowa next.