The Graudation "Walk"

Graduations are awesome. Ya know, you like get to listen to some cool speeches, walk across the stage, shake your dean's hand, etc. Wear the cool hat and robe 'n stuff. Awesome, right?

Well, I decided to try something a little different for my graduation. Save the $30 tassle fee, or rather, trade it for a tank of gas, and go to Moab.

Every year, Kenny puts on a group ride called RAWROD, which means for Ride Around White Rim in One Day in bike acronym language.

White Rim is a 103 mile road in Canyonlands National Park outside of Moab, where "you ride down into a hole, you ride around another hole, and then you ride out of the hole." Most people tackle the ride in 3-4 days, and the N.P.S. recommends that jeepers do it in at least two days.

But since bikers are crazy (or stupid), we all got together to do it in just one.

So my graudation "walk" was a ride. Sweet.

Sweet, especially the descent (Shafer's) into the hole, where Craig and I took turns turning little bumps in the road into jumps. Sweet, except for the 25+ mph headwinds we battled for at least 20 miles. Sweet, except for the 1500 meter climb out of the hole, where I went from feeling like a decent climber to becoming a believer in the 22-34 combo. Sweet, especially the ice cold Cherry Coke Craig promised was waiting for me at the finish.

I had a good time out there in that hole. But it only took me about 30 miles before I started asking myself why I was doing this. I still don't have an answer. Is that what endurance riding is about? Doing things but not knowing why you are doing them? Well, I'm new at this endurance stuff. Kinda like a freshman. Doing stuff coz its good for ya even though you have no clue why.

P.S.
Thanks Craig for keeping me in the game mentally.
Thanks Fish for letting me know how crappy you felt, it helped me know I wasn't the only one feeling like that.
Thanks Jon for keeping the humor up, and for showing me just how much better discs are than V's. And for not noticing that my shorts were white when you were making fun of everyone else's white shorts.
And thanks Craig for that killer Cherry Coke.
(Yeah that's my RAWROD thank you list, not my college one, in case you couldn't tell.)

Lambert Park

I've never ridden here before. It was totally dry, even after the huge snowstorm Thrusday. Got in a couple of hours with Ash, then ride home. 60 and sunny...nice. A good break from finals.

What the heck is NOIR?

So in the middle of my ride today I started wondering what the name of my handlebar noir meant (I didn't name my handlebar, the manufacturer, Truvativ, did(It's also the name of their carbon cranks, duh)). In the middle of writing my last undergrad paper ever I started wondering again. This is when you know you're no longer being productive and should go to bed is. So I started looking it up. Here's what I came up with, in a convenient list format:

• There is a film genre called film noir, which you can read about here. Sounds boring compared to movies made today. No chance they named it after old movies.
  
• In english the word noir can have several definitions, which all seem to have roots from film noir. My favorite definition is "suggestive of danger or violence." This could be the meaning, however, I'm not sure that they'd name their lightweight XC carbon components that.
• In French, German, Cajun German (?), Provencal, and not Scottish noir means black. That's probably it because crabon fiber is, well, black.
  
• My favorite definition, although the one I'd least likely to see come true, is the Spanish defintion. NO in Spanish means no, and ir in Spanish is the infinitive of the verb "to go" So basically it means no go. Kind of like the Chevy No-Va (which didn't sell well in Mexico!). I don't want this to come true because that will likely involve my bars breaking which sounds bad.
  

So, now I (and you) no longer will have to worry about what noir could possibly mean. I just have to worry that my bars don't "no ir" me. We've all been educated here. Too bad this won't help me any with that last paper. Maybe I can just turn this in. It kinda involves economic growth, right? No? Well, looks like I justed wasted another twenty minutes of precious paper writing time. Definitely time to put the computer down and stop working on that paper.

Cholla

Just came back from a great weekend in St. George racing at ICUP #2, the Cholla Challenge down in Hurricane. Here are some notes.

1. It's amazing how fast the dirt dries out down there. Our Friday evening pre-ride was a mudfest, by Saturday at noon the course was dry. There was only one puddle on the entire course, and the dirt was dry everywhere else.

2. Bad luck. 3 years ago I DNF'd at Cholla less than a mile into the race. My chain snapped. Last year, I rode without incident. Last month I DNF'd with two flat at the Desert Rampage. This weekend, my left shoe's lacing system broke halfway through the race. I was able to finish, and ride well, but imagine running with no shoelaces. That's what this was like. My southern Utah racing stats are one out of four races without a mechanical and finishing two out of four. And...I've had four mechanicals in four races. Dude.

3. Dan, those socks have got to go.

4. The first two times I raced at Cholla I ran a 29/44 2x9 setup. First on a 26" bike, which, I only raced about a mile. Then on a 29er. This year I ran a normal triple, but really wanted to run a single 32 ring upfront. That was the perfect gear. I never left my middle ring.

Rampage

Last weekend was the first Icup race down in San Jorge. Ash and I pulled in late Friday night and set up camp and went to bed. It was a windy night and we used the car to hold down our tarp while we set up the tent. The wind woke me up once around two and I had to get up and take a walk. Besides that I slept well as I usually do when camping. It was nice staying at the course because it gave us a lot of free time before the race. Ash raced first and did well, while I chatted with teammates and prepped for my race.


I had a good first lap and stayed in contention with the top 5. Stuart Goodwin showed up and he and I were passing each other for the first lap and a half. That was cool, Stuart's old bike (by now really old bike) was my first race bike about 8 years ago. I ran with his brothers in high school and they were fast, just like Stuart is on a bike. Racer passed me during the second lap and I grabbed his wheel. Racer's wheel is a good one to be on coz he always takes great lines. Kenny passed me on one of the river wash climbs.Kenny's bike has a belt drive that makes a slight humming noise, kind of like a UFO. Very cool. Probably the coolest sound I heard all race, and definitely the most distracting one. Bikes usually don't sound lik UFOs.

From here on it all went downhill. I flatted on the downhill portion of the second lap, Stan's spraying all over and then drenching my rear wheel after I put a tube in. I lost a bunch of places but passed a ton of people on the first half of the third lap. But then I flatted again, the front this time. With no tube I started hiking in. I took a short cut and just went back to the tent. I crossed the finish line walking the wrong way at about two hours.

I felt really good when I was riding. It was a lot of fun despite the mechanicals and now I'm super excited for the rest the season. Afterwards we went for a ride and Ash took these funny pictures that look like team photo profile shots. They totally belong on a rider profile page.

Good times in San Jorge. Can't wait for dry trails up here and more riding.

Classy

Maybe because it's the most observable part when riding a bike, but I think top-caps are one of the ugliest pieces on a bike. Finally, someone made it look good, by getting rid of it: Photo

Chris King Inset Headset

Chris King just announced that they're coming out with a headset for semi-integrated frames, which I believe means for the Cane Creek ZS standard. That means everyone with a G2 29er will be able to run a King headset, including me in my superfly!

The only question now is what color to get?

Good thing we'll have to June to decide!

Bikes I've owned since High School

A few years ago my dad made a list of car's he's owned since high school. It was about 80 cars long, and about 20 of them were various years of mustangs. Here's my shorter list of bikes (but in 1/5 the time)! Ash's too.

DBR Zetec Pro - Later the "Cramer Special", and even later the "Cramer SS"
Giant TCR2-lots of mods piece by piece.
Giant Trance 1 - I owned this for two years-a record
Diamond Back Response -Ash's
Felt F1X-stock
Felt Nine Pro-SRAM X9 and Formula Brakes, etc.
Felt Nine Pro - stock -Ash's
Felt F1x-SRAM force/rival, bontrager cockpit, Easton EC90 Aero wheels
Lemond Fillmore
Gary Fisher HiFi Deluxe -Ash's
Felt Curbside -Ash's
Gary Fisher Superfly
Specialized P2 - built up with leftover Trance parts.

Saddles

Apparently, as shown above, stock saddles are not comfortable. And why should they be? You go spend too much money on a bike, ride it for a month, and decide it's unrideable unless you buy a new saddle. So, you drop another load of cash on a new saddle. And sometimes, that one is the 'right' one. But most of the time, you have to buy another one a month later.

A Letter from John Burke about IMBA

I need your help. The International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) is facing the biggest policy battle they have taken on in their 21-year history—an effort to increase opportunities for cycling in our National Parks. I need your help to make sure IMBA wins this fight.

National Parks represent the most treasured, iconic places in America, and IMBA stands ready to help build and open trails in these epic, breathtaking lands. From a policy perspective, our National Parks set the bar; it's therefore critical that they embrace mountain biking, as their policies shape those of state, county, and city parks. 

We only have until Feb. 18 (a week from Wednesday) to submit comments in support of this policy change, and five national organizations have waged an all-out battle to defeat this proposed rule. I know many of you have already written in support of IMBA, but we need your employees, your customers, and your riding buddies to weigh in as well. This is big.

What am I asking you to do?

take 60 seconds to provide comments and TAKE ACTION:http://www.imba.com/news/action_alerts/12_08/12_18_nps.html

New Ride

Easton Cracks

tremensly

"This could help me tremensly."

I miss riding in California

When your downtube, cables, and face all freeze up with road water, maybe it's too cold to ride. I miss the wet, greasy mud I had in Cali last week.

Biking in the Rain

Monday was different. Riding in the rain at 50 degrees. Lots of mud. Seems like we missed that season in Utah. Good times getting lost at UCSC. The downhills were super technical thanks to mud and 6" deep puddles. Tuesday was a day trip to Boreal in Tahoe for skiing. Geez us Utah folk are lucky to have so many resorts within an hours drive. It was a 5 hour drive there and a 4 hour drive back. But we did get to eat In-n-out burgers. We're planning a 40+ mile "Hellride" for Friday. Too bad we couldn't get Mark Weir to come nip at our heels and bite our calfs off.

2.5 Hours in 16.0 miles = 6.4mph

I knew we were going slow. But at least we rode. Outside. In 20 degree weather. While it was snowing. But at least we rode. Did you ride???

Chain Length

I've been a competent bike mechanic for a few years. And yet, sometimes I make really dumb mistakes. Fortunately, (or unfortunatly, depending how you look at it) most of the time they occur on my own bike. Long story short, Aaron, Art and I went riding this morning. Less than 50 yards into the ride, I shifted into my big cog. No big deal right? Right, unless you are running a 1x9 and put a bigger chainring on your bike the day before, and spaced checking chain length. If that doesn't make sense, here's the simple explanation. My chain was to short and this happened:
When that happens, your bike doesn't work. Which is the pits when you're only 50 yards into a ride. (Especially when you've already spent 15 minutes nursing wounds- right Aaron?, and another half hour fixing tubeless setups, -right Arthur?) Oh well I ran back to the shop and snagged the demo Nine Solo and we got our ride in. And it was a good one.

Squaw Peak

I did Squaw Peak yesterday. Like rode up then down, on the road. For the first time in FOREVER. The cool thing was is that from mile 2 up, there was a trace of snow on the road. Luckily, it wasn't icy underneath, and if I pedaled really smooth I wouldn't spin out on the snow. It was pretty rad. I threw road tires on my cross bike, which may have not been the best choice for the day. Coming down was pretty scary, especially with my weak-sauce 'cross brakes. 'Cross brakes were designed to control speed in the mud, not to stop your bike. 'Cross races are usually pretty flat, Squaw is an 8-10% grade the entire way down. So a simple equation is 'cross brakes = not stopping on snowy road descents. Once I got below the snow line the descent was awesome, I remember why I road biking is (still) cool. I counted six sets of road bike tracks in the snow. That means there were two other people crazy enough to ride it. Here's some crappy cell phone pics:

Less than spectacular view of hazy Orem for a reward.


Couldn't stop on this.

I could rally...as long as the road was straight at least.

175s

So...Threw some 175mm cranks on the 'cross bike. I've wanted to try this setup all year, and even longer than that. The good: They are awesome. So much better for me than 172.5s I didn't think it would make a big difference but I could totally feel it. Especially on the climbs. Cool. The bad: I get a bit of toe overlap with the front wheel. I guess I'll have to deal with it. I've had to deal with it running fenders on my Fillmore, so I think I can handle it. It's a bigger issue on the commuter anyway. These are some pics from the SS race, thanks again Ash for taking such awesome pictures all year! (And there wasn't as much running as the pictures show, there were just a lot of good pics of the runup this time.)

It's Over

The UTCX cross series ended today. Bittersweet. Good but bad. We were at Draper again, the course with the killer hill. In the B race the first climb up the hill was an all out sprint, it was nuts. The SS race was a lot funnier, we were all spun out by the time we hit the bottom of the hill. I went down twice in the B's. Here's a hint for racing 'cross: Don't do practice laps and then add 15psi to your front tire. You lose a lot of traction, and your tire will wash out on turns guaranteed. It's kind of embarrasing when you go down on what should be an easy turn. Anyway, I dropped my pressure back down for the SS race and did better. It was a good race day and I was really finished when I was finished. I couldn't have made it up the hill one more time. Thanks to everyone who cheered for me and especially to Ashleigh for coming to all my races and supporting me without a single complaint all season.

This hill kicked my butt.

Literally. You should see the bruise. I think I went down twice on each lap ! Once dismounting, once running. At least Ash didn't get me going down on it and has footage of other people going down on it for me to show off:

Helmets

I hit a tree today. Barely. With my head. Going around a turn. If I didn't have a helmet on, I probably wouldn't have hit it. But I was glad I had it on. Better safe than sorry, right?

Just One Today

Raced the B's only today, too tired for the SS. Ash says I'm sick and have been dragging around all weekend. Sounds good coz I just couldn't make power today, I only had one speed and it was slow. Ash did awesome though, had a sizeable lead until she dropped a chain, and hung on to second in her race.

Adam Throwing down:

Nice butt shot for ya:


Ash trying to win biggest smile contest:

SLC Wednesday

Haven't blogged about a few cross races...Finally got video so I'll post it soon.

Went up to SLC to do the bobsled again, then we did city creek and hit the I-street jumps. The guys we rode with were hitting these huge doubles and even on the small ones they got tons of air. This is Tom doing a 5 foot tall ladder ramp with a 15-20 feet gap to the landing. I was pretty much right under him when I was taking this picture.

I was jumping racer-style, low and fast. It was fun riding with some guys that have a totally different riding style then I do and learning their tricks and stuff.

Oh, and I hit the big drop at the end of the bobsled full speed. Awesome. It was great when everyone regrouped and Ash wouldn't believe I did it.

RMR video - B Race

The Bobsled

In high school I had some friends that were on the bobsled/skeleton teams. One of them was in the olympics in 2006. I was super jealous that they got to go "practice" every week. What I would have given to just do that once. Well, on Saturday I did a ride that ended all those years of jealousy. The Bobsled, in SLC above the avenues, is the most fun I've ever had on anything that moves. The trail involves shuttling to "almost the top," then a tough mile or so long climb. Then the fun begins. A rutted out, steep 1/4 mile descent (not so fun, but more fun than the climb). Then the run begins. It can't be better described than it's name. Fast, flowy turns with HUGE berms. The trail is built down a small canyon, and the berms are the sides of the canyon walls, some of the turns 12-15 feet above the canyon floor. A few smaller stunts and some big ones (for next time, after 'cross season is over and when I have some pads), including a huge step up to ladder ramp to huge step down. The flow of the trail is what gets to you, there are few trails in Utah that are so smooth and, well, flowy. The trail conditions were perfect, most of the trail a dried-clay, concrete like consistency. Not a lot of pics because we just rode and it was no fun to stop for pictures. On a trail like this, you've got to take it top to bottom. You can find videos online but they don't do the trail justice.