Kicked it...almost. This dang cold or whatever it is that has felt like somebody is taking a welding torch to the back of my throat finally seems to be weakening its bony grip on me. On Thursday last week I began to feel like crap and after sleeping until 10am on Friday (a good 5 1/2 hrs later than usual) I decided to take the day off and try to kick the pig. It didn't really work since the sore throat was still with me through Sunday and now it feels more like a head cold that is finally draining. It did ease up enough to go for a spin with a couple of Bikeman teammates on Saturday. I met up with team manager (and totally married to a woman) Big Gay Al on his spanky Mamasita and Buzz on his single speed. The cool thing about single speeds is that there is almost nothing to go wrong mechanically with the bike but the un-cool thing is that when something does go wrong it often means the end of your day and that was Buzz's luck in the first 5 minutes of the ride with his rear hub totally self destructing throwing skewer and tugnut pieces everywhere and leaving him with a very unsatisfying walk back to the parking lot. Buzz will need to try a 29'er now because I'm sure that never would have happened on a 9'er. :)

Anyway, Al and I were left to tear up the trails alone and that we did hitting probably 90% of the trails in the upcoming Bradbury Enduro. Al, it seems, is totally on form right now despite not training specifically for mountain bike racing since he prefers cross. He was nailing every section on his totally riding Mama, often leaving me on the fast, rough descents. Damn him and his skills. We ended up with a solid 2:30 on some of Maine's finest single track. Good times.

During the ride I was really wishing I had some Ergon grips on the Dos. After talking to Jeff K. from Ergon I have found out I can cut down the P1's I currently have on the El Mariachi to work with my twistie shifters but I just can't bring myself to do it for a couple of reasons. Reason 1: what would I do for grips on the El? I definitely can't put the old grips back on, my hands won't stand for it. Reason 2: when the GX grips become available in the fall they'll go straight on the Dos and I'd be left with the cut down P1's and no place to use them which is very sad. So, for the time being I'm leaving things as is.