Time Flies 

When you have no time.

Things have been progressing somewhat nicely in RR Land but you wouldn't know it by my blog posts.  Sadly, with everything else going on, there has been precious little time for blogging.  That's really sad because I've got a metric shit ton of video to edit and upload but haven't the time to do it.

As the snow is leaving the great state of Maine, my riding hours are slowly picking up.  Generally, this time of year, I'd be on the road or snowmobile trails.  The snowmobile trails are shite right now and for some reason, I can't bring myself to ride on the road right now.  I'm not 100% sure of the reason but me thinks it might be partially about this little vixen:

sure, she's a little wide in the hips but once you get her going, 

she's fun to throw around and do dirty things with  

I'm officially loving riding the Salsa Mukluk.  There is just something fun about the lumbering beast (unless you're on pavement in which case riding a white hot fork business end up would be more enjoyable) and it makes me sad that the snow is leaving.  That's ok though because she also does a nice job of dealing with mud floating over much of it (not that there is much in Edgecomb).  Next year, she'll be sporting studded tires so nothing will hold her back.

Speaking of her back.  Ever seen a tramp stamp on a truck?  Well, now I have.

Or creepy cards with two faces prancing around on ice?  Sadly, I've seen that too but at least it was while spending some quality time with my favorite flesh eating zombie (photo at top of page).

Or me building kitchen cabinets?  Well, I'm officially seeing that again as well.  As I think I mentioned earlier, I can't ride my new bike until our upper cabinets are installed.  Spring is coming rather quickly so I'd better get crackin on these bad boys. 

I'm a Jerk 

In the video below, I'm going to pretend that I didn't know with near 100% certainty that my brother was going to eat shit on the ice just so that I could capture it on camera. Not only did I not warn him about the ice until he was already on it but I also broke the "make sure they aren't hurt before you laugh and mock" rule by laughing my ass off before he had even stopped skidding. You can tell that there is concern in my voice.

We're brothers, he'll get over it...

go pro

Tuesday Two-fer

Yesterday's plan was simple.  Get up uber early, get some work done and then hit up Bradbury with the snow bike on my way to the Portland office.  Conditions at BB were varied.  The initial trails were well packed (some by snowmobiles) but as you got away from the parking lot it got dicey in some areas where the trails had seen little traffic (where are all of the Portland areas snow bikers???).  All was good though as I was able to lay down 7 miles of riding in 1:10.  I had planned on riding longer but once 8 am rolled around the twinge to get to work started to spark up (despite having plenty of hours in already).  No worries though since, before I headed out, I had seen another ride in the evening posted for Cape Elizabeth.  It's going to be a two-fer!

Early evening I met up with six others ready to rip the Cape E trails.  They were all running studs.  Me?  I was still on my snow bike.  This was going to be interesting.  Before we left, we met two guys who had just come off the trail.  They said that other than a glare ice corner right at the beginning, the rest of the trail should be fine for me. When we rolled, we quickly started to pick up speed and things were looking to be fun.  Fun for about 30 seconds that is, at which time I hit that glare ice corner.  I tried to ride it out by staying in a straight line and aiming for the snow on the opposite side but my speed was too great and the ice too lumpy so I was unceremoniously thrown to the ground and hurled into the woods ejecting both my bar light and gopro (too bad I hadn't turned it on yet!).  All seemed to be ok though so I got up and caught up to the group.

At this point I wasn't sure the ride was all that advisable but I was there so I'd give it another shot.  Glad I did.  There were plenty of sketchy, butt puckering sections but there was also lots of fun stuff and the added bonus of constantly scanning the trails for ice free areas kept things interesting and taught me a lot about line choices.  And then to top things off, I managed to catch Danze doing a pretty spectacular endo crossing a wet area.  Observe:

Finally, some GoPro success!

From go pro

Spare No Expense

Over here in RacinRick land, money flows like wine, sponsors throw themselves at me and the women - hoo boy, the women! A recession has never touched the land of RR. Oh so fortunate.

Here is a good example.  My winter shoes started to bit the dust a few years ago but instead of buying new shoes, I got a pair of shoe covers.  Those shit the bed in a year or two, but instead of buying new shoes or at least another set of shoe covers I taped them up with duct tape instead.  MacGuyver would be proud.  Sadly, two years of duct tape had them looking a bit ragged with everything but the top completely shredded. 

Any normal person may have just ponied up the $30 to buy a new pair of covers.  Me?  I just added another quarter roll of duct tape. 

Success!

go pro

Blogger Screwed Me

Blogger f'd me last time I posted a long(er) video so I'm going to keep this short in case it's feeling frisky again. Below is a vid I made last weekend on a snow/ice/trail ride. I was playing a bit with camera locations and think that I'm going to like the fork location. Everything looks faster from that perspective. Until I crash and jamb the camera into the spokes.