I'm number one

But only for the time being. Currently, I sit a whopping 14 points ahead of Wheels for the coveted Master of Mud title. I suspect that lead will last right up until this weekends race up in Orono. My one and only hope is, from what I hear at least, it's a super technical course and that is the one area that I have an advantage over Wheels. If it's open and fast or has climbing he has me by the giblets but throw in some tech and suddenly I have a chance. Bring it on sucker!

Yesterday, for my commute home I opted to throw a leg over the Dos instead of the road stead for two reasons. One, with a race this weekend it makes some sense to hit the trails a bit to get the skillz honed and two, a couple of weeks ago I somehow bent two cogs on my cassette (folded them outward from my massive watts) and had cobbled together a repair that I wanted to try out before the weekend. I didn't want to have to replace the whole drivetrail for two bent cogs (since a new cassette would definitely need a new chain and probably a new ring up front) so I found a cassette that the three highest gears were worn but the bottom five were still good (now I know why I never throw stuff away), did a little mixing and matching and voila! I had an almost new cassette that seemed to mate perfectly with the rest of the drivetrain and it cost me nothing to fix. After yesterday's 2:40 of saddle time, I can say that it did indeed work perfectly and all of a sudden I feel like I have a modest amount of tech skill (and creativity).

For the commute I also did a bit of 'splorin in the area of the new property. I had seen a sign for a preserve only 1/4 mile from where the new house will be but had never bothered to check it out because it appeared to only be a dirt road. Turns out there are a few miles of very tough but fun singletrack hidden in there. From the look of it, the trails are never used so with a bit of tlc (rake the leaves!) it would be a sweet place to ride. As a bonus, I think I know another trail that I could use to link back close to our property with only a few miles of roadage afterwards. I had checked the trail out once but since it was relatively short and nowhere near anything else I knew of at the time so I had written it off. Time to go back I guess...

New singletrack in upper part of screen. Property at lower.

View of marsh and rt 1 rest area from new singletrack.

Not enough berries to ride this bad boy.