bunny weekend

Had a great weekend, no riding to speak of but fun none-the-less. Friday afternoon Marcy, B, Chance and myself went out of a walk and ended up clearing some new trail behind the house. It should be a pretty nice section and it will allow us to ride right from our back yard since it will connect to the trails back there, killer. I also got some wrench time in this weekend. Marcy's bike is finally up and running. Thing is pimp now, I think she'll be psyche when she notices the differences. I also got some lovin time in on my Dos Niner, I finally cut the steerer down so that I don't have the goofy stack of spacers on top of the stem. I felt like such a tool with that oreo stack up there. Much better now. I also finally got around to installing the pop-lock on the fork and putting the new handlebar on all in preparation for the SRAM order coming in this week (please, please, please come in this week!!!!). If all goes well, I hope to drop Dosey off at Bikeman on Wednesday so they can hook me up. I've decided that since I haven't used grip shift since my very first mountain bike that it probably would be best for me to allow the pros to set the bike up initially and I'll go about screwing it up from there.














I did manage to get in some cross training in this weekend. The bro and I played some ping pong on Saturday night (feel the burn!) followed by watching the Paris Roubaix tape for the first time. That Hincapie fall looked scary. Guy looked like he was riding a unicycle for a few seconds there. Too much beer and chips plus too little sleep meant that yesterday (easter) was a bit slow starting. I think that I managed fairly well at Easter though. I sampled a bit of everything that was available for lunch but didn't eat myself into a food induced coma as I usually do. Its a minor victory but a victory none-the-less.

So, I've been thinking about running the Dos as a 1x9 recently. A good deal of people do that around here on their 26'ers. Our climbs here in Maine tend to be steep and short so a granny is almost never needed. I haven't touched the granny on my fuel in the last three years of racing but I worry that the Dos' larger diameter wheel will be just that much harder to turn that I'll be wanting the granny. Not sure what to do so I've decided that I'll install the triple crank with the small ring taken off and the large ring replace with a bash guard for now and see how it goes through the first part of the season. If all goes well, I'll sell the xo front shifter and derailleur. If all goes not so well, I'll put them on. No harm, no foul. Bikeman.com has a good article about the whole process here.

the many faces of me

Since Jason thinks that I'm giving Jeffy K. a run for his money when it comes to posting pics of myself, here are a few more to dazzle and amaze!












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Slow Thursday

Not much to write about today, I'm taking a few days off of the bike so what to do, what to do?

For starters, Salsa has come out with a super sweet new single speed, steel 29'er. I know that I don't have any new bikes in my future but I soooooo want it! I have an idea that now that I have the Dos Niner, the little wheel Salsa SS won't get used too ofter. Time will tell.





lust!







Worked a bit on Marcy's Fuel last night. She's getting most of the parts off of my Fuel since I won't be using that anymore. When all is said and done, she'll have basically a full xt/xtr build with a sid fork and some bonty race lite ceramic wheels. I'll bet that the bike will lose a few pounds easily just from the wheels and fork.














nothing else to post so here is a pic of me!

its back

Finally got the blog fixed, still waiting on the resized header but at least everything is working again. I think that Mr. Kerkove has a secret agenda against me by suggesting that I use the K1 Black template. Damn thing was riddled with problems. Next time that you need a house designed that will fall down Jeff, you let me know, I’d be happy to help. ( Thankfully my brother is a computer geek and was able to help me get things sorted out, I feel like a monkey banging two rocks together when it comes to this stuff.

Managed to get in a couple of great rides in the past 24 hours, rode the Dos home yesterday, hitting most of the available single track on the way. Everything seems to be coming together as far as fit goes so I should be ready to rock when the SRAM stuff comes in next week (hopefully).

This morning, I rode the road steed in and took a very nice alternate route. With my new work location, I now have some great road options to select when time allows and when time is short, I can still get in a quick 12 miles. I did underestimate mother nature this morning though, it turns out it was a bit cooler than I anticipated and I almost lost a couple of digits because my hands were so damn cold. Weird because nothing else was cold and I was fairly lightly dressed, the junk didn’t even get cold. Guess I’ll have to pay more attention to the temps when I leave in the mornings. I totally can’t wait until I can wear just shorts and a long sleeve jersey every morning and not have to think about it.

While I’m on the topic of cool weather clothes, what the frig is up with undershirts? I love them for cool to cold weather rides because they can make a hug difference in comfort but I don’t see how they can help keep you cool in warm weather. Does anybody buy into this? Considering the body’s primary cooling mechanism is sweat evaporation, it seems that these undershirts would only make you hotter by wicking the sweat away before the evaporative action can take place. I know that I’ve tried my undershirt on warm-ish weather rides and it makes me way hotter. Am I just a freak here or do other people feel the same? Seems like a bunch of marketing nonsense to me.

no comments

I've just been informed that my comments section isn't working. I'm all over it!

Paris Roubaix

Not much happened last night. Did some stretching and ab work to try to loosen up from Sunday’s marathon ride.



Hitting the first gravel section.











Every year on the day of the Paris Roubaix a buddy of mine puts on a P.R. inspired ride that consists of some crappy paved roads and several sections of dirt roads. I’ve done it for the past three years and it is always a good time but at only 20 miles, its really not worth driving 40 mins. for, so each year I ride in from wherever I happen to have been staying the night before. This year it meant riding in from home (roughly 35 miles away). Sunday morning rolls around and my lovely daughter gave me a wake-up call at 5:30. I didn’t have to leave until around 7 so it gave me plenty of time to wake up, get some baby time in and get ready for the ride. I rolled out the door promptly at 7 and quickly got into a nice moderate tempo. The goal for the ride in was to not redline at all since the group ride can get very competitive and I knew that I would need the legs for some of the soft gravel climbs ahead. The night before I had mounted up the Panaracer Extreme Duro’s onto the 2300 and I was immediately impressed with the supple ride despite the fact that they are touted as training tires. They felt much nicer even than the Michelin and Hutchinson racing tires that they replaced and with their added flat protection I figured that they would be perfect for the crappy roads that the day promised. I managed to keep my goal of no red-lines and got to the rally point at 9:00 sharp. Ten minutes later, the group of 19 rolled out for the beginning of the ride. I should back up and explain a bit more about the ride. The first 2/3 is essentially a competitive group ride, people ride fast, there are some attacks but we always regroup at all intersections. The last 1/3 of the ride is different however. For the last 1/3 its every man for himself as we race for the finish. So anyway, the ride started at a nice easy pace for the first couple of miles but in the first gravel section the tempo picked up as people fought for the best lines through the pothole riddled road. Things remained largely the same through the remainder of the first 2/3. I was feeling pretty good overall but since I had already eclipsed my longest ride of the year, I didn’t expect to have much to give in the final 1/3.





Attack!













Final re-group.








As we left from the final re-group the first attack came, literally before most of the group could even clip in. I knew that I was in for it but was determined to stay with the leaders as long as possible. The next three miles (roughly) were extremely leg sapping soft gravel climbs briefly separated by only slightly smoother rolling asphalt. I managed to hold on to the lead group of five through most of those three miles but as we climbed the final gravel grinder they slowly pulled away as my legs gave up the ghost. At this point, we had a comfortable lead over the remainder of the field so I settled into a tempo and tried to gain ground when I could. At one point I almost pulled in a couple of the last stragglers of the lead group but to no avail and finished a somewhat respectable 6th.

Checking my watch, I realized that I was late leaving for my scheduled 12:30 hike in Camden (10-15 miles away) so my only hope to get there in time was to go over Moody Mountain. Its not really much of a mountain but it is one hell of a long brutal climb, especially after almost 4 hours in the saddle. I sucked it up and rolled into Camden at 12:15, exactly on time.

Marcy met me there with B-girl and Chance in tow and together with a past coworkers family climbed Bald Mountain in Camden, a pretty quick but very rugged hike. When we got back to the car I was officially smoked.

Of interesting note, before the ride (6:45am) I put some Greyhound Juice Original Formula onto my legs and at 2 in the afternoon I could still feel its warmth. I was amazed. Not once during the ride did my legs feel hot from the juice but they never felt cold either. Good to know for when the leg warmers come off for the season.


















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Good weekend

Wow, what a weekend. Saturday started off a bit dreary but I was committed to a good ride on the dos, plus I had just installed the Salsa SUL stem to try out, so it was out the door I went. Turned out that the trails at Reid State Park were in great condition. Everything was wet but there were very few actual muddy areas. Reid seems to be perfect for that, there never seems to be any real mud, just mossy goop. The Dos was rockin on the rough trails. The Dos totally ate up one section of trail commonly know as the pipe line is brutally rough with large jagged rocks and roots. Typically a full on full suspension bike works best in that section (for me at least) but the combination of the soft tail and the 29” wheels on the Dos seemed like magic.

A section of the pipeline. The camera sort of flattens it out a bit but trust me when I say that it can be tough to ride.











It wasn’t quite as cushy as my Fuel but I think that once my tech skills are back in order I’ll be able to make better time over that section than I ever did with the Fuel. The larger wheels also seemed to work very well on the soft spongy trails at Reid allowing it to ride on top of as opposed to through some of the soft, mossy sections. I’m getting happier every day with my choice. Family obligations only allowed one lap, but it was a great lap and I was glad to be able to get out on a real tech trail to put the Dos through its paces. Mission accomplished.


Two Salsas, a Dos Niner and a Moto Rapido single speed.


























On the way home, I stopped by Bikeman and picked up some sponsorship goodies, some Panaracer road training tires, some Slick-Willy lube and some Greyhound Juice embrocating sticks. All three were going to be put to the test on Sunday’s planned epic.

More on that tomorrow.

New template

I'm trying out a new template. The header still needs to be resized but let me know what you think.

Pilates, Bonk!

Last night was pretty low key, no bike time. I did end up test driving a couple of used cars to replace my Civic. Seems a 2-door coupe isn’t he best vehicle when you have a child in a car seat. Tried a Subaru Legacy GT and a Passat wagon. The Scooby was cool but felt cramped while the Passat was pimp but costs a few K more. Decisions, decisions.

This year I’ve decided to focus on maintaining my flexibility through the season (or should I say developing some flexibility first and then maintaining it!) so last night I did my first (in a while at least) of many Pilates sessions. I know what you’re thinking, pilates are a bit femme but trust me, they are killer. They are great for flexibility as well as core strength. These are two areas that cyclists are notoriously weak in. We’ve got great lower body strength but nothing to balance it out. For me personally I feel much more comfortable on the bike (especially the roadie) when I’m following a stretching regimen. Its tough to maintain an aero position when you can hardly bend over. We also all know that most of your lower body strength and power is initiated from the abs and low back so core strength is key as well.

In other news, Al fixed up my Hope P2 rear hub yesterday for me. Turns out that I just didn’t have the dust seal properly seated and that was what was causing the friction. All seems to be well now. Hopefully, if the weather dries out at all, I’ll be able to get the Dos out for a spin this weekend. Al also hooked me up with some Bonk! Frame protectant to cover the cable rub prone areas of the bike. I intend to try it out tonight if time allows. Gotsta protect that purty paint on the Salsa!



















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Trainer tuesday

Was raining like hell yesterday so I hopped on the trainer for 1.5 hrs last night.  Had yet another great workout, seems that having a more structured plan on the trainer is the way to go.  Why didn’t I think of that before?  Just thinking of all of those days spent mindlessly grinding away on that sucker being bored senseless makes my stomach turn.  Having structure not only makes the time go by faster but I feel that I get a hell of a lot more out of it.  Who’da thunk it?

Wifey is dropping the dos off at the shop today.  I’m still having trouble with the rear hub so she’s going to drop it off on her way by this morning.  I’ll probably just have them keep it until the SRAM parts come in.  I’ve got three other bikes to keep me happy until then and its just a pain in the ass to keep shuttling back and forth to the shop.  I need to get riding time in on it but every after work trip that I make to the shop is one more day of no riding and at this point I can’t afford missing too many days.  Good news is that when I do get the SRAM stuff in and bikeman puts it back together for me, I’ll have one bad ass ride on my hands!  Can’t wait.

Oh yeah, I want to apologize for the lame header.  I’m a blogger and photoshop weenie and can’t seem to figure out how to get it to look better.  I even needed my brother to get me this far.  Hopefully I can get the art from Wally (bikeman’s graphic dude) and get it blown up…someday.

Zak Attack

Had a pretty fun ride yesterday.  Since the pooch is getting so chubby I decided to bring him into work with me so that he could go on a ride with me after work.  I decided to hit up the Zak Preserve since its short enough to not kill the dog plus I want to be sure that its suitable for the people from my office whom I’m trying to get back into riding.  

The ride started off on a poor note when I quickly got a slow leak on the front tire and when I went to replace the tube I realized that I only had a 29’er tube with me (I was riding the Moto Rapido instead of the Dos because of hub problems) but it turns out that in a pinch, a 29’er tube works just fine in a 26” tire.  It took a bit of work to stuff it all in but once that was accomplished and I had the tire reseated it aired up just fine and I could notice no ill effects.  The rest of the ride went really well.  The trails in the preserve are super tight and twisty.  I realized that while super tight and twisty is good for me it probably isn’t so hot for a couple of my co-workers.  The last thing that I want is to drag them out on a ride that is above their heads and totally kill the fun for them.  Looks like I may take them to the Schmidt Preserve instead.  It also has some very nice single track but its much more open and forgiving.  At Zak, if you miss a turn you’re likely to get a pungi stick in the gut at Schmidt you’ll probably only slam into a hardwood.  Sounds better doesn’t it?

Another item of note is that I’ve started to introduce some specific interval work into my rides (especially in my trainer rides).  Since I’m seeing less time for riding this year than years past, I need to really focus more to get more out of my limited time so I’m forcing myself to do REAL intervals.  Every year, I say that I’m going to start doing interval workouts but I’ve never been focused enough to do it.  I usually would just end up going out for a ride and hope for the best.  Well, no such luxury this year so I’m really going to crack down and bust those suckers out.  Sunday’s trainer ride was short (1 hour) but after a nice warm-up I did a set of five intervals at a cadence of 100-110 rps followed by 10 minutes of tempo and then another five intervals working my cadence up to 110-120 in the last 10-15secs of each interval and then followed it up with 15 minutes of cool down.  That one hour left me more spent than any longer trainer workout that I’ve ever done.  I guess that if I’m forced to ride the trainer I might as well suffer like a dog and get the most bang for my buck.

Jumped the gun

Turns out that I have jumped the gun on my presumed hub problem. You see, the hope P2 hub happens to be a cartridge bearing type hub that doesn't have anything holding it together like a loose bearing type hub (which is what I'm used to) so I guess that all that I have to do is press it all back together and I'm all set. Did I mention that my mechanical skills are limited? Well, I just proved it again.

Tonight I'll be hitting the trails with the single speed and the pooch. Chance has gained 10 lbs since B-Girl was born so its time to run some of the lard off of him. Fat bastard.

I'm also organizing a group ride from the office on Thursday night. There are a few "sort of" riders that I work with (one semi serious) who I hope to get excited about riding again. It'll probably be a pretty slow ride but I don't mind, its always nice to get to ride with new people and who knows, maybe somebody will get bitten by the bug and we'll have another bike crazy nut in the house...

ever seen this?

I was putting a new cassette on the dos this morning and while pulling the old cassette off, the cassette body of the hub literally came apart in my hands! What the f? I'm not sure what was holding it on in the first place but its not there now. Anyone ever have this happen before??? I guess the wheel will be going back to Bikeman tomorrow and hopefully they can figure out what happened. Looks like I won't be riding the niner for a bit. 

Second Dos

Wow, what a difference a few inches make! Heard that one before have you? Well, in this case, I’m talking about the fore/aft position of the saddle on my Dos Niner. When building it up, somehow, I managed to set it a full 3” too far back behind the bottom bracket. I noticed it on my last ride because I felt like I had no control over the bike. Sort of like the bike was riding me. In short, the maneuverability sucked. Well, I fixed it before my ride last evening and I could immediately tell the difference. All of a sudden the bike felt nimble much to my relief. During the last ride, I became worried that maybe I had made a mistake jumping into the 29’er pool because the bike was handling sooooo poorly. Chalk one up to my poor mechanical skills I guess. Anyway, on last nights ride it all seemed to come together and I was really digging the ride. Overall, the bike handled and felt pretty much spot on but its strengths really became apparent during the particularly rough sections. The big wheels rolled right through the rocky/rooty sections with narry a wimper. I would say that there are good times to come. Tonight I plan to throw some gears on for an early morning ride at Bradbury with the Portland posse. Fingers crossed that the rain holds off.

Bikeman Blog

Yesterday, after some pestering from Jason, I agreed to start posting on the Bikeman website as well as here and over at DAMNelsons. Here is what I sent in for my first post since I’m assuming that most people surfing that way won’t know who the f’ I am.

Here it is, enjoy: http://www.bikeman.com/content/blogsection/1/48/

Greetings and salutations. I’m using this first post as a way to introduce myself. My name is Rick Nelson (no, not that one damnit) and I am a rider for Team Bikeman. You can check out my profile in the team rider section. Recently, it has come to Al’s (our team manager) attention that I maintain a couple of blogs on the World Wide Waste (of time). One of which, titled “Racin Rick” covers my trials and tribulations as a mountain bike racer, commuter, new father etc. In truth, its just a way for me to kill time at work and to see pictures of myself on the web. My other blog “DAMNelsons” covers more of the family aspect of my life and gives me yet another place to post pictures of myself. Oh, and sometimes I’ll post a pic of Marcy and Brynna too.

Soon, I’ll start posting regularly here in addition to what is posted over at blogger. If you want to get an idea of the type of nonsense that you’re in for, cruise on over and give it a gander. Beware, you’re IQ is likely to drop substantially simply by looking. I spend way too much time talking about my commute, bike setup, pimping sponsors products and taking funny pictures of myself. I’ve even been known to delve into the sometimes bewildering, but always entertaining, topic of frozen man bits. So sit back, pop open a brew and enjoy the ride.


















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Yesterday when I rode my mountain bike in to work I had a dilema. Marcy had made some white chili for dinner the night before and I wanted to take the leftovers in to eat for lunch but I didn't have a good way of doing it. A tupperware would probably leak in my pack coating everything. Thats when it dawned on me to use a water bottle. Sure, it looks like I vomited into the bottle on my way in but it did work and I was able to enjoy some yummy chili for lunch. 

Peer pressure

After an e-mail from team manager Big Gay Al and some coercion from Jason, I’ve agreed to start posting on the Bikeman site now as well. Not exactly sure how that’ll work and whether it’ll be the same posts as over here but we’ll soon find out. I’d hate to thin my already meager creativity into yet another blog (since I’m already stretched thin with this one and DAMNelsons) so my guess is that I’ll send occasional posts the bikeman way and keep up my typical lackluster posts here. Wouldn’t want to disappoint my legions of fans here now would I? Who am I kidding? I’m sure that I’ll have a bigger audience over at Bikeman.com anyway.

Yesterday, I had a chance to get out on the Dos Niner for the second time and I think that I’m starting to get it dialed in. During the ride I was feeling weird and out of sorts. I couldn’t tell quite what it was but it was something bike related so when I got home last night, I took her down into the shop to check a few things out and sure enough somehow I had screwed up my saddle position. Turns out my saddle was 3”! too far back. That would explain why it felt like I was driving a tractor because the bike felt totally unresponsive. I think that I screwed it up while riding it last week, I made a saddle adjustment but I don’t think that I tightened it down completely thus allowing it to slide on the rails. Leave it to me and my wrenching skills to make the stupidest mistakes. Hopefully with that fix, I’ll be back on track. Gonna take her out for a ride tonight to see if that did it. I also have a longer stem on the way from Bikeman that I’m supposed to test for a month and give a review on. It’s the Salsa SUL stem. Should be killer. Its lighter than what I have now and with the longer length, it should dial in the fit just a bit more. Fingers crossed.











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Ullrich unveils his new aero position!























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office

I was taking a gander at my workspace and realized what a shithole it was turning into. Its starting to look like a college dorm. It can be tough keeping it tidy when I need to reference several 24"x36" drawings at once and need to have reference materials handy. After I took this picture, I did actually clean up a bit but it still looks like crap. I'm just a cluttery (not dirty) person by nature I guess.

Burrito

Not to be outdone by Jason and his pizza rolls, Marcy has supplied me with her recipe for her kick ass burritos.

Ingredients: I generally cook to taste so the amounts of each ingredient can vary...

olive oil
garlic minced (~2 cloves)
onion (1 small/medium)
red and green pepper if you like (I've also used canned hot green chilis)
chili powder, cumin and cayenne pepper to taste
Ground turkey (a large can of chunk chicken worked really well in a pinch) - (~1 pound)
Black beans (1 can)
corn (a cup or two)
salsa (a cup or two - too much and the mixture can get watery)
mexican cheese (or other preference)
tortilla shells

Directions: saute garlic, onion and peppers in olive oil, add seasonings and ground turkey and cook until browned, drain if necessary. Add black beans, corn, chilis(if using them) and salsa. If you are using canned chunk chicken instead of ground meat add with the beans, corns etc. as it is already cooked. Simmer until heated through. I usually let it simmer for 20 minutes or so - stirring frequently.

Add the mixture to tortilla shells, add cheese to each, fold, top with more cheese and cook at 350 until shells are crunchy.

The picture isn’t great but it’ll have to do for now.

Eureka!

Yesterday, on my ride home, I finally realized how I could link up most of the trails between home and work and turn it into a mighty fun mountain bike session.  Recently, as I have mentioned before, I’ve been hitting up the Schmid Preserve on almost every one of my commutes by bike.  It has several miles (actually if I did them all it would probably be around 6 or 7 miles total) of trails that I can take on my way in.  Once back onto the road I pass by another preserve (Zak) that has about 4 miles of sweet, tight single track that I had avoided on my commute because it is an out and back.  While riding home yesterday I remembered that the Zak preserve trail dumps out on the River Road (my office is right at the end of the River Road).  This is the only road that Marcy has forbade me to ride my road bike on because it is narrow, twisty, in bad shape and the drivers on it treat it like an F1 race course.  I wasn’t sure exactly where on RR that it came out so this morning I decided to drive the dreaded road on my way in to scope it out.  Turns out the trail ends only about a mile from my office (sweet!) so if I were to be riding my mountain bike it would be easy for me to stay on the crappy gravel shoulder and stay out of harms way.  I am now in heaven.  I am going to be able to turn a 12 mile ok road ride into a roughly 20 mile road/mountain bike ride with the option of adding another 5 or so miles of trails right near my house on days that I have the time.

This is very important because I’ve been looking at my riding time so far this year and on average, I am at least 25% lower and in many cases 50% lower on a weekly basis in comparison to last year and its gotten me worried.  Having B-Girl at home means that I can’t simply start riding more on nights and weekends because my time with her is scarce as it is, so I need to find ways to get more riding time in at the two ends of the day.  First thing in the morning and right before dark look to be my prime hours.  It’ll probably stink initially to be getting up at 4-4:30 in the morning to get a long ride in but I’d rather have that than no ride at all and come that first race, I’ll be glad that I made the sacrifice.  I typically already get up at 5-5:30 so how bad could another hour be???  Pretty bad is my guess but I’ve got to give it a shot.

Single track goodness

van d nestled in some single track goodness. I hope to get the dos out on this trail soon...

one more shot of the dos. I've been too damn busy with work and a sick daughter to ride it again but maybe, just maybe this weekend I'll get another ride in and get the suspension dialed. 

OK, quit screwing around

Since I love to see pictures of myself on the internet, here are a few to marvel at. Notice the aerodynamic shape of my nose? Thats where I get my speed from. Wind tunnel tested, lady approved. 

Me likes

See how giddy I am to be riding my Dos? Good thing this is a head shot only, a full body shot may not have been appropriate for some viewers considering my, um, excitement. 

Brews

Here is a sampling of some of the brews that I sampled whilst in Vermont this skiing this past weekend. I can honestly say that I like them all.

First Dos

First pic of the cobbled together dos. As noted earlier, I've built it up as a sort of mongrel single speed for now to get some riding time in. Overall, the ride was pretty sweet. I still have to dial in the suspension because I wasn't getting enough travel out of the rear and the front was bobbing too much. The disc brakes are sweet and not nearly as grabby as a set I tried a few years ago. I've got a bit of squeal in the front break that I'll hopefully be able to get rid of with some use but overall still very nice.

I have many more pictures but blogger is being a bitch right now and won't let me upload more so cool your jets for now. 

Parts swap

Not much going on today, just getting ready for the weekend in Vermont.  Good news on the Dos Niner front, I should be able to start riding it in ss mode next week.  My baby is at Bikeman getting an old crank installed so that I can set it up as a ss until the rest of the parts show up.  It’ll be a bit of a mongrel at first but at least it’ll allow me to get used to the way it rides, get used to disc brakes, get the stem and seat dialed in etc.  I am so freakin psyched to hop on that baby the first time.  Now, lets hope for some dry or at least freezing weather.

I now have my fuel 98 stripped down to a bare frame and shock to be put up for sale.  Not sure what to sell it for yet, I guess I should start trolling ebay to see if any other fuel frames are up for grabs and what the prices are.

I was over reading Nick Martin’s blog the other day and noticed that he’s giving out mix cd’s of his riding music.  Cool idea but it got me wondering if he’s going to get himself in trouble.  Seems like he’s asking for trouble if he’s making cd’s with pirated music (maybe he owns the originals but I can’t imagine that he’s allowed to sell copies) and putting his sponsors on the cover.  Maybe he has actually covered his bases and is a legal reseller of music and is paying royalties to the record companies and if he is, kudos to him but if he isn’t, I’d be really worried about the legal repercussions.  Its one thing to make some mix cd’s to give to friends but totally another to advertise them on a popular blog.  

nada

Not much to note today.  I did a quick spin on the trainer last night while watching “The Devil’s Rejects” by Rob Zombie.  Interesting movie but not nearly as f’ed up as his first movie “House of 1000 Corpses”.  Now that was one screwed up movie.

Marcy and I are getting ready for a long weekend in Vermont for (hopefully if the friggin rain lets up) skiing and hiking.   We’re staying for four days at Sugarbush.  Our first choice was Jay Peak but their daycare can’t take 6 month olds.  Oh well, any skiing will be nice since we have done zilch this year.  Its been hard to get into the mood to ski when we’ve literally only had a few weeks of snow cover ALL WINTER!  They’ve still got a good bit of cover over there and I typically love spring skiing so I really don’t care if they get any more snow between now and then, I just hope that it doesn’t rain while we’re there.  That’ll suck monkey nuts.

Actual quote from the Sugarbush website:

CONDITIONS: The current conditions are... well, they're a bit wet. We did get some translucent snow yesterday, but are expecting some of the white kind later tonight and tomorrow. The groomers were kept off of the hill last night because of yesterday's r#@%. 

Marcy and I cooked up Jason’s recipe for pizza rolls last night.  Aside from some swearing emanating from the kitchen during the prep process, they came out quite well.  

Shelter trails

Found some more tasty single track on my ride home on Friday. I don't know how I ever found trails before getting the Van Dessel. With it, I can duck into trails in the middle of a road ride which allows me to discover lots of new stuff. Not all of it good, but hey, you need to filter out the crap to get to the good stuff anyway. This little get is about 5 miles from my house. For now it seems a bit too short to make it worth bringing the mtb out to but great fun for during the middle of an ss road ride. 

Today's commute was fun and slushy. I decided that based on the conditions I would take it easy and just spin in but ended up doing the whole ride within one minute of my typical time. Hmmmmmmm 

Perfect chain tension

I was having trouble with my new surly chain tensioner that was not keeping enough tension on the chain to keep it from jumping off the chainring in rough areas. I initially thought that maybe I had a bit too much slack in the chain so I took out one link and viola! what do I discover? It turns out that 32x18 is the magic ratio for my bike to not need any tensioner at all. Now if I just got rid of the dorky big ring ground down to work as a bashguard I'd be all set.

I have come up with a theory on how to get some ride time in on the dos now that my parts are delayed from SRAM. I think that I have everything that I need to turn it into a single speed (especially now that I have a chain tensioner that isn't being used) except for disc brakes. If I could set it up ss for the time being, I'd at least get to know the geometry and adjust position so that when my parts do show up, I'll be ready to roll. I'd hate to only have a few weeks on the bike before the first race. Just doesn't seem like a good idea considering how different it will ride compared to my other bikes. Just need to find some disc brakes to use for the time being...

SRAM order

Just found out from our team manager Al that our Sram order has been delayed until April 17!  Frig, talk about cutting it close to the race season.  My first scheduled race is May 21 so that won’t give me much time to get used to the whole 29’er thing.  It probably also means that I won’t have time to do the build myself and may need to have the shop do it for me.  Double bummer.  The good news is that as a result, SRAM has decided to give us an additional 10% off our already insanely low cost so that’s nice I guess but to be honest I’d gladly pay an extra 10% to have the stuff right now!

Dos!

The dos is in the house. I'm still missing all of the sram and avid bits but at least it looks kind of like an actual bike now. The paint and pin stripping are sweet and I sort of feel bad about getting it dirty but whatcha' gonna do?










Check out how lucky here. The skewers actually match the adjuster knob on the reba perfectly. Super bling!












Me likes...










So, it appears that Jason is getting a Dos as well in addition to his El Santo. His build will be pretty similar to mine but since he's getting his sram bits the good ole fashion way, he'll be getting most of his parts before me! Unfair!!!!! Of course, Al mentioned that his reba and delgado rims are on backorder for a bit so I still have a chance at beating him on the build. I'm secretly (or not so since I'm mentioning it here) hoping that his stuff lags on backorder for a while. There is no way that he's going to have two new pimpin rides before I have my one... The race is on J.

tugnut

got the tugnut installed on the van d. look ma, proper chain tension!

tugnut

Not much happening on the riding front right now.  Hope to get in a couple of hours on the trainer tonight but we’ll see how that goes.  I picked up a surly tugnut for the VanDessel to keep the rear wheel from slipping in the horizontal drops so I can keep proper chain tension especially when I start ripping up the single track on it.  Hopefully I can work it so that I ride home on Friday and I can check out s.t. in the Schmidt Preserve.  Fingers crossed.

..

Got word form Al at bikeman that the frames have come in on Friday.  I was somewhat overjoyed because I’ve been waiting for quite some time for it to arrive but the problem is that all of the SRAM/Truvativ/Avid stuff has yet to arrive so the frame will stay packed away in the bowels of bikeman until said parts arrive.  They’d better come soon.  Not only am I excited to have the complete bike but this will also be the first bike that I’ll put together from scratch myself (minus the headset since I don’t have a press) so it’ll probably take me a while to get it set up.  Its also the first time since my very first mountain bike over 10 years ago that I’ve had SRAM shifters so I’m not sure how difficult/tedious they are to set up.  I’m a pro at setting up shimano drivetrains now but not so much SRAM.  We’ll see how it goes.

The weekend went pretty well.  B-girl slept all of Friday and Saturday nights so Marcy and I got a full nights sleep both nights.  I’ve forgotten what its like to be rested.  Feels pretty good actually.  Saturday I didn’t get a ride in but I was able to do some ab work as well as a full circuit of Cyclo-core.  It had been a couple of weeks since I’ve rocked the cyclo-core so this time it rocked me.  I couldn’t get through any of the exercises without a quick 1-2 sec break but it’ll come back soon enough.  The hindu squats totally kicked my ass and I was feeling them on my Sunday ride with Mad Dog Mike.  Mike seems to go fast no matter what time of year it is and yesterday was no exception.  He put the hurt on me in sections but it was good to really work the legs.  Overall, it was a good exploration type ride with a few dead ends as well as one quick dip in the river for Mike.  Thank god for wool socks is all that I can say.  Without them, Mike would probably be hobbling around with fewer toes today.  I rode the moto rapido which is in full on ss mode now as opposed to its mongrel ss set-up that it has had for a while.  All of the shifters and derailleurs are gone (and on Marcy’s trusty steed) now having been replaced with a surly singlelator and a deda fang.  It’s nice not to have all of that extra crap on there and the bike looks much cleaner to boot.   We ended up with 2.5 hrs of supah-dupah fun.

On my Wednesday ride home, I tried out the route through the Schmidt Preserve that I spoke of last week. Turned out to be very rideable for the most part although a bit rough in areas with the skinny cyclo-cross tires but still mostly doable. It'll be a nice occasional change from my typical road slog. As a bonus, there is a couple miles of single track trails in the preserve to ride as well but I had promised Marcy that I wouldn't do them on my first time through for safetys sake. I was a good boy and avoided them but the next time through, I'll be ripping it up.



This is what the main trail through the middle of the preserve (and the one that I'll use for my commute) looks like. This is one of the smoother sections but you get the idea.















This is the entry to one of the single track sections. The presere gets a fairly small amount of visitors so most of the trails are nice and smooth of course they can be soft as well since they don't have tons of people beating them down.










For good measure I took a spin through the hospital property just down the road from my house. They have some stone dust walking paths that are good for working on your sand skills on a cx bike.

no FWS

No FWS (Frozen Weiner Syndrome) on my way in this morning.  It was a bit warmer than yesterday (13 deg) but I think that the main difference came from the fact that I stuffed a Hannaford plastic grocery bag between my pants and shorts this time to work as a wind block.  Is seemed to do the trick with the added bonus of making me look a bit more well-endowed.  Sweet!  Shaggy dog tried to get me again today but I managed to outrun him although he is much, much faster than he looks.  That one road has more loose dogs on it than any road that I can remember ever riding on.  Its only about 5 miles long but on any given day there are 5 or 6 dogs that may give chase.  Thankfully, they all seem to be good dogs just looking for some excitement and not any angry Dobermans…

Saving Rick's Privates

Holy shit in a shoe locker it was cold this morning!  Yesterday, I rode my bike home and left my car at work intending on catching a ride in this a.m. with Marcy. Unfortunately, last night Brynna had a really tough night ending up keeping us awake for most of the night and as a result, Marcy’s cough and sore throat developed into a full blown cold which meant no workie for Marcy which also meant no ridey for Ricky to work.  Of course since I’m always looking for an excuse to ride, I decided that I would simply ride in today and bring my car home tonight.  Turns out it was a wee bit cold out this morning.  When I left, it was 9 freakin’ degrees.  I’ve ridden on the trails many times at that temp and colder actually but never on the road.  It started out great actually because my legs felt good (surprisingly since I got so little sleep last night) and I was fairly warm except for my face.  It was cold but not unmanageable.  About 3/4 of the way in though things started to get a bit rough.  I have seen ads for wind proof briefs in cycling catalogs before but never really knew when you would need such a thing.  Well, I’m here to tell you that its mornings like this little sucker that you need wind proof briefs.  At about that ¾ mark, I noticed my hoo-hoo dilly (“Well, who put their hoo-hoo dilly in your cha-cha?” thanks Cartman) was getting a wee bit chilly.  No wait, let me rephrase that, my junk was downright frozen!  The rest of the commute became a ride for survival.  On every downhill, I’d cover my junk with my right hand to keep the wind off and I’d crank as fast as I could on the uphills to try to get the blood flowing again.  The strategy seemed to work because when I got in to the office everything was still attached and save for a few minutes of the “its gonna hurt like hell before it warms up” phase everything down THERE seems to be feeling better.

Another interesting note from this morning’s ride is that the dogs on my route seem to be working in tandem now using the whole distraction ruse.  Early on in today’s ride I spotted a large German Sheppard taking a piss just off of the road, and not just a normal piss but a “I’ve been holding it all freaking night and its starting to dribble down my leg” piss that just seemed to keep going and going and going.  While I was marveling at this dog’s pissing prowess, dog number two was sneaking up on me from the other side of the road.  If it hadn’t been for the leaves in the ditch, that shaggy dog bastard probably would have been on my heels without me even knowing.  If they keep upping the ante like this, soon I wouldn’t be surprised if they start ordering products like rocket propelled roller skates from ACME and Wile E. Coyote my ass.

big 'uns

Upon Marcy seeing my newly built 29’er rims with Maxxis meat installed she said, “Those things are huge!”

Why yes, yes they are.

Hippy

I have some serious tightness in my right hip today.  What the hell is up with that???  I’m not sure what I did to it yesterday but jezus, when I get up from my chair I hobble around like an arthritic old fart.  I’ve tried stretching it some but can’t seem to hit the spot.  Does anybody have any ideas on how to stretch it?