grocery getter

Took this bad boy to the grocery store this weekend. It was actually quite fun pulling it behind the single speed. Brynna is still too young to ride in it for now so I figured I might as well get used to hauling it around. Its actually much narrower than I expected. Every time I got close to the edge of the pavement and expected the right wheel to drop off of the edge it was actually several inches from edge when I looked back. Maybe when summer rolls around I'll be able to take it on some of the wider trails around here. I might need some disc brakes for some of the downhills though.

grocery list:
1/2 gallon cookie dough ice cream
gallon milk
fifth vodka
cranberry juice
lime juice
tortilla chips

turned out to be a good night.

cyclocross

Well, cyclocross season startes in maine this weekend with the first race in the Verge series. I'm hoping to get over there to see some of the action but I'm not sure of the game plan yet. My daddy-o has his final stock car race of the season tomorrow as well and I'll be going to that if the weather cooperates but from the looks of it it'll be dumping buckets on us so I'll probably end up at the cx race instead. I hear that cx and rain = good times. We'll see.

The finished product

enter the information age

holly crap! I'm posting right now wirelessly from a wi-fi that I logged onto about a mile down the road from my house. Before yesterday we didn't even have e-mail access in our house and now all of a sudden we're connecting wirelessly. It must be pretty easy to do if this techno weenie can do it. Damn, I think that I'm going to get a nose bleed from my sudden rise in self importance. Dude I'm cool.

Cross training.

No time for training so I lift heavy stuff instead.


450 lbs of love

In place. Ugh, my back hurts.

This sucker just about broke my back and nearly pulled the skin off of my office boy hands. Its completely installed now so I'll have to post that pic. It should be a big help this winter with they way that oil prices are. Of course when you figure in how much this biznatch cost me it'll probably take about 10 years to pay for it. It'll be mighty purty though.

I've also been trying to run with the dog every morning if I can drag my ass out of bed at 5 am. Sometimes thats tough though when Brynna keeps me up to 12-1 am some nights.

The final exercise that really gets the burn going is to do walking lunges while trying to soothe the baby. They work to calm Brynna down and lunges always kick my ass. A couple of trips the length of the house is about all it takes and I'm crying more than she is.

hit the trails

Still no riding recently. The little bambino just won't allow it but I have found a way to get in some trail time none the less. We purchased a snuggli pack so that we can carry Brynna will going about our business and keeping our hands free. So, what I've started doing is after work I'll load up the car with Brynna, and chancy pants, drive over to the start of the trail down the road from the house, let the pooch run free and brynna and I will do some trail work. Its a very new section of trail that needs lots of raking/general clearing plus I'm putting in a few more routes to lengthen it a bit as well. Its not exactly riding but at least I know that its improving the trails for when I do get out plus I'm getting a bit of exercise and spending some time with Brynna. Plus it allows Marcy some free time to do as she pleases. All is good.

unusual site

Got back from my almost daily pilgrimage to the store this a.m. and what did I see on the back porch of the office??? A track bike leaning against the railing! I couldn't f'in believe it. I'm out of here in one week and one of the new hires is actually a rider. Damn my luck. Oh well, maybe he'll let me tool around on it a little bit before I leave.

Season wrap up.

On Sunday the Maine Mountain Bike Association held their awards ceremony. In what has now become tradition the awards banquet was preceded by a large group ride. This year it was held at Bradbury State Park. As I've mentioned before, Bradbury has been busy adding new single track to their already nice selection on the non-mountain side of the park. 30-40 souls showed at 10:30 to feast on some of these new trails. All in all we got in about 2:00 of riding. The group split into two rides, the "A" fast ride and the "B" less fast ride (but probably still fast considering that they were on the heels of the A ride in the beginning. One interesting thing that I noticed on the A ride was that a full 1/3 of the group was on single speed rigs and those riders tended to stay at the front of the group. Very interesting. I rode my single and did manage to stay at the front but I must admit that I got worked over pretty hard in doing so. I had all that I could do to keep the pace and did manage to eat one major dirt sammich on some of the twisty single track. I had been completely redlining to keep up with the leading rider (on a single speed of course) and in my bleary eyed state grabbed a bit too much front brake coming into a hard right hand turn. I did manage to do a nifty shoulder roll when I hit the ground and thus avoiding any horrendous injuries so all is good.

Immediately after the group ride (and a bit of cleaning up) it was off to Thatcher's for awards and beer. There was a good turnout for the awards portion as well with all of the available seating spoken for. After about 50 door prizes were handed out (I nabbed two) awards and thanks were given. The category awards this year consisted of a small marble award about the size of a playing card and a custom embroidered winter hat with Maine Mountain Bike Association along the edge. Pretty cool but a bit on the large side. The hat fits my bulbous melon quite well but I feel bad for anybody with a normal size head. Oh well, thems the breaks.

Thar she blows!

Good god, I just had my first simultaneous double take/shudder of the day. Went down to F&B this morning to get some breakfast and just about lost my appetite when I saw the fine specimen at the front register. I don't believe that I've seen that much facial hair on a woman EVER! I'm not talking about a little bit-o hair lip either, I'm talking about "bust out the weed wacker cause you're one step from Chewbacca" lip. Egad, I almost had to put my croissant back. Ick.

Sometimes you're the finger, sometimes you're the cornhole. 

Got dew?

What to do when you don't have enough time to sleep or ride? You hop on the dew wagon that's what. I got hooked on this smack while in college and can't seem to get the monkey off my back. On a good note, I've made so many entries into the mt dew x-box 360 competition that I'm bound to win one soon. Of course if I do I'll probably sell it on ebay or something and buy some bike stuff with the money. I already have an old playstation that I never use so whats the point in having another, more expensive console taking up space in my already fiercely messy bike room?

Look at this shit hole! Its got a real nice, homey 60's feel to it ya know?

You also surf for bike blogs to live vicariously through others. There are actually quite a few good ones out there and a bunch of pointless ones like this one right here. Can you believe that you're wasting your time reading this drivel?

Ride much?

I haven't been recently but hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in a ride this weekend with the pooch. There is a large group ride on Sunday before the awards banquet for MMBA but I'm not sure that I'll be able to make that. Too bad to since it'll be at Bradbury and they have some sweetness new trails that I'd love to rock on the single speed. Speaking of which, I think that I'm going to pretty much hang up the Fuel for the year and do most of my future rides on the rigid single. I get beat up more and work a bit harder with the single but that is perfect since my ride time will be tight anyway and this way I can still be spent after a shorter ride. That Fuel is just way too comfy for short rides.

All is not lost though. I have been getting out for a run most weekday mornings with chancy pants so if I do score a bike for a cyclocross race coming up I'll be able to handle the running portion of the race, I'll just have to figure out how to deal with the riding part...I can see my breakfast already. yummy

Damn these legs are sore!

Holy cupcakes are my legs sore. My run in with cramps from the race this Sunday has left me more than a bit tender just above my knees. Apparently three weeks of nearly no riding followed by a fast race can lead to very sore legs. Who woulda thunk it??? I'm actually more sore than I was after the two man 24 hr race that I did earlier in the summer. Doesn't seem to make sense. I had toyed with the thought of trying to do a cyclocross race or two this fall but I'm not so sure that is such a good idea now unless I start riding more... Hopefully I'll get some nice fall rides in though. Fall is my favorite time of year to ride, at least before hunting season starts and the woods fill with rednecks looking to shoot at anything that moves (I should know, I used to be one of them!). A bell on the bike and some blaze orange should do the trick though. Not too sure what to do with the pooch though since he looks and runs a lot like a short deer.

after the finish 

hot on al's heals 

the start line 

Final Race

Yesterday was the final race of the 05 mtb season for me. Coming into the race I thought that I only had to finish one place behind my main rival Big Al to get the overall series lead. I held a slight advantage coming in so felt good about my chances. Leading up to the race I had had very little training or sleep what with a three week old at home but I was hoping that I had enough residual fitness to get me through.

The race started off fast and furious as usual with Al getting a better start (also as usual). We ended up trading spots a few times during the race and it came down to a final move by al on the last lap going into the final technical single track section. My recent loss of fitness was catching up to me and cramps set in so I had nothing to counter the final move. We ended up finishing 2 & 3 for the day so I had met my pre-race goal of staying with him and finishing no more than one place behind him. Unfortunately my plan didn't work for the overall series points. If we had finished 1 & 2 I would have beat him by 4 points overall. By finishing 2 & 3 we ended up the season with the exact point total and since Al had won more races than I did through the season he is given the overall nod. No problems here, Al was certainly the best this year but I plan to throw down next year...

License plates

I've been contemplating possible riding influenced license plate. Here are a few that I've come up with so far.

1. rider, ryder etc
2. lv2rd
3. iride, iryde
4. bikeme (me being the abbreviation for maine)
5. bkbtch (might work better for a woman)
6. rideme (again me being the abbreviation for maine and my personal favorite)

Funny, when I just did a spell check a couple of funny suggestions came up:

for lv2rd they suggested labia, hmmm interesting.

for bikeme it suggested bikini, seems that spell check has a dirtier mind than I do. Very good suggestions.

Phew, I'm back. Don't ever let anyone tell you that having a baby isn't tiring. No I didn't pop that sucker out of my own pee-hole but the last two weeks have been tough with the odd and inconvenient hours that our new bundle of joy follows. Its been great though and nothing that I could really describe. If you wanna see some pics check out the dam nelsons link on the right.

Anyway, to prepare for the final race in the Maine series coming up this weekend I've been trying to squeeze in a few rides here and there. I won't be building any strength or speed at this point between the lack of sleep and only having a week before the race but I've still got to keep the legs moving and firing on all cylinders. With that in mind, I did a road tt on Sunday. TT's aren't really my thing since I prefer longer races and I don't have a properly set up tt bike but since the race was being held in my home town it seemed like a good way to get some quality intensity work in to wake up the legs after a week of little saddle time. I also got to try an unusual warm up for the race. I got up at 6:45, grabbed some breakfast and suited up. Rode my bike to registration (about 2 miles away), rode back to the house, did a couple sets of stair climbing repeats carrying the laundry up and down the basement stairs, folded some baby clothes (a man's work is never done I tell ya), rode to the race start, took in a couple miles of the course, shot the shit with a few riding buddies for 5-10 mins. and rolled to the line with two mintues to spare. The race went pretty well after the first few miles. I went off a little hot and felt it after the second mile and thought that I may blow my Quaker oats all over the road so I eased up a bit and soon felt much better and able to push some gear. I was only passed by one other rider which I feel to be a great success since there were some pretty haunch guys there. I put in what I felt to be a respectable time but wasn't able to stick around for official times and awards because I had Mr. Mom duties to attend to at home. Overall a good ride with some very good intensity. I'll try to grab a couple more rides this week to just keeps things in tune and I should be ready to throw down with Big Al this Sunday to see who bags the overall series points.

Kat

No riding for me lately, with Hurricane Katrina blowing through and the looming due date, I have been scrambling to get stuff done around the house. Well, mission accomplished. The baby's room is done except for a tiny bit of painting to be done. That means that I can finally get back out on the road for some more training. Today I'll be able to do the 30 mile ride home from work (not a long ride but a good workout when pinched for time since it kills two birds with one stone) and the same ride in tomorrow. Hopefully by Saturday the trails will be dried out enough to get a good spin in as well to open the legs up for the race on Sunday. This race was miserable for me last year so hopefully I'll have a better showing this time around. Of course if baby comes there will be no race but thats ok cause whats more important, a race I do for fun or the birth of your first child?