Bathtub

Gauley

Jeff and I went to West Virginia to contemplate life.

The one thing we decided is life sure is good in West Virginia.

I’ll have Noah out there one day.

I’ve been off the bike allot lately and it’s done wonders for outlook on riding. Sometimes I get too wrapped up in the peripherals of the sport and loose touch with the pleasure of just spinning peddles and feeling the breeze. One of the reasons I have trouble enjoying kayaking any more is the sport became too much about the details and not as much about the overall experience. Along those lines, I decided recently I’m ditching the Ipod while riding no matter how loud my bottom bracket gets. I think the Ipod brings a layer to the experience that disrupts the purity of why I’m on a bike in the first place.

Ride Log:
18th Haw Ridge 2:00
19th Haw Ridge 2:00
The rest of the week was spent on the river !

Down and Out

I have been sick to some degree for about a month now, I kept starting to feel better, and then relapse within a day or two. I finally broke down and went to the doctor last Thursday, started some antibiotics and have been pulling myself together again. Hopefully I’m kinking it for good this time. This past weekend I did some leisurely riding, Saturday involved a 30 mile’ish greenway ride that took about 4 hours (stopped for lunch and beer along the way) and a trip to Raccoon Mountain. I hope to get back in the saddle for some decent rides soon. The blacksheep is giving me allot of issues right now. I got a new EBB for it after the crack but its slipping really badly plus my back wheel is breaking spokes every other ride. I checked the tension on the back wheel a week or so ago and it was ok I think it’s just dying and a new rim and spokes are in my near future I hope to try one of those Stan’s rims next.

Monte's new Badger finally arrived after over a year log wait/ordeal. Monte, Allen, and I went out on his inaugural ride of the new bike, the lime green looks sweet threading the trees.


Noah is getting pretty wiggly these days, he’s constantly squirming from one place to the next by any means possible. The weather was so nice this weekend we did a little outdoor tricycling.



Ride log:

September 3rd - Labor Day – Tandem Ride with Tara 1:30
4th - Fixy ride around town 1:00
5th - Haw Ridge 2:00
6th – Forks of the River Tour with Brian Hann 1:30
8th – Haw Ridge with the Badger boys
9th – Ocoee 2:00
15th – Extended Greenway super casual lunch outing with some pallet jumping behind the abandoned grocery store 2:30
16th – Raccoon Mountain, Love that place!!!

Labor Day

Noah had a baby sitter this morning so Tara and I got to do something we had nearly forgotten, ride together. We do a pretty good job of getting out on the bike individually, but one of us is always staying home to watch the child. We didn’t have a ton of time so it was pavement from the house and what better way to enjoy a ride together but to bust out the tandem.


Levi knows he doesn’t get to go with skinny tires.

All smiles heading down some desolate country roads.










Noah had his first solid food today. It was some brown rice run through the blender. We shoved it in his mouth but his expression tells the rest of the story.

Cracked Up

I’m in one of those phases where every time I ride my bike I break something. Last week was the cracked EBB yesterday was a flat tire and a chain snapped in two places and today I heard a loud pop followed by horrendous creeking that reveled a broken stem.

That’s the lower bolt holes of a Thomson elite face plate.


So far for the year in broken parts that’s; a Moots seatpost, Jeff Jones handlebar, Bushnell EBB, Crank Brothers Candy peddle, a Mavic Reflex rim, three I9 spokes and a couple of SS spokes, 3 torn tires, and countless tubes.

Carolann has been here this weekend for the Chandler/Tucker wedding. It was a traditional Catholic ceremony followed by a reception at a traditional civil war mansion, that struck me as an odd dichotomy. Noah got to come to the wedding, he got all dressed up in his fanciest duds given to him by my moms friend Ann.




Ride log
Aug. 31st – Haw Ridge, road the Captain, stuck to some remote trails and had as many as 3 spiders hanging off my visor at any time. 3:00
Sept. 1st – Haw Ridge, road the Wily had a blast, the Wily is the shortest wheelbased Mountain Bike I own, I forget how maneuverable it feels. 2:00
Sept 2nd – Haw Ridge, road the Wily again only made it a short distance before the stem failure. :30

Black Bear Rampaged

I road the Black bear rampage last weekend. It was a ~40 mile race at the ocoee. I had been sick the entire preceding week with a stomach bug so I wasn’t hoping for much but I didn’t expect major equipment failure. The EBB on the Blacksheep cracked, the BB fell out and the bike was useless. I had to walk a little over a mile of trail to get to a sag stop and radio for a ride back to the start.


I hung out at a trail junction waiting on Jeff to catch up and he bailed on the race at that point, it had been raining since the start, visibility and traction stunk and the racing wasn’t much fun at that point. We made quick work of putting bikes away and busted out on the river for the rest of the afternoon.

I’m sick again this week this time with a cold. I feel like I haven’t been 100% healthy in about 3 months.

Noah got his first bike this week.


Ride log:
22nd Haw Ridge left the lot with a group of about 20 riders at full race pace, it was nearly 100 degrees and the pack thinned quickly as soon as the hard climbing started I overheated and dropped off, the pack was down to about 5 at that point. 2:00
25th Fixy ride, new tape on the bars, peddles and sandals fun ride, 1:30
26th Black Bear Rampage ~2:00
27th Haw ridge, Charles was in town so I went out to show him around the trails.

Long time - No post

No update in a long time, things have been super crazy lately and I just haven’t had the time to mess with the blog. Riding has been pretty light the last few weeks, I just cant tolerate the heat. I often wonder if global warming will force me to move north in the future. I absolutely love Wisconsin in the summer time if the winter would get a bit milder….Anyway, I am officially sick of summer and cant wait for some cool autumn wind to blow our way.

I recently trashed the rear wheel on the commuter bike. The wheels on that bike where ~14 year old road wheels built with super light spokes and I knew they wouldn’t last much longer. I built up a new set of wheels to replace them with, they turned out the swankest $112 wheelset I have ever seen. I had the front hub and most the spokes, and all the nipples laying around the shop, I scored an incredible deal on the rear hub, and I got some solid yet cheep rims to finish the package. I got some good help from the get-go on the build.
This was my fourth set of wheels to build this year and my best yet they went together true, round, with perfectly even tension without any cussing at all.


Front: Machine Tech front hub 3x 32 W/14,15’s and brass nips to a Delgado Cross.
Rear: 105 rear hub 3x36 W/sg14’s and brass nips to a Delgado Cross.

Tara and I went to visit her brother, John, his wife, Amanda, and their children Aubrey, Cecilia, Adelle, and Francis. They recently moved from urban DC life to super rural Ohio. From their house its soybeans and corn as far as the eye can see. It was a good trip I unfortunately forgot to take the camera with us.

This past week Noah got a stomach bug, his first illness ever. Within 12 hours Tara and I both had it too. All three of us were sick as could be for the better part of a week. It was tough sorting out who was taking care of whom in the whole ordeal. It was the sickest I have been in years and I have never seen Tara that Ill before. Hopefully family wide plagues wont visit us again any time soon.

Ok now with the tons of Noah pics for all the family and friends that need a fix.
Sprinkler fun:


Noah cant wait to go Shredding:


Crinkling leaves is his favorite game:


Gotta love that smile:


Next weekend is a mountain bike “race” I signed up for a few weeks ago at the Ocoee. I plan to take it super chill and fight for the “Had the most fun" prize. Lots of Knoxville riders that never go to events at all, have signed up so it should be interesting. I have ridden those trails so much I know every rock, root, and soft corner of the entire 40 miles of singletrack hopfully my skill and familiarity will help make up for my current fitness. I started the year off planning to do the Shenandoah 100 again this year, Tara said there was no way I would have time to prepare and I didn’t believe at the time, I should have listened to her. Noah takes up so much of my time now but I love every minite of it.

Ride log;
August 1st: Haw Ridge 2:00
2nd: Commute to work 1:30
4th: Tannasi with Jeff 3:30 followed by a full river trip, both upper and lower sections of the Ocoee 7:00 t
5th: Haw Ridge 2:30
7th: Road Ride 2:00
8th: Haw Ridge 2:00 Road the Captain and had an interesting ride. I ripped the rear derailleur of the bike somehow. I had a spare hanger with me so I switched it out. The lower cage of the detailer was pretty tweaked but I took it apart and striated it fairly well. Put it all back together and it shifted as good as it ever has. It was kind of neat to repair such a mangled mess back to perfect working order in the woods.
13th: Road Ride W/ Jeff 3:00
14th Greenway/urban, ride I bailed just after the start :30
19th: Infamous West Knox, MTN Biker Road Ride 2:30
20th: Haw Ridge 1:30 hot but fun
***lots of running errands on the commuter bike never make the log but some of my favorite times on the bike these days involve rides around town with shopping bags hanging off my brake hoods half the time.

Update coming

I’ve been super busy lately and hadn’t had time to write anything and then the power went out tonight and so updates are once again delayed. Trust me though I’ve been out playing


And Noah is as cute as ever.

Recovery/Regrouping Week

After last weekend’s miserable performance and my general displeasure for riding lately I took most of the week off the bike. I did spend some time researching some new routes not far from home both on and off road. I have several cyclocross adventure routes picked out and plan to start doing some major fire road exploring in the Cherokee National Forest.
I have heard about some MTB trails not far from Knoxville that nobody seems to ride. I picked up a map of that area and have done some research, I’m interested to see why nobody rides there, its got tons of elevation change and that may indicate its just tougher riding than many people are interested in. I plan a recon mission in the next week or two and will report the findings.
Lastly I have been mapping out new road routes from my home. Theirs some pretty desolate riding not far from my home but you have to put in some mileage to get into it. I went out today to try out some new roads, traveling out to Kingston Tennessee and back. I went out hugging the edge of the Tennessee river and had intended to stay near the banks of the Clinch on my way back. The mileage started getting a little out of hand so the return route was a little further south than I had intended. Still I hit some really nice roads in the ride and only hade a couple of wrong turns. Turned out to be an 80+ mile ride.

Ride Log

Friday – commute to work 1:30 trashed my rear wheel on the way home hopping dirt mounds along the greenway. Those wheels had never once been trued in ~13 years of use. The nipples are frozen to the spokes and they are now untrueable.
Sunday – Road ride from home 80.5 miles @ 16.25 mph all solo (no drafting) with stops along the way (I checked the map a million times) it was about a 6:00 ride.

Who is the Hippest Hipster?

Tarik posted some new links on Moscaline. One of witch may be my new favorite blog. If you’re a long-time cyclist and can see things for what they are you will absolutely love Bike Snob NYC. If you just got a new set of lime green deep V’s and spent the weekend doing skids about town on your top tube protected, NJS track bike sporting capris or star tattoos, you may want to skip it because it may offend everything you are trying to stand for.

I can’t explain this except it sure made me laugh.