Education

A couple of videos that have been powerful for me lately. I'm not sure I believe it all but its interesting.





If you have the time and attention to read a couple of hours this site Peak Oil is a very good and well documented read. Whatever the "truth" is i do believe we are on the brink of a radical change in civilization as we have known it to be and your not going to find out about it through mainstream news until its already happened.

Greenway Beer Bike

I scored a sweet new bar bike off Ebay last week. I got it together last night, should prove to give lots of commuting and bar hopping fun.


Love the head tube badge:

May Ride Log

Kind of a slow month on the bike.

1st Greenway Fix 2:00
3rd PMBAR 9:15
6th Neighborhood Ride :30
7th Haw Ridge 2:00
9th Commute to Work 1:30
10th Cyclocross adventure 4:30
12th Commute to work 2:00
14th Rode to a Bar :30
16th Commute to work 3:30
17th Road Ride 3:00
18th Raccoon Mountain 3:30
19th Commute to work 2:00
21st Haw Ridge 2:00
24th Iron Mountain Trail @:30
25th VA Creeper 2:00
29th Rode to store in Fl :30

39:15 in May with a week of vacation and sinus infection in the mix.

Words cannot describe

I suggest clicking the little arrows in the lower right corner to make it full screen then watch in amazement.


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Recent Rides

A few words about some recent rides:

PMBAR (Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure Race)

This is a race outside of Brevard, NC and is just about the most fun day on a bike one can imagine. It’s a great format with checkpoints throughout the forest that nobody knows where they are until the start of the race you have to go to a minimum number of the possible checkpoints to finish (or more to win) in any order you deem best. It’s great because you’re seeing other people doing the same race as you going different directions all day but you have little idea whether they are doing better or worse than you. It has a total party atmosphere. For safety you compete as a team of two, Jeff was my partner this year. We had a great day and met out #1 goal of finishing, it took us a little over 9 hours. I road briefly with a bunch of old paddling friends, that was cool to see how so many people of similar interest have had those interest evolve in the same way. Knoxville was well represented at the event with about 10 folks coming out, all clad in the Union Jack.
I bought a couple of raffle tickets at the event and won a new mountain bike frame that happens to be Tara’s size. It’s a Vessago “Bandersnatch” in traffic safety green/yellow, where going to build it up with leftover parts and stuff to make her a nice neighborhood/greenway/grocery bike. I’m looking for a cheap 29er wheelset for it if anybody has one.

Fired up and ready to go, It seemed Jeff and I had some of the burliest bikes out that day:


Rider Meeting Harper's Crew in full force:



Me sketching out on the bridge, notice how the bridge is bowing up:


Jeff on the bridge, notice how the bridge is bowing down:


End of the day collecting my raffle prize, Tara's new town bike:



Cyclocross Adventure:

This past weekend Jeff and I couldn’t decide on what to do so we went with something completely new and went cyclocross exploring/adventuring. We went up to the Citico Creek area riding some fire roads and some single track that ties some fire road sections together. We did about 20 stream crossings, 200 log hops, 3 miles of horse chewed mud, and 4,000 feet of climbing in some of the most beautiful mountains of Tennessee.



Lots of Stream Crossings:




Lunch Break and map check:


It was a great ride and a beautiful day:


Photo credits to Brado and Jeff

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April Ride Log

April was a decent month on the bike with a little over 44 hours. Several trips out of town and a couple of local rides I dont do very often.

2nd Greenway Weiner Fix 2:30
5th Road ride 2:30
6th Parkway/Dragon/Parkway 5:30
7th SK8 :30
8th Trailer ride with Noah 1:30
9th Haw Ridge 1:30
10th Haw Ridge 1:00
12th Pisgah 2:00
13th Pisgah 5:30
14th Neighborhood Fix :30
15th Concorde 2:00
17th Greenway fix 1:00
18th Family greenway ride 1:00
20th Raccoon Mountain 3:00
21st Farragut Fix 1:30
22nd Commute to work 2:00
23rd Haw Ridge 2:00
25th Commute to work 2:00
26th 12 Hour Allycat 1:30
27th Farragut Greenway 2:00
29th Farragut fix :45

Quick update

I haven’t posted much lately. Just too much going on. CarolAnn and Brian Blair came into town last week for the Cohutta 100, they both did very well and seemed to have a good time. I took Brian down to Raccoon Mountain on Sunday. We missed a few of the better trails but I think he had had enough by then anyway (Having raced 100 miles the day before and all). Noah is doing well his personality is becoming more apparent every day.





Banjo lessons are going well.


Just a week until PMBAR, I hope Jeff is ready.

Squeezing in the last of the Pisgah “Seasonals”

I had a great weekend in Pisgah trying to squeeze the last bit of life out of the seasonal trails this year. In Pisgah some of the trails are referred to as “seasonal” meaning that they are only open to bikes during the winter months (Oct. 15th – April 15th) when hiker traffic is low. It’s only a handful of trails but some of them are among the best trails in the forest and some of them help tie trails together to make loops that just aren’t achievable otherwise. Jeff, Thomas, Eric, Levi and I met up in Brevard on Saturday. On the way in Jeff and I spotted DJ’s car at a local bike shop so we stopped in and recruited him and his wife to join us for the day. We snagged the last roadside campsite along the river by the stables. This spot just happened to be on the opposite side of the river from the road and that made for allot of fun all weekend. Once we set up camp we made our way over to the hatchery and made a loop up the fire road down Long Branch and Cat Gap then we loaded up and went over to North Slope for a quick spin around. Not too much ridding Saturday and all at an easy pace in preparation for Sunday.



Sunday was what this trip was all about, I have had the route I’ve wanted to do for a while but have never had a group that was interested in the idea and everything come together to pull it off. It’s a shuttled point-to-point ride and goes a little like this…. Laurel Mountain -> Pilot Rock -> 476 -> The Pink Beds -> Club Gap -> Avery Creek -> Clawhammer -> Presley Cove -> Black Mountain. It’s not that long at about 25, and the climbs aren’t that horrid, but the descents are some of the finest around. To get Pilot, Avery, and Black Mountain all in one day is as much as any mountain biker could ask for. So we met another crew from Knoxville (Jay, Jen, Shawn, John, Chris, and John from the UK)at the bottom of Black mountain Sunday morning to consolidate gear into a few shuttle vehicles and head to the beginning. It’s about a 30 minute shuttle drive and I think a few folks where getting nervous about the whole idea. One of the Participant (John from the UK) had just moved to the US a few days before, wandered into Harpers Bike shop and bought a bike, this was his first ride in the States and his first ride on his new Heckler. I have to say that Britt ripped. The ride went off like clockwork, You would be hard pressed to get a better group together for such an unknown undertaking. We lost a couple of folks at the bottom of Avery but the majority pulled through. I think everyone agreed that this is one of the best routes they had ever done in Pisgah.

Unfortunately I didn’t get the camera out too much all weekend. Thomas has some nice pictures over at Harvest the Ride to check out though.

Still no dogs on the grill

Another Wednesday night at the ridge and still no sizzling meat in 08. Matt brought a grill this week and everything.

As usual we left the lot with a bunch of big wheel bikes with drive train deficiencies.

At some point the crowd dwindled.


We hit some rocky descents on the way out of the woods.

And then headed for hydration.