bikes more bikes and a flashlight

Our bike room at home is full, of bikes that is. The norm for our bike room is 7 bikes but we've added 2 extra in the past week. Moonshine loves bikes almost as much as I do but she was complaining the other day that she was running out of room for her bed on the floor. Really only one bike is permanent, for now, Brownie is back to stay and I'll be damned if I can't think of another name for it and for some reason keeping it "Brownie" when it's no longer brown kinda sounds fun to me. The other addition, while temporary for now is another 29er. No we're not flipping bikes these days, it's a demo Niner Air9 that Melinda is currently putting the screws to at Bays Mountain as I type this. She's been pondering the big hoops for a while but I never thought we could find a size to fit her much less a demo for her to ride before throwing down the cash on one.










Not the prettiest looking bike I've ever seen, Kermit green, gold and red kinda hurts the eyes but it's hard to come by demos, especially in a size small. Having this bike in the house does help me make up my mind whenever it comes to whether I would like the Kermit green color or not. It would be hard to find parts that flowed with this color and you would really be limited to all black.


On the subject of new bikes I'm still on the fence on what to do with my full squish frame, I like it but yet I feel like it's not me. It's fun on the downhills but in my hood you have to do alot of climbing to get there and I'm not 100% sure I'm really that much faster going downhill with the full suspension vs a hardtail. I had serious thoughts of selling the JET9 for a SIR9, Niner's steel hardtail that can be run geared or SS. I almost talked myself out of it but now it's creeping it's way back into my head again. This year they've got the SIR9 in the sweet Moondust grey color and to tell you the truth I think I might just enjoy riding a singlespeed more than the squish. It's simple, fun and challenging not to mention the feel of steel on the trail is like non other. The deraileur/gears on my JET9 has been nothing but a pain in the ass the whole time I've had it, some of that has to do with the fact it's a 1x9. The debate continues inside my head.




LED's are getting brighter and brighter and coupled with a Lithium Ion battery you can have one small, lightweight light that lasts longer and is super bright. Melinda says I have an addiction to flashlights, blinkies and other lighting systems and she's probably right. I ordered 2 high powered LED flashlights a couple of weeks ago from China and they finally came in the mail the other day. These things are super bright, brighter than any flashlight I own. They are almost if not as bright as my LED headlamp I run while night riding. They each came with 2 small Lithium Ion rechargable batteries and a charger. I only paid $10 for the light, 2 batteries and a charger. I've seen several similar flashlights you can order that are about half the lumens of these at 10x the price. With a little bit of engineering I could strap them to my helmet for riding and I might try it soon. Some of my older LED's won't even hit the back of my yard at night but I have to be careful where I point these things cause they'll light up my neighbor's house 2 houses down. I'm scared what I might see if I accidentally shine the light into the windows down the road.


Spring is looking up, I'm seeing the trees starting to bud and green stuff sprouting up in my garden and so far my head and allergies are doing good. I'm really hoping the new allergy meds are going to make this spring clearer for me. I'm determined to silence the ridiculousness that goes on in my head and straighten out whatever distorts my thought process. I'm convinced it's congestion effecting my inner ear or something of that nature. I've talked myself till I'm blue in the face to several doctor's but they all look at me like I'm an idiot. I've researched this on the webMD sites for those people who think they're internet doctor's and some tried to tell me I'm paranoid but that's crap. Why can one minute I feel normal then the next have trouble processing thoughts or sentences. I've thought about telling my doctor I see dead people just to mess with him so maybe he would take me seriously but Melinda doesn't think it's funny when I say things like that.
I'm really hoping to redeam myself this year at the 6WC coming up in two weeks, the past two years really sucked last year being the worst. It's the first and only time I've bailed on a race like that. I busted out two rides at Warriors in the past two days and felt great, no allergy side effects or weird feelings in my head.
Last night I met up with Fat Tony at 6:30 to squeeze in a lap after work. I thought for sure we would need lights near the end of the ride but we were able to finish out the lap with enough light to still pin it in the corners coming down MCR.

If you haven't already seen the IMBA Trail Care Crew re-cap video check it out.








It took a little longer than expected to finish it. I had to wait a few days for the rain to quit before I could get out and shoot a ride on the new section of the Big Oak re-route and it rides great. It may not be as fast as the old section but it's 500 feet longer, no longer has a creek running down it and it's rideable going up hill when wet. Give it a couple more weeks to get properly ridden in and I think it will continue to get faster. If you're still pissy about the change you can still go bomb down the creek called Azalea trail that keeps getting wider and more rutted out everyday.