riding with friends

Evidentally Blogger has updated their dashboard which I tried my best to ignore for as long as I could but they've forced it on me and now I'm having to relearn how to type up a blog post. Things are not working so swift for me just yet, I'm not sure if it's me or blogger. Inserting photos was never an easy task and while sometimes it seems to work good, today it was a nightmare. 

Last weekend was the huge Southeast Bike Expo down in Georgia which benefited SORBA/IMBA. I would have liked to go but it was Melinda's birthday weekend so we hung close to home and rode what she wanted to ride. There really wasn't a huge selection of bikes I was wanting to ride and the ones I did want to ride were waaaay out of my price range. Getting to try them out would only have been torture and I'm sure they were among the more popular anyway so I would have spent most of my time waiting in line.

 

Melinda's trail of choice for her b-day was Bent Creek in Asheville. We invited all the lady's out for a ride and luckily for me she allowed some of their significant others to join us so I wouldn't be the odd ball only guy.

 

It was a beautiful day for riding with friends, the pace was nice and casual with plenty of stops for scenery admiration, stunt riding and some refreshments. I've been eyeing this log ride for quite some time but usually skip it, Sunday I decided it was time for me to buck up and ride it. I swear it's me, Andy's photo skills were lacking, he blamed cutting off my head on a rabid bee.

   

  

 The birthday lady.

  

  

I downloaded a cool little camera app that adds some interesting effects to my photos. This one is by far my favorite, the first day I actually tried it out. I had a little time to kill while waiting on some friends to ride a couple of weeks back and decided to play around with the new app and got this. 

I've been talking of buying another singlespeed frame for some time now, one that's made of steel and has the capability of running gears. Melinda gave me the green light and I threw my AIR9 up for sale. 30 minutes later I had a buyer so I made a quick call to my LBS and ordered a new frame. Last night I stripped the AIR9 down to just the headset and seatpost. I tried to remove the BB but instead of loosening it I only managed to booger up the contact points, a problem I've experienced quite a bit recently. I think my BB removal tool is no longer up to par so rather than do any further damage I'll hold off from trying to remove it any further and let the professionals help me with it.