riding with 2 old friends and the infamous "Trixie" crew

Yesterday after some back breaking trailwork I loaded up the two white squishy bikes for some singletrack fun at Warriors with Melinda. Upon our arrival I notice all the Trixie riders gearing up for a spin through the woods. So rather than ride with the ladies I opted to ride with the guys so they could talk all girly and stuff.

Mike T. aka the "Local Cult Hero" had texted me earlier, something along the lines of "Rodney Warriors 6". Infamous for his one liners that take a few minutes to decipher I pondered a minute or two and then forgot about it. Upon our arrival at the trail head I realized he meant "Riding Warriors at 6, come out if you think you can hang".

As we suited up and the normal trash talking began, I noticed not only were all the Trixie riders in attendance but a couple of old friends of mine were there as well. One of which I used to hang out with alot. We spent countless hours at Warriors together cursing singing and making others look like chumps on a couple of occasions. Speaking of Trixie riders, Mike I want a Trixie t-shirt dammit! All the good deals I've given you on my old bikes and the $20 you shorted me on the Karate Monkey sale, it's the least you can do.





It took me a second to recognize the Monkey with it's new fancy wheelset. The white rims, wow very nice! It almost made me throw down an offer to buy it back. I'm still pondering that offer Dirty so hollar at me if you decide to sell.





Although we didn't spend a whole lot of trail time together the Mary did hang out in my bike room for a year or so until the Local Cult Hero finally conned me into selling it to him for a ridiculously low price. Both bikes were in good shape and made me proud to see them run again.

Kind of like it's time with me the Mary doesn't see much trail time either, I'm not saying the LCH doesn't ride much... well yes I am but even if he did, he has so many freaking bikes he could ride a new one everyday for two months before any of them see a second ride. I would say he easily has more bikes in his basement than some of the local bike shops.




The new NTMBA T-shirts are finally in, no funky colors this time. Get one while you can, $15. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Today is the day that the Lord has made, it's also the day where I will make the JET9 pedal like a dream. Easier? Heck no, Smoother? Yes! Hopefully there will be alot less chain droppage as well.

Bike @ Bays this weekend, hopefully we won't see any rain but if it does I'll still ride. Those trails with their sand based composition drain better than any in the area. Yesterday while working on the new Chestnut trail I was amazed at how well it held up just after two big storms, no mud.

Chainless bike race? You better bring it!

M.J. would be proud of me

I think I've resolved my issue with what to do about the new color scheme on the Karate Monkey. A week or so ago in a post I was talking about the addition of some new white components. I felt like the Monkey needed a face lift but after adding a new white stem & seat there was just something else I felt like it needed but I wasn't sure what that was.





I didn't have the dough to throw down on a new white fork or a set of I-9's with white rims which would have been pretty sweet. I needed something small, something inexpensive and something that wasn't too "in your face". I think I may have found just that.





Ladies & Gentlemen may I present to you the Dakine Step-up Gloves in white.
Back in April Melinda bought me a new pair of riding gloves. Something I really needed. Normally I go with just plain black because there is not much else out there to choose from. I'm pretty picky about the fit of my gloves and my last pair while they did fit good and still do the velcro wrist strap gave up the ghost within 2-3 months. I was really disappointed in the lack of stickiness. I'll try not to complain too much about the gloves since they're were completely free courtesy of the Endura Rep. I met on a ferry ride in the Outer Banks last summer. The gloves themselves are still in great cond. and I'll keep them on hand for days when the weather turns sour and I don't want to get my new pretty white gloves dirty.
I'm sure I'll take some ribbing over the white gloves but I think they look pretty cool, they fit great and best of all there is no velcro wrist strap to worry about. I do have one small little complaint about the Dakine gloves, they're hard to get. None of my local shops carry them and none of my usual online stores do either. I will assure you that I did look locally before I purchased them online but I've been disappointed in the selection of gloves here in the Tri-Cities.

Enough about color matching & gloves, the Night Owl, is just around the corner and my riding has suffered lately so as usual I will probably be trying to cram too much riding in a short amount of time in an effort to be in the best racing shape ever. Why does it never work the way I plan it in my head. I have no kids, my work schedule allows me to ride more than most but yet I still have a hard time getting in all the miles I would like to.
I did grab Melinda and I a camp spot at Hungry Mother but I have yet to register for the race. I'm going to hold off until Friday in order to give myself the most time possible to decide on which class to race. Expert or Sport, I definitely won't feel like a sandbagger racing sport but the course for expert is more appealing and the fact that Alan is racing expert makes me feel as if I should. If I race expert there is a good chance I'm going to get my ass handed to me, if I race sport there is a possibility of getting close to the podium if the turnout is low and I'm on my A-game. I've got 3 more days to study the course try and figure out who's racing what and make my decision.

the world's most expensive bottle opener

I don't really have anything exciting to talk about. I spent the last two days sitting in a hospital room watching reruns of Friends and flipping through my latest copy of DirtRag for the 20th time. Before you start worrying, everything is ok, Melinda was the one who had the procedure and it was planned. She had her Tonsils & Adnoids removed and a really interesting procedure on her nose called a Septoplasty. No she didn't get the MJ special to help her hit the high notes. It was a procedure to help her breathe better at night. I feel real sorry for her as she has been in alot of pain, the meds they sent her home with are so strong that when she asks me a question she usually falls asleep before I can finish answering her. When this happens I usually end up hearing the same question again an hour later.

Once I got everything situated at the house and hauled all the trash I've been collecting in my basement down to the curb I got the green light to head out to the trails with the dogs and burn off some pent up energy. We had gotten about 30 minutes worth of rain earlier in the afternoon but as dry as it's been I wasn't too worried about wet trails.

Once I got into the woods my suspicions were confirmed, the dry ground had sucked up every drop of rain leaving the trails in perfect shape for a nice trail run. I was kind of surprised when I had a problem with getting the dogs to stay with me. Usually when they've been cooped up in the house for a few days all they want to do is run but yesterday they were more interested in putting their nose to the ground and checking out every inch of the trail. All was going good until I managed to step on a rock just right. I positioned my foot on it just in the right spot so that when I put my weight in it, it rolled to the outside and all I heard was a pop. Not a crack signaling a break but a pop loud enough to hear and give me that nice queasy feeling that makes you think you could blow chunks at any minute.

I immediately ended my run, turned around and limped back to the truck. A majority of the time if I continue to walk right after turn my ankle I manage to skip alot of the soreness and swelling. After a couple of minutes it felt pretty good but not good enough to continue running and I still had a slight limp. I knew once I sat down and allowed it to rest things might turn for the worse and I was right. That evening as I wound down I layed down in the floor with an ice pack. An hour later when I got up I could barely walk on it, just great. I downed a few ibuprofen grabbed another ice pack and went to bed hoping for a better tomorrow.

Surprisingly when I woke up it felt alot better but I'm still limping a bit. I'm working the next three days so my weekend was already a loss and hopefully that will be all I'll need to fully heal and be back at it by Monday.

Tuesday while in Johnson City I gave my old buddy the Local Cult Hero a shout and asked him if he had 2 Yakima Bow Down's in stock. He said he had one and could order me another. I had been looking around online but the best deal I could find was $161 per rack and I needed two. I really didn't want to spend $300 + on kayak racks but the cheaper version didn't fold down out of the way or have a nifty bottle opener on it. I've noticed alot of manufacturers have really jumped on the bottle opener band wagon in the last 2 years. You can find them on bikes, trailer hitches, belt buckles and now roof racks. I will admit I frequently forget mine at home when we head out on a camping trip so the two I have on the Karate Monkey's chain tensioners have saved many of my friends from dying of thirst.

I asked the L.C.H. if I bought 2 racks could he cut me a deal and he did leaving me with no choice but to go ahead and pull the trigger. Now I'll never have to worry about not being able to open a frosty beverage if by some crazy chance we're out in the wild and I have forgotten my trusty BO-2 and I picked the Mamasita over the Monkey.

I received an email from the fine folks who put the 6 Hours of Warrior's Creek the other day with a fancy little link to a web page containing all the lap times and other info regarding who won and who got their ass handed to them. I knew where I was going to stand in that regards. I started off the race in the back of the pack not really wanting to get in the mix my first lap out especially since my head really wasn't in the game. I figured if I stayed back and kept my pace at a respectable speed I'd have more gas in the tank closer to the end and be able to continue when most were calling it a day. At the time I didn't think I would be one of the first to pull the plug.

Needless to say I decided not to view the results and remind myself of how poor my performance was. Today I finally ventured over to the BMCC's website but only to see if I could find any race pics of myself on my one measly lap. Of the 431 photos post up on the web I could not find one single shot of me flying sideways through one of the many banked turns.

I could have sworn I saw multiple photographers out on the trail but I guess I was either in a worse mental state than originally thought and hallucinating or the photographers deleted all the pics of racers who bailed after 1 measly lap thinking that if we didn't care enough to put forth the effort of at least 2 laps then we definitely wouldn't take the time to looks for our race pics much less buy one.

After being disappointed by not being able to find a photos of myself I decided to look at the race stats anyway. I knew I was probably not the only one who bailed after 1 lap and I thought to myself may just maybe I was the fastest 1 lap lowly rider. Last year I think I counted at least 4 or 5 folks who pulled the plug early and wasted $40 on entry fees. As I browsed through the solo open men category I reached the bottom only to find only one other person in my category had finished only 1 lap and he managed to finish ahead of me. DAMN! Not to let this get me down I clicked on the Overall results, scrolled to the bottom of the big 1's and learned that I finished 3rd overall out of 5 racers!

That's a podium spot even if it's for the poorest showing of the race.