nice end to the year

Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds.
Ain't no use jiving
Ain't no use joking
Everything is broken.

in a fitting end to '09, i ate shit on an icy run at granite peak aboard my trusty jim rippey model snowboard, and broke my wrist. same one i had screwed together and re-assembled with a piece of cadaver bone back a couple summers ago. naturally, it is my right hand, so in addition to being refamiliarized with that unique brand of sickeningly sharp ache that keeps a guy up at nite, i also am enjoying the inconvienience that accompanies your dominant hand being less than dominant. new examples of this pop up all the time, such as trying to hold a cup of coffee, or open a sticky door. sweet.

not even my steven colbert wriststrong bracelet could save me.

so . . . . . . roller riding on the aero-bars is in order, maybe some running. brite side might be found in the fact that my swimming plan for the off-season is on a 6 week hold. :) and i can still XC ski, but it is gonna have to be no-poles sk8-skiing exclusively. a season of no-pole sk8-skiing is perhaps something only a singlespeeder would look forward to.

summbitch.

the best thing about swimming

gretchen decided to go rogue on our new-year resolution, and dragged my sorry ass to the pool a week early.

it has been a little while since i was at the pool, and i forgot how much swimming has in common with pounding yourself on the knuckles with a giant hammer. that being, both of them feel so darn good once you stop doing it.

you can take the fondo out of italy . .

but can you keep the italy in the fondo ??

i have watched and admired the gran fondo's since the days when they would be picured in winning magazine. now, after levi L's acclaimed gran fondo out in cali, they are popping up all over the place, including wisconsin. my initial impression was crazy-hell enthusiasm, but since then a few people have given me pause to wonder . . . . . .can this scene really transplant to america ??

i always perceived the whole bit about them to be true spectacles of gentleman-racing. probably "won" by a hi-profile recent ex-pro, but civilly and superbely and classily ridden by the masses. i know a lot of bike riders, but who other than russel fits that description on this side of the pond ?? what are the other 7999 guys gonna look like, and more importantly - RIDE like ??? !! ???

i dunno. maybe it'll be great, or maybe it'll be a nutcase crashfest of american hacks. maybe the only sure thing is i should really go to italy.

hate the game, not the playa

enuf with the snowshoing, already.

people, walking on water frozen or otherwise, is not a legitimate sporting activity. need proof ?? ask a 3 year old what is cool about snow - he or she can tell you it is fun to slide on. need further proof ?? how bout his:




look familiar ?? now, i am sure this seemed a right fine idea at the time. " hey, let's make some shoes for walking on water, like snowshoes !! " but, sometimes you need to step away from a good idea. here is another attempt:



let's look at that again, just so we are clear:




there is a reason that instead of constucting a giant reed bubble, and walking to The New World those cats make boats. or outrigger canoes. or reed rafts. or whateverthehell - point being they didn't try and walk here. snow is no different - SLIDE on it, my friends, do not trudge.

what is that old joke about mopeds . . . . . ???

. . . . something like "riding one is kinda fun - right to the moment somebody sees you doing it ( and yes i know the non-politically-correct versions of the joke, this is a family-friendly blog )".

anyway, there is little point in making fun of triathlons, as evidenced by this photo. plus, if you take every ridiculous part of the cycling world and condense it down - you have the triathlon cycling-market in its pure form. there is swimming involved, and getting off a perfectly good bike to run as well. the whole thing is beyond silly and foolish.

which is perhaps why i am gonna do one this summer.

honestly tho, i am in serious need of some quality time in getting back into some semblance of shape, and doing it from fear of dying in a half-ironman might be just the ticket. and, i have actually done one or two previously. just like the moped story, and tho it pains me to admit it, i had fun (and looked ridiculous). i expect more of the same. i am a horrible excuse for a triathlonist. i cannot swim without a wetsuit holding me up. luckily for me in triahlon-ing it is OK, even encouraged, to cheat by wearing a neoprene canoe on your person. i suck so bad at swimming when i use a kickboard i actually go backwards. pro swim-guru's have been rendered speechless by the shear ugliness of my flailing. back when gretchen and i did the ironman in madison a complete stranger told me i was going to die during our pre-race warm-up ( i am sure she was well intentioned ).

my feet are so wasted from being broken as a result of skateboarding my running is scarcely better than my swimming. i draft medium-speed walkers when i run to conserve energy.

i'd say the bike portion is my strength, but of course i cannot time-trial my way out of a wet paper bag.

on the brite side, it is in my hometown, and despite what you may hear, there are some cool people to be met in the otherwise vile arena of triatholism. in any event it doesn't matter - i stood on the scale the other day and desparate times call for desparate measures. all that flaling in the water that never did anything to me to deserve the abuse i am gonna be giving it, and innocent asphalt who my plodding feet will pummel might make lose a pound, and losing even one at this point instead of gaining another 20 a day like i have been doing will be worth it. Ok it won't be, but i'm doing it anyway.

if you give a moose a muffin

if you are parent, you probably read that bokk, and the other couple - " If You Give a Mouse a Cookie", etc.

this pic could perhaps be titled "If you give a Snowboarder a Garbagepile".

it isthe launchramp nicky and his buddy came up with in a rush, with the last snowfall. my immediate commentary to it, as sawyer climbed the ladder to the top was " dude, you are going to eat shit so bad". he did not, and it actually sent them down to hit the press-box and following rail-hit pretty nicely. they have moved onto construct modern-day urban ramps, hips, and tow-in hits all over town, but this fine monument to 15 y/o energy remains outside our front door.

to the laboratory !!

at one time, maybe back in te 90's, i was a bonfide ski-waxing guru. these were te days pre-stone grinding. it was as much alchemy as isaac newton trying to turn mercury vapour into gold. and, probably just as toxic, as we stuck out noses down into swirling chemical fumes and smoke of exotic flouro-carbons and gods knows what.

razor sharp metal scapers, quivers of hi-speed drill mounted brushes kept in hermetically sealed baggies, wax that cost more than heroin, and was more addicting. don't even ask about cost - cost was not an issue. and, pay to let somebody else wax your skiis ??? we would sooner have paid a cuban poolboy to . . . . . . well nevermind. ain't nobody touching the bottoms of my skiis.

but, no mofo ever out-glided my ass at the birkie. that was all that mattered.

nowadays i could give a crap. i'll put on anything, or nothing. things have moved on, and i have not kept up. but, if you want to do a glide-test sometime lemme know. take yer stone grinders and yer paid-for store wax job and i will dust off my old wizard-like madness. you ain't out gliding me if i don't want ya to.

scored a top-o-the-line crazy-hell set of poles today for a c-note at the ski-swap. too cool. ski poles are the only legit use of carbon other than stealth fighters that i know of. time to ski !!

nicky setting up the winter trainers - 1 outta 2

it did not take much snow for nicky to get motivated to set up the home-trainer scene for himself for the winter. here he is getting a super-sweet little press-box snowboard feature put together for those backyard jib sessions. way nice !!



. . . . . he was a little less successful here, however, in following my suggestion that he get his "bike set up in the studio next to mom's for some trainer-time in front of the teevee". oh well . . . . .

public service anouncement - "snow"

in case nobody noticed, teevee weather forecasting is no longer about forecasting weather. it is about selling teevee advertising time. hence, the "naming" of summertime rainstorms, and wintertime snow flurries. and of course, the insanely over-reaching snow predictions.

these cats, tho

http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/wwd/winter_wx.shtml

ain't selling no teevee time. bookmark it, and check the little percentage/date/snow amount maps. they are the best guess you are gonna get, and the best guess it is possible to make. they only go 3 days out, cuz guessing anything past that is stupid.

yer all welcome.

throwing down and living dreams

somehow this weekend nicky managed to insert himself and his little kawi 110 playbike into the popular local x-mas parade. thus, he found himself rocking stylish tweaked extended wheelies down the mainstreet of his hometown, much to the delight of the kids and everybody hanging around the quaint parade, and he didn't even have to resort to throwing candy. plus the cops were stoking and slapped him on the back for his efforts, instead of chasing him into back alleys with their lights on - so what more could a 15 y/o want ?? good work if you can get it, and evidently he takes after his mother and managed to get it.



MK on the other hand, was throwing down herself in a manner most dignified - rocking handel's messiah as a rare freshman member of the chorale, in the ultra-posh debartolo performing art center of notre dame university. gretchen brought her mom down for the performance, and it doesn't get much nicer than that.

the kids are alright, and as my man russell would say - it was a good day.

aaaaaghhhhh my eyes !!

while it is true that i own a couple bikes so cool that grown Nipponese bicycle enthusiasts will throw themselves to the ground and weep with joy for just having seen them, i am a man that believes not only in redemption on the wheel, but retribution. hence, for a portion of the year i ride this horrid monstrosity - call it a form of bike ascetiscm . . . . bordering on bike self-flaggelation.

yes, those are aero-bars ( albeit very small ones ), and even more disturbing, those are an ancient set of powercranks mounted down there on the noodle-like bottom bracket of this poor old vitus. speaking of which, while it is made of aluminum and would by elemental nature normally deserve scorn and ridicule - it avoids that by having been ridden by sean kelly - if your aluminum bike was ridden by sean kelly, go ahaed and give it a pass - otherwise . . . . . . . .

anyway, i dare anybody to come up with a bike more vile than this collection of weirdness. living down there amongst the spiders and cobwebs of the Count-TmonT-Cristo isolation cell it serves as my torture device. it does feature 2 redeeming qualities, however. find them in the blurry photo, and i can get you a professional grade spork for a prize.

ok, i love to hate on the cowboys, trek, and the yankees . .

. . . as much as the next guy. you do not ride around on a drop-bar mtn bike ( and actually believe it is everybody else who has it wrong ) for 25+ plus years because you like the mainstream.

but i gotta break ranks on the notre dame football team. sure, i am a total coattail bandwagon fan, it is true - to the degree i thought of them before MK went there i reckon i hated on them too. and, just so we are clear - i am still on record for saying the kid "shoulda gone to ripon". but goddammit if that place does not have some serious-ass Style. how much Style ?? get this:

several days before they jettisoned charlie weis and paid him off with a wad of stacks totalling several million like they were in the movie goodfella's, they called up the FAA and had em turn off their private jet's tracking info, so they could conduct job interviews in privacy like Gentlemen.

T-H-A-T, my friends, is style. Style.

mind you, i get the hating. plenty to hate on. but make no mistake, by hating you are being played - hating on the ND football product is by design, and from a media perspective haters and fans both equal $$. and, what ND understands is that while it is good to win, a great thing to win . . . . it is a far far better thing to matter. and matter they do, there can be no denying it. what they do best tho - is matter with Style.

whether it's the stacks-o-ten-thousand-dollar-bills they hand weis out in the garage ( was it 8 million, 18 million - who cares - as if it makes a diff to these guys !! ), the gassed up and ready private jet, turning off the aircraft's tracking device so they can meet prospective coaches in secret like the Illuminati, or even the mountains of free media coverage they pull in for themselves - i don't care which part of the story you look at - those dudes know what the fook they are doing, make no bones about it, and they pull it off like the Corleone family.

Style. nobody is even a distant 2nd.

" if i had a million dollars . . . . . . .

. . . of course i would first buy gretchen a new fur coat ( but not a real fur coat that's cruel ). and if it is true like danny sez below that SurfnTurf's bowls are destroyed - i wonder if i would do what local ski-philanthropist TP does with that kinda money-to-burn. i ran out to check out some rumours i heard about ongoing work at cherry hills nordic. CHN is actually a one-man private ski area. dude owns a sizable chunk of woods, and has recently addded a derelict hilly orchard. he has a gigantic pole-barn, and a series of tents which house enough earth moving equipment to start a medium sized road contractor business. he has enuf state of the art xc-ski grooming equipment to supply a true destination resort. he has a staff of groundskeepers. he will groom nite and day when the snow flies, and will not stop until it is the best it can be.

all for fun, i guess. no idea. all i know is we can go ski for free on one the best ( maybe one of two best ) groomed trails in the state whenever we want. you can, too.

anyway, above we see is a nice newly constructed sweeping corner showing some of the already pool-table-like grassy trails, with the new section awaiting seed. the perfection of these trails is such that instead of needing my mtn bike i could ride the whole system in 2nd and 3rd gear on this:



if you are riding a XC ski trail in 3rd gear on a naked sport bike with wide road rubber for tires . . . . . . . that is a pretty goddam nicely built xc-ski trail !!

moving up a few years . . . . .

i did manageto get a ride in this decade. it's been a while since i rode at winter park in kewaunee. at one time, trailbuilding genius jonathon V had an almost 8 mile loop out there, with another 3.5 miles a short 3/4 miles away, and plans to connect the two with a magical ribbon of imaginative singletrack that is/was his trademark.

but, political and redtape problems ended that. dark-souled dirtbag that i am, i knew it was too good to last - and i have been there only a handful of times since the demise of that stellar, if largely unknown trail system.

sucked for me, because i forgot if you wish to ride kewaunee, you gotta let the dew dry off the trail first. full-on granny-gear climbs and slick clay make for some tricky riding. add in the extra mass i am lugging around these days, no fitness, and a couple extra layers of blaze orange clothing and it made for a ridiculous display of profuse sweating, floundering, and a guiness book of world records-level effort for breathing hard.

still, my trusty steel steed with its super-trick component exotica from the nineties still rocking made it fun, and hi-lighted the fact that it was me, not the bike. some guys might think suntour XC-pro toeclip pedals and derailleur, flexy ti bar, and 8 speed era XTR ( complete with SRP Ti bolt kits thruoghout ) less than ideal by today's standards . . . . . but they were the hi-water mark for geared mtn bike parts, if ya ask me.

80's horror redemption

just so we're clear. the 80's were not a complete embarrassment. behold !! there may have been a skateboard bowl or three created on this earth as good as this one, but there has never been one better.

as i alluded once before, this piece of heaven on earth is rumoured to still exist. legend has it the thing is intact, albeit filled with gravel and covered with a false floor inside its original building near the corner of loomis road and 8-94 in MKE. when i wasn't riding around in neon on my pink ibis, this was the place to be back then.

a rich dude is out there somplace who could do this right - buy the joint and get it dug back out, for god's sake. like when the sword excaliber was stuck in the stone awaiting Arthur, this world and existance is in a State of Darkness so long as this bowl remains buried.

speaking of neon . . .

and youthful stupidity. here's a sweet shot of me and a single-malt fueled buddy riding in an undisclosed stretch of forest someplace in scotland from the mid-80's. rocking the fanny pack, lime green socks, and little plastic madonna bracelets, even. that is some viscious-hard smack to be laying down, and believe me when i say the scotsmen had no answer for it - plus, we had women-folk with us that could ride as well as any of em, and hold their own in the pub !! this may have one of the first itmes i could lay down the most excellent line of: "let's see if you can outride and outdrink our women, and then maybe we'll bother with ya".

if i can recapture one half of the skillz most mad that i possessed then . . . . . and can get within 20 odd lbs lo these 20 odd years later - look the fook out !!

bulletin board motivation

right then. keeping in the theme of an attempt to drag my most sorry ass into some manner of shape before i hit 50, i thought maybe if i go back 25 years or so i could recapture that bounding spirit of the young and stupid. i never did lose the stupid part, but i could do with a little youthful motivation.

to that end, my bulletin board motivational poster looks something like this. a decent sized mtn bike race, at a venue most surprising. note the classy mode of strating, singlespeed style with no waves or classes, just one big neon coloured and lycra-helmet-covered mass.

name the venue and i will let you sit on russell's wheel for perhaps 10 miles at the upcoming Door County Century - Winter Edition

on like donkey kong

right then. i held a little formal introduction today:

Mr Road, please allow me to introduce Mr. Rubber. Mr. Rubber, it is my pleasure to present Mr. Road.

it has been too long since these two hit it off in my presence, but that's all over now. with rubber meeting road, all i gotta do is join in. tripled up today,with a roller ski in the AM, ride mid day, and run in the eve. here comes the pain.

8th wonder of the world

you know, while overdone, the taj mahal appears a right fine buidling. love the relecting pools. and, not having a green thumb at all, the hanging gardens of babylon have got to impress. but, as you can see in the pic, i am less impressed with those egyptian cats and their pyramids. no indeed. every year i create this monument to rival the pyramids in my front yard.

not only that, this year i did it in time to also bag a sweet ride at the stump farm on my ultrasweet strong SS, with my ultrafine wife. for that, i say the leafpile should bump into that 7th spot from the pryramids.

in other news. the WI mtn bike heisman trophy has got to go to none other than my man rick walls. not content to launch his stubby-legged most excellent self into the top ten of all WORS comps, he threw down HARD agin' those michiganders at iceman in the hyper-competitive middle-age-guys-who-ride-bikes-too-much class and went wire to wire for the V. crazy hell win. special mention to the Don. i am gonna take both as my inspiration back ta racin starting . . . . . . . let's say today. waytogo, fellas, and thanx mucho.

friendly hint tho - you can ride bikes, it is true - but do not mess with me when it comes to leaf rakin.

TdTosa and tactics, tactics

back when the kids were young, they would on occasion participate in a thing called Destination Imagination. it is a deal where a group of kids put on a creative skit to meet a theme. they need to be clever, and funny, be creative and so forth.

anyway, unbekownst to them, the preferred placement/finishing spot that any not-insane parent/advisor would shoot for was the coveted 2nd place. ya wanted to make a good showing ( and maybe even grumble about the bad judging and how you were robbed ), but by all means you did NOT wish to win, and have to keep doing it and go on to all the finals and nationals and worlds, etc etc. no indeed - 2nd was the spot to aim for.

so it was with our killer TdT team, led again by rick W. we had everything in place. not one but two overly skinny fast/cool guys. a fat old guy, a hot female, a local color guy, and of course super local mo-fo team captain. we would not be denied, and we were not. when it appeared we might be bordering on trying too hard, the team pulled together and dug deep to find the inner strength to sit in the sun and eat grocery store sushi, in a hard-won effort to not win. and, we even had some last second heroics when, in the closing seconds where all would be decided, our playmaker rose to the occasion by sittting down and declaring we were done - and she wanted to eat some damn candy.

final place: 6th, with the top-5 sucker teams above us having to keep riding while we moved to superfan mode. a win for the ages.

so it's official - cyclocross is the new triathlon ??

so, it wasn't enuf when they started the cyclocross season in summer - now they are cancelled because of rain. uhhhhhh, yeah.

here is an idea, everybody get back on one of these here style bikes for 'cross for a while again, and see how it goes. if we get back to 'cross racing in summer and/or magnesium brakes stopping CF wheels in the 4/5 races we are gonna go back to the 1982 univega touring bikes again like we rode back in the day 'till we get it right, 'kay ??

triathletes out-gnarling 'cross racers. i never thought i'd see the day.

poetry on the wheel

so much depends
upon
a crap can-
nondale

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chicken.

back in the crazy melee that inexplicably passsed for hi-skool-education in the mid-70's, i had one of those english teachers who was cool. he turned us on to authors such as kerouac, and richard brautigan ( if you have'nt read brautigan, for fuck's sake go do so !! ). he had kids over to his super-cool apt on weekends for all the things you can imagine. . . . . and for that i am certain he would be thrown in jail today; but he was alright. as i recall, we may have wasted a week of time studying the actual version of this william carlos W. poem. they just do not make hi-skool english teachers like that anymore. maybe for the better, but it is a cool ass poem just the same, and one i am gonna take as my motivation to kick off my re-launch from the doldrums of 09 into which i find myself. rock&roll.

i will buy ya smoothie at the muddy cup at iola 2010 if ya know the original poem without cheating.

don't mind me

we did not go see the leadville movie last nite. i believe i am the only person who likes to pretend to be a bike rider who is finds the leadville 100 completely uninspiring. mind you, i have never been there. and of course i am certain that its grandeur and epicness is the grandest and most epic-est that ever was, and ever shall be. etc etc.

but, an out&back on bleak-ass rocky roads in the middle of noplace ?? i must say, i don't get it. and, i am not a complete stranger to doing stupid things just see what they are like . . . a series of do-one-and-be-done kinda deals . . . a marathon, an ironman triathlon, a 24 hr solo singlespeed race, and so forth. i did once meet a couple runner guys who had done the run thing there, and i admired their honesty when they reported that the race actually did suck, and was in actuality from its inception a bit of a stunt to get money into the dinky little town, and in truth nobody is sure why it took off like it did. i dunno, and by all means like i say don't mind me.

i would love to do the creampuff 100 someday, tho. THAT sounds like a cool race to me.

everything is gonna be OK

i nabbed a sweet guvmint-conspiracy h1n1 nanobot mind-contolling injection for myself today. the way things have been going it can't hurt.

parts-bin rat-bike in progress

the cold dark wet roads, and first snowflakes got me to notice i don't have a ride fit for those conditions. i mean i got the fixie, but wanted something to go ride in the crap up hills and stuff. couple options existing in the lab . . . . i hope a ridable bike emerges from this obviously high-precision operation.

rocky V

after a prolonged hiatus, i decided this AM to find the comeback trail yet again. this should be interesting.

i made immediate progress, tho !! i identified a device in the studio as bearing a remarkable similarity to this "bicycle". they say you never forget how. giddy-up.

resurrection on the wheel

allow me to introduce a close member of the family, and recent recipient of a very nice Resurrection from the dead ( only the second guy to get that sweet deal for himself in history that i am aware of ), scootie.

scootie is, externally and/or in this plane of existence, a 1962 honda 50cc step-thru. but he is much much more than that. he is a person or persona of a nature perhaps beyond human understanding. he came to me in the murky and vague period of the mid 70's. the specifics of how, and the details of legal title and so forth are shrouded in the twists of the quantum warp of the fabric of the universe which accompanies scootie, and in which he trully resides. one does not "own" scootie. he simply is by you, or he is not.

for the past 10 years, scootie was in my garage, inert and inactive to our perceptions. previous to that, he was in my brother's dank basement for perhaps 8 years or so in a similar state. prior to those spells and while awake, he was the coolest pit-bike in the world at venues such as road america, road atlanta, mid ohio, watkins glen and so forth, where he enjoyed being a star in the sports car racing world . . . before that he hung around the early years of the skateboard world. he is omni-talented.

this past weekend, as a way to avoid doing any actual work as gretchen and i cleaned the garage, nicky decided to start scootie up. 20 years of not running at all - just start him up. ummmm, yeah, ok nicky - you do that.

a splash of new gas, some fiddling with the carb ( which he knows nothing about ), and a few healthy pushes up&down the alley later . . . . . . . . . and scootie decided to awake. 20 years of quiet slumber, suddenly scootie deemed nicky worthy and putt putt putt putt - off he goes. since then we have actually cleaned the carb, and have been running a mysterious gas additive known as "sea-foam" thru him and scootie is ripping around like it is the pre-beatles days from which he came.

scootie rules. as does nicky.

now i need to go tell the friendly DMV guys to dig around in the basement someplace to find the title that hasn't been active since 1976 or so, and nicky will have the coolest commuter to ever exist in this most unworthyworld underneath him, come next spring when he gets his license. in the meantime, i need to ask scootie who was cooler to hang out with, jesus or elvis, or maybe hemingway or perhaps . . . . .well i dunno, i'll let you know.

a yearning for the simple days

after a tiring week of various comminques concerning recent events, and with missing the cheq40 for one of the couple times over the past ump-twenty years . . . i find myself in a reflective mood.

so - little quiz, in that vein.

only one WI/MN ( she was pre-WORS )rider has ever won a NORBA / USA Cycling XC Mountain Bike National. she is pictured above. know who it is ??

bonus pints for knowing where her win took place, and which pro team picked her outta the obscurity of WI racing ( which was not that obscure in those days ).

and yes, she was faster than the people today ( obviously ).

featured rider of the week

issue resolved. nevermind.

still life with carbide steel spearpoints, and heart-piercing daggers

one can only wonder what MK's rommates are going to think, when her alarming looking scar-headed dad shows up to drop these little items off to brighten up her dorm-room. a poster with icicles, and a dagger thru a heart ?? this represents "comfort-decor" to her ?? well good, say i. as russell advised - " let them be the ones who feel the need to sleep with one eye open ". sound advice from the shedmaster.

as for the roller-ski poles . . . . well . . . . few things outside a 5 foot lightweight spear tipped with a razor sharp carbide steel spike say " personal- safety-spoken-here " with the same panache'. she could kill lions with those things if she needed to. take the hint, would be scumbag drunk assailants - or don't. hint #2; she's going for the eyes first, and she ain't gonna drop 'em - they're tied onto her hands . . . . . either way is fine with the old dad.

safety first.

i am of the mike tyson schol of safety - always lead with the head. which is not to say i don't like or wear helmets. indeed i have numerous roller skiing helmets. they are painstaking made of fine woven cloth ( cotton ideally, with coolmax acceptable. i like a nice little brim on there, too. the graphic "campagnolo", "suntour" ( the old one, OK? ), or the belgian flag colours in a spiffy ribbon down the center are always a plus.

anyway - i will not compromise on any of this, because one can easily see above why i insist on one at all times. sure, my melon still has a little burn up there, no worries except prompting - among others - lamprey eel jokes at work. when is the last time you heard a good lamprey eel joke ??

patience, tactics, longboards, and back ridin ??

nicky quit ridin, and racin road/XC bikes a few years ago. retired, more like. not that he stopped loving bikes - from from it. he just tended to street/park BMX and DJ/urban styles of ridin. if anything, his cycling thusly has been MORE of a lifetyle thing than straight up road/XC.

but, i always hoped he would find his way back. he might be on the way. above we see his new fixie he threw together one recent afternoon. went like this . . . . i meet him comin home from his job at the cool coffe shop in town. with him is a 20-something co-worker, with a longboard. i walk up, say hi, and grab the longboard from the young man. at this point the young man gives nick a look of grave concern, as in "dude-your-old-bald-dad-is-gonna-break-his-arm-in-this-parking-lot-like-every-oldbald-dumbass-dad-when-he-falls-off-my-longboard" sorta way.

now, indeed there are a LOT of things in the modern sk8 world i can't do - but ripping/shredding/sliding on a longboard in a low-slung-pivotal-z-boy style is not one of them. i proceed to do so. the young man is stunned. talk turns to bikes, fixies in particular . . . . . the young man has a shittily conveted fixie, and nick and i - as frank zappa would say: ". . . tell him how to do it right".

nick starts to think . . . . . . cool coffee shop job = style to work via longboard or fixie = not a bad thing. presto - a new fixie is born. i've been keeping the frame, and an ENO rear wheel around for just such a day. he went with the mustache bars for now, because i kept singing the line from the viral "performance" video to him . . . . . " you can barely fit your hands on the handlebars - you look kinda shaky, weaving thru cars ". of course many friends chime in wondering when he will start wearing girls pants . . . . . . " anodized chain? cards in your spokes? how can you ride, your pants are a joke". and so on. which is cool with nicky, he is fun. bubba should bring him a pair of meghans to try on at lake geneva next weekend! :)

mostly tho - he's back on the road. it's a start.

good day, and talking with, ot kicking a live horse

gretchen and i loaded up the van with BMX bikes, DJ bikes, skateboards, and our own old-person style pedal bikes. we dropped the kids at a sweet skatepark in schofield, and then had a very very sweet ride at 9-mile for a few hours. i never know where i am out there, but we ended up hitting most everything.

it was G's first real trail ride since her foot surgery, she did well, and was stoking.

oddly, we paid 3 dollars to ride, not $350.00 there weren;t that any people there, a few groups of 2-6 riders whom we did not know. it was a nice day, and we would stop and talk with them. every group the subject of 24-9 and GG and that debacle came up. is was uncanny. it even came up somehow with some equestrians. i could give a shite one way or the other at this point but lemme tell ya, GG dug a deep ass hole for themselves on that deal. again and frankly i was amazed - we never brought it up.

i hit a few follow-the-leader runs with nicky back at the park, and we marvelled at their growing bag of BMX sk8park tricks/speed/height. howzabout a carve 12 feet up OVER-vert to vert-wall pocket manual, to 270 hip over a 10 foot wall with an extension to a tabletopped and tweaked 10to 56 foot spine transfer ?? that is some crazy shite.

during the procedings, i was fully dorked out with my portable XM radio listening like a hopeless sucker to my kid's new school's football game - which XM/sirius plays on The Catholic Channel", not a sports channel which i find hilarious. yelling "touchdown" every 6 minutes didn't help with the dork factor, but it was fun. it was MK's first football game EVER ( inclding hi-skool ) she was never remotely interested in even a packer game - but she is ranching out and digging college life. riding time is way down, but that's the way it is - se is geting a few hammerfests in. anyway, they make a freaking grand spectacle of it the f-ball thing there, by report, and MK loved it.

2 kinds of mechanics in the world . . .

there is the "place for everything and everything in it's place" type.

and the type that works in a pigsty but knows where every washer, spring clip, tool and specialty part is, even without looking.

here we see nicky's style revealed mid-project - he is of the latter school. it would bother me more, but my brother was of the same school. and he could rebuild a MG's engine from the cylinders up with his tools scattered in the dirt at elkhart lake, and go win the june spints with it 5 min later. or dissemble a triumph tridents transmission on the side of a county lane, fix it, and put it back together with the ragtag band of shit pot-metal tools they ya gave to carry with you. when he died, 2 brothers and i cleaned HARDCORE his appt for 3 hours before we uncovered a trek 2300 hehad in there. so - he was of this school of mechanicing also, and it is the probably the only reason i do not kill nicky for it.

he has his new project in there someplace . . . . . more on that later.

just so we are clear . . . .

i enjoyed the artful DVS sk8boarding video making the rounds. it is beautiful, and artful in the extreme. i see why a designer as talented as jesse posted it. it might win second place in cool sk8spot film.

but T-H-I-S pic is first place. T-H-I-S is the vince-lombardi-trophy of sk8 related film. there is no debate. this photo INVENTED skateboarding, defined it, and changed the world forever. anything in popular or ( especially ) underground culture that exists today that combines aggresion, style, speed, grace, grit, balls, skill, and the pure act of being outside the norm for the pure sheer hell and fun of it came from this photo. that is a fook of a lot of things, but is is the truth.

one image. black&white. the man who according to stacy peralta God himself put on this earth and said "let there be sk8boarders".

rusty tool shed fabrications

on their wat to school, russel insisted MK and G stopped by the shed for a care package. MK was nervous as to what it could be, naturally . . . . .

but behold !! the sweetest campus cummuter one could ever wish for. only the most discerning of eyes will note that under that spiffed up old 3 speed frame there lurk ultra-trick SS BMX hubs/wheels, the beautiful crescent handlebar, the wholly trick crank with chinguard, etc etc. and russell always knows the secret ingredient - love. just as when rick and liz hit her with the original iceman artwork from hero jesse L for her dorm wall, MK was choked up beyond words with this ultrafine goin' away present.

reports from scool indicate she is already known as the girl who rides that yellow bike with the basket stuffed full really fast everywhere you look. she sez she can't help it - it makes her smile and feel like people at home are pulling for her everytime she gets on it. in a lot of way, she is the country-cousin-at-the-big-city-wedding, so to speak at an elite-level school - but having the coolest campus ride east of the missippi makes up for it.

as the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers ( ya'll BETTER know who they are . . .) used to ( sort of . . ) say" " having a cool-ass bike in times of no money, is a hell of a lot better than having money, but a crappy bike ". russell has my girl covered.

indy fab

oh wait, that name is already taken ?? dang. anyway - here is a set of new-skool large-diameter rollerskiis that nicky and his buddy made for me in the garage. not bad, eh ?? the colour is their trademark "playboy-blue", BTW. i am told the alloy wheel hubs will soon be picking up the blue, in a nod to hipster deep-V rims everywhere - perhaps i will print "all you haters suck my balls" on them afterwords !!

the wheels i got at cost from a generous supplier, when i explained the plan of having the kids making them. otherwise, they observed a friend's set of $350 marwi's along with a few pics of other rollerskiis, and had at it. their design and execution is superior to everything by the marwi's IMHO. observe the carefully dropped shafts for a lower - better - center of gravity, for example. nice work by anybody, and they slay skiis costing $250 and more in this and nearly every other every way. keep in mind they ( nicky and sawyer ) are 15 years old, and had a budget of pocket change. i'll take them sk8boarding in schofield maybe, and buy em lunch at wendy's - nice deal !!

more plans are in the works to actually move them past the benchmark marwi's and thus make them the best rollerskiis on this earth. think foam injection into the shaft for vibration damping first off. maybe some experiental wood shafts down the road ?? other laminates ?? awesome job. oh yeah, they ski great as is !!

houston, we have spearation

here we see MK as the spent ( very ) solid fuel booster rockets finish their job, and fall to the sea. she has parlayed herself into a spot far far beyond our means, and imagination. she did it with help from many who read this, so thank you all very much indeed.

in other words, the kid is a now a freshman at notre dame, and by all reports she is digging it the most. as for me, with time-sink of a kid gone, trainin' for 2010 started today. :)

sabbatical

well now. that was a wee might longer sabbatical from the blog than i anticipated. i am not even certain anybody even looks at blogs anymore - let alone this one. but, with my man T bates getting back into it maybe i will too.



this photo depicts how the summer has gone for me. the discerning eye will notice a pronounced S-bend there on the right seatstay of MK's sweet singular 29er. mind you, there are not many 17 y/o's who have an ultra-cool bike company design a prototype frame around them, and give it to them them pre-production to ride/test/own. indeed there aren't many people, period - but MK is one of them. of those few, it is a smaller subset yet who have their dad run the bike over with a mini-van and bend it all to shite. . . . . . . .

on the bright side . . . . . none other than Carl Strong has offered to fix said bike. Carl is a NAHMBS winner, and sits comfortably among the very very top tier of framebulders on this earth - if it can be done, nobody on this earth can do it better.

maybe a good omen. i needed one.

not a normal guy

a friend asked if i was an armstrong fan. i will say, MK grew up during his reign, and we have spentmany summers as dad and daughter together watching and cheering for him. on the other hand, he is certainly the "new york yankees" of cycling, and so it's hard to get behind that.

but to me, none of that matters. this is what matters to me:

this is a bicycle racer who has both bill cinton and george bush on speed dial. desmond tutu, too. if he needed to, he could get freaking obama on the phone inside of 10 minutes, i will wager. a BICYCLE RACER.

the degree to which the cycling community fails to celebrate that one of our own has reached the levels LA has in world astonishes me. and, i believe what livestrong has done for Hope in the human condition is as great as anybody living today. every day, right now - somebody someplace is being told they have cancer. every one of them can walk to their car with with their loved one, and instead of lip-service bullshit can honestly say to themselves - " you know, if that lance armstrong guy can win the TdF 7 times after what he had, maybe i can beat this summbitch too." it is real. i think he deserves a nobel prize for that. name me one living person who has done more for Hope than LA.

but, i am not a new york yankee fan. no.

separated at birth ??

we taped the 1st mtn top finish, and watched it late so i am sure everybody has had their say on AC's attack from the back at andorra. my own ?? that crazy little dude went completely sarah palin on that old man lance mcain. too wild.

almost not woth it

well the week back from vaca was a living hell, as per usual. brite sdie being looking forward kwickly to the SS chmpnship race at levis trow. i never get there anymore except for this race. it is odd, because i still think they are the best trails in the region, but of course nowadays you have to drive past so many other good areas to get there and . . . . . . . . . just doesn't happen.

the SS race was down in numbers. sad to see but oh well. in my opinion WI never did get the whole idea of a SS chmpnship race quite right to begin with. it has been way too serious, and it has been a race of the hardcore instead of a relaxed kinda deal like we experienced back at say, SSWC. the idea that you were not gonna win was MORE a reason for people to go, and not less like it has seemed to evolved to. no matter.

MK had a solid ride, she liked her gear. she won the first 2 SSWC's, was gone last year when she was on very good form. this year of course her form is yet to come, and she got beat by a stronger rider in katie. so, there are now 2 two-time winners Fe of SSWC, maybe MK can use her collgiate cycling experience next season as she leaves the jr ranks to make it a race for the showdown. amy plato raced, and that was cool - MK and amy were the original 2 Fe racing SSers in WI and battled way back to when MK was 13 or 14. she really liked that and after katie and her very intimidating bike-racer-legs took off MK just found a groove and edged amy for 2nd.

i rode an easy gear, seeing as my season is noplace, and was off the back having a great time by myself. i did glimpse rick W once a few switchbacks ahead of me, but was never that close and i just enjoyed the ride. we hit a nicely air conditioned but otherwise nondescript place for huge platters of poor excuses for chicago dogs for lunch, and enjoyed the stunned appearance of the elusive one who broke in his sweet new singular in grand style. thassit. time to go fix the pool.

so camp is over. long tiring drive home sat eve. i wish i was at eau claire, and it woulda been doable, but too draining - time to come home. the last evening they hold a contest, and the last event is "best trick" - being numerous shots one-by-one at whatever you can throw down on this selected feature of the park. i could not get any action shots, so i will have to describe what went down.

it was a tie - 2 kids wer going at it. the feature consists of a 11 ft high double-bank set-up . . .from steepish to near vertical( at this angle you cannot actually see the last near-vert 5 feet of the bank ), with a 6 foot quarterpipe in the middle as a kinda launch. on top is a 3 foot deck to a wall.

kid no 1 was a little fellow, and he lauched off the 6 foot quarter-pipe, spun a 540 frontside ( facing the wall - hard to dos ), and landed up on the deck in a "disaster" - that being the is board half on the steep re-entry, and the other half up on the deck. he then nudged the rear of the board up and onto the plummeting steep re-entry.

kid no 2 was bigger, and fast. he went for the burly approach rather than tricker. he blassted off the quarter-pipe, sailed clear over the remaining 5 feet of nera-ver banking, across the deck, up another 4 feet or so and onto the steel wall near the middle of the signs you see there. he planted his feet, , compressed, and leapt back off the wall across the deck. at precisely the right moment, he found the balls to put his board back under his feet as he sailed down past the lip of the banking/wall, using the tail of the board as it hit the lip as a placement tool before unbelievably putting his other foot on the front of the board as he re-enters the ultra steep banking blind and plummeting super fast and hard - a slam here woulda been very very bad.

they do this to win a hat. unbelievable.

anyway, cycle related here is the dirt-jump section of the park. i am so happy to be a part of this place. they run 2-3000 kids thru here a sumer and every of them shows that every other time toy here about there "nothing for kids to do" or people bitch about "kids-these-days" is ful of it. this tiny gem of a camp in the middle of nowhere proves it. most ofthese kids have nothing like at home, nick - surely doesn;t. they look inside, and they find it, and they bring it out. i have great hope.