1st tracks, b!tches

i am not certain there is a cycling equivalent for the Sublime Fineness that is laying down 1st tracks behind a modern groomer whilst sk8-skiing - i don't think so. even this poor bastard pictured here is working sloppy seconds, it appears, obviously having a miserable time of it. i, on the otherhand, am 2-for-2 this week, hitting first tracks for a couple hours behind the groomer at cherry hills. that would me, laying down first tracks and the rest of the world - not. gotta love that flex-time. no hogged out over-skiied junk snow for us hicks, if 10 people ski the new spot the guy is personally affronted and regrooms. incredibly, jerry D hit the local hotspot over the holidays with me on the one day the groomer slept in - i mentioned it to him ( the groomer ) yeasterday and i thought the poor guy was gonna pull out a samurai sword and ram it up his thorax from the shame. jerry's gonna have to make it back.

sha-wah-no is the new kewaunee

i need to learn how to do hot-links. if i could do so, i would have one right about -here - linking to the story about the planet bike 'cross race being part of the super-cup or whateverthehell they call that natl series in 09. what a beautiful thing, perfect timing and effort by, i assume, renee C and her crew. 'cross is the darling of the cycling world these days, WI has classy racers galore ranging from young guns to folk hero's. this is gonna be the biggest race in WI for quite some time in a lot of ways. huge waytogo to renee !!

ya gotta feel a bit for the poor shawano wors race, tho. same weekend. i thought they put on a pretty sweet race last year, kinda charming, actually. but, they took a series of brutal beat-downs for some reason, and now this. sux for them. since they are getting run over by the bus again, maybe i'll throw up just a couple crusty old beligerant points just for the sake of it:

1. while this 'cross race is gonna be huge, didja know milwaukee actually had the 'cross nats twice before ?? once in the late 70's, and again 10 years later or so. that should keep renee busy, bringing that back !! if i am not mistaken, bobby julich won one of those, maybe as a junior . . . . .

2. sept ?? portland has mud and rain, KC had ice, the NE races can have anything. the WI race is gonna be known for picnic weather ??? i like 'cross as much as the next guy, but the season thing is s'posed to be part of it.

3. didja ever notice that a lot of the same people who will bag on a mtn bike race that has a little grass and/or field section in it, will also rave incessantly about how cool 'cross is - which takes place almost exclusively on grass in fields ??


well, i hope that eases the sting a little for the shawano crew. i tried. and, huge congrats again to planet bike - i am gonna be there for sure at least one day, and i can virtually guarantee i will have the shittiest bike on the course so whatever you do don't let me pass ya on that thing.

scorched earth

mtn bike trail advocacy is a topic near and dear to my heart. my first go-round with it is pictured here. unfortunately, mtn biking in WI in general, and the raggedy band of "advocates" of the day in particular were on the receiving end.

there are around 50 state parks in WI, and near another 50 various forests, trails, woodlands and whathaveyou. in the early days of mtn biking ( indeed, since the inception of the parks ) the rule was simple regarding bikes in these parks: you could ride a bike wherever you wished, unless there was a sign saying not to. nice !!

well, no. in the early/mid 80's, the DNR put the word out that they were going to review, and possibly "clarify" that age-old rule. they kindly reached out to the mtn bike community, and asked us to collect data on which trails in which parks we thought were the best to ride, and which we would just as soon not ride. there weren't that many of us in those days - you almost knew everybody in the state who owned a mtn bike - we were just a bunch of mtn biking dirtbags, there was no WORBA or anything of the sort. but we called around, and got maps and stuff, and compiled our lists of trails and parks, and got them in to the DNR. we waited with anticipatation to see which trails we would "get" and exactly how the new rule was going to "clarify" what seemed to be an already straight-forward enuf rule . . . . . .

uhhhhh, yeah. in the end, the "clarification" of the rule was in a fact a 180 degree reversal, instead. overnite, the rule became you could not ride a mtn bike in a state park unless there was a sign saying you could ( and, coincidentally, no signs existed ). mtn bikes had been wiped out of state parks in one fell swoop. as a consolation, they did indicate that the specific trail list would be reviewed to see which trails would be reopened at some point, but in very nearly every case the order of reversal would be the exact opposite of the trails we had asked for. as an example, at that time NOBODY rode the muir trails at the kettles, it was a dump of a trail system and the parking lot on the other side of the road at the nordic trail was vastly preferred by all. so, not only did we get nuked off the face of the earth, but we were graciously allowed to first dig our own graves for ourselves by our freinds at the DNR.

things have moved on bit since then, and thankfully much better people than i are in the arena nowadays - witness muir !! i even managed to survive that mushroom cloud for another battle ( in which i was nuked again - could it be me ?? ), and insanely i might be yet again in the near future if things go OK. but, this was the first mtn bike policy history of the WI DNR, as it went down. it seems odd to me that nobody nowadays knows it.

where my wife sleeps, and my children . . . . . play with their toys

OK nevermind that is was minus 2 F, and everything was covered in ice outside this morning. it could be 72 degrees and sunny outside - if you are watching this film while you are riding indoors yer still alright. i couldn't bust out the whole 200 minutes of Fineness and Style in one go, so i'll finish it off tonite.

icy day = work in the laboratory

shite. icy rain all day, above zee-ro temps has us holed up instead of skiing. luckily for me, i have a most Righteous new fork to finally get onto my trusty curtlo road bike. this fork replaces a very old first-gen look HSC, which has been battered, was always known as a bit of a noodly short-lived kinda thing, and was kinda making me nervous. these things are not unknown to me - i am not that smart sometimes on these matters and rode a sibex Ti fork off road for 2 years to prove it - that thing used to scare rick W just riding around a parking lot !! slow learner i may be, but when i make it right . . . . . . . yeah yeah i do try and make up for it. for off-road i came across an incredibly sweet blacksheep ti fork last season from MK's bike sponsor, and this year i recently had the fork ya see here made up for me by john caletti. we worked together a lot on the design, which was inspired by the old yamaguchi aero-steel bikes from the 90's. as ya can see, john realy got into it, and fabricated the whole thing from scratch, with steel stock and aero-plane strut cro-mo i helped source. interestingly, aero-grade cro-mo is quite cheap compared to bike tubing . . . . go figure. if ya make it to the NAHMBS, he may have a very similar fork working on a show bike concept.

the fork is white, at this time. i'll work on a full pic of it on the curtlo soonish. but, it is Bad Ass and i am stoking hard. so screw you ice storm . . . i got bike stuff like this that can keep me rocking for a while.

early adopter

i see the grateful dead - or The Dead, musta took a hit to their portfolio's and are gonna tour this summer. neverminding the issue of why in the world you would want to see The Dead without jerry garcia steering the ship . . . . . . . . i am reminded of a disturbingly persistant and moderately embarrassing GD phase i had thru the swirling morass of Bad Decisions which was the late 70's and early 80's - a remnant of which - a dancing bear emblazoned canondale SR-900 POS frame i rode at the halloween-cross this year. that bike is remarkable in other ways, i am sure i will hit on them at some time or another - but the real thing the grateful dead brought to cycling in my book is this bad boy you see here.

that's right - the sony walkman circa 1980 ( - ish did i mention the murkiness of those days ?? ). this machine brought tunes to the bike - in my case in the form of stacks of maxell UDXL-II cassette tapes i diligently provided my local "taper" with. a taper was a guy who recorded dead shows, and then traded with other tapers - all ya had to do to have a never ending supply of new shows was flow the taper with blank tapes, and the occasional extra botanical bonus from time to time. never money - it was Bad Form to even insuate money exchange take place. anyway, this device was not for the feint of heart.

for one thing, it was the size of, well, a cassette tape player. no clipping this sucka onto yer belt, or arm, or god forbid - pocket. you wore it slung around yer shoulder like a chrome courier bag. and it ate AA batteries to the tune of 6-8 every 6 hours or so. so, ya had to run down to Radio Shack and set yerself up with a gigantic newfangled ni-cad battery set and charger for around 40 bucks. oh yeah, and the walkman itself was over a hundie . . . . . . those are 1979 dollars, when a tap beer was under a quarter, and gas under fitty cent, and minimum dirtbag wage was i dunno - 3.25 ?? for god's sake, a full campy derosa was under a grand !!

but i will tell you this, it rocked like a mofo. 'cept for those stainless steel goof-ball head-bands getting stuck in yer center-parted hippie hair, that is. and, i will say those trails out atpets that jerry D and the 'goat ride nowadays ?? they were ridden first by a yayhoo on a one speed schwinn with a motorcycle handlebar, malcom smith aftermarket motocross brake levers, a cruiser fork, with a big ass walkman blaring dead tapes thru bandana-held-down headphones.

so good luck to bobby W and phil L and the boys this summer. but i think i'll pass, stay home, and dust off some old cassettes when they play alpine valley. or, i'll record some alpine valley show from sirius radio and go ride the old c-dale that day. how many days since the last Dark Star, anyway ??? i think i'm out of the loop.

right then, happy new year.

i decided to start out the new year hitting up my new fave place to ski:

http://www.cherryhillsnordic.com/

this is a local guy's backyard trail system gone mad. they went nuts in there last summer, and hauled in truckloads of dirt, redid the trails, worked out more of a deal with a neighboring golf course, and now there it is - an actual ski system. they groom like mad with $50k of equipment, and it's fabulous - maybe it's not minocqua winter park, but for a guy's backyard trails system it is insane.

i started with gretchen, going no-poles skating with her and a local doc who was striding. i kept that up for 2 hrs after gretchen went home, and then hooked onto a bunch of guys all skating for a total of 3 hrs or so. after going at it no-poles for 2 hrs beforehand i was suffering . . . we got a tour of the 5K hi-skool race course, which is pretty good to ski with a really nice mix of wooded speedy bits and 3 big-enuf-to-hurt hills, and we watched the orange helicopter fly over head on its way to pick up some fools out on an iceberg drifting into the bay . . . . . . . . i am pretty sure i have skiied more already this year than i did all of last, and i am digging it. for x-mas gretchen got me some boots i lusted after since the last olympics which rule, one of the best x-mas presents ever ( altho the sweet fixie/SS -themed z-boy-style lo-top vans MK got me are right in the hunt also ):



it looks like nothing but more snow for the next few weeks, so i am a skiier again.