close to the end-o-summer

and i for one am glad to se it go. i've whinged enuf about all the various ways it sucked, so let us say i am looking forward to what comes ahead.

but, one last lookback at a sweet last dad-girl bonding ride, before she heads off to school. fitty one miles ( the luckiest number in bike racing, and my racing age next year when i git back on it . . . . ). beautiful first day of the cool breezes after the insane heat, too. also had 2 most cool unexpected friends stop by, one we hadn't seen in 12 years or so, and another for only months, but too long nonetheless.

so, bye bye girl !! daddy will miss you. we found a favorite ride-spot for a pic - not many door cty non-locals have seen this spot-o-interest - a gate of a most ominous and eerie nature tucked away in a wood of a seriously enchantedish threatening demeanor. i would tell you what is behind it, but i we woulda had to have looked back there to know . . . . . . . and i ain't going and MK damn sure ain't. vampires, most likely. perhaps witches, and possibly both.

there is only one story this week

and that is the uncovering of surfin turf skatepark, in greenfield. i guess a road project took down the old building and LO !! contrary to rumour, the bowls were still entirely intact ( with a couple extensions missing. then, it picked up some press, teevee coverage, and a ton of guys with shovels dug out the smallest bowl.

only to have the powers that be knock the gravel back into it.

at this point the future is uncertain. i hear the roadway is NOT going over the site, so there is hope. this spot should be saved. it was one of the last great skateparks built before the bowlriding bust came ( due to insurance, land values, and other factors ). while small, some of its features were among the best ever built - and the park can hold its own among any mention of the best parks of all time. . . . marina del ray, cherry hill, getaway, you name it. to this day, the construction techniques used are a bit of a lost art, and the transitions and smoothness of the place is not felt in modern offerings.

letters are being written, and support sought with the biggest players in action sports. in cycling terms, this would be like uncovering a velodrome in NYC where major taylor once raced. god. i hope they do not blow this one. it's a one-time chance to restore a legendary and completely irreplaceable spot for everybody.

youtube " santa cruz streets on fire ", and witness. that was almost 20 years ago. this place rules.

what, no unicorns ??

so, with my new firm resolution in mind, i set out for some ridin. a friend noted to me that jesse lalonde kick-started his fitness by winning the duo class at 24-9. i decided on a SLIGHTLY more modest approach to my own comeback effort, however.

above we see a small portion of the famed "bianca strada" of door cty, discovered by russell, and now a staple of every 50 mile ride outta town. i rounded up two suitable training companions, MK ( who has also been slacking off the bike for a year, albeit with far better reasons ) and - just in case MK has gotten back into shape without me knowing and thus likely to crush me - a raw beginner 20 y/o daughter of a friend of ours, who is also a D-1 heptathlete. first order of business was adjusting the heptathlete's new trek into ridable shape after the pathetic - nonexistant, really - job stadium did when they they sold it to her. talkin a saddle height 2 inches too low, etc etc. . . . . . sigh.

anyway, we headed up to see if those butterflies pictured above were still hanging out on the bianca strada, and to peer deep into the surrounding enchanted forest for unicorns. it was a fine ride indeed.

but - lemme just say - i still have no real idea what a heptathlon is . . . . . except to note that whateverthehell it might be, it leaves 20 y/o participants of it in crazy-good shape !! ill-fitting and dorked out trek aside, that girl was hammering. and, once we got her hooked onto the whole wheelsucking thing, she was smiling that smile that comes from experiencing the cool dynamic of a sweet road ride, on sweet roads, with everybody lookin out for each other for the very first time. she and MK are goin out for more this week ( the old man's job is done ).

ironically, after that we entertained the original founder of stadium bike for the eve - and reminiced about the days when that shop ( nowadays it is a store, not a shop ) was the most happenin around by far. how things change . . . . .

retire, or reinvent

so, the question arises - do i keep this blog goin, or just let it fade away? obvious choice is the latter. but, a couple things have popped up to make me reconsider.

ya know, there is an old joke/sterotype amongst guys who finally realize that they not athletes, but instead old-guy-hobbyist racers. seems like after you reach a certain age, every year there is some guy who is newly divorced, and he's a freaking holy terror. leaned down, eating like a caveman, working out like he is on garmin slipstream, new bikes from the money he stashed from the wife, and pissed off to no end about all the rest of his money the ex got in the settlement. we've all seen him. guys like me - more or cruising along, very happily married, other stuff on our minds . . . . how we gonna compete with newly-divorced-guy ?

then, i have my awful year of riding to look back on. work issues kept me off the bike all spring, and into summer. big trouble getting back on the bike once outta the routine, complete loss of any remotest sense of shape i might have had, and at age 50 the very very real possibilty that once gone - it ain't coming back, period. don't laugh - at my age, it happens.

and now, my beloved strong frame and blacksheep fork might well be toast after being rear-ended on the back of the van.

i think that last thing is the final motherf*cking straw. i'm pissed. that bike is gonna be either fixed by the best tig-welding framebuilder on earth, or i will replace the thing. till then i'll ride on whatever rolls, but i gonna ride. i am gonna look back at this past BS season like recently-divorced-guy does the shafting he took in court. i am gonna saddle up, kimosabe, and ride. when winter comes i will XC ski till i collapse ( my refurbished rollerskiis are on the way . . . ), and i will march-hero next spring like it is 1999.

and i am gonna write about it. give it another year. yeah blogs ar so 2002, but i am lightyears more irrelevant that that on my best day, so who cares? will it be entertaining ?? dunno. but, i have been bouncing around a few cycling topics that seem to resonate ( read, annoy ) some people, and a few that some people actually agree with me on. i'll throw those in too. recently-divorced-guy best get on it, cuz this past season was worse for me, than him - and i was probably a lot worse person than he was to begin with - so next season we can have it out. i imagine i will tick some people off, already have, in fact. don't care.

it's a shame it took some a-hole wrecking one of the coolest bikes around to get my ass moving, but i can get another one, and it'll be just as cool, believe me. and in the meantime, my ass is moving again.

requiem

my strong 29er SS frame is now a wall decoration. probably the blacksheep ti fork, too.

hiding in plain site

when is the last time you saw a sugino cycloid chainting, in aluminum, in mint shape ?? trick question - unless you have invaded my secret basement vault where i have them stashed in the lab - you very likely have not. here we see the pristine and enigmatic ring monted up, ready for MK to jump back into racing after foolishly frittering away her 18th year doing schoolwork during her freshman year of college. ha !! here comes the pain.

noneof which gets to the heart of the matter - that being . . . .why on earth use a sugino cycloid chainring for ANYTHING, let alone a race-going bicycle ?? well, i have my reasons, and indeed like most of my reasons they are neither shared, understood, nor agreed upon by anybody. i used to tell the child the ring was a secret weapon, but long about age 12 she asked " dad, if our secret weapon was laughed off the face of the earth by everybody 20 years ago . . . . . is it really a secret weapon ??? "

funny kid. gotta admit, kinda smart, too. more like her mother every day.

well, THAT was cool.

i have been racing mtn bikes more or less consistantly ( this year less . . . ) in WI for over 25 years straight. lookin back - not gonna lie - that year lemond won the TdF and then lined up a month later with us hacks to race the cheq40 in the mud was a pretty good weekend for WI mtn biking. B-U-T this past weekend at mt morris is without question a close runner up.

i think the best part was the story that the ever-classy Mrs Peters was telling. she watched the pro race with a racer outta texas' dad. this race-dad and kid have been hitting the natl race scene. and, the dad was stunned by the turnout of crazy cheeseheads. in particular, he noted that not only were the crowds the biggest and by FAR the loudest of any mtn bike in the country - he had never ever seen the ear-splitting roar that came for every local pro, as they looped around the course. he was dumfounded, and had to ask Mrs Peters " what IS that ?? "

WI is the best state in the usa in which to XC race a mtn bike. always has been, and still is. huge thanx and shout-out to don E, for letting a few more people than us know it. man, i hope he brings it back.

the other funny thing that happened was the look on MK's face, after being duly impressed by the pro racing scene and style when we reminded her of where she comes from. a little over 20 years ago, in the heyday of the sport, her MOTHER - then riding as a regional expert for suntour-ibis - could pretty much hang in the lead pro bunch . . . . . well OK lets say for 2/3rds of the race or so. those were the days !! when the girl asks . . . ." what happened ? ", we get to say - she stopped racing like that to have you. it was cool to see her comprehend what that meant.

little help from her friends

since losing her road bike in a pink-slip street race in south bend, the girl has been riding on my most righteous back-up bike. a killer ride, to be sure, but a wee bit too big for her. so with her home for a few weeks we endeavored to remedy the situation. bein' a struggling college student and all, resources were limited. enter the amazingly cool world of cyclist buddies !! with a series of riding friends each piling on to help, this h'yar ride took shape. wahat's more amazing still is that my bike-snobism has rubbed off on the child, and so she has a certain bar that has to be met. luckily, said cycling buddies are pretty much as big a snobs as either of us, so no problem there !!

so, with help from russell, rick, marty out at prairie peddaler, singular cycles, dallas fowler at trikes2bikes, of course MOM, and a few more the girl is back ripping in style. those hoosierswill not know what hit em when she gets back to south bend. her vinatage ibis she rocks on the trails made them weep over their lame ass rides, and this bitchin steed will do the same. killer bare-knuckle no-nonsense wheels, rival parts doing the work, solid remaining bits to just last and work with blue-collar aplomb, and to tie it all together a frame older than the child, triple butted lugged steel made in nippon like a samurai sword and quite probably the best frame specialized ever made - every bit as good as all but the most boutique level frames made today.

thanx to all !!

half way to the wrong side of the grass

i turned 50 this week. i looked up a few things that were going on the year i was born.

1. the flintstones premiered
2. ben hur was a hot movie
3. the aluminum can was invented
4. cassius clay ( not yet muhammed ali ) won his first pro fight
5. gas was a quarter a gallon, and a brand new mustang was 2300 bux.
6. the foolish pic above passed for olympic-level winter sport

pardon me, while i go heat up a bowl of stewed prunes and ovaltine.

week at camp calls for -

lake owen drive every morning. i can't get away to ride camba singletrack, but this is pretty sweet.

if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin' !!

i have been enjoying the big story about cancellara and his supposed electric motor, boosting him to victory. personally - i would love for the story to be true. take bike racin's cheating and get it out of the classless and tacky PED arena, and move it up alongside motorsports; the source of the title quote for this entry ( famed tuner and notorious cheater smokey yunick is source ). i mean, let's see some more creativity in our cheating !! make it something to be proud of - for example, f-landis' famous testoterone-patch-on-the-XXX has got to be the ultimate low-rent cheat in history. not because he cheated, but because of the horridly embarrassing way he did it.

my all-time favorite cheat, tho, was the kid ( OK, his dad . . . ) in the soapbox derby car back in '73. he had a wicked strong electromagnet in the nosepiece of his car, and a switch hidden in the roll-bar. he would switch it on, and when the metal plate holding the car at the start line would fall away, the car would get a little pull from the magnet ( !!! ). awesome !!! so, so wrong, on so many levels - you just have to love it. they only caught him because as the battery wore down, his times and starts became noticably slower.

so, please cancellara - let this business of you having an electric motor hidden on your bike be true. if people are racing, somebody's gonna be cheating - cycling NEEDS a good cheatin' story like the soapbox kid, or one of smokey yunicks legendary yarns. for god's sake, no more embarrassing stories about placing sticky medicinal patches on one's XXXX.

redemption via russell

after a decent start to her college career at ND, the girl has been undergoing a fall from grace. first, they kept her over after class for some reason - to the tune of over a month and a half !! dunno how she got that far behind on her classwork, but there it is. then, while out running the mean streets of south bend all nite long like she routinely does, she ran into a bad crowd - and ended up street racing for pinks with them - in the process losing her road bike on a bad bet. as she wallowed in the shame of losing a pink-slip bike race to somebody from freaking INDIANA, russell swept in like the veritible Angel of Wheeled Redemption that he is - with this:



yeah, we had to update a couple things. the wayward kid could not get on with the righteous crit-bend ultra-narrow bar, nor the 36 hole front wheel. i give her a pass on needing the bar-con rear shifter, tho - like russell, bar-cons are always in Style. she is back at school finishing up her detention till the end of june, but had better not lose anymore street races !! that bike has some nice stuff on it - if she loses this stuff we will move while she is away, and not leave a forwarding address:

just beacuse . . . .

frank zappa once sang:

"Just because the sun
Want a place in the sky
No reason to assume
I wouldn't give her a try"

with that kinda spirit in mind, we decided recently to go with the rage and jam a 29er wheel into the fork on gretchen's 26er on-one . . . . . just because.

well, not exactly. i originally designed my strong as a 69er, but that was on purpose. i need to know - what does doing it ghetto-style like pictured here, and how you see guys doing today actually do ??

for a given fork offset, and/or a given fork what it does is this: adds around 8.1 mm to the trail figure of the bike's front end. this is not a small change. it is about the difference in trail between a standard road bike and a touring bike ( 1.5 degrees of head angle, say, if you were to leave everything else the same ). speaking of which, it also relaxes the bike's head angle by a half degree actual. it does a few other things as well, regarding bb height, position, and weight distribution but those are minor or easily correctable to insignificant for a dirt-going bike, i think. some of them might even be improvements, depending on yer preferences. we need to correct the position from the photo, and get the rider contact points back where they belong. . . . bars back down, saddle back where it needs to be, etc.

anywayz - two ways of looking at the numbers game with regard to bike as converted - 1. a more stable platform on which to hammer and rail . . . or 2. a formerly nimble bike now handling like a dog.

personanly, i believe stability is VASTLY underrated. a stable bike is a fast bike. all bikes handle quick, or quick enuf - how can they not?? they weigh 20 pounds and are only a few feet long. just as with sporting motorcycles, very few people can actually use all the parking lot quickness in handling that most modern bikes possess. i've had that converstion with many a veteran builder. they Know, but usually build what the market tells people they want, instead.

so - i think we'll keep it like this. it rails.

redemption on the wheel(s) within a wheel

seeking wheeled redemtion requires certain obligations. one of those obligations is this:

"" when skateable full-pipes are in town, drop what you are doing and go skate 'em !! "

i am fortunate to have a kid who is hip to this. not only that, but he knows what size full pipe is skateable, and what is not. in this modern world you gotta be sure to teach kids the right stuff, ya know (in case yer wondering - it is 8 ft diameter) ?? and so, when nicky spiied these with his keen eye and called to say some steel 8 foot full-pipes were in town, we grabbed the board and headed over to assess. never know what yer gonna find - maybe the pipes are full of concrete, maybe they have stuff welded in 'em, or maybe the construction guys on the job-site are gonna be jerks, or whathaveyou.

a number of years back, a barge full of beautiful 18 foot pipes docked in town. my buddy could not make the scene, so i hit them up myself, was chased away by the po-po and a hyperventilating tugboat captain muttering something about wrecking his million dollar cargo ( a skinny bald goof on a 34 inch piece of 8 ply maple and urethane is gonna hurt 1" thick steel ?? ) - and before my buddy could make it up they actually fired the tugboat back up and towed them across the bay and docked them behind a fence next to a navy minesweeper with its security detail. my man was still gonna try to session them . . . . but i noted that the navy guys carry 45 cal sidearms, and we had to sadly watch them sail away the next AM instead. i hope somebody else sessioned 'em at their next port-o-call . . . .

anyway, here we see nicky - a new-skool skater - throwing down hard over-vert in a vicious old-skool fashion. that is my boy !! over-vert realities with no flat-bottom - very very nice. lightning fast transition management/direction changes, and razor's-edge precision are called for in quarters that tite - and woefully few new-skoolers are up to the task.he's a punk, as russell or my man rick W will tell you anytime - but he does have his moments.

as the wise russel would say . . . .

. . . it was a good day:

this as nice a urban in-town trail system as i have ever seen, rum village in south bend IN. very sweet banked over&under section pictured here -



2. chillin in as nice a place as can be -



3. new steel confers with old steel. both agree, steel is where it is at -

the perfect metaphor is sometimes hard to find . . .

. . if you are not bob dylan. the picture above comes quite close to describing my current cycling form, tho. and this classic lyric from the great ray davies hits my recent state of mind ( not literally, but figuratively ):

Cheap is small and not too steep
But best of all cheap is cheap
Circumstance has forced my hand
To be a cut price person in a low budget land
Times are hard but we'll all survive
I just got to learn to economize

I'm on a low budget
I'm on a low budget
I'm not cheap, you understand
I'm just a cut price person in a low budget land

as ray notes, circumstance can force a fellow's hand sometimes. in my case it has not been $$, but rather time, energy, resources/energy. they forced that hand into doing something and becoming something i have not been for many a year . . . . . . . . a guy-who-used-to-ride-bikes.

being a guy-who-used-to-ride-bikes is a suck-ass thing to be. something i never wish to be again. after umpteen years of riding and ( mostly badly ) racing bikes, i have known and do know plenty of this breed. i never wanted to count myself in their number, but it is easier than i thought to do so. the worst part of being a guy-who-used-to-ride-bikes is that you are no longer kin with the coolest people around anyplace - that being guys-who-do-ride-fooking-bikes. fortunately, in my case it was a planned short-term kinda thing, and it's over now !!

so, redemption on the wheel is reborn. it is sorely needed, too - the redemption part. my bikes never looked so good - every one of things reflects me in some way, and i cannot wait to rediscover them.

kinda fallen off the back a bit, gonna try and catch up. LBL. what a fun time it was. rain, driving wind, cowshit, riders from far and near, and a hunk of head cheese for the grand prize after the World's greatest Townline sprint. thanx to all.


one very very bright side during the hiatus has been nicky's official first self built bike - behold. not an easy build, either - it came as a bare frame which has both BMX and standard mtn/road specs scattered throughout, and he did everything from selecting the parts, to the wrenching itself. it is a fab bike to look at, and he styled it out just perfect with a little help from his friends. super-stylee, show me a cooler looking DJ bike and i'll buy you a smoothie at the cup.

despite that, here in these grease spots we see a beautiful representation and metaphor of my cycling efforts and current status thus far for 2010. in the words of vincent vega " i'm a fooking grease-spot !! "

so, redemption-wise, i see one last hope - fortunately it is a good one. this Lady will not let my sorry ass down:

we've all been there . . .

the day the new frame arrives. such a sweetness it is !!



with ray's MKE only a short 7 months away, nicky is on it. plus, there are skateparks, and a newly constructed dirt jump at camp montee to shred in the meantime.

still in need of a few key parts, a new temporary sculpture takes over the living room, like an early michelangelo sketch.

cleared for flight operations

this is the perch for my multi-time busted, crushed, double plated, screw-and-glued, cadaver-bone wedged mangled excuse for a right wrist - most recently pulverized between the hardware on 12/29/09. rode today - good to go. 2.5 hrs on bumpy semi-frozen dirt. i mean, i kinda hurt but i had other things hurting worse, so that is a go.

Ti (rigid) fork & drop bars, my friends. good for what ails ya, say i.


P.S. with all the very nice shots of everybody's new rides for the season floating around with various hot nouveau-bling parts and stuff. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lemme just say, for those of a non-nouveau persuation - italy is where you get bling from.