More Morgan Hill. Tuesday night ride.

i'm mainly going to put pictures for this post, since i took a ton and became known as the tourist guy. i hope you all enjoy. oh, and i'm posting a small tidbit about the second
Boone Bike Tuesday Night Ride of the year. It was my first, as i was in Cali for the first one. I'm glad to be back in NC and glad to be back with my girlfriend Darcy. We are both traveling a lot right now, for work and for pleasure, ie. bike racing, spring break, family affairs, etc. So its good to be able to hang out. Alright, pictures now...

Sights in the rockies:


Ned Overend. I find it hard to believe he succeeded at riding since his first name can be rearranged to spell End Overend...


Some dork in the redwood forest:


Hanging around on our mountain bike ride near Santa Cruz:


Matt, punished for his cell phone ring with the "Condor Helmet."


A paceline rolls out on thursday, watch out for mountain lions, and even worse, cougars.


Random scenery to the right of the Tour of California TT climb "Willow."


The Innovate or Die hurst (spelling?)


Lana (like atlanta without the at) sporting a horn. Does that mean she's horny?


Lana and Garth on our second road ride of the day.


Nothing is as fun as ripping across gravel on Tarmac SL's with 23C tires at 120psi... check out the mountain lion attack on Matt's leg. Or maybe its a cougar attack...


Andrew, our instructor, after a Condor Helmet offense of his own.


To any of you that may be reading this that I met in Cali, it was great to hang out with and ride with you guys, and girls. I'm sure we'll never see each other again, but I feel priveledged to have met you all. If you're ever in Boone, come to the bike shop and say hi. I'll give you some good routes for the road bike. Later!!

Morgan Hill, California.

I left Boone at 4:30am ET. Got to Charlotte at 7:00am. Snuck to the front of the security checkpoint line and convinced two old people to let me in, and then ran to the plane with only minutes to spare. Oops.

I got some awesome pictures of the Rocky Mountains and Nevada and maybe one or two of the rolling green California hills. We landed, I found my bag on the conveyor belt. Then headed to the shuttle van. The driver must have been going 90mph on the interstate.

Our hotel sort of sucks. Its in this part of town with a big shopping area across from it. But all the stores are like run down or closed or whatever. Anyways. We went over to Target and got some snacks and water. Now I'm sitting at the hotel. I talked to Darcy a few times. That was nice. I miss her.

jg

Riding. Cold, Not so cold.

The weather in boone can be the wierdest thing. Sunday morning I went out for a mountain bike ride in the snow. It was 17 degrees. Monday night I went snowboarding. Wednesday I went for a bike ride and it was between 40 and 50 degrees the whole time!! Nice and warm.

Sunday I was hoping to drive off the mountain and get in a hour and a half in the national forest which is much warmer than in boone. Well, I got to Blowing Rock and none of the roads had been scraped, and I didn't feel like sliding off the road into a 100 feet deep canyon. So I parked in town and settled on riding down, and then back up the steepest gravel road in North Carolina. It's called Globe Rd. Its about 5 miles long and drops roughly 2000 feet. I only descended as long as my feet could handle; its cold at 35 mph in 17 degrees! Turning around and climbing just for a mile and a half, I gained about 950 feet. The average grade climbing was 16%. The maximum was 25%. Needless to say, I just spun in my granny gear and kept the heart rate low, with an average of 139 for my short ride. Some pictures as proof that I went out:





If anyone is interested in more details, check it out here.

Moving onto the much more interesting ride... Wednesday is almost always my day off so when the local weather guy forcasted 51 degrees and sunny, the 30% chance of rain did not bother me a bit. I am trying to get in 8 hours on my bike this week, i got 6 last week (10 next week, 12 the next, restart). So I wanted a big ride. I opted to go for a similar start as my last big road ride, and added a descent into another valley, and followed it with two very incredible climbs. I changed up the beginning of the ride, per the suggestion of Megan Carmody (eat Black Cat!!) and rode out the parkway and Brownwood road to get to the railroad grade rd. Got a refill of water at the friendly Todd Mercantile:

On the way up Three Top Rd. I stopped for this view:








Then i followed a route similar to last week to get to us-421, and climbed it back into North Carolina (from Tennesee)

and descended old 421. This is a very welcome 35 mph coast for the most part, except for the great dane that was waiting half way. Following the usual route, I crossed us-321 and turned and climbed Mast Gap Rd. Crossing Mast Gap and descending into Valle Crucis I took a break and got a Diet Cheerwine (on credit, forgot my wallet!) and chatted it up with the women working. We discussed our mutual distaste for out-of-towners and the Jersey accent. Rolling down Broadstone, riding the worst road in the high country (Hwy 105) and turning onto Old Shull's Mill Rd got me to the best point on my ride: Shull's Mill Rd. It snakes up the side of a hill, all the way from Hwy 105 (elev. 2700) to us-221 and the parkway in Blowing Rock (elev. 3900). I snagged a picture of the twisty road ahead:


Reaching the top of Shull's Mill, I did the dumbest thing for the day (aside from forgetting my wallet) and turned on Flannery Fork Rd. Its an awesome dirt and gravel road that gets you quickly back to Boone, but not the best idea after snow has melted. I cruised down the pavement that follows, and got back to boone bike around 5 o clock. Just about 6 hours after I started. With a ride time of 5:30 that means I only rested 30 minutes during the day. I'm okay with that. Just a couple more pictures, my bike and my Garmin Edge showing numbers and the elevation:

For more details click here.

Well, if anyone actually reads this, I'll be amazed. Thanks, if you are reading it. More next time. Hoping for a big mountain ride sunday, maybe some good pictures.

Joseph

bike riding. brr. cold. yep. mm huh.

so the final short track event in charlotte was yesterday but in lieu of my bike breaking, my legs feeling the 9 hours of riding from just a few days before, and well, general excitement about having a new road bike, i decided to stay in boone and test out the road bike and its sram shifting!!

my new road bike (still gotta pay for it though) is a 07 specialized roubaix expert with sram. its got the rival ie cheaper version, but its supposed to work as well as the force just without the fancy carbon and lighter weight. its got ksryium elite wheels. i would like to do something unique in the wheel department, i just haven't figured out what yet.

so, my route consisted of leaving boone on 321 to deerfield to the steady climb known as wilson ridge road. i turned left on bamboo and then crossed 421 to get on brookshire rd. after navigating the gravelly crossbike friendly section of brookshire i turned right on 194 then right on castleford. this was my first experience with the famous castleford rd and i liked it. nice and rolly, not too hard, but nothing like the road following it. finishing castleford let me out onto railroad grade road and that was a relief, though it was windy. oh yeah, and between 20 and 45 degrees the whole day. it may not have even made it into the 40's. dont know exactly. so railroad grade in the drops moving right along found me stopping at the store across from the floridiot owned todd general store. the lady there was a local and wasn't afraid to have her store open during the colder winter months. i stayed there way too long, but the crackers and diet coke and new supply of reeses and salted peanuts was keeping me there. we talked about possible routes to get back to boone. i was planning on using 194 to get me back into boone at 421, but i realized that would only be about a two hour ride. i wanted four hours.

remembering a ride we'd done in the summer that continued on three top rd and then some highway 88 i verifired with the nice lady, owner of the todd mercantile, that my mental map was correct and headed out on three top rd. after just a short rolly section i crested "the divide" as the lady called it, and it got much colder. i wore my fleecy windproof bib tights, matching jacket, fleecy long sleeve jersey and ridiculous almost snow-worthy cycling gloves. i was still cold on this stretch. once i reached nc-88 i felt much better as i was in and out of the shade, not consistently in it. i stopped and peed in some person's yard on 88 because there were no wooded sections to hide in. this was the scariest point on the ride. second only to descending into tennessee and facing crosswinds from hell. speaking of tennessee, the climb to the state line was only really the second or third climb to deal with. and an easy grade. thanks for 34 teeth. compact wussy. anyways, reaching 421 and turning uphill, i mean left, was the only thing left and i would be home. i marveled in mabel at the view of beech mountain, AND sugar mountain AND sugar top. and grandfather mountain. and the hawks bill down in the linville gorge. seeing things in plain view that are twenty to thirty miles away reminded me why we are so lucky to ride in the high country.

blah blah blah. i sound like a tourist. so 421 wasn't entirely uphill like i thought. i'd never been on the stretch between old 421 and the tater hill area, at one point i was in my 50-11t spinning, i imagine thats around the 40mph mark, for probably a mile. that was a relief. and then into vilas and back to the other end of my gearing. 34-26t back up to the 105 bypass, then left on 105 and left on 321 found me back at boone bike. i forgot to take my camera for pictures, but i did steal and modify a map from Google Maps:


that's all for now. i'm excited about training and getting fit and faster. hopefully i can score some top tens and maybe a top five at a SERC race this year. i'd like to be consistent enough to be forced to upgrade to expert, but if it takes another year for that, well, so be it.

thanks for reading.

jg

updates. me and racing. snow. sports.

alrighty, i'm back to my posting once a month if that often pattern. at the request of someone with no life, i'm putting new stuff.

i've been running a little bit. got a membership to the wellness center aka too fancy gym for the cool people in boone to hang out and for a very few people to work out at. i got a little routine for weights and some running and some work on the abs (currently in hiding). its been frigidly cold outside. yesterday was the coldest day in recent history. we have highs sometimes below 20 deg. and lows in the upper single digits or low teens. snow hasn't really made a showing like in past years, some say its el nino, some say its all the expeditions and tahoe's and escalades and hummers.... but thats debatable, oh wait, no its not. the UN just declared global warming is because of humans... oh well. i should get back to interesting stuff. umm..

things are going well between my girlfriend (darcy) and i. she got a really nice set of skis and boots and the like a few weeks ago. we've only been out together once since she got that stuff. i've gone out once since then with the mechanic from boone bike. andy is pretty much a freak of nature. he hasn't been snowboarding in five years, but he does like two runs and is flawless after that. i'm doing okay with snowboarding. its fun. i'm still not going super fast, but i can put together multiple runs from the top of sugar mountain to the bottom without falling and with a little bit of grace. darcy is better than i am still. although she won't admit it. anyways... we're going on 8 months together in a week or so. its been a very enjoyable 8 months. hopefully there will be many more.

so bicycling... steve murray told me i finished the year very high ranked in men's xc sport 19-24. i don't remember the exact number, but top 10 i think. i just checked usacycling.org. currently i'm ranked #16 in the nation for men's sport xc 19-29. i'm listed #2 for men's sport xc 19-29 in north carolina. i guess thats good. i've done two events this year that haven't shown up yet on usacycling. short track series in charlotte, nc. did january 27th or whatever day that sunday was. 10th out of 15. raced on feb 3rd and got 8th of 10. not super duper results, but its re-assuring knowing i can post em like that without riding or training other than running and gym stuff. i want to get in some spin classes. that should help. but basically all of the people are from the charlotte area or south carolina. yep, they are training year round. i'm looking at snow on the ground.





ASU is doing a cycling study which i'm taking part in. they have been giving us a special gatorade with a supplement called beta glucan. i heard that we're the first group of humans to ever be studied with this supplement. hopefully we won't die. basically, other than drinking that stuff, we have given blood, ridden two days (so far) on the trainer at 57% and 50% of our maximum wattage. tomorrow i'll be back in for another day at 57%. it hurt really bad. but they're paying us, so thats nice.

otherwise, things are great. just working, running, riding a little, racing again this weekend. i'm trying to plan my year as well. i hope to just start doing long slow rides soon, and logging lots of base miles. my next race is probably going to be:
april 1 - tsali (SERC)
april 15 - athens, ga (SERC)
may 6 - ocoee white water center (ducktown, tn) (SERC)
may 19 - 12 hours of tsali (okay, maybe just the 6 hours)
may 27 - dauset (SERC)
june 17 - fontana dam (SERC)
june 24 - good ole columbus, ga. (SERC make-up)
july 1 - clemson, sc (SERC) (maybe)
july 15 - anniston, al (SERC finale) (maybe)
july 28 - banner elk, nc (NORBA nationals)
sept 22 - 12 hours of dauset

alrighty. i don't know what else i might do. i want to fit in a hiking trip in august. then come back and train for the 12 hour race at dauset. thanks for reading if anyone actually does. later!!

snow sports. and me

so i live in boone now and i'm picking up the hobby/sport of snowboarding. i am not super good yet, but i can put together a few fall-free runs. barring wrist injuries and other bodily harm i should be able to use this as a winter time off-season sport, along with running, to keep myself in shape and athletic in general while its snowing outside.

i've been running quite a bit. i don't have all my total totals from www.entryworks.com yet from 2006, but i definitely ran and rode more than i ever have before. updates to come!!

me after snowboarding and a day in the kitchen... drinking through an imaginary straw.

i feel free

i just deleted my facebook and myspace accounts. i don't really know why, but it feels really really, really great. i realized i spent so much time on there and that it was such a waste really. so. i will be back at it on here posting and being more consistent. yep.

proof

pictures from my new years eve 7am bike ride.

darcy is so great.

this post is just to say that darcy alexander rocks. i like her a whole lot. so thats about all for now. okay. later.

just noticed

i was reading some news and realized:

number of us citizens killed in the september 11th attacks:

2,973 people died and another 24 remain listed as missing as a result of these attacks. (Wikipedia.org, 9.8.06)

while

The number of U.S. troops killed stands at 2,657 since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. (CNN.com, 9.8.06)

I would agree with many that i don't want another soldier to die in Iraq. But it seems doubling the death toll is far enough. WHY CAN'T THIS WAR STOP????? Does Iraq even want us there anymore? Is there an end in sight??

alright. enough for my liberal hippie political opinion. have a good day.

65 miles. 8000 feet of climbing.

so today was a fun day. we left our apartment around 8:30am. up winkler's creek rd. russ cornett pkwy. first big climb of the day. poplar grove rd. shull's mill rd to nc-105. left to clark's creek rd. up and over clark's creek into valle crucis. second big climb of the day. left on nc-194 to banner elk. third big climb of the day. left onto nc-184. we stop for coffee and a paradise bar. mmm. right onto hickory nut gap rd. fourth big climb. left onto some road. left again onto nc-181. right on old nc-181. left on land harbor pkwy. left on us-221. right on linville ave. right onto us-221. fifth big climb. left onto the blue ridge pkwy. we stop at linn cove visitor center. climb the pkwy. sixth big climb. descend the pkwy. take some rad pictures. up holloway mtn rd. left on us-221. blowing rock. left onto us-321. right onto the parkway. left onto flat top rd. seventh big climb. left onto deck hill rd. right onto state farm rd. right into my apartments parking lot. 65 miles. roughly 8000 feet of climbing.

ride time 4:44:27
maximum speed 48.1mph
avg speed 13.8
mileage 65.78
traintime (HRM) 4:48:55
avg HR 149bpm
max HR 180 bpm
kcal burned (approx.) 5627


quite the day. some pictures.

better days

so since my last post i've driven to georiga and back. i've gone to the first funeral for someone very close to me. that was very tough. my grandfather was in the military and so they did a 21 gun salute and played taps. the sounds coming from the trumpet were pretty much the beginning of my break-down. i don't think i still realized what was going on until that song started playing. my mother's whole family was there pretty much and seemed to be making the best of everything. at dinner the night before everyone was joyful. i thought they'd forgotten why we were all together. but anyways. that visit was not really the most enjoyable. i cried at various points on the drive down and on the drive home.

but "C'est la vie."

in other news, israel and lebanon are fighting. george W. is continuing to be goofy. alaskan BP shut down an oilfield in one of the greatest moves of all time. they realized they're making a mess and cut the operation. 400,000 barrells of oil a day are produced there. i know most american's are thinking why in the hell did they do that?? now gasoline prices are going up 5 cents per gallon!!!! oh, well. lets see. it currently costs me about $0.128 to drive a mile. so this unbelievable, unpatriotic, inconceivable act of shutting down the BP alaskan field raises my cost to a whopping $.13 to drive a mile. but i guess if you compared this to the fuel efficient SUV's of say, most of the people complaining... i guess it currently costs them $.24 and the increase in gas will take it to a huge increase at $.25 per mile. so basically, the increase in gas costs raises the cost of driving a mile by about a penny. i understand i penny is a big deal though when paying off the monthly payment of say, a Range Rover, or a Hummer, or Ford Excursion. Oh well. Who needs beautiful wildlife and forests and trees anyways. Lets make Oil. Ugh.

Go George!!

i've seen better days

so i've started riding my bike some recently. so thats a positive in my life. on the other hand. i got a voice mail the other night saying "joseph, your grandfather died at 5:35 this afternoon." that sucked. so anyways. i've seen better days.

jg

its just one of those days.

i typically don't like limp bizkit at all. but this song reflects my feelings today. i've seem to have temporarily lost interest in riding my bike, so that makes me mad. thus:

It's just one of those days
When ya don't wanna wake up
Everything is ******, everybody sucks.
You don't really know why
But you wanna justify rippin' someone's head off
No human contact
And if you interact your life is on contract
Your best bet is to stay away mother ******!
It's just one of those days!

It's all about the he says she says bull****
I think you better quit lettin' **** slip
Or you'll be leavin with a fat lip
It's all about the he says she says bull****
I think you better quit talkin' that ****

It's just one of those days
Feelin' like a freight train
First one to complain
Leaves with a blood stain
Damn right I'm a maniac
You better watch your back
Cuz I'm ******' up your program
And if you're stuck up
You just lucked up
Next in line to get ****** up
Your best bet is to stay away mother******!
It's just one of those days!

It's all about the he says she says bull****.
I think you better quit lettin **** slip
Or you'll be leavin with a fat lip
It's all about the he says she says bull****
I think you better quit talkin that ****, punk
So come and get it

I feel like ****
My suggestion is to keep your distance
Cuz right now I'm dangerous
We've all felt like ****
And been treated like ****
All those mother*******, that want to step up

I hope ya know
I pack a chainsaw
I'll skin your *** raw
And if my day keeps going this way
I just might break something tonight

I pack a chainsaw
I'll skin your *** raw
And if my day keeps going this way
I just might break something tonight

I pack a chainsaw
I'll skin your *** raw
And if my day keeps going this way
I just might break your ******' face tonight

Give me something to break
Give me somthing to break
Just give me stuff to break
How 'bout your ******' face?

I hope you know I pack a chainsaw, what? A chainsaw, what?, a muther******' chainsaw, what?
So come and get it

It's all about the he says she says bull****.
I think you better quit lettin **** slip
Or you'll be leavin with a fat lip
It's all about the he says she says bull****
I think you better quit talkin that ****
Punk, so come and get it

buyala traguitaori

i just made up the words to the title of this post. it could be more appropriately titled super bad ass mountain bike ride. i did the most epic ride ever today. just for you. whoever you is. i'm putting the stats up for my bike ride. in case someone has google earth and wants to see where i rode, you should check out the grandfather district of the pisgah forest. its just south of the us-221 and nc-181 intersection in north carolina. near linville, NC. so anyways.

so anyways. the ride started around 10:30am from the tablerock picnic area. this is basically the beginning of a huge hill. let me re-state that, an F-ing huge hill. we drove a shuttle car down to the bottom of this hill for my buddy, it was probably a 30 minute drive down and back to the top. alright. enough on the size of the hill. we instantly hit singletrack, its good, rolly, some waterbars. it lets out on a gravel road. my two buddies had ridden this area a few weeks ago, they went the "wrong way" and missed a piece of trail. we rode around on every off-shoot of trail and fire road making sure we didn't miss this sweet piece of trail. so we found it. this trail went through this field and we hit more singletrack. this trail was steep as hell. it reminded me of snowshoe mtn. except instead of my 8" travel downhill bike i was on my 4" travel epic. i did everything i could to stay behind the back wheel, basically. imagine your saddle occasionally touching your chest. thats about how far back i was. anyways. the other two guys were on 5" and 6" travel bikes. it was rather challenging. so we get to the bottom of this trail and go across some waterfalls and stuff. it lets out on a gravel road that my two friends had been on before. this was the gravel road they rode down the weeks before. it comes out on hwy nc 181. we cross the street and sit for ten minutes or so. i eat half of my peanut butter sandwich. actually it was only half a sandwich to begin with. so i ate a quarter of a sandwich. we head down greentown trail. it puts us at a ridiculous creek crossing, and since i'd already walked through a couple creeks earlier, i just walked through this one too. we rode for a while, on some relatively flat stuff. it was slightly uphill, but not really steep. so we come to a trail my buddies had ridden, and to the left there's a gravel fire road. i ride up it while they sit. at the top there is a fire road to the left and singletrack to the right. i head back down to get the crew. we go back up and they're like "i dont know. we should stick to the trail we know." of course, we'd ridden mostly new trail to this point. so i just get on my bike and head down the mysterious trail. it was more of the mountains to sea trail. really, really fast stuff here. big ring fast. singletrack. big ring. 44t. are you getting this?

so there is a split. uphill, and really uphill. we opt for uphill. it connects back to the trail that went up the super steep part. so thats all good. moving along. we get to an intersection with two more trails. one is the top of raider camp. to the left is persimmon ridge. i'd ridden both of these a month ago. i tell my buddies i know where we are and i know where the trail lets out on a dirt road. everyone breathes a sigh of relief. so this was the point a month ago where two of the four guys on the ride were like. okay. we're not waiting anymore for you slow guys. referring to me and my boss. anyways. raider camp is this very talked about piece of trail. its amazing. not really steep, but again, very fast big ring for like twenty minutes. yeah. i said twenty minutes. theres another big creek crossing, then a beautiful creek crossing. this one has a bridge made of rocks. but large rocks. like two and three feet wide and tall rocks. must have taken ten guys to build this thing. anyways. more of this trail and we're on a road. nc-90. we take it out of the way from the car to a grocery store in the middle of nowhere. literally. look up mortimer, NC on maps.google.com. see how bad it is. anyways, none of us had any money on us when we got to this store. which was about three miles down the road. so we turn around, ride right past where raider camp let out. continue for oh, three more miles past the trail exit. we knew the dirt road came out on nc-181 and that we'd have to climb a ways to the shuttle car, but on the right there was a forest service road. fs-982 i think. we took it. thinking, this has got to be more direct. climbing now. climbing still. we crest the hill and its 27mph downhill on f.s. road. sweet. at the end of this, it splits. my buddies recognize it. this is where their known trail from earlier would have come out. oh well. we learned something. so we stay on the road to the shuttle car. it was 31.56 miles to this point. my two friends were like you want to ride still or should we take you to your car. i being the tough stupid guy i am was like i'll just ride to my car. there must have been a few thousand feet of climbing in the eight miles remaining back to my car. i rode up 181 for almost 6 miles. then there's a turn on the left at gingercake. rode past some million dollar houses and the road turned to gravel. it crests, downhill back to my car. its over. finally.

so...

my HRM says:
6:33:04 training time
143 avg hr.
176 max hr.
7362 calories burned. (this made my mexican dinner a bit better...)
22% easy zone
32% middle zone
43% hard zone

my computer says:
5:24:40 ride time
7.5mph avg speed
40.67 miles (yes that 40.67 miles)
28.5mph max speed
613.1 miles odometer (since november 2005)

so. today was quite a day. thats all for now. work tomorrow, and a recovery ride. and a very easy week, to get my legs back for the tanasi serc #8 a week from today.

jg

thanks for reading this.

chalk walk

so i went to columbus this past weekend. it was good to see my parents, my grandparents, and my dog kasco. i got in really late saturday night/sunday morning, raced sunday morning at 11:30 in macon ga. it wasn't a very good race. however i did manage to pass three or four people (in my age class) on the third lap. so i finished 20th out of 29. not very good, but could have been worse.

stats:
1:52:00 ride time
avg HR 179
max HR 205
avg speed approx 8.5 mph.

oh well. i came very close to cracking during the race. my body didn't want to go any harder, so i went slow, recovered a bit. then did a better third lap. it was very very hot too, for the weather i'm used to at least. i've definitely become a mountain resident. its hot if its in the 80's now. oh well. at least i can altitude train...

so i didn't ride monday, i drove though, tuesday i hit my all time fastest speed on a bicycle. it was 51mph coming down baird's creek road near willow valley golf course. there is a long climb into the hill, then the other side is straight down the grade. there is a small right turn a ways down, then straight some more. i had a good ride too. we call it the clark's creek loop. its about 27 miles. i improved by about 6 minutes on my time from the last time i rode it, which was an 8 minute improvement on the previous time i rode it. anyways.

no pictures in this post. although i got a few good ones lately, from the bike race and random rides around boone. well, thats it. i have friday off work, so i'm hoping to go to the forest to ride. later!!!

okay, so i found something to put up:


jg

destination hardware

so i haven't posted recently. oops.

the norba nationals were great. i have more pictures from last weekend over at sugar mtn. i'll put up a few.





i have been riding hard trying to train for a string of upcoming mtn bike races. this coming weekend i'm heading to macon, ga for the SERC #7 race. i should also be able to get over to columbus. i'll visit my parents. it will be good to see columbus. partially because i miss it, but partially because it will remind me how much better boone is. yep.

after that weekend, there's the tanasi serc #8 race, then a race down in wilkesboro that is only like 30 minutes from boone. then serc #9 way down in anniston, al. that will be quite a haul from boone. i hope the race starts at 11:30 am on sunday, not 9:30am... i'll be driving until at least 1:00 am i bet. anyways.

oh, so last week i built up some cool wheels. at least i think they're cool. chris king iso disc hubs, wheelsmith 14/16 gauge silver spokes, blue aluminum nipples, dt swiss xr 4.1 d rims. the pictures i have of them do no justice. but it should suffice to say they're 1690 grams. i think i may switch the rims out for stan's ztr in the next few months. who knows. that would take em down to oh, say, 1575 grams or so. blah, gearhead talk.





alright. check out the pictures from todays ride too. ross and i rode about 48 miles. i did a 48 mile ride this past tuesday too. and some really good training rides. intervals, and a great recovery ride. okay, okay, stop typing. picture time.

norba national

so.

this past weekend was the showdown at sugar norba national mountain bike race. yeah. it was cool as it could be. like a cucumber. maybe cooler. the racing started friday. i had a DH race saturday morning, followed by a nap, and a XC race at 3:30 that afternoon. my dh event was fun. i woke at 6:45am to get on the lift and do a practice run. i determined i had the wrong tire on my front wheel, and went to the kenda tent and bought a nevegal 26 x 2.5" tire. i proceeded to use a borrowed multi tool, flimsy tire levers, and my shoe to change my front tire. then repeated all the necessary steps as soon as i realized i installed it the wrong direction. ugh!!! but my DH race went ok. i was hoping to be on the podium. i missed it by two spots. i got 7th, 6 second off the next guy and like 11 seconds off the 5th place finisher. i came off my bike in an awkward way and couldn't easily get started again, and then had a wrong gearing through a creek crossing. if i would have done better in those two spots, i think i could have done it. but it was my first real DH race and i had a blast. i think i may partake in a series at snowshoe mtn in west virginia and possibly a racers edge.com race in pennsylvania. dh racing seems fun.

my xc race was a shortlived experience. my somewhat newly installed cranks came off 10 minutes into the xc event. i installed the crankset a few weeks ago, torqued them to the exact specs, but the bolt managed to back out. i guess i will be checking them more often in the future. i did try to push, i wanted to at least finish, but i developed some nasty blisters on the backs of my ankles, from running in my cycling shoes, and turned around and coasted back to the bottom. oh well.

i did realize i got changed to NC resident for my usa cycling license. i'm ranked top 15 in sport for my age group in NC. thats sort of cool. anyways.

lastly, i must say, i am very glad to have redeveloped friendly ties with my ex-girlfriend. we were on the outs for bits of time, here and there over the past few months, but we're talking now and i'm very glad for it. hopefully we'll visit when i come to georgia for the macon SERC race. i can't wait to see my columbus racing buddies in macon. you guys should all be there since its on your GSC calendar as well. anyways. i will write more later. for now, settle with a picture of me coming over the tabletop at the finish of the DH race course. this photo was expertly taken by glenn kalnins. thanks for reading this, if anyone does. and if not, well, thanks for nothing. hahaha.

tresemme shampoo

yo to all. stuff is great here in boone. the weather is especially nice. its still chilly at night. and its june. in case somone forgot what month it is... i've been riding a bunch. sorta took last week off, but i'm back at it. getting ready for the NORBA nationals this weekend. i'm racing DH saturday morning at 9:30. then at 3:30pm racing XC. i'll put results up as soon as i have them, if they're decent at least... and hopefully pictures from the podium with special shoes.

oh, a political thing... i can't believe our wonderful president is trying to push the federal marriage amendment again. its so stupid. 1. marriage should not be considered a religious matter. atheists can get married right?? 2. if he does want to consider it religious then it shouldn't be governed right?? separation of church and state?? is that somewhere in that document called the consitution?? 3. are there more important things for our government to worry about right now?? anyways. i'm glad the senate struck down the proposal. at least someone in washington has some sense.

some pictures from a bike ride. in some order... a bonsai tree on the trail, the full view of an ancient ladder jump, the edge, and the view back looking at it. pretty sweet.

Louisiana Hot Sauce

Here are some random pictures. The bike ones are from the Fontana SERC race this past sunday. The one of Andy is showing the five stitches he received after a friendly game of bike polo.