South East Cyclist

This might be more easily done than you think.

     the bicycle industry is comprised of many sectors that may or may not connect. the way i see it is that we all just simply have to exist as cyclists through these hard financial times.
think about it! have you already got a bike? YES well, okay it doesn’t cost anything to ride it. sure it might cost to enter races and events, and if you cannot afford to do so you still need to try to make it to these races and events to spectate and support to help the race promoters and event sponsors through the recession. supporting cycling events through the recession is the only way to make sure some of these great events make it to the other side where we’ll be in a more prosperous economy.

    Sure we may not be in the new bike buying budget these days HOWEVER when you have to buy consumable parts for your bicycle (i.e. tires, chains, brake pads, cables etc…) its pretty damn important to buy them from your local bike shops there by also supporting and stimulating your local economy. lets leave REI and Performance out of these transactions.

    i really feel that it is just that simple, stay on your bike, hold your line, support cycling events of all sorts, and buy local. want to take it a step further? save money on motor vehicle costs by riding more! use your new fitness and saved money to enter a race!

~Drew

   

event photo from last weekends ICYCLE race

repn’ my PISGAH WORKS wool jersey

what a fun cold weekend it was in lovely Fontananananana village NC this past weekend.
Drank a lot, rode shuttles ALL day on Saturday riding my big dumb squishy bike on the really short DH trail. hung out with rachel and archie and fennel and old friends made new friends etc… just what i wanted for my B-Day

i checked the SSWC09′ start list and im in! so now due to that and talks of doing the tour de burg and maybe a few other regional funner races, i am posed with the daunting thought of TRAINING!

i havent really ever truely trained before… when i would have considered my self a better racer (towards the front of the pack in sport class) i was a full time bike messenger. that was decent enough training.
i have a plan. the plan has two parts, broken up into two catagories 1. FUN and 2. track racing season. dont worry your self with what my plan is… just know i’ll be having the most fun possible while i trainhow i will and the other times starting in mid april i will be racing on the track every week. fun + track work out = fast? i hope so.

rachel, regec fennell and i are leaving after i get off work tomorrow to head to FONTANA! saturday is the ICYCLE, and i am not sure what events i want to line up for.

i’m probobly going to sign up for the single speed catagory XC race, and the night time DH has a ridged catagory but i think i want to do it on my squishy fun having bike rather than my ridged bike.

i’ll have plenty of time to pre-ride, and drink (this is what were doing for my birthday) so it’ll all come together.

maybe a nice mellow ride at Tsali on the way home on sunday?
ONLY if i keep off the JOOSE.

Joose is bad shit. it will make you ride short busses
its got all the normal taurene, ginsing etc of a normal energy beverage, BUT is 9.9% booze and it tastes like dimetap grape cough syrup

i have tried and failed quite a few things. every once in a while i got something right.

when i was a young lad i had a favorite place in the world. my favorite place was my familly’s mountain land where my aunt and uncle and cousins lived. its where my grandmother and her 11 siblings grew up as well.
i used to take my cousins schwinn predator up to the top of the old rutted and eroded logging road up over the michah mine and bomb the hill, each time checking the time on my swatch watch to see if i had set a new p.r.

that was my first taste of mountain biking i guess.

i am looking into seriously developing a trail system on this land, with high hopes of it being a place to host great races and fun events. i have a consultation with pal and trail builder Ben Blitch on saturday january the 17th
any one interested in being present ought to contact me, all opinions and ideas are needed!

im a bit crippled, im in a plaster half cast thingie… waiting to hear back from the radiologist to get my real prognosis.

art by Joshua Mikel

Hi, i’m the seldom author of this blog, my name is Drew. i am home from work on my lunch break and this pasta i am eating has me so happy and warm i thought i’d log on to BLOG.COM and spread some christmas / kwanza / chaunnakah (i know its spelled wrong, but the spell check wants me to change it to “leprechaun”  or ” haunched” so i dont know the right way) / festivus / wednesday pm cheer.

Rachel and i have a rad christmas tree complete with dinosaurs, ribbons, blinking white lights, and peacock decorations. if you send us gifts to 276 state street asheville NC 28806 we will put them under said tree until christmas day (promise)

i already got myself a couple of christmas gifts in the shapes of a big dumb squishey Tomac MTB, and a nice fancy titanium Lynskey ‘cross bike, so now i am posed with the shopping experience that will yield Rachel , and my family with a happy unwrapping session this year. i think i am going the mall free route again this year.

if you still have some christmas shopping or personal shopping to do i’d like to take this time to shamelessly plugg HTTP://WWW.CLASSICCYCLING.COM your boy <a href=”http://hincapiecycling.com/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=108&Itemid=26″>Shane Martin</a> is bringing you the best deals on cycling gear possible. i have the privilege of spending my money at wholesale or below through EP and industry pricing, and i still find better deals through Shane (my ebay feedback shows proof) congrats to him for getting his web site rolling.

CHA!

my tooth cutting 08′ track season is over. it was great and i learned a lot. despite the fact that i am looking across the room at four silver medals and one bronze, i didnt really have any super strong finishes except for in match sprints.
i really enjoy racing on a regular local basis, i had great times at the charlotte sports cycling winter series short track races for the past few years, and the lowes motor speedway TT series, but racing on the track weekly definitely helps keep one motivated. i know my Eddy Merckx is a hair too small for me now after getting uncomfortably wobbly up front in sprints so i am going to sell it here in the off season to buy a better fitting and more handsome bicycle.
speaking of handsome bicycles, i should see a nice titanium cyclocross frame show up with my name on it from the folks over at Lynskey one state away in Chattanooga TN. so i’ll hopefully get to have a tooth cutting cross racing season this year too. so along with selling the Eddy Merckx, i’ll be selling my Cannondale roadie as well. to fund a build kit. i figure the cross bike will do me double duty just fine on the road.
Track + Cross = skinsuits (and i am skinny as fuck.)

so what else is new? yeah ive done a lot of new stuff. a couple of weekends ago me and the dudes from work took a long weekend vacation to <a href=”http://www.ride.snowshoemtn.com”>Snowshoe mtb park</a> in WV to get rad gnar and do some freeriding and downhilling and ride the lifts up instead of our bikes. i got hooked up with a morewood downhill bike from a pal of a pal for the weekend.
i am remorseful at how much fun i had. i dont have a bike to sell to fund a DH rig.
i hope you all are taking advantage of this nice long weekend to ride your bikes. although besides the quick after work N. Mills River ride, all i have ridden was 37 miles in the woods on my moto this weekend.

A year ago tonight, I was hit by a car riding my bicycle. This might have been the single most important things that has ever happened to me. If you choose to continue reading you will find out why.
My friend Jason had announced that he was moving to NYC to get out of Charlotte for a while. Charlotte had jaded Jason as it soon would me. Jason was a fellow bike messenger and he had won most of the Alley Cat races that we had around Charlotte, but in the previous year there had been a new fleet of fixie riding fashion clad North Davidson types.
Aside from Jason himself, only I and Arleigh Jenkins ever put on memorable underground races or on predictable dates. I took it as my responsibility to give Jason what he needed as a last impression of Charlotte. I planned out a punishing alley cat race that would make him struggle to win. And win he did.
As I was riding from “home base” to the finish line of the race I was riding at full clip to make it before the first wave of finishers would. I was punishing my lungs and legs down pecan ave. as a 78’ Chevy Caprice made a left turn (into me) that scooped me up onto it’s hood. The startled, inattentive driver instinctively slammed on the brakes shooting me to the ground shoulder first and with my foot still in the toe clip. The flimsy bill of the hip-cap I was wearing broke and sliced a clean cut into my forehead which looked way more intense that it turned out to be when cleaned.
The first thing I did when I got home even before taking pain killers with a few beers to reduce the swelling was call Rachel.
Rachel and I had met through mutual friends a little over a week before, and we hit it off right off the bat. Off the bat and out of the park and through the windshield of some un suspecting ticket scalpers car in the damn parking lot. We met and spent a concentrated amount of time together that weekend unsure of when or how but that we’d for sure continue to hang out again. Rachel lived about 4 hours away on an island on the beach.
I called Rachel first. I had a broken clavicle (obvious but yet to be prognosed) I couldn’t continue working the rest of the summer as a bike messenger with a broken clavicle! I called Rachel first and she offered to pick me up in charlotte that coming weekend and take me back to her home on the island on the coast and take care of me for a week or so.
Yeah DUH. I took her up on the offer not knowing how this concentrated time to be could or would turn out. I just knew deep down that I would be an idiot not to.
Yeah no shit, I would have been an absolute waste of human if I had turned down an offer to be taken to a beach island by this beautiful woman that was willing to take care of my broken ass.
A lot can be assumed about the week at the beach I spent with Rachel. But only she and I will ever know the respect and experiences and emotions we shared with each other that week. Having been relatively unfamiliar with each other up until that point(with the exception of known shared interests) it was the best way that we could have ultimately or eventually become such a big part of each others lives. That week started what has brought us to where we are right now.
Over the following months we shared many powerful and emotional events that put us in a place to where we could help each other realize what our goals were. We continued to learn about each other. We have helped each other overcome challenges, and challenged each other. We have slipped up and we have helped each other up, we have changed and grown and developed focus on creating a life with each other with goals and with strong personalities.
Getting hit by a car one year ago brought me to where I (we) are right now, living together in our home in the mountains. It fast forwarded the relationship to be developed with Rachel but it also brought me a hefty settlement sum that in parts funded the move and a period of unemployment. It funded a motorcycle and a bitchin’ bike that I race on the track, home furnishings and settled debts I owed to collectors and the IRS. We celebrated our one year anniversary a little over a week ago, because we pretty much became a couple that first week end, but one year ago today was an unpredictable event that put a magnifying glass on what was to come.
I am thankful for the breake I was given (PUN INTENDED! Subtract one of the e’s) despite the pain. And I am thankful for the life Rachel and I have now.