South East Cyclist

tonight was the MSG Crossparts training race in Johnson City TN.

DFL’d the cat 3′s and was passed by most of the masters and a lot of the womens 123′s. i was lapped by Will Black 3 laps in and then the rest of the 1 and 2′s the next lap in about the same place.

i realize that the course there is the kind of course i need to practice on… bumpy grass fields with no beaten in paths. i think if you can get good holding a cadence on bumpy dry grass, you can do well in almost any other CX situation (except mud, and no one is really good at anything in mud)

i have a pretty good quiver of excuses i could use with validity BUT i know that no matter what i have a long road to hoe to get to where i need to be in a month when *real* CX season begins

i took a funny picture of dicky last weekend:
and i registered a legit taxable business entity. true shit.

AAAAAAND this is the year i lear to do the bikerfox flip http://www.bikerfox.com

and awkwardboners.com

this is Owen, the newest addition to my branch of the familly tree. Owen is my cousin and the first of his generation in my familly.:

this is PawPaw (Paul Revere Hager) he is the Patriarch of my branch of the Familly tree, Owen is his Great Gandson.:

this picture of Owen was taken on the day that he came home for the first time, PawPaw was not healthy enough to be there. PawPaw is suffering from a condition that will not allow his body to produce enough healthy blood cells.

you see the thing here is that even though PawPaw couldnt be there, he is proud of the life time he has spanned, from a time when farmers bartered for food and neighbors were miles away, to a time where gadgets exists that can take pictures (of Owen) and travel 2 hours down a highway and be shown (to PawPaw and Granny).
we all realize that it is not the same as getting to see your great grandson, but it fills a gap there.
filling these gaps are very important because even though we have a happy healthy new member of the familly, we also are going through a sad time as the doctors have numbered our PawPaw’s days.

here is an interview with Barry Wicks from 08′
actually its just the best part of it and kind of highlights why i like ‘cross so much… there is no Lance Armstrong in any of these guys, just sadists who like cold, filthy, muddy, pain, BUT have a personality. a personality of some one who you would hang out with.

from Nyvelocity.com

I think the Oregon is finally catching up to the East Coast in terms of pretentiousness, but we just do it our own way. I mean, hand made bicycles and novel writing baristas are way more Emo than sweater wearing frat boys from Jersey, so I guess we are the new preppy.”

you see, if it were up to me i would do maybe one or two endurance MTB events per month in the summer, take mid july to mid august off to hang out with my wife doing essential summer chillin’ then i would turn my guts sour racing cross every weekend untill the end of January at which point i would take my wife somewhere WARM on vacation to celebrate our birthdays and to show her my appreciation for her patience on the race weekends.

the main reason why i dont is because i pay for my own equipment and my own registration fees. sure i get better deals than most on bike equipment but the grand total stays the same. a life style like this leaves me with little money to do ALL of the races i want to do, but i get most of them… i definitely cannot afford that post season birthday present of a vacation for my wife though

i want P.E.D.S.
not that i feel like i need to be fast… i just wish here were P.E.D.S. that made you motivated, and focused, or that just made you “feel” competitive.
oh.
thats called adderall

Failure. for me it was PMHAR (pisgah mountain HIKE adventure race)

wow… who knew such a shitty day was about to happen? my team mate and two others who were doing the  PMBAR were out at a bar pretty late and they all had respectable hangovers. i even had to drive Tyler’s car to Pisgah forrest because he was still drunk. par for the course my friends, done worse and placed well.

we arrived, got parked, got checked in, got dressed,toed up to the line, read our maps and took off.

100 yards up the beginning of Black Mountain trail something in my drive train binded and my chain exploded. no sweat Tyler had a SRAM power link to get me moving again. once mobile i realized that my deraileur hanger was bent ( i have thick aluminum sliding drop outs ) tried to bend it back and it snapped. FUCK. capital F. well, hey they are sliders right? single speed time it was. situation resolved kept moving, however happy thoughts of getting 4 check points and enjoying beers and burritos were gone.

single speeding the day away diddnt frighten me, i rode SS exclusively for years in the past including endurance events. Riding SS for the day did kind of kill my spirits though and it was soon to start jabbing me in the ribs.

several times while still climbing Black Mountain trail the flex from my spindly ti frame cause my chain to derail into the bigger cog causing it to bind. this situation would bind so tight that it would flex my rear triangle enough to not have clearance for my crank arm to pass. my bike was un-rideable up hills or in torque-crank technical areas so i pretty much hiked from the Black Mountain trail head to the parking lot at Turkey Pen… yeah my team mate and i took Turkey Pen gap as a bail out route and it would have been hiked with or with out my mechanical issue, get some saws out there y’all.

we rode 280 back to 276 got laughed at and ate burritos, had beers, played pranks on Tylers car… thats about all. now i have to buy new drive train components.

i guess i will have to wait until next year to get my PMBAR experiance.

up next? the BURN 24 with Fennell, Tyler, Eric & Ricky courtesy of Magic Cycles of Boone NC and possibly the Tsali12, but probably not due to a wisdom tooth extraction scheduled for the week before.

well yeah. It is ON like Simon LeBon!

the Burn 24 that ishttp://www.burn24hour.com/ it is a great 24 hour event… low cost, high fun and no Duran Duran. well maybe a little.

riding has been fun lately but i feel no need to post about it because you can read about it here: http://www.teamdicky.blog.com here: http://www.whereonearthisbill.blogspot.com/ here:http://ericsridelog.blogspot.com/ and probably here soon:http://craigbarlow.blogspot.com/

PMBAR yeah im scared it is two weeks away.

and i have linked to my new project: teamrexcx.blogspot.com

its not fully functional death star yet but i will chime back in real soon to explain it in further detail. for now know, its a conceptual team for those who dont *need* sponsorship. it is a brotherhood for those of us in the bike industry who like racing bikes. and cyclocross is really really cool.

http://trexcx.blogspot.com/

http://trexcx.blogspot.com/

http://trexcx.blogspot.com/