Sometimes things just don’t work out

So, the job that I’d really been expecting to get, I didn’t. Seems I didn’t sell myself well enough or they didn’t read my resume well enough. Maybe it was a combination of both. The apparent reason that I didn’t get the job was not having enough quality control experience. What did I do onsite with a multi-million dollar project? Anyway. As you can see, I’m not too thrilled about the result. The woman that won the position is fantastic, I just felt that I was the best candidate for the job.

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On to other, happier, things. Here are a couple of good photos from SS Italy where we had a fantastic time as I’d previously mentioned.

Kera made and gave away a bag to the winner of the Pixie Cross. Notice the colors.

Some cool and interesting costumes. That mustache is real.

Master of ceremonies Stefano looking happy in a chair. The smile is genuine. He’s a fantastic guy!

Our friend Ed scored Kera one of those cool cycling hats from Stefano as well.

Friend and teammate Ed looking a little too….something.

Kera made me suffer up this hill for this photo. So appreciate it!

Subbaqqui Rules!

A great photo of Chris another Ami.

The male and female winners admiring their new jerseys.

A charming photo of me.

Lot’s of the nutty folks.

The Gay Fisher

A good one of Kera taking many of the above shots.

Unfortunately, we won’t be going to Zurich for SS Switzerland this weekend. So, if the weather cooperates, we might just have to do our own ride around here.

Munich is absolutely nuts right now as Oktoberfest is going on and there are people here from around the world. Everywhere you go it feels like rush hour. It’s rather strange. Kera’s been once and will go at least once more with work. I’m not sure whether I’ll end up going this year or not. Due to a FUBAR situation, I ended up selling my ticket to go tonight.

Till later.

SiS race report and other things… naturally!

So, we went to SiS (Schlaflos im Sattel) last weekend. I’m glad we did. It was great to see friends from throughout the world there. This little (only 400+ participants) is one of the best events this side of the Atlantic. Phaty, Keili and crew do a fantastic job and are to be commended for their efforts. THANKS GANG! What is also commendable is the efforts of the local people. They come out, volunteer, work hard, make food, serve drinks, etc. for 3+ days. I’m sure that they make a bunch of money from all of us, but it wouldn’t be the event that it is without the participation of the people of Weidenthal.

Here are a few photos from the event. Many more here and here.

This ball was about 6′ tall and had fake snow falling inside.

Toilet out of order. That’s bad at a bike event!

Marty rocking a lap in partion BWR gear.

Me (sleeping whilst standing…I think).

My teammate Matthias coming in at the end of the race.

Another of Matthias

A beautiful singlespeed Gary Fisher Superfly

That’s me there with all the colors on the lead-out lap.

Our friend David….always smiling

There’s a lot of love going on (actually, it was after bike jousting).

Tattoos and piercings everywhere

Even belt-drive fixies could be found

Also, a Ti Independent Fabrication singlespeed it belongs to Ken who is really nice and fast… bastard!

Yup… clueless me before the start.

Marty hitting the Start/Finish at some point during the night.

Busted! Got to love the Dopers Suck socks I bought from Ken.

A great shot of Ed that I stole from Keili’s photos. Thanks Keili.

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So…. after all those pics, it’s probably time to write just a bit. We hit town on Friday, went for a ride with Ken and then had fun chatting with everyone we know and having a few drinks. We woke the next morning to a beautiful day, had breakfast, ate some lunch, chatted some more and then did a lap of the course. We watched a bit of the singlespeed race, watched the jousting, took lots of photos and generally relaxed.

The race started just before 21:00 and I did the first two laps. I felt surprisingly good. During the first lap I, somehow, caught up with Marty and tailed him up the long climb to the top of the mountain. It was really great to have teammates in like uniforms for a change. Most of the races that I go to I don’t really know anyone and it’s good to have people you know around. Anyway, I cranked out a couple of first laps and then Matthias went out. After that, Armin and then Christian. While they were out I had a shot of really good Scotch and some food up at the refreshment booth and headed back for a nap. I awoke about 2:00 after what amounted to an hours sleep and then waited. No one had awoken me and I didn’t know that Christian had already done his two laps and then he rolled around after a break with food. He dropped the food and off he went for a third lap. Way to go man!

Then I hit the trail again and cranked out my fastest lap of the night. By then, there was a beautiful tracked worked in to even the most difficult parts of the course. Sadly, most of the way through my 3rd lap I ran across the ambulance picking up their second victim of the night. He’d fallen and broken his pelvis (OUCH!!!). The first had hurt himself but not too badly (Phaty informed me that both hurt guys have said that they’ll be back again next year). Luckily, the worst injuries I received amounted to sore muscles and a small rash from Stinging Nettles wrapping around my arm on the previous days fun ride.

Another couple of comments. This race has to have a large majority of the 29′ers and singlespeeds from Germany if not the middle part of Europe in general. If you’ve got the time, cruise through a lot of the photos. There are some beauties there. Thanks again to everyone that had something to do with this race. It’s the best!

My little Dinotte light performed well as did all my various Ergon products (BC2 pack, grips and gloves). I’ve mentioned it before and will again. I love Ergon! My Black Sheep is, finally, starting to act the way that I’ve always wanted it to. I might have been the week we spent together in Italy. Who knows? Anyway, if/when I get my seatpost I’ll have a complete bike after nearly two years of waiting. Is it time to get a new one yet? :-)

This is a little pic of said seatpost if/when it ever comes.

A little home news. I’m applying for another job at the school doing the same job as I attempted to get the last time but at the school that I teach in nearly daily. Wish me luck. At 46 I suppose it’s time that I attempt to grow up and have a ‘real’ job.

O.K., now that I’ve worn out your eyes and brain…. I’m signing off.

FYI – Ken… still working on the tagged Blog.

The long weekend that was – Garda, Italy

This past weekend, Kera and I headed down to Riva del Garda, Italy for the annual “ride Michael in to the ground fest”

I found this great video on on the Prairie Peddler blog.

I have no hope of ever riding like this but it’s great fun to watch

A few Garda pics here.

We drove down on Thursday which was somewhat uneventful other than the snow falling in Austria. By the time we got to Italy it was shorts and T-shirt weather. We kind of farted around, picked up my registration packet and had lunch at one of our favorite places in the area.

Friday we got up and went for a pretty good almost 50 km mountain bike ride which was supposed to be a “stretch the legs” sort of thing and a chance for Kera to ride non-technical singletrack. Well, the second part of that was correct. She got some good time on some fun singletrack and rocky double-track. Unfortunately, I think we went a little hard which I felt the next day.

Saturday dawned fairly early as I had a 8:00 a.m. start time. Ed Husted (my team mate) also came over to do the race. Ed is a star! The man did the long course (88 km or something with 3000 meters of vertical) on a rigid singlespeed. He way outdid any feat that I could have been credited with.

Anyway, I raced/rode the short course which amounted to just over 55 km and something like 1300 vertical meters (almost all of which was on the first 2 hour climb). I think that I finished 111th in my class. The photos of the race have, finally, been released and they want an arm & a leg for them. They want more per photo then Sportograf wanted for all of them. What’s up with that? I get $5 or 5 Euros but I don’t get 19.90 Euros for each photo. Given that each photographer probably took 500 or more, they’d make 10’s of thousands if people were dumb enough to buy them at that price. If they’d lower the price to something reasonable, I’d imagine that you’d sell a lot more.

The course wasn’t so much of an issue for me. Of course, the past two years it was hell for one reason or another. In 2006 it was the 3 hour climb at the start of the race that I attempted to do on little training and on a rigid singlespeed with thousands of unsympathetic Euro racers aboard their beer-can fully’s, cranking up the mountain in their Granny Gears wondering why I wanted to get around them. Oh, don’t forget the 5 km downhill where I cracked my crank too. That was pretty special as well.

Last year they ran pretty much the same course as this year other than part of it was run inside out. In that part, we had 45 minutes of bike traffic jam. Yes folks… a bicycle traffic jam. Apparently, a lead motorcycle had fallen over in front of the pack at the start of some singletrack and they couldn’t get it righted quickly enough to avoid major problems

This year… 2008. A few problems came together on one day to play with my feeble mind and body. First, a messed up bottom bracket which squeaked so very loudy. I’d even changed out a cracked BB cup but it actually got worse (could have been the lack of grease). Second, riding harder than I should the day before the race as I’d mentioned before (that I blame myself for). Third, I didn’t eat a good breakfast or have any coffee (I’m a freakin’ coffee addict after all). Needless to say, I had absolutely no energy for the epic 2 hour 1050+ vertical meter climb that started the race.

All in all we had a good time, ate some good food, hung out with Ed and got to enjoy some nice riding and fantastic weather. I really can’t complain beyond my race performance.

Photo follow-through

I promised you photos from the Corratec City Bike Marathon. Here are a few. There are more here.

This coming weekend, Ed Husted and I are partaking in the Garda Marathon. I think he’s shooting for the long-loop and I’ll probably be happy if I make the time cut-off for the middle distance (I’d love to do the long one though). I’m sure that we’ll both have race reports from that ASAP afterwards.

Also, this past weekend Kera and I went down to Tegernsee to go for a ride in the mountains. We did about 1/2 of the Tegernsee Marathon loop. It’s a beautiful place, to say the least. The big surprise was the amount of snow that is still on the ground. There’s going to have to be a fair amount of snow melt otherwise we’ll be racing on snow/slush in a month when we race.

Check out the video from last years race (here… nevermind the bad music).

1st Race of the season

This morning, I took part in the first race of my ‘08 season. As I mentioned in my last blog entry this was done in part to gauge my fitness for the upcoming Garda marathon and just because I wanted to do it. Yes… I have to be truthful there.

So, I’ll get results out of the way right off the bat and head on to the meat of the matter. I placed 46th (if you look at my time not where they placed me) out of something like 160 in my class. They don’t seem to have overall results posted, but I’ll keep checking.

O.K., the meat of the matter. Kera and I left (she didn’t race) to ride up to the Olympic Park at about 8:00 this morning as my class and distance were to leave in two groups starting at 8:50 & 8:53. I left in the second group as I didn’t feel like fighting my way to the front of 700-1000 people. By doing this, it meant that I was in the heart of the newbies instead of with more of the seasoned veterans. Looking back, it was probably a big mistake on my part.

The city had blocked off the streets with signs for not only our bike marathon but a running marathon as well. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize what they were dealing with and made a lot of “pinch points” on the course while in the city. Everytime that we got close to one of these areas things got really squirrelly.

What else? Oh… they’d place cones in various places but no one had any idea why. While hundreds of us where rolling though the English Garden and rounding a turn, suddenly there was a bus coming at us. Surprise! We then figured out what the cones were for.

About 25 km in to the race I saw some course tape lying on the side of the gravel/dirt road that we were on. I assumed that it was to block that off and a hiker had broken it (hikers don’t like most cyclists here either). Well…. no! That was there to actually mark the corner. Again, a group of maybe 100+ seemed to figure it out simultaniously and we all did a U-Turn and headed back toward the tape. That cost us 20 minutes and 6-10 km.

Immediately after that, we hit a huge bike traffic jam. When we, finally, made our way up to the front it turned out to be a 1 bike width bridge that we had to cross as the canal was too deep and too cold to cross with the bike.

That was the last major foible short of the roadies that aren’t able to handle a mountain bike on anything other than pavement. As an added bonus, they seemingly can’t make it up a hill without falling over in front of you either. This is where I picked off a lot of people. Give me a climb baby! It’s definitely something that I’ve learned to love while singlespeeding here and in the Alps. I’m a damn good climber. Woohoo… I have at least one good skill on a bike.

After all this it was nearly all flatland gravel, dirt or pavement for the remaining kilometers. I honestly don’t know how many actually. One place the long course was listed as 100 km. Then it was listed as 90 or 87 km depending on where you saw the listing. On my speedometer (with getting lost as well) I have just shy of 72 km. Are you with me? No, I have no actual idea how far we travelled.

Anyway, the end of the race found us riding up and over the Olympic mountain three times in different directions. It was here that I realized that I was in danger of cramping so I downed as much of the fluid that I had and that seemed to help along with spinning vs. mashing. We then rolled in to the Olympic stadium and crossed the timer.

They then fed all of us pizza, all the fruit, cucumbers and cobbler that we could stomach. As always, we also got all the Alcohol-Free Weissbier that we could drink. I had a bit of each and headed home.

How do I feel now? Pretty good actually now that I realize that I’m actually 12 places higher than where they put me. I also know that I need to do some pretty heavy training before Garda and especially before I do a week of climbing starting in Garda and ending up on the other side of the Dolomites. It’s 270 km and 10,800 vertical meters in 6 days.

We then headed off to the Chinese Tower for a going away party for one of the girls that I worked with at Berlitz and her boyfriend who are moving back to the states. It was a perfect day to be outside and even more perfect to be in a beer garden.

Kera’s working on a cool bag for our friend David who’s hosting the SingleSpeed French Rally 2008.

Now we’re home getting ready to BBQ. Till next time.

The Loooooong Easter weekend

As most of you realize, it’s Easter weekend around the world. We’ve got 4 days off here. Unlike the U.S. everything was closed yesterday and it will be again on Sunday and Monday. Therefore, it requires preplanning to make sure that we have enough food and drink in the house.

Some good friends (Nikki & Aaron) sent us the care package laid out in the photo above. It came Thursday before the long weekend. In it we found Mexican spices and candy also some Peeps, Girl Scout cookies and some Keebler cookies. To make it all that much better there was also come coffee beens to feed my coffee jones. All we can say is… THANK YOU GUYS!!

Yesterday, we went to a 2 hour spin class that included a fair amount of weight work. This morning I felt like I’d been riding a horse for 100 miles. Kera’s been doing a lot in the mornings in regards to spin class and a Monday weight class, so she wasn’t nearly as sore. There’s a reason that I call here “Tough Girl.”

We’re off to dinner with friends tonight and we’ll probably do something with some other friends tomorrow night. That still leaves a whole day on Monday to relax.

The last two things…

Kera’s foot.

My new uniforms.

FINALLY!…. only took 2.5 years

 

This morning we went down to the KVR (beuraeu for foreigners) with paperwork and my Deutsch Test results in hand. Our lady there, looked over the paperwork and said that she’d make the proper notations in my computer files and give me my long-term freelance work permit. Woohoo! I don’t have to go back again till 2010. At that point, we can apply for a permanent version of the same thing.

That means, if you want to hire me to do anything freelance, I’m free to do it. If I get the chance to get a “real” job with contract, she said to just come in and she’d deal with it then.

I’m about to head out for the first ride that I’ve been up to in a week and I’m doing various home projects today.

I’ve also started this page for what will become the European version of Big Wheel Racing. You can follow developments of the European team there in the coming months and you can sign up for email direct to your computer just like on this blog. Anyway, let me know what you think about it.

A day in the life…

As I sit here drinking coffee and having just finished my lunch, I figured that I’d better drop a line and say HEY!

We’ve been home a little over a week. In that time, I’ve not worked much (that’s about to change), gotten a few decent workouts in, pretty much given up sweets and beer (except on weekends), drank far more water than I have in ages and spent way, way too many hours uploading pics from our Vietnam trip to here. Check ‘em out if you dare.

Like the Big Guy, I’m on a mission to drop 10-12 lbs. and I’m already feeling like my body is changing. We’ll see how it progresses. Yesterday my workout included lots of 15 second intervals with 30 seconds between. You’d be amazed how much that begins to hurt after awhile.

Anyone on Boulevard or others need some sweet riding clothes? I’ve got gobs that I’d be willing to part with cheap! Give me a shout.

Muddy and 4th on the 2nd

I did a race yesterday in the small town of Külsheim, Baden-Wurtenburg, Germany. Having just looked at the results, I only missed 3rd by 30 seconds. Wish that I’d realized that I was that close. I had thought it was far more than that and was more worried about losing my present position to the guy that I’d battled with for most of the race.

So, on the last lap, I turned on what gas I had and left him behind. I was at the line when he came through and he gave me trouble for turning on the gas and leaving him (i.e “Du hast gas geben!”).

It was probably the muddiest race that I’ve ever done. Other than that, conditions were good. Warmish, but not too much and it sprinkled every once in awhile.

One thing was kind of funny though. Many of the people that started with gears, ended with one gear due to the crazy amount of mud. At the award ceremony we had to laugh abot it.

The course was partially pavement, dirt (farm) roads and then about 25% singletrack. On the first lap about half way through the singletrack I heard something running and turned to the left in time to see a deer (think giant poodle sized animal) coming straight for my front wheel. It missed me by inches.

The rest of the race was uneventful other than battling with a guy named Markus for most of the race and the deep and very slimy mud.

We picked up a fantastic new sponsor for BWR. It’s Ergon products. I’ve mentioned before how great their stuff is. Kera’s been using some of their grips for a long time now and they’ve done a lot to ease her hand problems on the bike. I think that we’ve got some other new sponsors as well and I’ll tell you about them as I find out.

I put in my application for a job at one of the schools that I teach for. I have an all-day interview on Friday. With the number of hours that I’m working this week, I’m going to love the weekend.

Somehow, I need to find/make time to measure the old Black Sheep before I pull it apart and put the new one together. After that, I need to send the old one back.

Weekend update!

Kera’s latest bag here. It’s one that she made for our buddy Jelle that runs singlespeed.nl. One of the few places in Europe that we can get 29′er parts easily. Thanks Jelle for being our supplier.

Check out some of Kera’s other recent bags here. She’s been doing some really cool and interesting designs for people.

Get used to the above logo. For ‘08 I’m switching teams over to Big Wheel Racing. As many of you know, I’ve been with Boulevard/KCOI/BikeSource for many years now. They’ve treated me very well and many people on the team are good friends. The primary reason for leaving is to start working on setting up a Euro version of Big Wheel Racing for ‘09. So, if you are looking for a chance to sponsor a Euro 29′er/road/CX and/or multi-sport team, give me a shout.

Ah… K.C. does another brilliant deed. Just think… K.C. has one of the highest murder rates in the U.S. and is so worried about a nearly naked cyclist that they basically tackle him to get him off his bike. Come on folks. Does anyone else think that their ideals might be a bit misplaced? Hmmmm?

We have two new alien roommates. They do good work though so we don’t mind.

Sweet thank you gift. Keras boss gave us this 2 liter bottle of his local beer. It was a thank you gift for letting he and his brothers stay at our place during Oktoberfest and before we’d moved in. It worked out well for all of us. The ‘normal’ 1/2 liter bottle is on the left. It was a very yummy Oktoberfest version from Hacker-Pschorr (a München brand).