For Sale… Black Sheep Highroller Frame & Strut Fork

As part of my “bike make-over”, it’s time to let the Black Sheep have a new home.

Here’s the geometry -

Geometry

Frame

Selling only the Frame & Struts w/Fork

This will take you places!

James from Black Sheep builds some of the most sought after Titanium frames on the market today. His welding is some of the best in the world and the styling is like no other. I need to sell this to fund a new project. New, this frame, fork and head badge would cost close to $4000. I’m selling all three for $2500 plus shipping.

Here’s the link to the Black Sheep webpage for info. http://www.blacksheepbikes.com or you can contact me if you have any questions.

WTF?

Those of you that know me also know that I’m cynical, sarcastic and a full-time smart ass. Somehow, my loving wife finds this endearing. Lucky me!

In spite of these disabilities (my maladies not the love of my wife) there’s a couple of things that people here in Germany (doesn’t seem to happen other places) do that completely befuddle me. At the top of this list is the helmet over the handlebar habit. For some unknown reason, more often than not, you’ll see people riding along with their helmets securely clasped to their stem and handlebars. Who knew that handlebars and stems needed the protection?

Check out this video… at about 35 seconds, you’ll see what I’m talking about.

My opinion…. if you’re going to bother taking it off of the shelf…. WEAR THE DAMN THING!!! I actually understand not wearing a helmet far more than I do taking it along for a ride and not wearing it.

Breath Cleveland… breath. Ahhhhhh, need to relax now.

So, Kera and I have figured out what our next brief adventure after next weeks will be.

Does it get more beautiful than this?

Of rocks and huts

One of the places we would stay

The Dachsteinwanderweg… it’s theoretically an 8 day hike around the Dachstein (where Reinhold Messner got his start) with our nights spent in mountain top huts. I’m looking forward to it…. a lot!

Lap just before sunrise

This coming weekends and next weeks adventures start Finale Ligure at the 24 Hours of Finale (pics from last year) in Finale Ligure, Italy site of one of my all time favorite 24 hour races. Part of it is that we get to see many of our European friends and because of the amazing views from the course.  The course it self is also great. After the race we aren’t sure where we’re going. Could be Arels, France back to the site of one of our favorite meals ever (when we met many of said friends) or St. Moritz, Switzerland. We’ll decide as we go.

Last thing… really cool video from Iceland of the volcano.

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull – May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

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.

Decisions galore

I took the above pic of myself (gotta love timers) riding close to home the other day. It’s roughly 10-15′ down from the top of this. This was a really frustrating day for me for many reasons, so I ‘attacked’ the trail like an enemy. It felt good to work off all that anger and frustration. Things are quite a bit better now.

________________

It’s the middle of the week and I’m getting ready to take off to teach a class and then go get the next tattoo at least started. The design is a surprise, of sorts. I’ll wait till it’s done to post picks of it (unless we only do part tonight), then I’ll post what gets finished.

Other decisions to be made, the most important one at this point is whether to run singlespeed, 9 speed or 27 speed at Garda in about 4 weeks. I’d really like to ride the Black Sheep as it’s the bike that I’d expected to have for the race last year and it’s light and handles really well.

My major hang-up is whether to hang derailluers on it and maybe put the Reba back on for  Garda. I can’t get last years first climb out of my mind (something like 500 meters in not too long of a run). In short… UGH! The other thing that I think of is the first year that I did it on a singlespeed. It took me just over three hours to complete the first climb. Do I really want to repeat that?

Lastly, I’d really like to do the long course and I’m guessing that I won’t be fast enough without gears to make the time cut-off (especially if there’s a bike traffic jam again this year). That thought alone might help make my decision.

Other things on my tiny brain slate:

Where are we staying for SS World’s in Napa?

Where are we staying for Garda (this might need to be first)?

Am I getting enough training in to do well this year?

When will I get the resume/CV in for the job my buddy Clark told me about?

There’s more….. I told you it was a small slate.

Ah… should I do the City Race going on in town in two weeks? My thought is yes as it will help me gauge whether or not I’m going to die at Garda or not.

Last but not least, thanks a lot to my in-laws for taking possession of the crazy amount of stuff that we had in storage. We appreciate it very much. Thanks!

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.

Another day…

As some of you know, I’ve been moving my “real” blog over from Blogger to here on WordPress. I have to say, it takes a bit to get used to so many cool options that you get but what is also cool is the built-in website tracking tools. I can tell so many things (where people link from, who’s been on the site, when people where they are and so much more). Also, the functionality is so much better. It’s not down every other day and I haven’t lost a post yet. Pretty cool. If you’ve got a blog elsewhere, you might come over and check it out.

Oh… got the new frame built up and figured out that I’m going to have to either keep the wheels amazingly true or drop down a size width in tires (from 2.35″ to 2.1″) as it’s incredibly tight in there.

Check the Flickr site for more pics if you’re interested.

Haven’t ridden it yet as I haven’t had time, but maybe tomorrow or Monday. I’ll report more to you then.

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.

The mothership has landed

I got a message late a couple of nights ago that the new Black Sheep frame has arrived in Germany! Woohoo!

I’m going to pick it up from my buddy this weekend at a race that we’re both attending.

Crazy busy with classes right now. Not to mention, I often have 3 separate classes a day in 3 different parts of the city. That means 3 different levels and in total about 2 hours of travel time. It means basically that I have have about 2 or so hours off between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. Phew! Granted, it’s a good problem (being busy, just exhausting).

Still no word on my Deutsch test. I need to give them a call or go by today and check in.

It’s really crappy out today. I’d planned to go for a ride, but I’m not sure that I’ll manage it given that it’s raining off/on and it’s close to freezing. Yuck! Instead, I’m hanging light fixtures and pictures as well as doing laundry and cleaning house. Fun eh?

Christmas markets open this weekend so we might go see them. That’s about all the news.