The Triple Whammy!

Grrrrr!

My last post was called Anticipation and this is one of the things that I’m anxiously waiting for….

This is the time of year that Kera spends a fair amount of her time traveling the world for work. I miss her a lot in part because she’s my wife (of course) but she’s also my best friend and adventure buddy. Mostly because she’s just pretty AWESOME! She’ll be home Saturday and then off again in a week. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder….” Right?

My Triple in Construction

Second would be this… My new Retrotec Triple 29′er which will be my singlespeed and probably my primary bike.

The fork for said bike plus some Chuey hats

and this…. The fork for the Triple.

The view from the Prienerhütte

Last weekend I went snowshoeing a couple of times. Friday for a couple of hours close to home in the mountains and on Saturday morning I headed about 25 km/15.5 miles south into the mountains and hiked up to Prienerhütte. It was a beautiful hike and I motored it trying to make it into a workout. It must’ve worked because the recommended time was 5 hours and I made it in about 3.5. It’d been more fun with Kera there though. Next time!

My second prototype for a front toptube bag

I’ve been doing a lot of spin class, some running and two weeks ago I did the big 4+ hour spinning marathon at the fitness center. Some other things I’ve been working on are my bike/part reviews for twentynineinches.com and maybe the coolest is prototyping the SpoK bikepacking bags. I’m about half (or more) complete with a frame bag and I’ve finished a top tube bag that I’m proud of and worthy of selling. Step-by-step….

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.

Time to face the fact…

It’s time that I face the fact that I’m going to have to break out the rollers or the trainer. I’ve been sitting here for a week now looking at a freshly built bike and basically all it’s done in the time is sleet… or I’m working when it’s nice out. Naturally!

Something many people know about me is that I HATE riding in rain. It’s odd because I’ll run and do so many other things in the stuff but it drives me nuts to ride in the rain. Maybe too many MS-150′s spent pedaling all day in the rain being cold or too many years battling mountain bikers and horse riders that tear up trail by riding in the rain. I don’t really know what it is. It’s just a fact.

Kera made this sweet new bag for herself. She’s been debating for ages as to what to make. Glad she, finally, did it as I happen to think that it’s her best yet. We’re tossing about ideas for a new, bigger one for me. Granted, I love my Green one (a little of which is in the pic) but I often carry so many teaching supplies or clothes to the gym, etc. That way, maybe I an part with the “Nicaraguan Baby Carrier” as Cotter calls it (big Chrome bag that I’ve had for years).

Anyway, she’ll post more pics on her Flickr site when she gets home, I’m sure.

We are off to Vietnam in 11 days. Wow! Until I wrote that it didn’t hit me how close it is. Cool! I’m taking running stuff with me becasue in 3.5 weeks I’ll go insane if I don’t exercise a few times a week. I experienced it last year when we went to the States and worse when we were in Egypt. ‘Sides, I might get to see some really interesting things along the way.

I’m off to go buy buttons for the cool Bayerisher (Bavarian) sweater vest the Kera knitted me. Then school till late tonight.

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).