Interbike Pre-Show Breakdown

I have been messing around the shop this week. With Interbike right around the corner and the last few items trickling in, I am now looking to have some fun in Vegas. I think that I am going to work in a daily show update on the blog with pictures, video and a quick run down of what happened. Monday we will be traveling, setting up the booth and building bikes. Tuesday is Dirt Demo and I plan on going out to Bootleg Canyon to hang out with some of my West Coast crew. Wednesday the show starts and later that night we will be hanging out with the Alpha Q boys at CrossVegas. Thursday will be more show action followed up with the Crit Series Final and I expect to kick it with Willo and Sulli that night. Friday should be a welcomed day as the show wraps up and we pack our items back into our boxes and ship them home. Saturday morning will come quick with the red eye flight back to Chatty. Sunday morning I will get up way before the sun to pack my bags and head down to the Cohuttas for the Black Bear Rampage, being hosted by Scott's in Cleveland. So there it is folks, the week before it happens...check back through out the week and see what is going on in Vegas. I will keep it PG rated, well at least I hope so.

What Can I Say?

It has been a long time since I have pounded away at the keys for anything other than work. I have been swamped with bicycle trade show details as well as the 2009 Lynskey Product lineup. While I have been surrounded by bikes, I have not spent a ton of time riding them. I have sent all materials to Germany for Eurobike and my guys are there now drinking mass amounts of high-quality German beer with our distributor and hopefully attending the show and selling some bikes while they are there. I am a bit jealous, but with Interbike on the horizon, I am glad to be here in the states right now. The Interbike shipment is being picked up on Tuesday, so I will finally be in the clear for a few days to regroup and get focused for the bicycle circus in Las Vegas.

I kicked off my return to the bike on Monday after a long weekend of moving in to my new house in North Chatt. It feels great to have a home again with enough space for company, racer friends and plenty of bicycles. Jason and I went out for a ride with no apprehensions or objectives and wound up doing over 80 miles and hit two of the local mountains. The term trial by fire crossed my mind a time or two, but it was what I needed to get back on the horse. Now I cannot wait to ride some more and get my fitness back up to where it needs to be for a killer Fall mountain bike season. I have been traveling and lounging with the best of them in an attempt to enjoy the summer months like I used to in college. Lots of low key sunshine and water sports like cannonballs, water slides and sun burns. All that is behind me now and I am excited about the turning of the leaves and epic mountain bike rides. Hope to see you out on the trail...you know I will be there.

Summer Time is Fun Time

It is official, no summertime racing for me. It has finally hit the too warm for me point and I am now taking my "winter off". I plan to ride a ton still, just not feeling very competitive. There may be a few appearances at some local 12hr events, but it will strictly be for fun. I have a wedding to attend in Mid July so the ORAMM is out. Kinda bummed but that further enables me to chill this summer. A steady plan of commuting, road biking and some epics on the mountain bike preferably at trails near the river is what I have planned. I spent this Sunday working the SORBA Outdoor Expo and followed that up with a killer late-afternoon boating extravaganza. Dr. Mark was kind enough to invite a few of us out to his pad for some water sports after the Expo. What a perfect way to wrap up a lazy work weekend.

I ordered the misses a new scooter for her birthday. I was trying to be all sneaky and get it here and then have my guys custom paint it for her. But her persistence and detective work, blew my cover and I had to spill the beans. I was trying to be strong, but if I was not careful, she would have bought herself one and I would end up with 2, so I filled her in that I already ordered it and it should be here soon. So if you are in Chattaboogie and you get passed by a crazy brunette on a tangerine Buddy, that was Mrs. P.

Back in the Saddle Again

The weekend is over and the new work week has been rolling along. The weather is warm and humid here in the deep South. The best plan is an early breakfast and early ride with all efforts to return home before 1PM. I have been riding to work as much as possible. I drove in to the office on Tuesday and actually felt a bit of disappointment. It was more like I missed out on something, so I rode in today and will probably do so for the rest of the week. What started out a once a week has turned into nearly everyday. For that I am happy and satisfied. Not only am I saving money, nearly 10 bucks a day, but I am also getting at least 2.5 hours of riding in, plus anything else I do after I get back on my side of town. Looks like my next bike project will be commuter oriented...I have a few steeds in the basement that will work beautifully and my road bike is working well now, but something a little more comfortable my be just the ticket. Fancy pants commuter style coming soon.

New Sponsors

I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to my 2 new sponsors...White Brothers Forks and Dedicated Athlete. I look forward to representing their products with pride and professionalism. So the days of bikes being thrown and fights taking place in the singletrack, jonny mac style are over...as Pisgah Bruce so eloquently puts it, "I might be serious". In all seriousness, I am grateful for their support.

The heat and humidity has slowed the training significantly, so to make up for it, I have started commuting to work on the bike. I have been wanting to do this ever since I first moved here, but for a small town, the roads are pretty sketchy. At least where I have to go. The first or last part depending on the direction is all nice greenway travel, but the roads through the industrial sections are much more dangerous. I have yet to feel threatened, but I do have to pay very close attention to the traffic. I am hoping that the daily travelers in those congested areas will get used to seeing me and start paying attention. A fella can hope right?

Summertime is Here

Work:
This week the boss man was out of the office on vacation with his family, so us flying monkeys have been forced to fend for ourselves and try to knock out as much stuff as possible before his return. While it has been quiet and peaceful, I do miss the excitement he brings to the foundry. I received confirmation that our Dirt Rag review is scheduled for the July issue...looking forward to hear Andy's thoughts on his ride. I am building a sexy new bike for Sugar Cycles, a new dealer, that I am going to shoot for a Velonews Ad. Should have a sneak peak photo up on Monday. We are working on some killer new stuff for 2009 and it looks like my bike is on the selling block so I am going to be in the market for a new ride...something to think about for a few days. I have been wanting to build a belt drive 29er SS, so looks like here is my chance. I think that I am going to take the summer off from racing anyway and just kick around on the road bike. Maybe even pick up some type of water sport while it it crazy hot out. I actually hate the summer time...it was only cool when I was in school, or out of school for that matter. But it is all part of our yearly trip around the sun.

Ride:
The past few days on the road bike have been rough to say the least. I have been consumed by the heat and feeling slow and sluggish. I guess this happens, but it is not something that I am used to, yet. After much thought and deliberation, I am going to bag the Disc Burner 12hr race this weekend for a more low key trip to the Whitewater Center for a repeat of the Big Frog 65 ride followed by some time in the river, then an over night camping escapade. I think this will be the new summer style for myself...pick trails to ride that are really close to water. Ride, Swim, Chill...my version of a triathlon.

On a separate note, I have a new mountain bike project in the works. My old school school steel Yeti is back from paint and is glorious. It will be built up as a 2x8 with some old school XTR stuff that I have. Seeking out some new cranks and maybe a suspension fork. This is the last steel Yeti ever made in Durango as far as anyone knows...I bought this from a former Yeti employee back in 2001 and he had it made in 1997 with the last of the steel tubing that was lying around the shop. It was once powder coated red and is now metallic pearl white with a sexy metallic black panel...I have been hanging onto the decals for many years and was actually surprised they worked with the clear coat. I will post the complete build ASAP. This will be my off-road cruiser bike unless someone wants to put it to better use, then I am open to offers. This is the best riding mountain bike I have ever been on.

Burn Baby Burn

Holiday weekends are always great. It's like a surprise day off that usually turns into an elaborate travel adventure and this year was no different. After work on Friday, I came home and began sorting all of my riding and camping gear that we would need for the extended weekend that would consist of a 24hr race followed by some socializing in Asheville with JutRut and Ty. It was going to be a full on family trip with Mrs. Pills and our four legged fuzzy son Gunnar. By the time I had everything packed into the car, it was nearly 10PM and I decided to take a short nap and leave early in the morning. 3:30AM came way too soon. We made some coffee and hit the road shortly after 4. The trip to NC was great, all the holiday traffic had made it to their destination and the roads were very easy to travel. We made it to the Dark Mountain Trails around 9:30 with time to set up camp and register. This year I was racing with a 5 man team, a first for me...have done many 4 man teams, but never a 5. Also, it has been a few years since the last time I competed in the Burn event. And without saying, this is still a well organized and most of all FUN event. The trails are not very challenging, but are tons of fun.

The race went well for us...we finished in 7th out of 25 teams which was respectable but nothing to write home about. My only goal was to turn some decent lap times and not be too far off the fastest times. Being the only rigid single speed on our geared full suspension team was a hoot. I was only a minute or so off of Jason which was fine with me...I was consistently in the 38 to 40 minute range with 1 lap at 41 minutes due to some heavy night traffic. I never feel good about being that guy that makes bad passes for a few shaved seconds. So in this instance, I followed a pretty quick female rider down the 2nd big decent with the brakes on...once we were in a safe spot, I quickly passed and went all out to pick up the lost time, with no avail.

The funny thing that I noticed most of all in this race was the hot laps are a thing of the past for me. Back in the day, I could bust out some fast lap times and felt pretty good about it, but usually fell short sometime in the early morning with the usual stomach cramps or something like that. This year, the team event almost seemed easy for me. I think that hitting the throttle for 35 to 40 minutes just got me warmed up, then I had to stop. We did one round of double laps and I actually had warmed up and started to feel good. I did get passed once during my second lap by someone who obviously was sitting around waiting their turn because I was not going slow and they came around me pretty quick. So I did the logical thing and latched onto his wheel and blasted the speakers even louder just to make sure he knew he did not drop me. I went back out a few more times and was the last to go out for one more right before the cut off time at noon. It was a lap for glory rather than purpose, but I did not want to miss out. It was actually a really nice lap, there were very few riders out on the course and the trail was in perfect condition.

All in all it was a really good time. The dog behaved better than I expected and the wife had a pretty good time hanging out with other bike widows from Chattanooga. Many thanks to Krystal's and the Scenic City Velo gang for adding me to their race roster. It was nice to be a hired gun even though we did not podium. But I will say, the competition was solid. I shot the breeze with the Dickman for while and even got heckled by him a time or two, but what's new there. We packed up and began the drive to Asheville shortly after the race was over.

We cut through the mountains between Boone and Old Fort to get to Asheville and this was absolutely gorgeous country. Curvy mountain roads and beautiful scenery were coupled with blue skies and puffy white clouds. Mrs. P took the wheel and I nodded off for a little while and caught up on my beauty rest. When we arrived at the Crow's Nest, we were greeted by Ty. We hung out for a little while then JutRut made it home. He was scoping a new pumptrack in the Asheville area...looks like another venue for the Enduro de Ocho...more to come on that. We decided to hang out at the Nest and grill out for the evening. After some killer chow, we checked out a graffiti and b-boy documentary then called it a night.

We woke up early and had some breakfast. Jut was going out for an all day ride from North Mills to Bent Creek and back, which would have been way more than I could enjoy, especially after a 24hr event. Bennett came over and he and Jut rolled out, Des and I took off and Ty slept in. We drove up to Craggy Gardens via the Blue Ridge Parkway and hiked around a bit to stretch the legs. We cruised back into town, stopped for lunch at Greenlife, then hit the road back to Chatty.
The weather has been pretty wet since we have been home, so the riding has been nil. Going to Nashie this weekend to hang out with the family and have a relaxing weekend. Thinking about driving back up to Knoxville for the Disc Burner 12hr event the following weekend...anyone interested in going, please drop a line.