vote

First time in 14yrs I...

This is an original Summit Co ballot box from 1930.

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cool NY bike messenger vid stuff

My co-worker sent me this. And to think my mom thought mountain biking was dangerous...


Empire from Empire on Vimeo.

Girls just wanna have fun

Click to Play

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Stock run

Trying to rest the mind after a 3rd straight week of bad luck racing the cross bike.

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Alina's b-day

Here are just a few shots.

Click here to see the full web album covering the Hills' visit and the ice skating b-day party.

 
 
 
 

Longs and Meeker

Ergon racer Jeff Kerkove posted this beautiful pic of Mt Meeker and Longs Pk, as he was riding south down to Boulder from the Fort. Gorgeous site. Every time i'm just a bit east of Boulder I get treated to this view.

Happy Birthday Alina!

happy birthday sweetie!! 3 incredible years. i get sappy just writing this, so I'll make it short. I was up late putting together her baby doll changing table. As small as it is, the thing weighs a ton, so it's pretty well built. She was very easy to wake up at 6:45 this morning, knowing she had a few gifts waiting for her. The first thing she did when she awoke, was sit up and say, "I'm three!" Cool moment. And 3 of the past 4 nights, she's slept in her bunk bed, though Helen or I have had to sleep in the top bunk also. I'll take it for now. We're going to hopefully give Zander her toddler bed. I'll have plenty more pictures tomorrow from her Elmo-themed ice skating party!

Wet snow fallin'

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Done?

Just yesterday I rode my mountain bike on this same trail.

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Breck pump track

The ever-progressive Town of Breckenridge's Open Space and Trails department, with the gracious donation of labor and materials from Bigfoot/MSC/Chris C., has created a cool little pump track near the ice arena. It is a hair small, with pretty tight-radius turns involved. But still a ton of fun, and boy is it a workout for my puny little upper body!

another toast to Toast

A great article about Josh Tostado in today's SDN. Once again proving to be not one of the best, but THE best ultra endurance (100+ mi) mtb racer around. How cool is it that he can train adequately while living in Breckenridge of all places!

Toast wins 24 hours of Moab

A big congrats to my friend Josh Tostado (Toast) for winning the Super Bowl of ultra-endurance racing, the 24 hours of Moab. Chris Eatough and Tinker Juarez were some of the big names there. About 9-10 years ago, I remember first riding with Josh. I remember how he always humbled us with his talents. One such example was when he used to ride his 30lb orange steel Kona hardtail. Even with that heavy bike, he never seemed to have any trouble riding the steep and loose last half-mile up S. Fork Rd. towards Georgia Pass. Way back in the day, before The Great Flume was aptly named...we called it the Magic Flume. Anyways, Josh is a man of many talents. He also has won the 24 hours of Montezuma's Revenge several times, including setting a course record. And he's an incredible skier too. About 6 years back he missed qualifying for the Winter X Games halfpipe by .5 points.

VeloNews posted a little interview about Toast here.

Images below courtesy of another Breck local, and talented sports photographer Liam Doran.

Xilinx, and what never was

talk about a crummy day for racing. i was really looking forward to this pro-style venue all week. As a result, along with the continued Indian Summer up here, I managed about 6hrs of riding this week. And even a bit of intensity mid-week. Nonetheless, we pull up to Xilinx and get a good parking spot. I hop on my bike to go register, and get about 20 feet before I hear the awful-but-familiar sound of my rear rerailleur seizing. I stop immediately, but the damage is already done. My hanger is bent and torqued. My derailleur cage plates are bent to hell and partially wrapped around my spokes. Beat beat. I pull back to the car, and then went over to the Mavic neutral service guys. Talk about a sweet hook...pro-level mechanics working on thrashed cross bikes for free! The tech saw my rear drivetrain and didn't look too optimistic. As it turns out, the Kona rear derailleur hangers are very soft metal. So he bent it as good as he could, but it still was too torqued and wasn't going to hold the chain line. So Mark Thompson is nice enough to offer me his pit bike. I swap out pedals, and get about ten yards before I HEAR THE SAME AWFUL NOISE. it can't be. it is. I manage somehow, without even shifting, to tear Thompson's rear hanger completely off the bike!! Un-freakin-believable. unfathomable. At this point, the thought of probably not racing wasn't as difficult as telling Mark, who was right there, what happened. He is a cool cat and was fine with it. Knowing I owed him a new der hanger (and maybe a new r. derailleur as well), I apologized about 3 times and then went back to my car. On the way back to see Helen and Alina and tell them my latest luck, I ran into Brett. He said I could ride Nat Ross's Spot singlespeed, complete with what seemed like a hybrid bullhorn/TT bar setup, AND a belt drive. Wow, not a good course for a single, but beggars can't be choosers, so I raised the seat a hair, spun it around the parking lot some, thanked him profusely, and rolled back to the start. Somehow I managed a weak 13th place call-up or so, which meant second row, out of about 10 rows of starters. Big field, but not surprising given it was in Boulder, at Xilinx, and a BCR (Best Cyclocross Rider) series race. I knew my good position would not last long with the long uphill start and whatever one gear I had to spin. Sure enough, the official started us, and a swarm of riders took off. I went from about 7th to 27th in the blink of an eye. I stood up (I did a lot of that in the race) and tried to respond, only to hear a noise from the drivetrain. Not a bad noise, but enough to make me slow down, and not want to break a third bike. The parking lot sweeper quickly spit us back onto the dirt, with the help of a cool HUP-HUP ramp. Then some BEAUTIFUL sweeping downhill turns on the grass, shoot over the gravel and then down into the grass. We made some more sweepers in the bumpy grass, across an abrupt, but small, muddy ditch, then back uphill for a very difficult 1/4mi drag up a singeltrack of grass and gravel. That was super tough on the singlespeed, forcing me to stand up and just rock my body back and forth, doing anything possible to eek out more momentum and power. On top of all this, my pedals were too tight, so dismounts were pre-mature and awful. Ironically, I really enjoyed the pavement sections, and the sand volleyball court, through which I rode 100% clean and fast 4 out of the 6 laps. The other 2 were slow, ugly, inefficient dismounts. Nice spectrum of form out there for me on the borrowed bike, but let me say I was just happy and grateful to be out there racing, on a fantastic course, after 2hrs of driving down from the high country. I don't know my result yet, but surely it wasn't in the top 25, maybe even top 40...who knows. But I did finish, I didn't break the borrowed bike, and I had a damn good workout. Probably a bit overboard for my lower back, but I'll deal. Best of all, my swollen and discolored ankle felt okay. I gingered a few places, but the brace and the tight shoe provided a nice amount of support. I think I am going to be in very good shape for the Boulder Cup this year.

S'ghetti

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Even better

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Thank you

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Look at me go

Click to Play

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Nice hardware

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Lodgepole swing

Pretty well made..

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Gold Hill trail

Steep son of a gun. But pretty good view from the lodgepole swing. Winter can't be too far away.

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goose egg, ankle, and no training wheels

that's about how much snow accumulation we rec'd this past wknd. We had only a dusting yesterday morning, when the news actually talked about 4-9". No complaining here, though we could use some snow to get more bookings coming our way. My ankle is sore, but walking will probably help it loosen up some. It is pretty swollen, but some ice and ibuprofen will help that. I am still pretty pissed about the guy who barreled in to me from behind in yesterday's race. What a jackass! A rookie move, not something you normally see in a 35 Open race. Maybe in the 4s, but the 35 Open race usually is quite full of good bike handlers. Regardless, I am ready to crush this guy next time. Hopefully I will just let my legs do the talking in the next race.

I am still ecstatic about Alina's riding her bike without training wheels. What a great milestone! It totally salvaged my crappy day after the crash and my sore ankle.

Red Rocks velo cross

great course they put together down at Bear Creek Lake Park. Left Breck in clear blue skies, with only a trace of snow on the side of the road. As we passed through Idaho Springs, we punched down below the cloud level, and were stuck in a 39 degree mist the rest of the time down on the Front Range. Registered with plenty of time to check out a few laps on the course. A short paved climb to sort things out before we dove onto some fun twisty singletrack before dumping us at a barrier for a short tun-up back to the parking lot. Then we dove into the volleyball sand pit, through the start/finish, and back through for some more twisty track by the lake. Pretty good start saw me in the top 6 or so, then I drifted back to about 10th on the second lap as someone stumbled through one of the sand sections that you could ride through. On he third lap through, a rider came barreling around me on the right. Soon his bar locked with mine, my hands slipped off the top of the bars, and we were locked together going off the trail. This fool managed to keep it upright, but I wasn't so lucky. My stem hit my knee pretty good, but the toughest part was rolling my ankle some. It feels well enough to ride on, but getting in and out of the pedals now is definitely too ginger to mess with in a cross race. I think it'll be fine next wknd. I hope so. It would also be nice if I accidentally cut off the other guy somewhere on the course.

On a posiitve note, Alina was riding her bike without her training wheels today on our street. In both the up and downhill directions, she has it down. Very cool moment. Even better was seeing her turn around to make sure I saw her progress.

Top of Heinous Hill

Light snow, mixed with rain. Mostly snow now. Way up here...only to hear the throttles of the dirtbikes.

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snowshoe hare

last night Scott and I drove out to the Dredge and rode Blair Witch and the CT. amazing night. a little on the chilly side (upper 30s), but the moon and stars were out, and the trails were dusty. We saw a snowshoe hare off the side of the Red Trail, in a very dense, northern exposure part of the woods. Perfect, moist, cool habitat for the elusive white rabbit, and also good habitat for its biggest predator, the lynx. We weren't lucky enough to see any lynx, however.

Playground climbing wall

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fire truck, and some new asphalt

Pete and Mistaya sent us a few photos of Alina they had shot this summer when playing with Wyndam. Here's a cool one of Alina and I believe Olivia sitting on the bumper of one of the town fire trucks.

and yesterday I saw a crew laying new asphalt on the upper reaches of French Gulch Rd in Wellington Neighborhood. This is b/c the town limits are extended out each summer as the n'hood expands up the gulch, as the whole neighborhood was annexed into town. New asphalt to a longboarder is like a powder day to a skier or boarder. Or riding new singletrack for a mountain biker.

Red Mesa trail

Scrub oak-lined, mesa top singletrack. Incredible.

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Plymouth Creek trail

New trail for me. Always a treat.

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Last ride on Barney Ford trail?

Could be...this is from a mere dusting from this past wknd, and it hasn't melted much on northern aspects.

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Frisco cross re-cap

it's late, so I'll make these quick. considering my legs never felt super strong or fresh either day, and I'm battling what I hope is the tail-end of a mild sinus infection....it was pretty fun.

Day 1 course-
road start, uphill, for about 1/4mi. Then hairpin left, downhill on the road, grab a bunch of brakes, sharp right onto wood chip singletrack. ride this bumpy flat til the sandy downhill chicane. right out by the softball fields, through some soft spongy grass, off-camber left hander onto the frisbee golf course, then another left and a sharp right down back on the grass. up near the ski lodge, then back up towards the disc golf course, sharp left and downhill on loose double track. hit a crappy, deteriorating run-up, then bang a left back around the ski lodge, through some more grass, over a triple barrier, hairpin right around the water fountain, through parking lot and back up the road grind.
Well, I had a great start and was riding top 3, even 1st after the 1st lap. But sure enough Mark Legg and Phenice and Wardell and all the big boys laid down some attacks early. What seemed like a tolerable start effort for me soon began to manifest itself in the form of a matchbook with few matches left....all after 3 laps. I exploded and faded from 3rd to about 8th in one lap. Then from there I was trying to ride with Mark and David, only to get shelled even off that group to settle in for 11th. Not too good, but another day ahead.

Day 2 course-
Same road climb to start, but only half as long, then a sharp left dumped us onto the wood chippy singletrack, popped back on the road after about 200yds, then up a steeper road for another 300yds, then left onto some dirt with a good chicane turn going right then left, and then a high-speed left sweeper, setting us up for the slow gravel pit slog, along with a hairpin to exit. Then it was onto a fast false flat up to the downhill chicane area from Day 1. This time the chicane was out, so we just powered down the loose dirt face and were by the softball field. One hairpin left behind home plate, then a set of quadruple barriers by the 3rd base line. Then down around the field to the disc golf course, this time with one left hairpin, then basically right back to the ski lodge and more grass. Then a very awkward off-camber barrier with quick turn and re-mount. Then around through the parking lot and back through the start road climb.
Basicallyt...remembering yesterday's shooting star performance, I held off right away. The start seemed a bit harder, and I soon was in about 10th place. A few spots too far back, but I wanted to save some matches this time. I settled in around 10th, basically traded punches with a few guys like Opperman and Overstreet, but in the end didn't have that last match needed to follow Overstreet's wheel as he left me to bridge up to Thompson's group. Still fun. I seem to be always in the top half of the field, but also often in no man's land, just off the initial selection. I am going to make that first group, for more than 10 minutes, in one of these races.

Frisco cross

a couple pics from Sunday.

 
 

Frisco Cross

I think these were from Saturday's race. It was a lot of fun, though Sunday's course was better.

 
 
 
 

snow dusting

winter isn't far away, I'm afraid to say. Frisco Cross re-cap and pic dump coming soon.

Dinner with the Hills

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ouchh

I've had a head cold, and a nasty headache...for 2 weeks now. Frustrating, esp. with the Frisco Cross wknd on tap. Oh well. Maybe I can race the cold out of my head.

Upper French Gulch

Incredible...and only 30min pedaling from "downtown" Breck.

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CU

Alina's grandparents gave her this. Colorado is going to need a lot of help this week against Texas, but at least they're playing at home.

 

lunch ride yesterday

another chamber of commerce day here in Breck. blue skies, yellow aspens, cool breeze, plenty of sun...and damn good mountain biking, as always. all this during a lunch break.