you know you're a biker when...

Ok, so instead of another list of generalizing remarks about cyclists, shaved legs and going "long and hard" I simply offer a picture, more proof that my Dad and I are obsessed with bikes

the Christmas Vibrator

Yeah, I said it.

Ok, so my grandma is in town the entire time I'm back in Walla Walla. Given the combination of her being from the mid-west, using hearing aids and 87 there's bound to be a few misunderstandings.

There's a ton of these stories that I could tell but I'll only burden you with the best one for now. My mom was out shopping and decided it would be a good idea to get my grandma (my dad's mom) one of those vibrating/back massaging pads you put in a chair. (you know what I'm talking about right?). Anyway, she really liked it and everything but she was talking to my dad's sister today and said "Gary and Helen got me a vibrator for Christmas..." All this time I'm sitting right across the table from her and my dad is sitting to my left. It was all I could do to keep from laughing right there. Anyway, whenever my dad or I sit down in the chair where that pad/massager/vibrator is we try and make it sound as...well, you know...as possible. Oh, the joys of old people...

There's a few more stories to tell like the "getting to first base" and "shorts" story but I'll save those for another time...maybe

slowest. ride. ever.

Ok, so I know what I took about two weeks off riding as a transition period and because of finals but I didn't think I was this out of shape. Today it took me 2.5 hours to complete a 37 mile ride with about 1100 ft of climbing, not that much. Besides the fact it was an exhausting ride and I really didn't feel like being out there I saw 18 wild turkeys,

saw a gorgeous sunset,

and rode on the brand-new highway which hasn't been opened to traffic yet. Ok, so I probably broke some law by doing that but who cares, I was tired. Overall, way too slow but I put the time in and some days that's all you can do.

the life of a redneck (Eastern Washington version)

On my ride today I was reminded of the cast difference between Portland and the "other" side of the mountains. Portland, the city of Subaru Outbacks and Toyota Prius, liberals, bikes, PBR and fit people stands in start contrast to "hick-town Walla Walla" and it's truck-loving, gun-toting, conservative people. This hit me when I got passed by a Fork truck proudly displaying a "McCain-Palin" sticker. Now, I don't have anything against this but it's been a while since I've seen one of those sticker, especially in Portland. Another reminder of this was when we went to pick up a Christmas tree today. Seriously, we drove half a mile through town like this (picture below) and it was considered perfectly normal. My dad's comment when we got out of the van "hey look, it's an air freshener! We may have a hard time hanging it from the rear view mirror though..."

what does $20,000 look like?

Ok, so it may not be $20,000 of money but that stack of paper represents what $20k can buy you at the University of Portland. Kind of unimpressive isn't it?

Anyway, the semester is over and I finally have a chance to breathe for once. This semester was way too busy but I enjoyed every moment of it (well, mostly). I'm going to miss cyclocross but I'll get over that. For now it's back to Walla Walla, finishing up all my summer projects, and turning my brain off for 3 weeks.

mountain biking

So, after these past two weeks of stress and s*** hitting the fan constantly it was time to do something different. How about mountain biking? Now I'm not talking about gravel roads, rolling hills and gentle singletrack through the trees I'm talking about, "hey, let's start at that cliff, work our way over there, then drop down and ride over a ton of boulders." Yeah, it was an epic ride but that wasn't even the start of it. On top of all of this, it's my first real mountain ride and I'm riding a borrowed S-Works Enduro SL. I figure, if you're going to do it, may as well do it right and a bike worth $8k seemed like a good way to go about that.

When we met this morning we got all the bikes and gear loaded up, hopped in the car, and...nothing. The car wouldn't start. Now, the car had been driven and working 10 minutes before this. After 45 minutes and two phone calls to parents we decided it was a sign that we should probably be studying instead of riding bikes. As we're pushing the car to a parking spot Stephen decides to try one last time. Now, everything in drivers ed tells you it's damn near impossible to roll-start a car but somehow we managed to do it without even trying. Whatever, let's load up the bikes and head out.

I'm not going to say the drive was uneventful but it wasn't anything unusual. It's the Gorge,

it's winter. It rained, froze, and at one point we had the wheels turned 45 degrees to the left and we kept going straight. There were a ton of wrecks and a bunch of state troopers out but they were all in the west-bound lane.

When we got out of the car and started unloading the bikes at the trailhead we noticed a 1/2" coat of ice on everything that was facing the direction of travel.

Forks, tires, handlebars, housings, everything. It looked pretty neat but was a sign we were in for a chilly ride.

After ripping through the trees, slipping on snow and leaves we made our way out into the open. Now you have to be familiar with the Gorge and the huge, open slopes on either side of the river to fully appreciate what we did. The first lap we ripped down these open roads that for all practical purposes, went straight down hill. Beside the fact that I stopped feeling my toes 30 seconds in to the ride it was awesome. The view was spectacular and was exactly what I needed.

After shuttling bikes back to the top of the hill we all decided to race the car to the bottom of the hill. It takes the road; we take the trails. We lost, but only barely. At a fork in the road Chris says, "ok, we can go that way which is more downhilly and get raped by rocks, or we can rip that trail at Mach 8...f*** it, I'm going Mach 8." And that we did; we absolutely tore it up.

At the bottom of the hill we found a frozen lake. And guess what guys (especially engineers) do in this situation. "Hey, let's throw rocks on it!" This of course escalated into finding the biggest rock we possibly could and trying to roll it in. We failed but in our minds it worked.

Overall, awesome day. Aside from the speedometer, tachometer and ABS giving out on the way back it was uneventful. They came back eventually so no big deal. What started off as another let down turned into a fun day.

Now to go study for those finals. Oh yeah, Bikes: 3; People: 1

Operation Save Face: abandoned

Well that ended just about the worst way that it could have. While none of the possible endings were bad this one was probably the least desirable. Instead of receiving a straight answer I'm abandoning this one. I have no problem working (even working hard) in order to get what I want but I will by no means force a situation. There's times when nothing goes your way. I'm not saying this to be melodramatic but I try and observe all the signs around me. Sometimes things go your way and sometimes they don't. When things don't go your way I have no problem pushing a little but when all the little signs in life seem to point away from your current goal I believe it's time to abandon that goal (or at least redirect attention). That's where I am. The signs pointed away far outnumber the ones pointed towards.

So, back to bikes it is. They've proved to be a lot more reliable than people at this point

USGP race report

The US Gran Prix of Cyclocross, the last race of the season. I wake up and look outside, it's about 20 degrees and the wind is gusting up to 25mph. A beautiful day to ride 5 miles through glass-strewn streets in piercing wind to a race where I don't have backup wheels and where the people who've been supporting me all season won't be there, right? NOT! The entire way down there I tried talking myself out of racing, "you're cold," "this wind sucks," "your friends aren't going to be there," "what if you flat on some of this glass before you get there," "you didn't race last week and didn't touch this bike for over a week and a half, are you really ready for this?" On and on it went. It didn't get any better once I arrived at PIR. The wind was still f***ing cold and blowing even harder. I tried warming up but everytime I turned around to ride into the wind my kneecaps decided to do jumping jacks to try and thaw themselves out. Eventually I hide out behind an out building a bust out the embrocation, the hottest I have. I swear I used about an 1/8th cup on my legs just to try and warm them up before I raced. Well, it did the trick. Aaron showed up and grabbed my stuff from me (THANK YOU) and I headed to the start line.

Instead of the normal random number call up like every other race where I have a chance of muscling my 138lbs towards the front the official called up every racer INDIVIDUALLY! Who does that? Also, they staged the singlespeeds first, again, WHY? I look up from my starting position and just see a sea of helmets. I turn around and see I'm two rows from the end, just freaking awesome. Upon later inspection it was noted that there were 128 racers in my category (not counting singlespeeds) and I started about 110th. The whistle finally goes off and I start the slog through the masses.

Ok, so besides getting a terrible starting position I had a terrible start. Yeah, there were only about 20 people behind me but I think 10 of them passed me in the opening sprint. I just need to learn to ball up and push my way through while I can. Then again I'm most afraid of a crash in the opening sprint so I'll stick with cautious for now and pass people out on the course. The being said, I spent the entire first lap waiting for gaps to open and darting into them. After we rolled through the first lap full of trash-talking, line-bumping a-holes with way too nice of bikes I finally caught my break on the road section. Peace out old guys, you can bump and fight each other for 80th place. At this point let's just say I had the legs and wheels they didn't. I stood up and took off, they didn't have a chance.

(second lap? Whenever I had room to finally pass people)

The next few laps kind of melted together but I recall throwing my chain twice, walking over the handlebars in an epic almost-faceplant and doing not one but TWO double-ejects out of my pedals after hitting a sandy/muddy section of the course. I managed to stay up the entire course but the chain throws probably cost me a few spots. Oh, I almost forgot to mention my rear tire. I started the morning with 42 psi in it. Halfway through the race I was bottoming it out (~20psi). This loss in pressure caused some problems on corners and I know that I lost 2 spots because of that at the very end but hey, it's racing, stuff happens.

I checked my rear tire pressure at the end of the race: 16 psi, probably cost me a few spots. Oh well, it was a fun race. I didn't place as highly as I would have liked (38th) but considering my starting position and what I had to work with it was a decent race.

Well, my cyclocross season is now over. I had a good run this year and I'm looking forward to it again next year assuming I don't get bored out of my mind with road racing. I'll probably type up a season recap at some point but right now I'm tired. I'm going to bed.

(edit): Crap, I forgot to mention; a special thanks to Craig for coming out and cheering for me. I'm glad you were able to make it out and see one of these!

(hey, I finally learned how to corner!)

Both photos courtesy of Oregon Velo

end of season, ceramic and the Last Stand

This past school week absolutely sucked. 3 tests, 2 projects and a few engineering assignments thrown in there really took it out of all of us. Let's just say I'm happy it's the weekend, well kind of. There's only one more week of actual classes left, then finals week and I still haven't accomplished everything I wanted to this semester. Isn't that how it always goes though? Oh well, I have accomplished a lot in the classroom and on the bike so I can't really complain about too much, it just sucks it's almost over. To be exact, 3 semesters and it's over.

One bright spot of this week was getting my front race wheel back up and running. One of the bearings had seized up after the race at Kruger's so it was sitting unridable for a week and half. Instead of replacing it with the same old steel bearings I had an ingenious idea. Why not replace it with something that will last longer, roll with less resistance AND won't corrode? And thus entered the ceramic bearings. Yeah, I know it's a little ridiculous but it's amazing how smoothly it rolls.

My last (and probably biggest) cyclocross race of the season is coming up on Sunday and I'm nowhere even close to ready for it. Not racing last Sunday really threw me off and I've been trying to get rides in this week when school permits. The course was open for pre-riding today so I headed down there. I have never seen so much carbon in one place! I have to keep reminding myself that this is also a UCI race but it's intimidating as hell when I guy rolls past you on a bike worth $8k and everyone is on deep-dish carbon tubulars FOR A PRE-RIDE! Oh well, I'm racing the OBRA B category and I'll probably get my "shit rocked" as Stephen would say but we'll see.

Finally, Operation Save Face is in the final stages. Failure or abandonment appears imminent. I'd like to say it's possible for me to walk away from it but abandonment doesn't sit well with me so I'll probably beat it into a bloody pulp until it results in failure. Again, I'm going to say "one more try" but I think I said that last time (yeah, attempt 7 didn't yield a concrete result). It may be time for the last stand which will be very telling. Hey, no one ever said life was easy, right?

I (heart) my cross bike

Today was my first ride on my cross bike since that god-awful, mud-slogging, pumpkin-bashing, grass-and-mud slop fest of a race out at Kruger's Farm. It was by far one of the best rides I've had in a long time. I could tell that I hadn't ridden that bike for a week and a half but my muscles did a good enough job of reminding me. Oh, and not to mention the fact that it was a crystal-clear day outside in which I was able to see all 4 of the mountain surrounding Portland when I woke up. That fact alone made it a great day.

Ok, this post is all over the place so while I'm at it let me just mention that I'm getting really sick of school work. It know, it's only one more week of classes and then finals but I'm tired of doing all the work on "group" projects.

Anyway, enough of that. Life is pretty good; as a side-note: Operation Save Face (if you don't know what it is you don't need to) Attempt 6 (?-I lost count anymore) was not a complete failure but yielded the same result as all previous attempts: nothing negative yet nothing positive. Sometimes it's better just knowing one way or the other isn't it?

Life is still going full throttle but I wouldn't have it any other way now would I? Cyclocross season is over this coming Sunday so it's almost time to transition into lame-ass, don't-get-me-muddy-I-have-an-expensive-bike, road training season. I'm going to miss cyclocross a lot.