Sunday, December 27, 2009

Extreme Ride Club

Farrow has the DBD rides, I realized J-No and I have always called ours Extreme Ride Club. There is a story, but I can't talk about it, right Maury? This would be ride #5 or so this year.

As alluded to before in the comments area, J-No and I had plans Christmas Eve. I was up at 4am, out the door at 4:30 on the Rig. We proceeded to set tracks in the 3 inches of wet snow left the night before. Up the snowmobile portion of the Douglas trail was slow going. The temp was high which led to squishy snow with rutted out slightly harder snow underneath. My front wheel got kicked around while J-No was able to keep his Puglsey a little more straight. We both would end up tipping over at least once (I forgot the camera).

Gears finally adorned the bike but 1/4 the way through the combination of the worn middle chain ring from last year and packed snow suddenly made chain engagement impossible. The rest of the way would be big ringed. You would expect nothing less, no?

I finished up with 7 hours bike time for the day. A quick nap and it was party time at the folks. Presents, food, and freestyle rapping are all part of the tradition.

Christmas day was presents at our house. Santa had a high opinion of me this year. Let's just say that I am now too good to ride alloy rims on my mountain bike. Blingy. Pictures to come soon.

Hope all is Merry and bright, blah, blah, blah.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Riding

Remember when I used to talk about actually riding my bike? Well, the riding has been spotty as "situations" arise. It seems it is full on now as I hope not to completely embarrass myself at the Arrowhead 135. The Gary Risher Rig and I took the monster wheels for some snow riding.

Heading out for a 4 hour tour this weekend. Yes, I use the clock on the seatpost as a watch. Other than that my "zones" I stayed in could be accurately described as J.F.R.


Mayowood, Mayowood always up to no good. A beaten path made things easier, but lowering the tire pressure did the trick. Took a lap on the recently held microcross course. Was able to ride it without dismounting once. I must be amazing.


Woke up too flipping early so I could be out the door at 4:30am yesterday and be back by 7am. Recent snowfall of 2-3 inches made things more fun. The local road crews heard about my ride and brought out a plow for me to motorpace.


A picture is worth a thousand words, but looks like I only wrote fourteen.

I am not sure if I will be in optimum shape for Arrowhead, but things are looking positive. This has to be the best shape I have ever been in for the time of year that I normally am making belly jelly.

I am hoping to finally get some gears on this thing tonight as I am bogged down in anything harder than smooth flat pavement. Good training though, eh?

Christmas is almost here, get some work done before your day off, o.k.?

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Seasonal Singing

Merry Christmas!!



BTW

Don't be that guy.

So this one time in college I went to use the bathroom. There were 4 urinals, one was lower than the others, similar to this picture. The 3 high urinals were being used and the 4th lower one was not. As I prepared to make my way to the vertically challenged depository, I realized someone was in the bathroom before me. He was just standing, waiting. What was he waiting for? One of the high urinals. I gave a guy a look and then went about doing what I came to do.

Don't be the guy that is too good to use the kiddie urinal.

BTW.

Monday, December 14, 2009

So it starts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got a butt load of snow. Finally got to test out the snow wheels on the snowmobile trails. Met up with J-No at 5am Sat for 3 hours of Douglas trail riding. Snow was not ideal, but we did well. One thing I found is that his 26X3.7" tires on 70 mm rims have better float than my 29X2.5 tires on 47mm rims, but not a lot better. It was 7 degrees with a -10 windchill at the start and 9 degrees with a -3 windchill when done. Only taking in 350 calories caught up to me in the last 1/2 hour as I knew it would. I think I do stuff like that to see what my body will tolerate.

Oh, the bike still does not have gears on it so I was pushing some very low rpm's on the trails with my gearing. Legs were begging for lower gears to spin in the last hour.

BTW

Friday, December 04, 2009

PSA

We are in trouble...

The
population of this country is 300 million.


160
million are retired.



That leaves 140 million to do the
work.




There are 85 million in school.




Which leaves 55 million to do the work.





Of this there are 35 million employed by the federal
government.




Leaving 20 million to do the work.




2.8 million are in the armed forces preoccupied
with killing Osama
Bin-Laden.



Which leaves 17.2
million to do the work.




Take from that total the 15.8
million people who work for state and city
Governments. And that
leaves 1.4 million to do the work.




At any given
time there are 188,000 people in hospitals.



Leaving
1,212,000 to do the work.



Now, there are 1,211,998 people
in prisons.





That leaves just two people to do the
work.





You and me.



And there
you are,



Sitting on your ***,




At your computer, reading jokes..


Nice. Real nice.


Time for you to get back to work.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Help me out here.

I am looking for suggestions for a charity that is most worthy. I have several in mind, but I am partial to helping children who have been dealt a bad card (illness, abused, etc.). This is just the start of a bigger plan I have been thinking of for a long while, so please help me with suggestions.

And since everything needs a funny picture,

BTW.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Sorry Joe.

Mr. Friel,

.....I appreciate you helping my riding structure again this year. Just like the previous years I am upping my "yearly hours". In accordance to your ways, a plan has been set out to not embarrass myself at the Arrowhead 135. Yesterday marks the start of my second week in the base period.
.....This is where I owe you an apology. You see, you want base to be primarily long slow miles following your guideline for hours in a week. Well, I did ride or workout the required number of hours, but they were not all slow. Saturday there was a local "micro" cross race. It sounded fun so I lined up with about 10 other guys to take part in the free race that was only a mile from my house. I figured it would be fun as I was on my Rig all single speeded out and with the big monster snow wheels.
.....The start was relaxed, and I was not there to try to crush people as it was all in fun. There was a whole smattering of people on single speeds, mountain bikes, and such. One local made it out on his Belgium cross bike and skinsuit. A far cry from my bike and 15 year old jersey and tights. We all started out together, but 3 of use pulled away with me in third. My gearing was limited, so most of the course I was just spinning it, enjoying it. Eventually, I pulled into the front and built a gap. I was never attacking, it just seemed that I continued at my same pace while others slowed during the 45 minutes of racing.
.....I know, I know Joe. There should not have been a race according to you, but it was fun. I attached my award above for you to look at. Not being a beer drinker, I let the Wookie take over the duty of polishing this off. I still don't understand the fascination with such things, but I am just one person in this world. A fire was made and a hotdog consumed before riding another 3 hours. Yes, they were slow and steady.

I look forward to working with you more this year. Have a Merry Christmas.

Yours Truly,
Charly