So much to catch up on, happy new year!

So I'm sitting here with a 100º fever, hacking my lungs up and wishing I could ride my bike. I don't really feel like writing much, partially because this headache isn't letting me think so clearly, and partially because I'm too feble to type. However, I have so much to catchup up on for my large crowd of 3 or 4 followers, I feel obligated to tell you about the past week. It will probably help take my mind off how horrible this sore throat is.

Okay I won't mention my sickness again. But if you have the choice, take my advise and don't get the flu. It's rather bad.

Well, to start things off, during the "last night of the world" (December 21st) I finally did what I've always wanted to do. No, I didn't get to round house kick a werwolf or go haywire in a wine store with a baseball bat. But I did get to jump over fire!

It's wimpy I know..

It was pretty great. Later on we tried looking for some meteor that was so pose to be passing by the earth and the moon at 11:16 or something. I believe we stared at a lone star for about 30 minutes until we realized it was a hoax. Imagine that. "Oh wait it just moved!", "I think it's getting brighter!", "Its defiantly flickering differently than the other stars!". Nope. Well, I guess stars play tricks on you.

I've moved on temporarily from the pink grips. Though the pink grips were the best ever, I've Decided to match for once in my life. Part of my christmas present to myself. Exciting I know.

This is a clock.

I started making more bicycle art! That is a clock. You know, the things with dials that turn on a motor. Some of you digital aged whippersnappers might learn about them in history class one day. 

Modern art?

And that would be "modern" art. Because it evokes an emotion, it tells a story, and connects with it's viewer. It's very expressionistic, and it helps the viewer decide what the art is about on a very personal level of profound idealist values.

Just kidding, thats a load of crap. I made it how it is because it looks super dope.

Oh Christmas I road 30 miles at Colonel Beatty Park to help work up my appetite. Not the best park for mountain biking, due to it's inconsiderably insane amount of roots. I believe there are more roots in the 5 miles of that park then there are in 3 full laps of Shermans Branch. Anyhow, 6 laps later and I was boarder than a 2x6. (Haha im so funny) At least I got to ride my bike on christmas though, I would have rather rode at any other trail anywhere ever, but Colonel Beatty is the only trail I don't respect enough to not ride within 24hrs after rain.

lovely mud lines.

I recently picked up a trainer from the shop. It's so pose to be for my Dad to help with recovery from his broken foot injury. But it's been neglected in the garage for a little too long. So I decided to try it out, despite how many friends have told me how awful trainers are, I found it was rather nice. Or at least it was nice because I was watching breaking bad. lol

Yea, I thought I looked good too, so I set up the tripod...

But seriously, It would have been the stupidest thing ever if it wasn't for my laptop.

And finally, I hit my goal! Actually I went over my goal! by a mile... And it was just a day before I came down with this flu. Good for me. Okay now I'm going to go sleep because I feel like crap. Oh sorry I wasn't so pose to mention that again.

Whoooho!

Ouchie

So far I've stuck well to the whole plan of getting to one thousand miles. Currently, with photographic evidence...

Now if I just don't get too lazy with my new netflix subscription, which bytheway, rocks. But has left me sleeping in to like 11am. That's so abnormal for me, but, but, breaking bad is just soo good!

I did have a slight setback sunday. Which is really calling it more than it is. But I needed an excuse to not ride.

As I was about to enter the trail at the park, like, I havent even seen the stupid trail yet, I had this stupid crash. It was like so stupid. The trail is right off the park road, and I usually swing way left in the road, and cut a sharp right turn into the trailhead so I don't loose much momentum. I do this so often, I don't think about it much anymore. It's like one of the absid minded things, or a routine of some sort, you don't have to think of how you're going to do it, muscle memory just kicks in and you don't really focus on what is it your doing.

Anyhow, back to the story, I did this exact same "routine turn" and immediately was thrown to the ground. My ignorant self was absent to the fact that the ground was still wet. Wet surfaces tend to be slicker than dry ones. So to look on the bright side of life, my wounds are probably not as bad as they could be if the ground was dry and a bit rougher? lol

Showers have felt like mean people shooting acid into my skin or something

After a few terribly uncensored sentences of which hopefully nobody could hear, I quickly got up, and tried not to look like a noob. Walked my bike to the edge of the road and sat down, trying to shake off the sting. Right as I did so, a small truck drove by me. I pretended to not noticed, I hate when people ask If im okay when I so clearly am. It feels like your mother asking if you need your diaper changed or something of the sort. The truck passed, and I was like "sheww, they don't care!" but then it came to a stop. And turned around... -_-

I put on the biggest phony ass smile you'd ever seen. I said, "Thanks so much for turning around, but I'm quite alright, just shaking it off for a moment." The lady said, "Ohhh, we thought you were stretching at first, but then it looked like you were hurt, bless your heart, you look terrible!" It was then I noticed I was actually bleeding. Blah blah, more fake talk, they left. It did feel nice to know random people care though. I'd surly stop for someone who looked hurt, it just feels weird and so embarrassing when you're the one on the ground. Thanks random people.

Too bad it wasn't like a herd of hot college girls in their first year of nursing school that stopped. I would have been like awww damn, im so hurt, help me out? Will you drive me to the bandaid store or something? Idk. Better luck next time. 

So apart from the stings and all, my body was really sore the next two days, and I just didn't ride. But I did come close to a full week of riding. Six days in a row is the best riding I've done in a long long time.

• 12 laps at Cornal Beatty
• 4 laps of sherman
• 1 lap of backyard

I thought I'd be sick of beatty's stupid roots by now. I am sick of them acctually. Guess I just came to accept them. But I'm looking forward to some laps at rocky river, and lake norman soon! Soon as this wet stuff disappears again...

The olden golden days

Was taking one of those "flash back" moments on facebook today, you know, when you look at pictures from like 4 years ago.. Well I ran into this video. Really remind me of how bad a dirt jumper I was. Pretty much the said reason I took up XC racing. And why I'm a helluva lot better off not making jumps...




*that scream...*

Watch this next one I put together a few years back. LOL I was better at riding children's bikes. Although this is the second edit, its much shorter and more bearable. Here is the original video for you folks that are mildly entertained.



More Mountain Bike Videos on Pinkbike

Anyhow, I still have my trusty little 12in hot rock. I'm sure my father would like it out of the garage, but thats like the sickest little bike ever. I still ride it on occasion. I think it would be amazing to give to my first child too. You know, to be all like, "Your father road this bike, ride with honor kid". I don't know. In fact, Ill probably have some custom, independent fab frame, custon I9 12in wheels, and little 40mm disk brakes for my kids bike. That would be like the ultimate shizz. All the other kids in the neighborhood would be so jelly.  And he would learn to ride clipless before he even got to kintergarden. When races hold those free one lap kids race, I'd so be "that dad" who give his son hammerjell shots and makes sure his kid lines up first and all. Make sure he wins by at least like half the time it takes most the kids.

If my kid doesn't like to ride bikes im going to shoot myself no kidding.

Finally, last day of school was monday! I've since then ridden my bike every day! (Thats only 3 days..)

Short story to explain main story. Last january, I bought my first bike computer. Can you believe it? I spent like 4 years not knowing my lap times, average speed, max speed, and all the stuff that takes the fun out of riding bikes. This devise I purchased should pretty much just be called a DDDD or 4D, Digital Douchbag Data Devise. Because all it truly does is either make you a blabbering brat who talks smack about their average speed and fast lap times, or takes a "casual ride", and reminds you that you're going under your average speed, and the "casual ride" then becomes competitive and way overworked. Or maybe that only applies to me, but this little red square on my stem hasn't done much more for me.

It has however, reminded me how lazy I've been since January 1st.

Only 726 miles since the beginning of december. In 11 months I should have done much more, and I'm a little disappointed in my performance. So, if effect to help train for the Winter Short Track, and to at least hit a somewhat respectable about of miles, I making myself ride to 1000 miles before the year is up. 

With no school, this should really be easy. But we will see. As of today, Dec 13th im at 834. But I only started riding "seriously" tuesday, the day after school. I plan on blowing my goal out of the waterpark. So wish me luck, or haggle me for being a lazy bowl of leftovers, and tell me to ride more. It's much appreciated. 

I also, plan on doing some more night rides, But not with my Mako 200. 

It defiantly didn't just fall off the roof of my volvo into the road because someone like myself forgot to put it in my bag, no. I was just riding along the trail, and the next thing I know, the defective pice of shit falls apart like those oatmeal cookies I tried to make last week. 

But of the other hand, good job NR, a mere 2 tons of car and the body is still intact! But on the upper hand of life, the 200 lumens of projected light this little guy put out was like worthless compared to the 750 from my mini newt. So it realistically would have just been neglected in the trunk of my car. 

Also, I broke down and ordered another pair of crank brothers because my current ones, well, they creak, and look like this, when they originally looked like this. No matter how often they fail me I continue to use them... silly me. And in the meantime I went ahead and replaced my cleats, and it's pretty obvious why...

State Champ Recap

Race recap. Got there 3 hours early. Got to the start line only 5 minutes till. Bad idea. Started in the back. Gotta remember those sandbaggers love to line up early. Anyway, crashed within first 30 seconds of the start. Some kid just straight up unclipped his floppy legs and tumbled himself to the ground right in front of me... leaving me with two not so awesome options. First would have been to ride over his mangled bike and body. He crashed so he can deal with it and I can stay on my bicycle. but that would have been so so unsportsmanlyish.  But I ceased up and crashed into him. The second option would have been to do that turning thing I learned about last time, and simply ride around him. Silly me. -_-

Back on my feet, or bike rather, I slowly raced my way from about 3rd to last, to somewhere in the top 20's or so. The corse was pretty awesome. One run up, a set of barriers, and of corse the sand pit. The sand pit was awesome. Saw plenty of crashes and experienced a few more myself. All in all, only 13 fellow sandbaggers finished before me sunday. I was satisfied with that.

 I was utterly unimpressed with charlotte spectators.. Only 2 people haggled me the entire race. And no handups were given. A mer "you suck" from like 5 other people would have been appreciated.

I tried sprinting the guy in front of me at the end. But he had like a 30 meter lead. So that didn't really work out, but it did result in an cool photograph showing my intensity. But I don't quite remember making that look on my face...

Photo by Weldon Weaver

Over all very fun race. I was also very pleased to have beat the evil ginger wearing a giant green sombrero.

My friend Timmy

Some of the great escapades of the sand...

Murhahchahah - Photo by Stacy - but with my camera

I spent an hour cleaning out sand from areas of my bicycle today. Oh well, just an excuse to spend quality time with her.

On to a different subject. Orbea bikes. I can't say I hate them, because I have never ridden one. But still, they made some ugly stuff for a while. And I happend to find a little mistake on their website.

Chain boner?

Junk. Complete junk. Okay, not really. But I posted this on their FB page with a link to a website showing how to loosen stiff links. Can't wait for a response. Hopefully they don't just delete it.

Also, whats up with the Orbea logo being so identical to eastons (easton alloy) EA mark? Geeze go and find some originality guys. Or whoever ever came second.

hmmmm, fishy...

In any case I won't be owning an Orbea anytime soon. 

 I would rather ride a Target, thruster fixie...

Which recently, sense monday, I do.

Equipped with real handlebars. 

 I immediately took off all brakes, chain guards and other plastics like reflectors and anything related to the word safety. Mostly with a hammer, but with a wrench when required. And then road around doing fixie skid stops like all the cool hipsters do. 

Fifteen minutes later, 

What a piece 

I had enough life risking hipster fun for one night.

My bike so hipstuhh, its too cool for air.

YES! My lights arrived!! One Night Rider mako 200 for the bar, and a Mini Newt 750 for the helmet! lets kick it yall!

Road at cornal beattys tonight, caught up with ma pal Jake, got really cold, saw a few opossum specimens climbin trees, and found out how super awesome 750 lumins is! Like, super awesome. I no longer have to wear my crappy little camping head lamp and crash into stuff cuz it dimly lights the path. No this bad boy is brighter than day yall. I don't even need the extra one on the bars, but it's still very nice.  

Also took some photos of myself for Stacy. No, not those type of photos... He said he wanted to do a blog bio on me and needed some with my bike. So I got creative. At first I was going to do me and some shots of the mountain bike. But then I was like nahww, and brought out my Huffy 3 speed. 

Never thought I would enjoy owning a huffy, but never less, let me introduce you to the great sea pines.. My pride and joy. 

Found by me and adopted from the recyclery, this mighty steed of mine comes with many great safety features, including,

Rusty spots.

faulty welds

and flat tires coming off the bead

My bike is so hipstuhh, its too cool for air.

If you own many bikes like me, and always obsessively compulsively fret over every scratch, nic, spec of dirt, or not to mention the performance of said bikes. Then you know that much time is spent laboring over your precious two wheel companions. I'd say it's nice to finally have a bike that I just don't give a hoot about what happens to it, and also to know that I need not take any care of it. I never have, and never will work on or repair this bike. If someone else would like to pump up the tires and see if they hold air. Be my guest. But these rims have held up to my standards well enough. Ridden down multiple stairs and still true to the eye. 

I would like, in the near future, to race the sea pines. Preferably at a cross race with many spectators. My goal would be to finish the race. And ultimately, beat just one person. Make them feel so foolish for even trying to race their bike, cuz some kid on an 1980's, 45 lb, vintage, flat tired, huffy beat them. I don't usually think this meanly, but I would like to do it. Just once. 

Me on it. found a axe, thought id look hot with it.

Endo!!

More things to be a fixin. Like myself.

Woke up with a sore throat this morning. Reallllyyyy hope I don't get sick before the Cross State Championship Sunday... So in a desperate measure to make sure I don't, I swallowed about 2000mg of Vitamin C and gargled some vinegar. For gods sake. Dont gargle vinegar. No matter what someone says about it working on sore throats... Just don't. 

In other news, my Night Rider lights should arrive through mail delivery today!! More on that when actually delivered.. 

On another note, I went for a cruze through Sherman's woods on Saturday. Ended up getting a little too self confident in the width of my bars. Being a narrow 660mm as they are, I don't understand how I get myself into all this trouble. Anywho, only a second after the time of clipping a tree, all of me and my bicycle was in mid air right at the moment I should be thinking about turning. You know, that thing you do to avoid hitting trees. Yeah anyways its called turning, and you can't do it if none of your wheels are on the ground. Especially the front one. So I was hovering off the ground just a fraction too high, directed towards a rather large congregation of trees. Why they decided to get in my way is beyond me. But I guess they just HAD to hang out there on saturday... geesh nature.

The collision happened rather quickly so I don't exactly remember how I may have looked with my face compressed against that particularly large tree. Or exactly how my bike managed to stay under me, but I tried to calm down and bring some feeling back into my hand as quickly as possible. I wanted to still look halfway decent on my bike as those "noobie guys" I had just passed were about to re pass me... crap.

"Oh hey, yeah I'm fine guys, just a little mishap, haha, thanks!"

*waited 3 seconds, continued to moan.. Okay enough wussin around, I shook it off and examined my bike. Bike is fine to my standards. Second Priority, examine self. Sweet! look what I found!

And then I was all like, "wait, theres nothing sharp around here. What did I cut it on?"

Didn't realize what is was till I got back to the car, and unfortunately it was nothing super BA like a brake rotor, or sharp chainring. It was this fagget little ziptie holding ma cables together... lame.

So file down my zip-ties. Got it.

I also came away with this little dude. Nothing hardcore, just an excuse to put up a picture of my quad since you already seen my calf. 

On an extra other note, remember my sad broken licens plate? That changed this morning!

I dug around for some epoxy for a while, found an old tube and spent like 10 minutes scraping off old glue obstructing the hole of fresh glue. Then I cut up a yogurt lid for a new backing. And glued away!

The epoxy said like 1 minute setup. And a minute had come by like a minute ago and Im not patient.  So I dug around some more and found some tubes of like older than me jb weld. Okay ill give that a shot.

Der I fixed it!

Whalah! Im back in business!  

And then I was like oh yeah I forgot to clean up! And there goes my flat head screwdriver. Forever stuck on a tacobell lid...

That is all.

Bandit Cross, Schwag, and broken stuff.

Headed out to renni for a festive "ride" or really an unsanctioned cross race today. In spirt of working off turkey and such and not participating in the black friday mob of shopping, I went out to the Bandit Cross Race put on by the great Bike Shop Girl. Race was super fun, I think I did well, But in Arleigh's words, "I only care who comes in first, if your second, third, or fourth it doesn't matter." Though I believe I came in fourth..ahem, I mean last...

There was a wide variety or riders, from the super fast cross guys, to mountain bikers, to a man with a child trailer thing...

Whadda boss!

I also got some free Schwaggg. At this age of my life im not quite sure how to use this foreign device some call a flask, though Im sure I can find a purpose for it.

And on the down side of life, as I was going down the short track and decided to get some gnarly "air" off the creekcrossing...

And not many, if any shops carry the right size of double butted, straight pull, silver spokes. So it will be a week or two until I can get a replacement.. In the mean time I'll just put on a crappy wheel from Mr. Jose.

Also, Me in Forttthhhhh, Last...

Photo creds to Stacy.

Oh yeah on the double down side of life, I broke my awesome license plate trying to drill another hole in it for the zip ties... #ohwellsuckforme

Its that time to be thankful!

Good afternoon, and Happy Thanksgiving! Started the day off just right with a little 30 mile cruze around marvin. Great to see so many people out riding this morning. I have to say, riding on holidays is the best. I've dedicated myself to riding on every holiday this year. Just two more to go!

Let me introduce you to my family. Not my immediate family, my adopted dear little children. Stumpy, Cadd, and Jose. They would also like to wish you a happy Thanksgiving. Just look how happy they all are together!

Stumpy was adopted last may of 2011. She has been the best mountain bike ever. Originally 26lbs out of the box, I whiped this little 29 inch brute into shape over the past year. She's currently sub 24, 23.8 on a good day.

Next is the my lovely new Cannondale, only been in the family 5 or so weeks. But she's fit in quite well, Jose is not too happy about her arrival, as hes been a little neglected the past couple weekends. Got some slicks on her this morning for a road ride. But I'll have the knobies back on before tomorrows little race.

Jose, has been a good commuter/beater steed since around February. Though last month we went on a 180 mile tour on the Green Brier River Trail. Perfect trail for a single speed. I thought I might be regretting it but it was really quite the breeze. Not to mention we took 5 days to do it..

Super chill trip, did it with the guys from work. Just check out the falls colors.

Weather was spectacular for 70% of the trip. The other percent? Well yeah.. 

Lets just say the river was hella cold for washing off.

My phone was dead during most the trip, so I dont have photos of this one town we stopped in. But there was no joke, a roadkill cookoff festival... Only in West Virginia Right? And no, I didn't try any. 

Now get off the computer and go work off that Turkey!