Bike Bling
Finally a little bit of Dura Ace. A little bit of Ti to replace my sketchy 105 dérailleur
Bike Repair
no not mine, I shot feature of some kids working on some bikes. I really like some of these frames and now I am back looking for another standalone I shot a over a year ago of some differnt kids working on a bike. Yes the kids did the bikes rolling, but they have have gotten a little bit of help afterwards from the neighborhood roadie wielding a hex key set a set of tire levers and the oh so handy floor pump that lives in back of my car.
In the caption I added a note about the winner of that day’s stage in the Tour but the copy editors didn’t approve and nixed it. I even CQ’d Schumacher and Gerolsteiner
Bike Across Kansas: Part I
Well the BAK. It was quite the adventure.
I had planned my flights with a not much fudge factor, so when I got to Birmingham and I had trouble with the American Gate Agent checking my bike box and then my flight being delayed I started getting a touch antsy. Then I got a call from Mom asking me if I had heard anything about the storms. Apparently there was the “storm of the century” brewing in Kansas ready to spit millions of tornadoes directly into the path of incoming jetliners.
Well I managed to work out the car details where Dave and Brandy graciously picked up my car at the airport despite a sketchy key copy. That way I didn’t have to pay eleventy million dollars in car parking fees.
We landed late in Chicago and my 50-minute layover became a ten-minute one. Luckily I had on running shoes and had been practicing my speed-work so I did some Chicago Midway Intervals and made it in time to board. Alas the flight was delayed . . . for hours. (By the way do you ever feel like a jerk when you run through the airport and get to a flight then have to wait for five minutes to board- then all of those people you passed while running calmly walk up to the gate and board- I feel like one of those stupid stop light racers. I wonder if the walkers get that same smug sense of satisfaction)
After all of the drama I landed in KCI after midnight. We got home and I stayed up late chatting with the brothers then I had to reassemble the bike- a procedure on which I had only a tenuous grasp. I ended up staying up all night- taping my bars fiddling with my chain, cables, brifters, cogs and sprockets and pre-flighting every little detail.
I trudged into the kitchen bright and early and had an awesome breakfast of Blackberry pancakes. (My mom has been on a pancake kick- after some foodie columnist said it was the in thing (i love you mom- not complaining, just saying))
I then loaded my bike sans pedals onto a semi trailer got on the bus and met my uncle- and we drove what seemed like 12 hours to the magnificent western Kansas town of St. Francis- a mere seven miles from the Colorado Border to begin bicycling across the great state of Kansas.
I’ll pick up with more in a bit
BAK- Biking Across Kansas Photos
I’ll update this post with some words but wanted to throw some photos up to brighten your Monday. You can thank me later.
Anniston Noble Street Festival and Sunny King Criterium
It was a crazy busy day- starting awfully brisk but ending warm. We got to see a kid toss his cookies on the jumbotron. I ran slowly on the crit course and got to hang out with friends watching some folks ride the scariest type of cycling racing. A fun time was had by all/most
Tuscaloosa Triathlon
Well I managed to get out of town for the weekend. Gadsden lulls you into a trance- when you first get here you realize that it isn’t a very fun place to live and how note how little there is to do or see. Then it grabs hold and you become apathetic and think-wow it isn’t so bad we have a Chili’s, Applebee’s and a movie theater.
Then you get out of town for the weekend and it is as if you stepped back out into the real world. You see interesting stores, green spaces, non-chain restaurants, people between the ages of 20 and 45! What a revelation.
Well after getting home from work on Friday evening at an obscenely late hour I loaded up most of my apartment into my car. Everything I needed to shoot and transmit a freelance gig and all of my bike/tri gear.
I drove to Tuscaloosa in the pouring rain, had a near death experience with a retired police cruiser hydroplaning and spinning across three lanes of traffic missing me by feet and then safely arriving at the hotel at 1:30 in the morning. I went over to the University of Alabama Campus and shot the Olympic triathlon Trials. 
The trials: Wow this is a whole new flavor of triathlon. Instead of a few hundred people treading water then all taking off to swim around some buoys. The athletes lined up on a dock and dove in all at one in front a huge crowd. They swam remarkably quickly and in each race one of the athletes opened up a big gap. The bike course was rather different from other triathlons that I have seen. Drafting was legal so it wasn’t a matter of getting on a super aero bike with a pointy teardrop helmet, spinning a big disc wheel and time trialing. No siree this was a road race complete with some mini packs, chase groups and break always. That said it was almost like a crit as we had eight laps to see the racers come by. Then off to the run with some of the fastest transitions I have ever seen, they would run in and as the wheels of the bike were still spinning, grab running shoes and be off again. Then the run, again 4 laps which gave us lots of time to check split times and to see tactics evolve. The trials were amazingly fun to watch but that the same time demoralizing-these people are in a different universe of speed.
Ok-off to work- I’ll add about Sunday when I get a break
Tuscaloosa Tri
While an awful video it is intersting to see the course from a local’s perspective and a newspaper person too. The bike course looks a bit tough-but for me i live for the hills and this will equal out some of the advantages the people with the aero bikes and helemets will have.
I am just worried about our swim leg. 64 sounds a tad brisk.
COGS-Marble City Metric Century
I will write an update soon. I just wanted to get the pictures up quickly.
Wheels O’Fire 2008 Report
It was a mess. It was an enormous, epic, awesome, snowy, windy, cold, lonesome, tiresome, exciting adventure.
On Friday I picked up Josh in Jacksonville and we attached the second tray to the car rack so we could carry both bikes with ease. We made excellent time to Georgia after a brief though successful trip to Wig’s Wheels in Anniston where I picked up a new set of bibs and wool socks.
Carmine, Susan, Scott and Athena had already ventured down to packet pickup and picked up my shirt, wristband and info. No goody bags like we were promised 
Oh well I don’t need any more clutter.
Then Susan and Athena made us a great dinner of Whole Wheat Tortellini, a great salad, garlic bread and some decadent brownies. To tell you the truth I was a touch worried about the whole-wheat pasta as I have had some misadventures with its ilk before but it was excellent and a great fuel for our looming ride.
We all went off to prep our bikes and lay out our clothes. I got to work mounting my new bright yellow Michelin Pro2 race tires. (I was sent the wrong color by the company I ordered them from and they are in fact hideous-but who cares) The tires were to replace the Continental UltraGatorskins I have been training on all winter. I like both sets and the Gatorskins were tough as nails and never flatted. However I wasn’t very comfortable with their lack of grip on descents and they were rather heavy.
The Pro2 race tires are great fast and grippy.
So after we had everything dialed in we called it a night. I didn’t sleep well. We went to bed early, + adjusting for the time zone change and early start- I tossed and turned for a few hours before getting up around 5ish and starting the pre ride routine which was all hinky b/c of my lack of coffee (doh) but I had a Jones energy drink to help start me up.
Well Carmine got up we talked about the chill outside and eventually everyone got up and we decked out. I decided to chamois crème up the new bibs and try out the new socks. Always a little risky on a long ride-but they were super comfortable and both performed admirably. We all put on our warmest gear with some us sporting a half dozen layers.
We loaded up the velocipedes and made it to the High School where we really took account of how cold it was. It was actually freezing and rather windy. We sat down to a nice little breakfast of baked goods I had an enormous chocolate chip cookie-guilt free, banana, bagel and an orange. It started blowing a little snow outside. I was not too worried it was supposed to warm up. Athena and Scot were planning on doing one of the shorter routes and were now letting Josh who signed up the day of talk them down to shorter and shorter routes. Josh initially planned on doing the 101 but got the point of only committing to the 25. Susan had not brought her bike (a wise decision if you ask me because of the weather) Carmine and I was still planning on riding. Then the driving snow began-blizzard conditions. Horizontal snow and huge flakes of it.
I started hearing some noise about it not being safe and I could tell people were starting to bail. Most people were bailing-like everyone. I was a little bit ticked. The mass start was cancelled. The organizers told us we could start whenever we wanted. We walked out and looked at the snow, my entire group said they weren’t going to ride. Not going to ride at all. I started getting indignant. I figured if I drove all the way here, paid my money to ride paid for gas, food, hotel all that I was gonna ride. I went out to the car put on my helmet, shoes and assembled my bike.
My friends came out to see what I was doing. As they were shivering I told them I didn’t want to be contrary and I didn’t expect them to ride and I apologized for not sticking with the group but that I was going to do the ride-just some of it. I think they thought I was crazy. I probably was. So I packed my jersey pockets full of food, wiped the snow off my saddle clipped and let it rip. It was bone chillingly cold. I heard about people with frozen bottles and icicles on their bikes. I took off and passed tons of people shivering spinning low gears on the flats.
That seemed silly to me. I turned it up I needed to get my furnace going-I attacked hills and turned up the pace. I did however remember that I left a part of the rack unassembled and tried to call the crew to ask them to adjust it. I called in the middle of “heartbreak hill” I didn’t get an answer-it turns out they tried to call back but I didn’t hear. They feared the worst and came looking for me. They say me in the mid 30s after I was doing just fine. The ride was surreal. Very few people turned out and the snow was amazing. I had trouble with my drive train in a few spots. On one epic hill I couldn’t get into my 2 largest cogs so I had to stand up the whole way-but I survived.
I made one miscalculation about the weather. My non-cycling full-fingered gloves got very wet in the snow and my hands went numb. I developed an ingenious solution. I rode with one hand on the bar top, one glove in my mouth and the gloveless hand jammed up under my vest, jacket, jersey and base layer pressed against my bare chest. I did that back and forth till I got feeling back. I kept telling myself as long as I could feel the pain of the cold and see that it was red and not blue I wouldn’t bail.
I had to make a decision pretty early on to either go the 101 miles or go the short route. Luckily by that time I was already sweating and despite the burning in my legs I went for the whole shootin’ match.
The rest stops were great but I packed gels to eat and after a frozen 4 pack of fig newtons stopped me up at the first rest stop I decided to stick to my gels. The snow stopped eventually after sending down pellets and flakes for quite some time. The wind however never stopped. I stopped at an aid station about 55 miles in had some peanuts took a leak and ditched the knee warmers which I had pulled down when I started climbing early on. I got some crazy looks-but who cares I’m already riding a bike wearing spandex out in the middle of a blizzard 
The toughest part of the second half was the lack of other riders and no drafting help. We had 35 mph winds and they get pretty rough when you can’t tuck in behind a strong pull. Hey I would have even taken a pull from Athena with the tiny little draft she gives Also the no company-no conversation-lots of self talk-and self talk on a 6-hour ride get pretty old.
My favorite part of the ride was seeing the while group the Toyota pull up beside me telling me that I had gone too far and missed the turn into the finish. Apparently I had just put my head down and kept turning the cranks. I didn’t see the High School. I cruised in and all of my crew was there to help me off the bike, peel of my gear and take me inside to the warmth of the cafeteria. I tried to eat but I wasn’t too interested in food as I was burning up and tired. Thanks guys for putting up with my stubbornness and supporting me in riding the full 101. It turns out of the 600 people that preregistered for the ride only 10 were foolhardy enough to do the century in the cold and snow.
Wheels of Fire my eye, try wheels of Ice.
Ok sorry for the length of the post. I’ll write later about the TT on Sunday.
Bike Link Hoover
The awesome guys at Bike Link in Hoover put the final tweaks on my new ride.
The fire engine red specialized allez comp x-large.
An awesome birthday present for myself if I do say so.
White saddle and White bar tape= Pro-ness
My Photo Stream
