Big Bikes

100 Times Faster Than Me

Bacon Egg And Cheese on a Boston Cream Donut Challenge Total = $10.69

Thanks to Charlie for the sixty-nine cents.

See, now if you donate, as an added perk, I will link to your blog and you will experience "the Big Bikes bump." How do you think Fat Cyclist, Bike Snob, Perez Hilton, The Huffington Post, and Dicky got their starts? — The Big Bikes bump, that's how. Somehow since I initially gave Fat Cyclist that bump he has increased his traffic to 100 times that of Big Bikes.

If blogging were a race I would be a HUGE loser. When it comes to mountain bike racing, even the very best riders in the country are only about twice as fast as me. Just twice as fast. If I were a fisty-fighting-wrasslin' type guy, that would be like me taking on a 340 lb. dude (that's right, I weighed in at a solid 170 lbs. today...and we haven't even hit Thanksgiving and Christmas yet). But if Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski were 100 times faster than me...I'd probably quit this sport and take up competitive eating.

Just like an NPR fund drive, the sooner you go click that donate button (sidebar, upper right) the sooner I shut up about The Bacon Egg and Cheese on a Boston Cream Challenge. Shut up about how I'm going to make a helmet cam video of the ordering process and then subtitle it.


Sponsor Thank you: GARY FISHER.

I honestly believe Fisher had the 29er geometry thing worked and dialed out before anyone, and they continue to produce the best handling 29ers on the market. The release of the Superfly Single-Speed frameset in 2010 is HUGE. I don't know how many people asked me about where they could get a Superfly SS. I had to tell them that I wasn't special, that my shop sent me to Trek World so I was lucky enough to get offered a deal on a bike which didn't exist. I had been drooling over Jesse's bike for a year. It was literally a dream come true. There might not be luck in bike racing, but there's definitely luck in bike-getting. Things are moving forward with Fisher going into 2010 and I'm looking forward to spending another season atop a carbon fiber-gleaming-black-death-machine. Thanks Fisher!


In Ice Weasels news. We're up to 52 Pre-registered riders. This is a problem, I'm beginning to get worried about all that FREE BEER Harpoon is donating. So stop telling people how fun this event was last year or we might not have enough FREE BEER to go around. What? I'm not advertising that we've got FREE BEER. I'm telling people NOT to come and drink all the FREE BEER. How the hell could you possibly describe that as advertising?

Bryan, Kevin (the guy who needs to update his damn blog and tell us how he went about killing it at the Lowell Cross race Saturday), and I were down in Wrentham today, doing a little prep with help form Christy and Chris from White Barn Farm. We put a bench cut in where last year we had a bumpy, precipitous drop. We put a BERM in where once there was only a pile of uninteresting dirt. There will be a few less twisty turns this year (we had a few to spare) and some more straightaway (but not too much). Ultimately, no matter what we do, the race will be 90% more horrible and you should skip it and let me, Colin, and Kevin sit around drinking all the FREE BEER by ourselves while watching a live Webcast of Cross Nats.

And now...Ice Weasels Course Prep photos.

Or what? You'll release the dogs?
Or the bees?
Or the dogs with bees in their mouth
and when they bark they shoot bees at you?

-Homer

Bees. We have added Africanized Killer Bees to the course. You'll be OK, just don't cause any vibration around their hive. Or breath loudly. Or sweat. They love sweat. They want to lick it up...then sting you to death when they are finished.

And we added a bench cut descent to cut down on injury and death. We have to make sure you're nice and safe...so the bees can get you. We have a deal with the bees. It's us or you.



Bryan packed some stuff down with the big-ass heavy roller. Kevin and the dog with the bees in its mouth survey their work. Farm Bike Yeah! And Farm Bike takes the plunge.

Chris moves some leaves to make for more course options. Bryan and Kevin gesticulate wildly and make chimpanzee noises at Chris (somehow he deciphered their gibberish and sculpted a great berm with the tractor). Me and Kevin fine-tune the BERM. Bryan takes a run at the berm well on a big farm bike YA!