The 6 Hours of Power Report is UP!

And it might be the best thing I've written in days, maybe weeks even. So go check it out.

6 Hours of Power Pre-Report

Ya, ya, I said I see yuz Monday, well this is MY Monday. It took three days to get to the 6 Hours of Power and back. It's nigh on midnight and M and I are trying to catch up on three days of DVRed Le Tour De coverage. You have to have your priorities y'know. During the next 24 hours I'll be meticulously outlining and fact-checking my very official race report for the 29er Crew blog, which I will hopefully be posting some time in the next couple days. It went well, crazy crap happened, it was a great trip altogether. It did start and finish with a bit of meteorological histrionics.



We left Friday night, after The Work. We were immediately hit with torrential downpours. M was white-knuckling the wheel for the first couple hours of the trip. I was white-knuckling the dial on the ipod, trying to cue up the most grating possible music.


Traveling with my wife is always better. After The 6HOP, I was telling Peter "BMP" Keiller, between mouthfuls of 5-minutes-past-al-dente-pasta, how I had my best SSWC performance as a result of my wife's attendance at the event. The night before SSWC08 in Napa she had the presence of mind to suggest that maybe, just maybe I was drunk enough just as Buck Keich handed me an entire pitcher of beer. I thought it was a good idea to drink the entire thing as if it were a pint. She thought it was a good idea to lead me home like a brain-damaged child so I could sleep it off and race in a semi-serious manner the next day. Or at the very least not puke on myself trying. That night I may have said something that sounded as if I didn't appreciate her guidance, I probably said something like "Hey Warden...yer not the boss-a-me...sazza-flazza-flazza." But in the clear light of morning, I saw her wisdom.



One way in which she improved this trip was by suggesting that we drive a few hours on Friday night, stay at a motel, and then continue on to East Hammondsport Saturday morning. Left to my own defective devices, I would have undoubtedly dicked around Saturday AM, driven it straight, and arrived late having not slept a wink. She made me sleep until 10:45, it was nuts. Um...and the BL Lime, that's hers. My Zimas are in my bag.


Saturday, on the way to East Hammondsport, we stopped off for a little spin somewhere in the state of New York. What we rode was part of The Finger Lakes trail, it was not a well-traveled piece of trail.


Coming through the town of Bath, we stopped to grab a couple things at CVS. There was a little town fair-type-thing going on down on the common. When we got out of the car I heard what I thought was a loud car stereo blaring death metal. I thought that there was some kid being a total punk, blaring his tunes while all the old folks in their lawn chairs were trying to listen to a barber shop quartet or something. But no. The death metal was coming from the gazebo in the town square. It was a high school band playing full-on, Amon Amarth style, roaring vocals, terrifying death metal. Excellent.



We got to East Hammondsport in time for dinner and a tour of the premises.


The '67 Chevy is a new addition.


My Auntie Ann's place has a multitude of killer places to relax while enjoying beautiful views and drinking beer from Keuka Brewing.


See. Part of the reason the race went so well (shut it, more on that later) was all the EXTREME relaxing we did the night before.


There were crazy lightning storms overnight, and for some reason I couldn't sleep, I mean extra-special, even for me. In the morning I woke up feeling like ass, but it was a beautiful day and there was a-racin' to be done. So we hit it —

to be continued...

I Smell Canadian Bacon

Wednesday, on the way to work at the Newton shop, I double-flatted. Now I don't believe in bad luck really. I flatted because I was commuting on racing tires (Michelin Pro 3's) and they were beat to hell, it was only a matter of time before it happened. But twice in one ride? C'mon! It was pissing rain too, total deluge. I fixed the first flat, rode for about another fifteen minutes, then BLAM! Second flat.


I wound up riding the rear flat all the way from Weston over to Newton, at least five, maybe seven miles. It got really dicey when I stopped to grab a coffee. I was riding one-handed down Needham street with my rear end washing out all over the place. That road is about as smooth as Robert Davi's face. It was a minor miracle that I didn't go down.


When I got to work, I had some more bad luck — I hadn't packed socks and my feet were soaking wet. This is the only time I buy socks. I wish other clothing items were bought on such a necessity-driven impulse basis. I would have a much better wardrobe. I couldn't find any socks that I liked, so I decided to get all crazy and check out some of those compression socks that are all the rage with senior citizens who don't want to get blood clots in their legs on planes and bike racers.


The socks I bought were black and I was wearing all black, so I could delude myself into thinking I looked like an awesome Kiwi rugby player from The All Blacks.


Didn't Johnny Cash write a song called "The Man In Black (Compression Socks)"? Compression socks are totally bad ass.


I thought that the fact that they went all the way up to my shorts felt odd, so I decided to experiment with different short lengths. Dan The Man was stoked. Look at him checkin' me out. I think he wants to, as he says, "yummy down on it." His words, not mine. That's his weird blue foot in the photo a couple back. He's rockin' those barefoot running shoes, they totally creep me out. He looks like a member of blue man group who forgot to take his shoes off in the shower.

I asked James Morrison from Embrocation if he wears the compression socks. He told me (in so many words, that were nothing like these) that those things are for pussies, all the cool kids are rocking the full-on compression tights these days. I told him that those are called "panty hose."


Take two, this one with the socks actually pictured. This one is more for Peter (and maybe a for Dan too a little, hi Dan) who put the following comment on the blog yesterday:

fuck you.
I AM DOING six hours of power.
YOU stay where you are.

See those meaty Mirko Cro Cop thighs Peter?


They're coming to the Six Hours of Power brutha. I'm towing them behind the Subaru in a Uhaul trailer. You better be ready for a battle, cuz I'm-a bring my A-War. I'll ride circles around you so fast that a vortex will be created. You'll be so turned around and upside down, you'll be calling ham "Canadian Bacon."



And now, in a very smooth segue from meaty thighed smack talk to...to, I'm not sure what. M and I stayed down at Pop's Camp in Wrentham last night. It's incredibly relaxing. I spend all my not-blogging and not-watching The Le Tour and True Blood time reading. It's sweet. What was not sweet was waking up to pee in the middle of the night. Well, not waking up to pee, but waking up suddenly as I smashed my fucking head into a 2 X 4. We were sleeping in the loft of the cabin, it's a little low in the ceiling. I thought I was being attacked as I dropped back to my pillow. I thought "Oh, so this is what it's like to be beaten to death with a bat in your sleep. Remind me not to piss off anyone with anger management problems and a collection of Louisville Sluggers."

Or cut Mark Renshaw off in a sprint lead-out:




In the morning, when I woke up from my concussion-aided slumber, I pulled my bike out of the boat and bike house. It's difficult to hit the road for a hard couple hours on the way to work when there are colorful floaty things in the boat house and beer in the fridge.


That's the cabin below. We call it "Pop's Camp." Pop was my great grandfather, he built the place. My Mom and my aunts and uncles all used to stay there in the summer with Pop.



In-between Wrentham and the Boston shop there's a pocket of some of the most amazing roads around. It's not a bad commute. It's not short, but it's almost 100% awesome.


There's a little bit of a contrast between Wrentham and Allston. It's mostly an olfactory thing. Wrentham doesn't smell so strongly of wet cigarette butts and urine.


But wherever you are, it's always a good thing to run into K.P., Kevin Porter. He is perpetually stoked and his stoke is contagious. I wish I could keep him in my closet. Every morning I'd wake up feeling like I normally do, which is probably worse than I should, and I'd open up my KP closet and he'd go "YEAH MAN!" and all would be well in the world.


Alright, off to New York for the Six Hours of Power. See yuz Monday.

Mary, Take The Chocolate, The River's Rising

My friends at Taza Chocolate have suffered some bad luck. Not Lance Armstrong, clipping your pedal on an inanimate object at 60 KPH, eating it big time, and sliding on your back for 40 feet bad luck:



More like act of god, flash flood wrecking your newly renovated factory and your insurance company not doing dick for you bad luck.

WBZ did a little story about it:
http://wbztv.com/video/?id=91149%40wbz.dayport.com

They are in a bit of a tight spot financially due to this craziness and now might be a great time for you to check out their amazing product. Maybe even buy a T-Shirt or two. Check it out, doesn't Kathleen look awesome in her Taza shirt? That's how you will look too, even if you are an obese man or a partially-shaved orangutan, I guarantee it.




It's not like charity, you are buying delicious chocolate.

And this is not your average chocolate. It is stone ground and entirely different from anything you've tried. Try it once and you'll be hooked. It's got cocaine in it. Did I say "cocaine?" I meant cacao. That's right, cacao, not cocoa. You can read all about their unique process here:
http://www.tazachocolate.com/OurProcess

That's all I got today. Worked the later shift at The Shop today and I'm back for the early shift tomorrow. The idea is to pack in about ten riding hours this week before I head out to the Six Hours of Power Sunday. This will be my last long week before I roll down to Pennsylvania for the Wilderness 101 at the end of the month. I'm looking to get an hour-fifteen or so in on the road before work and an hour-forty in after by extending the commute down to Wrentham. This, despite the threat of "T-Storms." (It's only a 50% chance...I like them odds.) I told ex-super-blogger Uri today that I wanted him to start calling me by my new self-declared nickname "T-Storm." For whatever reason he wasn't going for it. We're staying at Pop's Camp, my family's rustic cabin on Lake Archer tomorrow night, so likely no Thursday post.

T-Storm out bitches!

That's how I talk now, in my new persona. Pretty cool huh?

6 Hours of Pats Peak - The Report

The 6 Hours of Pats Peak report is up over on the 29er Crew site. It was a long race, so long that the amount of bottles pictured above proved inadequate. The report is long too. I would suggest pouring as many cups of coffee as there are bottles pictured above just to get through it. I'm going to pour that many cups of coffee...because that's just what I do on a Tuesday morning.

Pats Peak Helmet Cam

Visit beta.cyclingdirt.org for more Videos

The full report will be up, hopefully tomorrow, probably on the 29er Crew blog.
Is that definitive enough for ya?
The short version is that I rode 52 miles in something like six hours and forty five minutes for a total of 8,270 feet of elevation gain. It hurt like hell, but it went really, really well.

See you tomorrow.

-t

Shit Island

I'm not exactly sure what put me in this incredible shit mood I am in. It could have been having to fix a flat on an electric Razor scooter at the work the other day. This incident prompted me to a propose a new policy for the service department — you can either a.) Do the repair you have been asked to do, or b.) Fight the person who signed in the repair to the death. Either way you win. If you're dead, you don't have to fix flats on electric razor scooters. Unless you die and go to hell, because that's all you do there, fix flats on razor scooters. That, and play golf.

Golf. God I hate golf. I'm sorry, I know a lot of people who golf, it's weird, I know. Sometimes you hang out with someone for years before you find out they play golf. It's like working with someone forever and then finding out he's a pedophile, you don't want to believe it, but it's true. It's just like that. I hate golf so much that I heckle golfers. It used to be: "Get a job!" Which is ridiculous, because of course golfers have jobs, how else could they afford to golf? But yesterday I was riding along next to a golf course and, out of nowhere, I yelled: "Tiger cheated!" This was just an adaptation of a taunt I have received from many a passing motorist:"Lance cheated!" At first I took this as a sign that things were moving in the right direction, that cycling was actually increasing in popularity. It was a much more informed taunt than, say "bike faggot!" Then it got old fast.

Now I don't think that golfers in Lexus crossover vehicles are the ones responsible for the informed, anti-cycling taunting, I just hate golf and want to cause golfers mental anguish. It took me a minute to realize that I had merely stated the obvious, quite loudly. Of course Tiger cheated...but I meant at golf.

No one has ever implied that Lance cheated in that way. Although when you're into "women" the size of the Olsen twins, it's very easy to get away with infidelity. "Did you hear that? It sounded like the garage door. Quick, get in the hamper!"


Speaking of trash talk, George W. turned me on to this site: HB Cut The Course in 1990, from which the above photo was stolen. Who knows, I'm so internet-slow that the photo may have been stolen from elsewhere. The site is like Bike Snob NYC for mountain bikes. That is if Bike Snob had been dropped on his head as a child and then spent the following thirty years huffing paint fumes.


You know what I don't hate? The heat. I'll take 100° and humid over 38° and raining any day.


This bike is called "The Islander." You know what island The Islander gets ridden around?
Shit Island, that's what island.


This bike makes me happy. Especially when two out of three bikes that roll in the door of the Boston shop are sweet, sweet fixies. If you want to stand out in the crowd, you have to ride something as awesomely gay as this thing.


As for the Olympus Stylus Not-So-Tough, it made me sad when is stopped working AGAIN about a week back. It would only turn on in PLAY mode. I let it rest for a few days, and then, just when I was picking it up to figure out how I was going to deal with the warranty business, it started working again. Ya, it's probably a lemon, and ya it's probably going to fritz out again, but it's working now, and I'm too lazy to deal with preemptive responsible consumer-type-action.



The frightening fact that I am going up to the six hour race at Pats Peak tomorrow makes me neither happy nor sad. I am just going to go up there and do as many laps as I can in preparation for the Wilderness 101. I may have something worth talking about on Monday. Madness.


Sunday is my year wedding anniversary (if I can make it through the next 24 hours without screwing up big time). My wife doesn't like the above photo, but I do, and I like her too, maybe even more than like. Whatever else is going on in my life, she is always there, and I can always count on her support. It is only through some grand cosmic mistake that a woman like her ended up loving a guy like me. But I'll take it.

Happy Thursday

Hi, I'm a "Thom didn't have an insomnia-attack last night placeholder." I'm here in case Thom didn't get up and write a post at 5AM. Look at me, I'm a tie-dyed Mt. Borah jersey. And you thought Primal Wear had a monopoly on jerseys that make you want to either puke or punch someone in the dick.


Full disclosure: I own this Primal Wear jersey. At least I used to. I may have "lost" it. Possibly in a fire. A man-made one. It was great though, I could ride through Framingham and Natick and instead of screaming "Faggot!," drivers in their Irocs would yell "Yeah dyude!" at me.


But at no time in my life did I think that this aesthetic abomination was a good idea. Shit, if I saw someone wearing this jersey, I wouldn't bother yelling at them, I would run them over straightaway. Even if I was on my bike. And then I would douse them with gasoline and light them on fire.

Warren Fourth of July Parade and a Few Words

OK, I'll admit it. I'm totally distracted by the several days of Le Tour De coverage that had built up on our DVR while we were away in Vermont. So what I have for you is a few photos of the Warren Fourth of July Parade.


Oh, and this horrible photo of a "feature" up on Perry Hill that almost ate me alive. I found that while riding in "The Valley." i.e., the Waitsfield area, that nearly everything was rideable, not too much scariness. I mistakenly applied the same attitude to Perry Hill and, during a brief moment when I was in front of George, I took the stupid line off of a big, honkin' rock and ate it, BIG TIME. It was kind of a roll down into three steep stair-step type dealies. The last one sent me ass over coffee pot. I don't normally go down so hard, so the getting up, pulling mulch out of my helmet was a novel experience for me. I was always tell other people, especially kids, "if you're not crashing, you're not trying hard enough." However I rarely practice what I preach.



Another dumb-ass move I pulled during my second Valley ride was running out of water. Jeff had told me tales of drinking out of sketchy streams in dehydrated desperation. I was there. It was 95° and I was looking for unattended garden hoses to prey upon. I was saved from possibly getting tazed by an angry homeowner when I saw a woman out watering the plants on her deck. I rolled off of the dusty, exposed climb I was churning up and rolled into her yard, ringing my bell in an attempt to appear as benign as possible. After telling me I was nuts (she was too polite to tell me I was a total dumb-ass) she kindly filled my bottles with icy cold water. She then proceeded to treat me like a lost child, trying to point me in the most direct way, back to town. Maybe I looked worse than I thought. I listened to her directions, and then turned back up the baking climb, not in the direction of town, but in the direction of more sweet trails and more inevitable dehydration.






Craziness is afoot, I gotta get some sleep before it hits.

I Left My Legs and My Brain in Vermont

This is what you would be reading if, I say if I hadn't scheduled this post to go up at 6AM TOMORROW. (Because I forgot it was tomorrow, which is now today while I was writing it last night.)

I think we've been here before...
if you're reading this poor excuse for a post, it means that I didn't get hit with a bout of insomnia last night. Which of course is good for me but bad for the Big Bikes blog. It's 1AM and M and I just got back from a weekend up in Waitsfield, VT. It involved a lot of riding in the hills, some swimming holing, a bunch of good food, and hanging with some seriously nice peoples. It was a great training camp, but I'm not sure for what. Could have been for cycling, or competitive eating, I'm not sure which. I have more to share, but it will have to wait until later.

But...
It didn't post this AM, and insomnia did strike, so I took the time to write a proper post with proper photos for the 29er Crew Blog. So check THAT out.

I Should Stick to What I know

Of course, if I did that, you would be staring at a blank page.

What can I say? I'm a technical genius. And despite the fact that I, more often than not, post something in this space five times a week, I'm not really all that inter-netty. I'm mainly a one way street when it comes to the web, I don't take in all that much. Not having a desk job makes spending countless hours on the laptop when the only man I'm sticking it to is myself seem kind of pathetic and sad. In Wednesday's post I made a gaff by covering a topic Bike Snob had already covered. What was I thinking? It involved a lame video related to fixed gears, how could he not have covered it before anyone else? And not only did he cover it, he killed it — broke it down into little pieces and spit them out. If I spent more time reading blogs, I would read his blog more often. I was desperate for material. My video from yesterday, that I was going to post Wednesday took forever to load up to Vimeo and I had about twenty minutes to scramble and cobble something together. Damn! What can I throw up today? Oh ya, that video Bullit sent me, sweet! Oh well, that'll teach me to even touch that subject. The subject of hipsters and fixed gears that is. Having the market cornered is right.

Then today (Thursday) M tells me (while looking at her new fancy phone) that my post wasn't up at about 9AM, I was flummoxed, I had set it to post at 6AM as usual so all the early risers could read it while they sat at their breakfast tables, feeling superior to people like me who only get up before 8:30 AM when there is an insanely good reason. Work doesn't qualify, neither do calls about deaths in the family. Bike races qualify, as do fires. So I rode into to work...
we stayed out at Pop's Camp, the cabin my family has on a lake in Wrentham, I had a solid 1:45 commute at a good clip, some craziness happened on the way in, y'know...cops, punching cars, and when I got to the shop I found that I had scheduled my post to go up at 3:47 PM. Wait! Hold up a second, this is good. Last night when I wrote that post, I went to schedule it...for 6 AM on 6/31/10. You know what happens when you schedule a post for a day that doesn't exist? It posts immediately. Now I don't know how RSS feeds work or any of that crap, I'm no Rooter. (I have to keep kissing Rooter's skinny ass and sending him traffic. He provides me with a ton of tech support, in fact he's holding my hand through podcasting right now....just you wait.) When I post the the thing and then quickly take it down, I'm not sure if the RSS feed folks get to keep it and have a little sneak-screening Big Bikes party. I guess I'll never know.

God, what an awful post, uh, I mean, aren't you enjoying this behind the scenes episode of Big Bikes? I find this shit fascinating, don't you?

K-Sweet's very timely post from today reminded me that I forgot to make fun of myself for my squeaky bike at the Pinnacle a few weeks back. I guess I spent all my time editing video. It was truly horrible, the worst ever. I had not swapped my wheel out for the race, using a schwappy training wheel instead. It went nuts about ten minutes into the race, squeaking like a hamster caught in a Cuisinart. And it acted up the worst while I was climbing. I was climbing horrible too, so it only added annoyance to injury. It was like having a pissed off ferret stapled to my face while my hands were tied around my back. No exaggeration.

Not sure what's happening Monday. We're taking off for the weekend, VT "training camp." Going to get to ride with George W. up in Waterbury. Not the George W. who is so horrible at riding bikes that he runs over Scottish cops (you'll never live that down W...never). This George W. knows how to ride a bike very well. That makes me feel all stoked inside. But we're contemplating a laptop-free weekend, and lucky for us, our weekend includes Monday. Unlucky for you three people that still read this thing, there may not be a post here Monday, we'll see.
But I will be working on those podcasts. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Crackin' Up On The Way To The Lumberjack 100

Crackin' Up (On The Way To The Lumberjack 100) from thom parsons on Vimeo.

The insomnia's back, so I am too. At least for the time being. If someone is a candidate for death by sleep deprivation, it's me. There are two types of insomnia that I suffer from, one is the anxious, — "I can't get to sleep!" (Just watch the video, it will make sense.) — kind. And then there's the kind of insomnia that attacked me this morning. The wake up at 5 AM after going to bed at midnight kind. The kind where I wake up and I know, just know that I won't be able to go back down. So I get up, pour a big cup of coffee and lay on the couch writing this crap and not doing the sit ups I should really be doing.

I think Stephen King once said something like "insomnia is a gift." And being an insomniac, I latched onto it as a way of feeling better about myself. There's probably some idiot out there with anger management problems who identifies strongly with the Rage Against The Machine quote, "anger is a gift." But that guy's an idiot and I'm a genius. Of course, at the time I latched onto that alleged (I couldn't google the thing up anywhere) King quote, I was probably in 8th grade. These days I don't think all that highly of King as a writer. In fact, I think the best thing that may have ever happened to Stephen King is Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining. King never liked that adaptation, so much so that he had it remade into a freaking horrible T.V. mini-series in 1997 starring that douche bag from Wings. Remember that? Do you even remember Wings? If you don't, you're lucky, maybe you've repressed it all. I wish I could.

Alright, I just spent an hour editing that video, so I'm going to shut up now, maybe try to do some sit ups, and watch some World Cup through my red and watering eyes.