Columbus Was A Dick, But My Mom Is Awesome

For the past, I'm gonna say three...ya three years, that sounds good, my family and I have spent Columbus day weekend up in East Burke Vermont riding the Kingdom Trails. This mountain bike-themed getaway is entirely my mom's idea. She's over sixty now and she's been riding since she got her first mountain bike at IBC back in the early nineties. We rent an apartment from the the super-nice folks at the Village Inn of East Burke, Loraine and George. The apartment is actually attached to Loraine and George's son's restaurant, Willy's. It used to be that the only game in town food-wise in East Burke was the River Garden Cafe or The Pub Outback, one of which is mediocre and over-priced and the other of which is downright horrible at any price. You can try both and decide which is which. Or better yet, just eat at Willy's because it's amazing.

My niece Lyla says hello to George's bird dogs at The Village Inn

Of course the Tamarack Grill ain't too shabby either, although it's a very different vibe from Willy's. Willy's is rather high end, while the Tamarack is more very-edible pub food. Just watch out for the ever-present old-as-Hell-drunk-as-Hell dude with the GUN seated at the end of the bar. He's cool, just don't piss him off.

Nephew Noah uses the bike wash at the Inn

When I say "my family and I," I'm talking about ELEVEN people. That's eleven people using one bathroom for three days. There's your reality show idea. Screw Jersey Shore; we got East Burke Bathroom. "Hey everyone...guys! I'm taking a shower, does anyone need to get in here first?" (Three people get up simultaneously).

Brother Brad on an $8400 Remedy 9.9 demo

Something I realize every time the non-serious mountain bikers in my family come out to ride is this: I am the least talented natural athlete in my family. My sister gets on a bike once or twice a year and rides like she used to win World Cups. My brother Brad is a ninja with preternatural balance. My brother James was kind of the sleeper, he doesn't usually get out on the trails with us, but this time he did and wow! He would just see me do things and then he would do them. It really makes no sense why my siblings are all such great natural bike handlers. Man, it took me years to get where they're at right out of the gate. It took a whole lot of lonely, frustrating rides on my too-big orange Rockhopper to get to where I'm at.

James: maybe the power is in the bandanna.

And then there's my wife who's made leaps and bounds with her riding prowess over just this past year. She's more on my arc — lots of hard work to offset lack of natural talent. I can't believe the stuff she rides now.


If you're ever taking beginner type folks out in the NEK the best trail to take them on is Vast. It has lots of off-shoots if you want to get all crazy but otherwise it's a scenic straight shot with very little climbing. I'll maybe do a proper "how to ride the Kingdom post" at some point in an attempt to prevent people, people like Rooter, from doing insane things, things like riding UP Moose Alley.



Speaking of riding up things you shouldn't...

I have to wonder, do directional arrows on trails lose something in translation? Do they mean something different in French-Canadian? Because I ran into a whole lot of Quebecois riding up trails that only work in one direction and are simply dangerous to ride in reverse. UP Webs? Are you sérieux? Go die. But please do it somewhere else, don't make me kill you as I ride down a trail that no one in their right mind would ever ride UP. That's what you have to understand about Columbus day weekend in the NEK: it's also Canadian Thanksgiving so the place is overrun with the people who live in America's hat. They move in packs of fifteen or twenty and form blockades at all trail heads and manage to make highway-wide fire-roads impassable. "Hmm, I wonder where the turn for Sugar Hill is? Oh, there it is, it's right there where those twenty people are standing and talking in weird-French."

Most mornings involved a little warm up at the pump track with Noah. He's made a lot of progress too. He's standing when he climbs now and looking where he wants the bike to go; not where it happens to be going at the moment. Next year we'll have him out on the trails for real.

And Lyla...well she presents more of a challenge in the riding bikes department. It's OK though, she has other talents. She knows way more Ke$ha lyrics than I do for instance. And it's not like I don't know Ke$ha lyrics.



It might be the weekend for made-up Canadian Thanksgiving and American genocidal-slave-trader-appreciation-day but for the past few Columbus day weekends I've been given a good reason to feel thankful and to reflect on just how rad my family is.

Things get a little but blurry in the hot tub after a few Dark & Stormy's

The Six Ps and Wicked Ride

I know this is an entirely weak way to start the week, but I am going to blatantly divert you over to the Embrocation Cycling Journal site to read Matt Roy's write up about his harrowing trip to Puerto Rico to "Check over 20 pre-assembled bikes" for an Orbea product launch/Opening of an Adventure Park. It's insane and awesome. He talks about the Six Ps (Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance) and employs Rooter as an example of the Piss-poor performance bit. It'll leave you wishing that Matt would quit his wicked-smart-guy lab job and start blogging full time.

And here's one for the calendar: NEMBA Wicked Ride of The East at Harold Parker on October 31st (click the link for details). If you've never ridden HP, this is the way to do it — with a 25 mile marked loop and chili and barbecue waiting for you when you're done. Wild horses wielding fire hoses and tazers couldn't keep me away.

Night Weasels Cometh: The Videos

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I stayed up 'til 2AM editing this thing, and I'm leaving for the Kingdom Trails in about an hour, so what I'm going to write about today is how I stayed up 'til 2AM editing this thing because I have no time for anything else.

Sounds like George "Not The Evil-Moron" W will be up there as well. We'll be demoing BIKES on Saturday AM at East Burke Sports, so come and play with us if you're in the neighborhood.

Oh, and all the post-race interviews for Der Nacht Wiesels Kommen-eth are up on Cyclingdirt.

I'll have a whole lot to say about the 2011 Trek Bikes when I get back from Vermont. See you then.

Bike Stuff For Sale on Craigslist

Sadly all I have for you today are links to my Craigslist fire sale, I'm busy trying to get the Cyclingdirt vids for the Night Weasels up (oh, the Imovie icon is a-hoppin', I gotta jam).

Buy all my stuff until I don't have any more stuff too sell and then maybe I'll shut up.

Maybe.

• A pile of 26" tires for $65
• A bunch of 29er Tires for $50
• Pair of new Bontrager XR1's for $50
• Commemorative Crank Brothers Breck Epic Split QR Skewers
• A basically new Cycleops Fluid 2 Trainer
• Hutchinson Carbon Comp Tire 700 X 23 Tubular
• Fuji Cross Pro 58cm CycloCross Bike

Doug is very disturbed that I am selling my Breck skewers...
I guess I'm just not that sentimental. I get no more attached to my stuff than I do to food.

Before We Knew How To Ride Bikes

My buddy Andy sent this over, it's a downhill video from 92-94, back when dudes rode bikes with 0 to 60mm of front suspension travel. It is also, apparently, from a time before people knew how to ride bikes. It's mostly footage of crashes and the crashes are for no good reason. I love the guys who blast down the rutted ski hill section with no consideration for the fact that they are going to have to to take a hard left-hand corner at the bottom. You sit there watching riders flip over their bars and taco their front wheels going "Hmm, maybe that's harder than it looks." But then in the next sequence, when they're simply trying to ride down a set of not-very-steep-at-all stairs, you go "No...these crackheads have no idea how to ride bikes." Of course these same inept, human cannonballs would have no trouble cleaning the same two sections on a modern bicycle with a slack head angle and 8 inches of travel.

And speaking of videos that I'm sure you are not going to watch because you're at work...

I did a little harsh-as-hell review of two new cycling films over on the Bike Rumor last night. It might hurt the directors' feelings, but they hurt my eyes and ears with the trailers for their awful films.

"Both films are sure to be cheesier than David Hasselhoff playing a private concert at a fondue party in Wisconsin, BUT...."

BUT what? I'm going to use a Bike Rumor trick and make you click MORE to find out.

Oh dude, the Night Weasels is a-gonna be gnarly tonight! It's raining Ligers and obese Great Danes out there.

Trek Demos, NEMBA-Fest, and Horrible Hill Climbs For Good Causes

This morning most of my blogging power is being diverted over to the Bike Rumor, got a couple things I'm working on for them.
I did a post yesterday about the Embrocation Cycling Journal/Cinelli Ram 2 custom bar (with some silliness). And I wrote a thing late last night that I thought might push the boundaries of the site's family-friendly content. It's about Fisher-Price toys attacking the genitals of small children. Sounds weird, but it's true and it's better than anything I'm going to write here today, I tell you what.

The photo of the Single-Speed above? That's what I've been doing for the past week: riding my single-speed right out my door and loving it. I can clean stuff on that bike that I have never cleaned on any other bike. I think it's part unicorn.

In the NEWS.

Wednesday night of course we have the Night Weasels in Shrewsbury.

This weekend I'll be up at The Kingdom Trails if anyone wants to meet up for a ride. Trek Demo-guy Dave O' will be up there Saturday at East Burke Sports with a whole fleet of Trek bikes, including carbon Remedies. Info on that:

Demo in the Kingdom

East Burke, VT

Sat. Oct 9th, 2010 @ 10:00 am—3:00 pm

Come by and ride some of the best trails that New England (some say North America)has to offer and while your at it, try out some of the new 2011 full suspension Treks or some Fisher Collection 29ers!

Location:

Kingdom trails

route 114

East Burke, VT

View Map

Directions:

For more info on this great place go to www.kingdomtrails.org We'll be set up on the East Burke Sports parking lot. www.eastburkesports.com

On Monday, that would be Columbus day (not Memorial day, thanks Zen), there's the RDJ Memorial Hill Climb up the gnarly Prospect Hill in Waltham. I won't be around and I don't own a road bike, but if I were and I did, I would be there to hurl myself against that stupid climb like a chickadee against a clean kitchen window. It's a short effort, great training for cross. Really.

Here's a little preview video:



This coming weekend is also NEMBA-Fest up at Bear Brook in New Hampshire. Demo-Dave will be there with the 2011 Treks and there'll be a bunch more demo-bikes available from companies like:

Kona Bicycles, Scott USA, Rocky Mountain Bicycles, Six Six One, Raceface, Kali, Nema, Exposure Lights, Foes, Banchee, MisfitPsycles and more.

There are going to be skills clinics, group rides, night rides, and all sorts of other good stuff. Go HERE for more info.

Apparently there's some big, weird cross-festival going on in Providence as well. Not that there's anything wrong with that sort of thing.

OK, back to "work."

Not It

Once, back when I was a stupid kid living in Boulder, after a long night of partying, I thought it would be a great idea to pick up a cooler full of empty beer and liquor bottles, raise it right up, high over my head and slam it on the floor. My logic: the cooler would stay latched and its fragile contents would shatter inside, it would be f—ing brilliant! But it wasn't really. Mainly because the cooler didn't stay latched, it exploded open, spewing shattered glass all over the carpet. A half-conscious hippy who was lying on the floor with his greasy head resting on the bottom step of a staircase slurred: "Not it!"

And that, is what this post is destined to be — thoughts and ideas scattered all over the place. I'm going to start with a sort of "what I did this past weekend" section and then move into a NEWS section, there's so much stuff coming up right now. Here we go...

Saturday was pretty action packed. In the morning I lead a kids ride at NEMBA's National Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day. It was rad. I had some real rippers in my crew, GB NEMBA president Adam Glick's son Sam was one of the more impressive riders.


Check him out cleaning a sick rock-lunge move above. I'll have a full write up and the whole photo sequence of Sam's move up on the International Bike blog sometime this week.


I got out for a little post kids ride spin. I've been enjoying riding around The Fells, basically my back yard. There are actually a lot of similarities between the trails of Pisgah and Massachusetts. Only difference is the total lack of extended climbing or protracted descending in Mass. That, and we don't have rhododendron groves like they do. The bruise I got on my ass from the above bobble is deep and causing bio-mechanical disruption. I sat down on the pointiest rock I could find from about three feet up. It was great.


Saturday night we did a little bicycle pub crawl down to Harpoon's Octoberfest. OK, not much of a crawl...we stopped at exactly one bar because we were running late. We got to Harpoon an hour before last call. At that point there were hundreds of people lurching down the street like zombies, heading away from Harpoon. There were police everywhere, they were trying to coral the inebriated masses into shuttles. It's always good to show up to the party just as martial law has been declared.


Octoberfest is one of those things people get really excited about and then, once they get there, they go "what the hell am I doing here?" You pay $20 to get in, which gets you one beer ticket. Then you have to wait in long lines to pay bar prices for beer (unless you've got a sweet hook up like I do). Then you stand in a beer and puke covered parking lot drinking your beer while listening to horrible music and repeatedly getting bumped into by glassy-eyed, drooling dudes who want to fight anything that moves. It's awesome.

That said, I will no doubt get bamboozled into going to the thing next year.

Above: Christopher Igleheart and Gerry Finnegan

Sunday I made it up to Gloucester for the big cyclocross race. I did more walking around and talking to people than I did actual race-watching, which is usually the case at these sort of events.


I talked to local frame builder Matt Budd about getting together to ride the mountain bikes and his crazy shifter mounts.


I did get some spectating in. Seeing Tim Johnson win at his "hometown throwdown" is always nice.

And now...
Here's The NEWS:

Some of you may have noticed that I began contributing to Bike Rumor last week. It's a challenge, I can't just go over there and talk weird like I do over here. I have to throw some facts in there as well. I do try to bring my "voice" into the stuff though. Here's a list of the posts I've done thus far:

• Celtic Ray Allen's Custom IF Corvid
• Custom Trek Speed Concepts for Kona Ironman
• G-Force Gel Brake Hoods and Killer Mutant Poly-Mermen
• Review: Ergon GR2 grips vs. Pisgah Stage Race
  

The Ergon thing and the G-Force thing have a good amount of silliness in them. Definitely more silliness than I have going on here today, that's for sure. I've been shamelessly bugging all of my "industry insider" friends for hot tips. If you, Big Bikes reader-person, have anything you think I should write about, hit me at wellonabigbikeya at the gmails with the dot com.

In an attempt to be more inter-netty, I have re-joined the Twitter. My handle is "BigBikesThom" because some undeserving prick had already taken BigBikes. I was shocked to find that Twitter has a blog. I wish I could think of a good analogy for what that's like. Is it more like a kangaroo wearing a front-facing fanny pack or buying the Cliff Notes for a book only to find they are longer than the book itself? Or is it nothing like either of those things? We'll never know.

So you can follow me on the Twitters but I'm not sure where you'll be following me to. If I could find that scene from Animal House where the dude grabs the marching band leader's baton and leads the band into a dead-end alley on Youtube, I would link to it. Because that would be very accurately illustrative of people following me on Twitter.

If you live under a rock (you obviously don't live under the same rock I do, otherwise we probably would have bumped into each other at some point) there is a f—ing massive cyclocross race this Wednesday NIGHT up in Shrewsbury, MA: The Night Weasels Cometh. It's brought to you by some of the same people as The Ice Weasels Cometh, along with some different people. My only real involvement with the thing was the doodling of the above logo. I went to art school, I used to know how to draw, I don't know what happened. I'll also be covering it for Cyclingdirt. Hey, I gotta earn my FREE, sexy Crossresults kit somehow.

Alright, that's all the news that will fit today, I got a couple more things but they can wait until tomorrow or the next day or the next day.

At Least I'm Consistent

Consistently a douche!

I know I've spent the entire week re-directing you to the 29er Crew blog for the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race Reports. Well, I hate to do this to you...wait a second, no I don't, I love to do it. I'm like a re-directing Marque De Sade over here and I'm going to re-direct you to the International Bike blog for my write ups about a couple things:

The Kids Bike Donation I worked on with Nicole Freedman and Mayor Menino over in Roxbury. That was fun.

And...

The post about further preparation of kids bikes in the scary attic of IBC. It involves Embrocation Cycling Journal, Vampires, Raiders of The Lost Ark, and other things that are scary. Not that Embrocation Cycling Journal is scary. Well, the price of an issue is scary, but not like crap your pants scary. Not like Raiders Of The Lost Ark face-melting scary, not like that.

It is time for the computer to go away for the night, I have stared at it far too long today while...um. pursuing more legitimate on-line pursuits that I will hopefully be able to talk about soon.

Alright, one more thing...

I will be down at The Fells Saturday morning, leading rides NEMBA's Take A Kid Mountain Biking Day while representing my sponsor International Bicycle Center. I think I'm doing the 10 and 11 AM rides, so come on down if you're semi-local.

And annuver fing...

I'll be up at The Gran Prix of Gloucester this Sunday drinking the beer and watching the cross. If you haven't come up to Stage Fort Park to watch this race, I highly recommend you do so. It is an amazing venue and the racing is always INSANE.

PMBSR Part III Stage 5 Transylvania Loop

The third and final installment of the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race trilogy is over on the 29er Crew blog. Things will be back to "normal" tomorrow don't you worry.

Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race Part II Stage 4

Since I began what has now turned into a race report trilogy over on the 29er Crew blog, that is where it shall be continued. Why do I send you over to the 29er Crew blog to read my manic drivel? In the words of Gerry Finnegan, "it's about respect!" The guys at Fisher (and now Trek) have been very good to me, so I in turn like to be good to them...by doing things like sending them the four hits I will get at this blog today. They will be very impressed. So impressed that they will send me to single speed worlds to cover the antics of the Gary Fisher Collection riders in New Zealand like it's a freaking reality show.

I AM LAUGHING MY ASS OFF OUT LOUD!

PMBSR Proper(ish) Race Report From Memory

Alright, I gone and done it. I wrote a proper, albeit partial race report for Pisgah. It's over on the 29er Crew blog of course. Part II tomorrow.

Showing Up

Ya, I know there was some mention on Friday of a proper Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race Report getting written, well that's not gonna happen today. This has something to do with sickness, a wedding, the premiere of Dexter, and a whole lot to do with the fact that what I have written so far is boring and worthless. So that will have to wait for tomorrow...hopefully.

I was pretty excited to have my Olympus Not-So-Tough show up in the mail Friday along with the rest of the contents of my High Cascades 100 drop bag. I even took it down to the Mayor's Cup, the big money criterium that happened in down town Boston today. For some reason I'm getting error messages when I try to upload the photos from that, but that's OK, they'll look great adorning mt PMBSR report tomorrow.


I took a photo of Greg "The Leg" down at the crit, which I can't upload. Under that photo I would have written about how Greg did the Vermont 50 Sunday morning and then drove his crazy-ass down to Boston to jump in the crit. Ya, he lasted about two laps, but it was the effort that counts. Between reports from Doug Jenne and The Leg, I have a little bit if an idea of what went on up in Ascutney. Sounds like Jason Sager (who's got a wicked cool-looking web site) beat Adam "Da Spyder" Snyder on his way to setting a course record in something like 4:06. Insanity. Doug laid down a scorching-fast 4:42, but with all the fast dudes there, it was only good for 27th place. Most years a time like that would land you in the top five or ten. I hear the mysterious mountain man, Bryan Lyster won the single speed category in front of Will Crissman and Mike Ramponi. I have no idea how that all played out and I can't wait to hear about it.

I'm falling asleep with my watery eyes open. Let's try this again tomorrow.

Friday Thought Scramble

You may have noticed that I've been a little hard up for images lately, hence the above Bob's Red Mill Logo (we'll get to that in a second). This is because my errant Olympus Stylus Not-So-Tough is still on its way back from Oregon after that unfortunate-unintentional-theft-of-my-drop-bag-incident at the High Cascades 100. Word is my 29er Crew vest, knee warmers, and arm warmers are coming back along with it. But that's not important right now, what's important is that I tell you about my very exciting breakfast (Wow-wowee-wow!) and how sometimes, just sometimes, sponsoring an athlete actually has an effect on the sales of your product.



Up until a few weeks ago I had never heard of Bob's Red Mill, but then I heard that they were Mo Bruno-Roy's new title sponsor. Fast forward — no faster than that, yup there you go, four arrow fast forward, oops, too far, now back up a little bit — to last night. I'm walking down the aisle at the grocery store and I decide to get some steel cut oats. Now, normally I don't have much of a preference for what brand of steel cut oats I purchase, but then I see them there on the shelf: Bob's Red Mill. And I go "Hey, they sponsor Mo...Mo is awesome...I think it is awesome they sponsor her...I will buy these oats to support their choice to support her." Yes, all that went through my head, really.

The bonus part was when I woke up this morning, cooked up the oats, and they were GOOD. I mean really good, way better than the stuff I usually grab at Trader Joe's, a real treat. They were like these big-honkin', chewy freakin' oats. They're so tasty, I think I'm going to have breakfast for every meal today. Throw in some apples, honey, and soy milk — POW! — that's some damn good eating.

Maybe for my "dinner oatmeal" I'll throw in some meatballs or sausage.

This type of marketing doesn't always work on me. I'm not sure if Tim Johnson is even sponsored by Red Bull anymore, but when he was, and he'd pull that very UFC fighter or NASCAR driver-like maneuver of tipping back a can of his energy drink sponsor's swill during his post-race interview, I wasn't buying it. Not just because it was such a blatantly obvious, I-am-getting-paid-to-do-this move, but because it is well established that Red Bull is total shit.

Unless you like the taste of rancid hobo-urine. But hey, whatever floats your short bus.

And the thing is, I think Tim is almost every bit as awesome as Mo (I say "almost" because Mo is my neighbor and if I make her mad, she may walk across the street and crush my skull with her preternaturally strong massage-therapist hands) it's just that the product he is pimping is, how can I put this lightly...oh wait, I already called it "total shit" and "rancid hobo-urine" — not nearly as palatable as the product Mo is pimping. Although I do respect Tim's decision to get paid, by anyone, to ride his bike. Shit, if Haliburton or BP showed up at my door step and offered me money to ride my bike all day every day in the service of promoting evil, it would be hard for me to say no. I ain't judgin'.

OK, a little bit more rambling about The 50 and then I have to get down to doing some "real writing." It would be so much easier for me if each of you readers just donated fifty-cents a day to the "keep Thom P. from working a real job fund." Is that too much to ask? That greedy Sally Struthers wanted seventy-cents a day to feed the children, and that was in the early eighties.





"For just seventy-cents a day, you can feed a child like Jamal nourishing meals. For about seventy-cents a day, you can also buy a cup of coffee. BUT, for just fifty-cents a day, you can prevent Thom P. from working a real job."

Seventy-cents for a cup of coffee. Fehkin' Starbucks.

Visit cyclingdirt.org for more Videos

So there have been some changes in my VT50 predictions. I did not know that Adam "Da Spyder" Snyder was showing up. And I couldn't help but peruse the start list and see that wunderkind Peter Ostroski is also signed up. Monte can still win any race against anyone, but he is going to have a battle on his hands. I think he's actually riding gears too, craziness. Ostroski had some severe mechanical issues last year which took him out of the running for the win (he even finished behind me), but I think without those issues, he would have been right there with Whittingham and Letendre, maybe not quite up there with Jakomait, but who knows, the kid is pretty talented. This year there will be no Letendre, Jakomait, or Whittingham, so I see a big battle between Snyder, Ostroski, and Montalbano going down. Of course the VT50 still doesn't have an Open or Elite category (and it should) so Ostroski will be riding with the generally slower, younger group which will be staggered behind the group all the heavy-hitters will be in. He will have the disadvantage of not being at the front of the race, but those in the front group will have the disadvantage of not knowing what the hell Peter's doing behind them. I'd hate to be one of the guys in the front group, waiting to see how long it takes for Peter show up at the finish line, counting the seconds.

Those dudes should have fun with the new-improved earlier start too. It's now 6AM instead of 6:15 AM, because it wasn't cold enough or dark enough when we started at 6:15. Hey VT50 promoter Michael J. Silverman, go out the day before the race and try to ride that first section of trail without a light at 6AM, see how it goes you nutter.

Jeebus, I have never yammered so incessantly about a race I am not doing in my life. I got issues.

Monday! I swear that I am going to put together something like a race report, if only for my own records, for the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race. God knows I got nothin' else to talk about.

No Fifty For Me

I'm just going to come out and say it: I will not be doing the Vermont 50 this year. Wow, that felt better than the time, five minutes ago, when I took a shower and expectorated two gallons of phlegm. Too much information you say? Too much fluorescent green mucus I say. The main reason I am not on the start list for The 50 this year is that I have wedding the day before. Now I could go to the wedding, be a total lame-ass, not party, and try to jet out of there early, but I would still party a little and I wouldn't be able to jet out of there early enough to wake up feeling at all not-like-crap for the 6:15 AM start. I would lose on both ends. All my friends at the wedding would still think I was a douche bag and I would have a total shit race. Sunday night I would feel like more of a sad and lonely loser of a man than I normally do. Not worth it.

That knowledge was enough to prevent me from signing up when registration opened back in May. But it was just enough. I still wanted to hit that submit button "just in case." Sort of like how I signed up for SSWCNZ "just in case." I mean, who knows, the wedding could have gotten called off or something. (I'm so glad none of my friends actually read this thing, otherwise Greg would be pissed.) Back in May I couldn't have known that I would be doing the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race either. And, having never done a stage race before, I wouldn't have known that I ride like a tranquilized Himalayan cat the week after a stage race. I also couldn't have known that I would come back to the Boston-ish area completely sick after said stage race. The stupid thing is, if I didn't have this wedding I would no doubt be on that start line Sunday morning oozing phlegm from every orifice.

That's the 50 for me, I do the race almost every year, no matter what, and it's a race that doesn't suit my strengths at all, the reason I am drawn to it is inexplicable. And apparently when asked about The 50 I tend to gush a bit. Both Garth Prosser and Sue Haywood expressed interest in coming up to the race and I told them they absolutely HAD TO do it, that it was the best thing ever. I actually think that Garth could win the thing, it definitely plays to his strengths. That skinny Tinker Juarez look-a-like can climb.

I haven't perused the start list but I'm going to tap Mike Montalbano for the win. With Whittinghammer sidelined with a broken leg (that he rode on for two weeks before noticing) and Jesse Jakomait having transplanted himself to Colorado, it's anybody's race...but mostly Mike's. Although you've also got Doug Jenne who was brilliant at Breck, Will Crissman who has shown some great form recently with a second place at the EFTA Treasure Valley Rally and a sixth place in a stacked field at the Landmine Classic. Then there's The Ramponi, Mike Ramponi, coming off a second place in the scary-fast single speed category at the Wilderness 101. I'm sure all the usual top ten suspects will be there as well: Tyler Merritt, Stephen Humphreys, and Brian Lyster. It should be good, so sad I won't be there to get my ass handed to me by a long line of professional ass-hander-toers.

A Failed Attempt at Misdirection

I'm not sure if I have any intention of doing a proper Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race report at all. I mean, it's five days of stuff to talk about, and each day, aside from the first were long days. The short of it is that it started out really crappy and got progressively better each day. Coming off of the Breck Epic just two weeks prior did weird things to me I think. I did ride in-between the two races and I did make some efforts, but I came into the prologue at Pisgah feeling both tired and flat. What I did have was the psychological edge, I knew that I could pedal my bike every day for five days and not completely die. Shit, I could pedal for six. Actually if the PMBSR were six days long, I would have done slightly better. My best performance came on the final day when I got 8th overall, beating all the Masters 40+ Elites but one, all the single-speeders, all the women, and a couple guys who were in my stacked field. On second thought, that's bullshit. I got sick on the fifth night and woke up feeling like a Vesuvius of mucus. If I had started a sixth day feeling like that, I would have been one hurtin' gator-unit. That's the expression right?

So what I'm going to do once again is post a bunch of videos and talk (hopefully) briefly about them. I've got a bunch of loose ends to deal with and my blogging time is scarce.

A couple days of lying sick on the couch has allowed me to catch up on some stuff, stuff like Cannondale Factory ride Alex Grant's helmet-cam videos from the Breck Epic. This is the longest but by far the best one. If you want to see more of his vids, go HERE. It's awesome because, first off, it was an amazing stage. We went over French Pass up at twelve-thousand somethin' feet. There was snow, I think we were in a cloud, it was truly epic. Another reason why it's awesome is because Alex was in contention for the win, he chases Jeremiah Bishop right to the line as Bishop virtually levitates over the singletrack.

Breck Epic Stage 3 French Pass, Alex Grant Helmet-Cam:

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Further evidence that I have had some actual down time to do the thing the people call "surfing the internet," a video from Fail Blog of a kid eating massive shit helmetlessly attempting to jump a dry creek bed. The finest moment, for me, is when, after shearing the head tube off his bike, and devouring an all you can eat buffet of dirt, he says: "The chain came off."




Oh ya, before I forget...
the above photo, at the top of the post there, that's from Brad O Allen's blog. He's got more great shots of the PMBSR course over on his site, they really capture the awesomeness of the trails.



And before I go on to introduce more distracting videos, I want to say that I also finally got a chance to read Colby Pearce's Breck Epic blogs on Cyclingnews and they are GOOD. OK, I may have initially dismissed them, before having read them, as the very serious race reports of a very serious racer-dork. I was wrong. After spending nigh on a week staying in a house with Colby I realized that, however serious he may be about bike racing, he is not really that serious about anything else, and that comes across in his posts big time. And I'll be damned if his post about his stage win on the final day isn't one of they most inspirational fucking things I have ever read.

And this, this was something I picked up of the Facebooks. I am blown away at how far cycling-film cinematography has come. I saw the same progression with Skateboard and Snowboard films — each endeavor getting more polished and aesthetically awe-inspiring. This trailer raises bar, I cannot wait to see this freaking film.

Life Cycles Trailer:

Life Cycles OFFICIAL Trailer from Life Cycles on Vimeo.

And speaking of aesthetically awe-inspiring...
I meant to post this when it was slightly more timely (but still after half the world had seen it). But, if you're like me and you ambulate around the internet like you have a 56k modem, this will come as a pleasing shock to you.

Rapha Continental | B2B | Boston, MA to Windsor, VT

Rapha Continental | B2B | Boston, MA to Windsor, VT from RAPHA on Vimeo.

Although the video below is old news, it is worth another viewing, especially now that it is Cross season. My favorite moment comes about 1:20 in, when the dude trials/rolls a log on his CX bike. Wicked. Another aspect of this video that appeals to me is the lack of soundtrack and the use of bike/nature sounds. With the helmet cam stuff I'm doing, that really isn't an option, all you'd hear is loud wind-noise and horrible rattling; not crunching pine needles and a light breeze blowing through the tall grass.

Local Trails Ala CX:

Local trails ala cx from Andy Wardman on Vimeo.

Tomorrow: maybe we'll talk about how I won't be doing the Vermont 50 this year and how it's tearing me up inside like I swallowed a live ferret. I might work some more yammering about Pisgah in there too.

Best of Cyclingdirt Coverage

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Alright, so I'm gonna chill out for yet another day and fall back on the veritable bounty of Cyclingdirt coverage I amassed over the past week. Last night was the first time I really got to sit down and watch a lot of it. Much of that stuff got posted without any kind of screening, just my memory of the interview. And they sure as shit weren't edited in any way...the interviews that is; the helmet-cam stuff is heavily edited, particularly the vids for stages 4 and 5. One thing I learned from watching all those videos is that I need to focus more on, well...focusing more. The Flip Mino (which is still on loan from the Reuters collection) I'm using has a very narrow angle on the lens, you really have to pay attention to where you're aiming the thing or, in my case, not aiming the thing — like, during the mid-point of this video where I linger a little too long on Dejay Birtch's hairy nipples.

OK so...guide to Cyclingdirt coverage. The above video is of Eric Purdue, post stage 5. Eric Purdue is awesome. He is hilarious. He is the man. But apparently some people don't get him — people like Joeseph, a dude who commented below Eric's video on Cyclingdirt. I don't like talking trash (real trash) in comments sections of blogs and I don't even walk on the same side of the street as those angry-forum-folks. Incidentally, speaking of trash, did you know that the Spanish word for trash is "chatarra?" Unlike me, you probably did. I learned this from my Guatemalan housemate in Brevard, Charlie. I guess he saw a house with a yard full of a bunch of cars and refrigerators and other assorted detritus while he was driving through Brevard and he wondered why the people who lived there kept all their "chatarra."

But back to Eric Purdue and the angry commenter...so this is what the guy said:

I'd like to show this doucebag some mercy on my own handbuilt, pristine, kick donkey ass trails!! I built Pisgah when I wasn't building my own shittt. I do like the follow your dreams bit, Nothing says follow your dreams like getting your ass handed to you by the first loser!!

- Joeseph

One trait that pretty much all people who spout ungrounded, venomous comments on the internet share is this: they can neither spell nor construct a coherent sentence. Case in point, this guy can't spell "douchebag" or "shit." Hell, he can't even spell his own name. Who spells Joseph "Joeseph." Yes I am a Thom who spells his name with an H, but at least Spellcheck doesn't flag my name when I write it. I hope, for Joeseph's sake, that he never crosses paths with Eric Purdue. Eric may not the the fastest cyclist, but if I had to choose the person I would least like to fight out of the PMBSR field, it would be him, hands down. If Joe-seph ever did the PMBSR I'm afraid he wouldn't make it past morning check in:

Joeseph: Yup, I'm just gonna sign in here, that's me right there, Joeseph with an extra E for no reason at all. Let me go ahead and...

Eric Purdue: (Standing behind JoEseph in his black and white ensemble, looking like a threatening Panda): You say your name was Joseph-with-an-extra-E?

Joeseph: That's right, you got a problem with that you shitt head, you deuce-bag?

What would follow is not a scene I can describe here. I'll just say that in homicide cases the term "debris footprint" is not usually applied. For this an exception would have to be made.

The rest of these are going to have to be a little less involved.

Below a man named "Shrimper" describes what it's like to inhabit a rancid squirrel suit for six hours in the humid 80-something degree heat of the Pisgah Forest:

Shrimper:

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The highlight of this video comes near the end, when Ozzie Open womens' leader Claire Garcia-Webb takes a dive off the podium...sober:

Stage 4 Helmet Cam

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This is my most heavily edited helmet-cam vid and the tunes are wicked good. It's also got highlights from the the kids race and the pie-eating contest. Good stuff:

Stage 5 Helmet Cam:

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The best part of this one is when a kid asks Jeremiah Bishop if he's a pro rider, he says "I try" and she says "You're AWESOME!":

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What can I say, his name is Butt and he's the funniest Australian this side of Ronnie Johns. You also might learn a little bit about how my race went from this one:

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And this, this is rad. I mounted a Helmet Hero to the head tube of local hot-shot-ripper Cory Rimmer's bike. The dude is 20-years-old and he had no problem chasing Bishop or Pearce or whoever else he felt like chasing. He wasn't racing, he was just out there training. He must be kinda scary when he races. Oh, and thanks to my buddy Bullit at Cycle 9 in Carrboro it has the best soundtrack of any of these videos. I tried to keep the music local as much as I could: Southern Culture on The Skids, Superchunk, Flat Duo Jets, and...The Monks!:

Colby Pearce, Cory Rimmer-Cam

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Shoot, I wrote a lot for someone who wasn't planning on writing anything.

Sick and Tired

Photo Cred: Brad O Allen

But not necessarily in that order. Yes I came home sick from The Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race, but I don't think I'd be feelin' all that well even if I were healthy. Riding 175 miles with 40,000 feet of elevation gain in five days will do that to a man...or me. It's not like I've been treating my body all that well this season, if one bout of sickness is the price I have to pay, I'll take it. I know things have been a little quiet here lately but that's only because it's gotten very noisy over on the PMBSR Cyclingdirt page. And speaking of noisy, there's nothing like flying with a chest and head cold next to a screeching-like-it's-being-put-through-a-woodchipper-baby to make you want to pull the emergency exit latch and fling yourself into stratosphere. Of course it could have been worse, I could have been wedged in next to this guy:


Seats on planes should be sold like real estate. If you pay for a house with a one car garage and you have two cars, you don't get to put your second car in your neighbor's garage. This guy's "second car" was a first model year Hummer comprised of a flaccid, sweaty, ass; taking up a good third of his neighbor's seat. At the very least big boy should have paid the dude to his right some rent in the form of a cocktail.

I have no idea why I got sick. I mean, my days down in Brevard went like this:

• Wake up at 6:30 Am or earlier
• Drink more coffee than the other five people in the house COMBINED
  
• Take establishing shots at the venue while getting ready to race
• Race hard for 4-5 hours
• Hang out at the venue doing interviews for an hour-and-a-half
• Do not pass shower, head straight to the cafe to edit vids for 2-3 hours
  
• Drive over to the awards ceremony/movie night and try to edit vids while being semi-social
• Go back to the then closed cafe to pirate their Wi Fi and eat dinner in the car, in a dark parking lot while posting my videos to Cyclingdirt
• Get home at 10:30-11, drink a couple High Life's to unwind
• Sleep badly for 4-6 hours
• Do it again only with progressively less vigor and progressively more pain
  

It'll pick up here as the week goes on, although I still have lots of "sweet footy" to edit and post on Cyclingdirt.

And, if you're in the neighborhood and you care about access to The Fells, please attend this meeting:

Trails Action Alert!

On Monday, September 20th, 2010 DCR will be presenting their Draft Trails Plan for the Middlesex Fells at a public meeting at the McGlynn School in Med- ford, MA.

We need a strong presence from the MTB community at this meeting! Anti-MTB groups have continued to hammer DCR against any equitable changes to MTB access in the Fells and we need to make sure our presence, voices and rights to singletrack in the Fells are *strongly* represented.

Where: McGlynn School in Medford (adjacent to Hormel Stadium)

When: Monday, September 20th, 6:30-8:00pm Action: Get yourself there! Tell your friends.

More info at http://www.gbnemba.org

Had Enough Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race?

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Well too F—in' bad kid, cuz you got at least two more days of video and then...and then I start TALKING about it. You are screwed. Unless, of course, you like-ah the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race. In that case, you're stoked.

Above is the stage two helmet cam.

I'm in the process of uploading stuff from Stage 3, check the official PMBSR page on Cylingdirt.

Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race on Cyclingdirt

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It's late for a post, I know.

It's been a long day and this is the shortest day of this five day race. Oh, and the easiest. Like getting shot in the gut is less painful than getting shot in the foot, just like that.

Above are my helmet cam highlights for stage one. The rest of the coverage can be found right freaking HERE.

Now I have to go home and take a shower so Garth doesn't kick me out of our rather small room for stinking like the ass end of a dead rhino.

-t

Wicked Pisgah Mountain Stage Race Preview

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Things are way to crazy and tight for a proper, yammering, train-wreck of a blog post this morning. So what I give you is this: my Pisgah Mountain Stage Race Preview on Cyclingdirt. Get used to looking at my contorted face and listening to my umming, aahing and nervous throat clearing, 'cause that's what's in store for you this week you poor bastards.

We're Having a Fire...Sale! Oh The Burning!

I'm selling my Fuji Cyclocross Pro, it's just not a bike I ride anymore and I doubt I'll be doing any Cross this season. It's a rather smallish 58cm (it fits me well and I'm a shortish 5' 11"). It's in great shape, new brake pads, new chain, new bar wrap, but other than that it's entirely stock. Except for the tires. I actually have road tires on it at the moment, which I can easily swap to cross tires.

All the specs can be found HERE on the Fuji site.

I'm thinking about $950.

I'm leaving for Pisgah Monday afternoon, I'd love to get rid of it before then.
Hit me up at thomp2000 at the gmails or give me a call at 781-801-3107.

Nothing For The Weekend

Yesterday was nuts, the most entertaining display of joyous mayhem I have witnessed since I tried to follow Dejay Birtch down a dusty, rutted out decent at Breck. (Hey, I can't get through a day without mentioning Breck; it's my 'Nam.) I worked a bike donation for The Shop over at a Boston Housing Authority development in Roxbury. This was in conjunction with Boston Bike Czar Nicole Freedman and the Mayor's office. We actually donated less bikes than we did during the Holland School Donation, but it seemed like a much bigger deal. There were camera crews, a PA system, tons of orange-shirted volunteers, and exponentially more mayhem. At the Holland School the kids got their bikes four or five at a time, and they weren't really allowed to ride the bikes outside of their brief fitting session. At this thing the kids all got their bikes at once and they were all told to go navigate a "safety course." You ever seen Death Race 2000? Death Race has nothin' on this.

Let me explain what the hell is going on here, so...

International Bicycle Center has a program in place that encourages customers to trade in their kids bikes within two years of the purchase date for a credit of up to 50% of the value toward a new kids bike. It's an incentive for people not to go buy a rickety-kid-maiming-machine from a department store. Although it is fun when they do just that and then they come into the shop and ask to get the thing tuned up: "$65! But I only spent $100 on the whole bike!" I quote my old friend Bruce Weber on that one, "OK, then why don't you bring it back to the service department at Toys R Us." "Toys R Us has a service department?" And that's when you look at them knowingly and, if they're not as thick as day old oatmeal, they get it. "Oh."

The truly crazy part of this arrangement is that the customer can actually trade that last kids bike, the 24", toward an adult bicycle. The crazier part is that almost no one does this, we get very few 24's back. The only reason I can come up with for this is this: at that age if you give a kid a choice between a bike and an iphone, the kid will chose the iphone, hands down, every time. And why the hell not? iphones have way more apps than bicycles, pedophiles can't cyber-stalk kids via a bicycle, and no teenager has ever crashed a car into an oncoming semi, killing two of her best friends because she was texting on her bicycle. I'm going to start a politically-based bicycle advocacy group called "Phones not Bikes."

The by-product of this program is that IBC ends up with hundreds of still-very-shiny and new looking kids bikes to donate. Which is very cool.

Alright, so I just wanted to get a plug in for the baffling awesome program IBC has regarding the kids bikes. They do a lot to support my racing and they even continue to employee me in some capacity while I waltz all over the country doing whatever it is I think I'm doing. I will be waltzing (I really have no idea how to waltz or why I am using that expression at all) down to North Carolina for The Pisgah Mountain Stage Race on Monday. There will be some updates here throughout the week, but most of my energy will be devoted to the video-work for Cyclingdirt.

OK, one more semi-awesome thing. Like I said, this thing was a big deal, there was even a podium for the mayor, yes the mayor. He showed up in his black SUV with his entourage, made a long speech to a bunch of baffled and ancy six-year-olds and then opened up the microphone for me. Yes me. "Ulp." I was given enough warning that this was going to happen to allow myself to become completely nervous and freaked out. I was not, however, given enough warning to plan anything to say. Which reminds me of a funny story about public speaking and me sucking at it:

Back in Breck....

crap, I have no time to tell this story, I have to go over to Roxbury to deliver 8 more bikes and nine more helmets, it will have to wait for another day, perhaps a Monday. It involves Dicky, Peter, and Tequila (no, that is not Doug's nickname, though he does need one), Christopher Walken, and me breaking glass things that are of great value to others with my bony ass.

SNL Star Wars Auditions @ Yahoo! Video

Brecked Out

Alright, I think I'm Brecked out, but who knows, maybe some more Breck will come oozing out of my pores sometime in the next few days. And I better be Brecked out because it's time to get all stoked for The Pisgah Mountain Stage Race, which starts next Tuesday. I spoke to promoter Todd Branham on the phone last night and it was awesome, the guy got me completely amped to do this race. He used adjectives like "slow" and "hard" and "technical" repeatedly to describe the trails. There was some discussion of the "half-track" trails, singletrack so narrow that it seems un-rideable. There was a whole lot of talk about the differences between Breck and Pisgah. I know from my two Swank 65 experiences that western North Carolina's trails are much more similar to our trails here in the Boston-ish area.

Except with hills.

I mean, what the crap? Somehow the Pisgah race boasts MORE climbing per mile than Breck. I haven't done the math but it seems that way anyway. OK ya, you don't have to be Rooter to figure this one out: Breck has 37,000 feet of gain over 240 miles in six days; Pisgah has 40,000 feet over 175 miles in 5 days. AAH! Well, at least it's not at elevation. That was the only hard part about Breck right? No, not really. Once I'd acclimated, I'd be grinding up some awful climb going "yup, this would suck at sea level."

I really just came down here today to make excuses for why I wasn't going to be posting anything. Gotta head over to The Shop to finish getting the donation bikes ready for the kids.

Bye!