Slump Day

Last Thursday I went out for another Solo Epic. Yes Epic. I said it, I'll say it again EPIC. We just don't use that word enough anymore. We also don't chest bump as a greeting enough anymore. "Hi Gramma" - Bump! "Oh God, someone call the paramedics". Maybe four and a half hours on The Superfly. Thursdays were my long road ride day, but since I got the Superfly set up and the trails have cleared, I haven't been able to help myself. Every chance I get, I'm out on that bike, riding all over the place just to ride. Training-wise I'm not sure if it makes sense. I don't really care. Enough road already, I want to play bikes.

This ride was another of those over the river and through the woods to god freakin' knows where rides. I had to get to the shop to attend to some very serious business. That leg of the ride was primarily road, although I did throw in some urban trials. There will possibly be a video to accompany this post sometime in the (probably distant) future showcasing how awesomely I suck at trials. I spent far too long messing around at the shop, leaving with about two hours of daylight remaining.

I talk a lot about all the music I listen to to keep me sane on long road rides but I on the mountain bike I almost can't tolerate music at all. I knew I'd be out for a long time and a good amount of that time would be spent spinning my brains out (Shut up, it's all relative, some of us just have less brains to spin out. Don't make fun of me just because I have a placard on my bike that allows me to park closer to the coffee shop than you) on the road. I was in a hurry so I even loaded up my ipod with my all time favorite, 150 song, nearly five hour comp, No Thanks! the '70s punk Rebellion. And even that couldn't keep me happy. For whatever reason, I prefer silence on the knobby bike.

From there I explored some trails along The Charles River around Hemlock Gorge and down Quinobequin Road. Nothing to write home about, but something to write on the blog about how they aren't something to write home about. Yes, that sentence doesn't quite work, does it?

I picked up some Fisherman's trails along The Charles in Waltham. These trails don't really go anywhere and no discerning mountain bike rider would ever consider them a destination, but string 'em together with some other stuff and you're a stoked puppy.

And Here's the funny thing. Half way through the latter part of this ride I bonked terribly. I had the camera on so whenever I had the thing running and some tasty single-track was thrown in front of me I started riding like a freakin' idiot. No one wants to watch a helmet cam video of someone poking along the trail. Except maybe my Mom...because it wouldn't make her quite so nervous. This practice quickly sapped my stores. The amount of food I'd normally ingest on a steady road endurance ride was nowhere near adequate.

I still had a Metric Butt-Load of trail to cover before I could hang my helmet so I veered about a mile off course in either direction to scare up some supplies. A little Liquor store on Trapelo road was the best I could do. So I drank a Forty of Old E and ate some Beef Jerky and Hot Fries and I was on my way.

No. I'm not quite that fucked in the head, nor I am I that dietarily punk rock. That set up makes the fact that my emergency meal consisted of Coke and Cream Filled Chocolate Easter Eggs seem pretty reasonable. Hey, they did the trick, I went from being useless, to being able to pedal my bike with some feeling, to kind of rockin' it again. So much so that given the choice between turning for home as the sun set or taking on more trail, I opted for the latter.

That went well...for a minute. Then I took a left when I should have taken a right and found myself over a half an hour from home, half an hour after sunset, with no lights. Dur. Here I chose to ride down the powerlines toward Horn Pond in Woburn, figuring it was safer than riding the road in the pitch dark. As I rolled down the powerlines I caught something out of the corner of my eye, I thought it was a Red-Tailed Hawk. Which would have been cool. Common...but cool. It was, in fact, a Great Horned Owl. It came to a perch on a leafless tree, staring right at me, it did that head thing, the pivoting in circles thing, it didn't make a sound, I did, I let out a hoot, not like and Owl, like an imbecile who was really, really stoked to see and Owl. Then it flew away.

After that I picked my way blindly through the Forest, spun home down the Mystic Lakes, and came home to find Mountains of Indian Food awaiting me. Such a perfect day.

Trek Rep Bill dropped these by the shop today. I quietly slunk back outside and removed the Banana I had just put in his tailpipe.

Weird, Barbaric Polish Duke
(Who no one in their right mind would marry their Princess-daughter off to)
of Burlingame

It's alright, I'm partly Polish. I can make jokes like that, but because I'm only partly Polish I have to leave out part of the joke...in this case, the funny part.

Where was I? Something about terrifying driving and not warming up. Sound about right? So we actually got there pretty quick (flashback to two sentences ago when I was talking about terrifying driving). Not enough time to pre-ride, but time enough to put our clothes on at a full sprint, number up, and check out the first part of the course. Looked good, very fun and techy. Boded well for an out of shape (I'm just going to weave my excuses for why I sucked like a big sucking suck into this post in a sort of subliminal way, therefore you will come away from this story saying "Well, that douche bag Thom P. did pretty well...considering he had more chips stacked against him than that guy on the news who got killed by that overturned Pringles truck". What's that? That's the wrong kind of chip? Well then a joke about an overturned Pringles truck wouldn't make much sense now would it. Way to parade on my piss.) dude with some rusty Bike-Ninja skills.

I seriously almost forgot to finish that sentence after the parentheses.

As I was saying, before I so rudely interrupted myself, Dan B., Linnea, and I rode the first section of the course. By the time we got back it was nearly go time. I decided to roll to the car which was a mile from the start to ditch my wind-vest and extra tube and to put some warm up balm on my butt-ass-white legs. Mike said I didn't have enough time. He was right. I slept maybe seven hours in the two days leading up to the race combined. I sprinted back from the car, missing my start time by two minutes. And I didn't get to race. The End.

Lies and craziness. They were running late and I had time to spare. No problem. Except for the fact that my legs were torn to shreds from the four hour ride I did Thursday, where I bonked and had to eat cream filled chocolate easter eggs and drink Coke until I regained stasis. The guy doing the starts, where he actually held your saddle while you clipped in, was hilarious. Hamming it up and taking the piss out of everyone in his pronounced Gaelic lilt. "Aye, Thommy Parsons, everyone's favorite bike rider...Thommy, I love them wee pink tassels you have on yer bike there lad". And I was off.


The big (to my legs) gear of 34 X 17 felt good to me through the tech stuff. But soon I ran out of tech stuff and entered the drag strip straightaways which would typify the remainder of the course with a few exceptions. I knew Johnny Bold and Kevin Hines were out there behind me somewhere, lighting those sections ablaze as they searched for more gears on their bikes. Super gears.

Quickly I began picking off the riders ahead of me. Which surprised me because the way I was feeling saturday afternoon, after the NEMBA trail day at The Fells, I was pretty sure I had The Black Plague. False Alarm! I had this insane idea that I would see Rooter. I wouldn't even end up putting a minute into him in the end. Remember how much faster the kid got between the 07 and 08 'Cross seasons? Watch out Root 66 Series, IBC has him on a doping regime you wouldn't believe. We first created an actual Centaur by combining the preserved DNA of the deceased race horse, Secretariat and the DNA of Eddy Merckx. Over the past few months we have been blood doping Reuter with the super-blood of this creature. I told you you wouldn't believe it.

I'm lost. I forgot that race reports are actually really, really boring. Triple arrow fast-forward, no, f-that, quintuple arrow fast forward...and I'm standing at the finish line with Colin and IBC's Dan B., who'd ridden the whole dam race, just about, with his seatpost snapped off, on a single speed. He stood for twenty five minutes. And he beat lots and lots of people. It was cold, so we rolled back to the parking lot where we tried to lay plans for a post race ride with the the likes of Chris Gagnon, Kurt Johnson, and Rob Stine. People I had different time lines so Colin, Linnea, and I ended up rolling to Arcadia where Mr. Stine showed us his personal playground. Those trails are sweet! It is no wonder the guy is a Technical-Gorilla-Jedi-Wizard. Most XC courses don't let a guy show off the fact he can cleanly J-hop a two foot high log in his sleep.

In summary: Great race, I'll do it again next year, especially with the added bonus of Rob's trails being nearby, Tim Horton's is better than Dunkin Donuts, getting a doughnut as part of your sandwich combo is awesome, I ate bacon with every meal Sunday, I drank, perhaps a record amount of coffee that day, in possibly related news I also peed more times throughout the course of the day than the word "Fuck" is used in the film Scarface and Goodfellas - combined, The Superfly was wicked! When you haven't breathed really f-in hard for months and months and months and then you go out and breath really f-in hard for half an hour you don't feel too too good, you can do anything for ten minutes but you can't do some things for more than twenty minutes, I got second in my age class and won a sweet full face Bell helmet which I will wear to Highland when I go up there with my Remedy, and...what else? Oh, I saw Gewilli stopped on the side of the trail during the race updating his blog. Now that's commitment.

1.)Rob shows us the way 2.) Collum searches for the precious 3.) "There can be no question, my dear Watson, of the value of exercise before breakfast."

I'm pretty sure Sherlock Holmes was talking about racing your bike before going to Tim Horton's.

Oh ya, oops! Cutler Park doesn't open officially until NEXT WEEK. So yes, big , I say BIG Cutler Park ride, on the actual opening day, Wednesday April 15th 6 PM, 71 Needham St. Newton. No ride this Wednesday though.

(Not The) King of Burlingame

First race of the season, time to work the bugs out in more ways than one. I think that's all I've got. I'm attempting to write in the morning here, not normal, maybe I need to wait for the coffee to kick in. Alright, I'll begin doing a "and then...and then" race report and see if something happens. I've got less than an hour to do this too, also not normal. And...go!

During the off-season, Sundays have been a day of partial rest for me. At least I get to sleep in, working off the huge sleep debt I have amassed over the week. It was tough to break out of that and wake up at 4:45AM, in the dark, to go to a race which was two hours away and would likely last a mere half hour. We did plan on riding with some people afterward to make it worth the trip. 4:45, I wish I'd slept that "late". I was up at 2:45. When sleep-deprived my math skills are the first to go, this includes being able to tell time apparently. I looked at the clock, it said 2:45, I was supposed to get up at 4:45, I "did the math" and figured I was only up an hour early and began drinking coffee. Once the coffee started to do its thing I realized I was up a solid two hours early. Oops. So I watched an episode of Angel and drank the first three cups of what would amount to about a gallon of coffee that day.

Then I went to pick up Reuters and Linnea. Cary Fridrich had bailed on us, he sent his cancellation email as I was waking up, it was this drunken slur of an email too, "Sozzle, blozzle, flozzum, I'm tired, I don't wanna ride in a car for two hours to race my bike for a half hour, burp! Hic!". He was obviously hammered but he was making a whole lot sense.

"He's using every bit of the road Paul. Well, that was a bit too close for comfort!"

Then we were driving down the highway, we were about half an hour into our trip, cutting it close for getting a pre-ride in anyway when Colin realized that he had left his bag of EVERYTHING in the house...or his car...or on the sidewalk. So I turned the family fun wagon around and began driving against traffic down 128 back to Somerville at 85 MPH. This blew our chance of a pre-ride but with a little more focus behind the wheel and a little more pressure on the gas pedal, we arrived in time for something that resembled a warm up if you tilted your head slightly and squinted your eyes enough.

Alright, this is uncharacteristically ridiculous of me but I am out of writing time for today and I must got to work, therefore I absolutely must do this:

To be continued...

Oh wait, before I go. We're doing Cutler Park rides out of the Newton shop now, all NEMBA sanctioned and everything, 6PM Wednesday night, no lights required, we'll just ride until we run out of daylight. Check the IBC event calendar for details and come on out!

Hey Race of Truth,
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't ready to kick—your—freakin—ass

EFTA's King of Burlingame Time Trial is this Sunday. It is an off-road time trial but like Greg Lemond before me, I am an innovator, an early-adopter of controversial technologies. I will likely be the only rider at the event utilizing Aerodynamic equipment heretofore unseen in the realm of mountain bike racing.

Photo Cred: Jason WG

I went over to The Shop today for a fitting on my Superfly, which has been adapted into a mean Time Trial Machine. Master bicycle fitter, Craig Gaulzetti worked with me. We came to the conclusion that for my purposes running the TT helmet in reverse was actually much more effective.

Photo Cred: Jason WG

The IBC wind tunnel came in handy today. Kind of a bold move, buying a quarter million dollar wind tunnel in this economic climate but I believe it will pay off. I also believe in Yetis and Zombies.

Photo Cred: Jason WG

The Bontrager Aeolus wheels coupled with Mud-X tires. A winning combination. The Mud-X is my, as they say, "Go to tire". It doesn't roll too bad on hard pack or tarmac and when the going gets gnarly it hooks up better than anything.

Meanwhile back in reality...

Got a package in the mail from Endless Bikes, the official cog sponsor of Big Bikes. Hey, Lance Armstrong doesn't even have a cog sponsor. Make that two things I have that he doesn't. The new Kick Ass Cog design looks great. I threw a new 17t on the back, on the ride after my Tri-fitting it felt great too.

Left to right, top to bottom:

a.) with theses new additions to my Russian-Nuclear-Weapons-stockpile-during-the-cold-war-esque arsenal of cogs, I now have an array ranging from 15 up to 22t. As I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot more about in the future. b.) I was all suited up and ready to go when I remembered I had to swap out my cog and spacers. I'm like a Golden Retriever after it's already seen you grab the leash off the coat rack once my bibs are on. Just working on my bike my heart rate's at 150BPM. c.) Endless Bikes also sent along their Fibonacci Spacer Kit. The old, very, very pro set up of mis-matched 9 and 10 speed cassette spacers, rescued from customers discarded drivetrains was pretty sweet, but these things are a whole lot sweeter. And lighter. And they look really nice and clean. d.) That's them, the old spacers. Nice eh? You can have them for one can of Dale's Pale Ale. OK, half a can, but nobackwashsies.

By the way (Longhand for BTW) more people tuned into Big Bikes than ever before yesterday. I guess I should have horribly traumatic, emotionally scarring pranks pulled on me more often. Can somebody say "Schadenfreude"? Because I can't. My German pronunciation is scheisse.

April Fools!

Ha, ha very funny. Jesus...ugh...this was a good one.

Last year Miriam (my fiance) tried to get me with a bike related April Fools joke. There were holes in her plot, and I went from skeptically intrigued to outright dubious within minutes. This was the email she hit me with:

Dear valued customer:

To kick off the 2008 road/mountain bike season we are starting our 1st annual bike giveaway. Your name was selected as one of the last 5,000 people to contact Trek Bikes. To win your 2008 Madone 5.2 Pro (road bike) or Top Fuel 9.8 (mountain bike), you must be one of the first 5 people to respond to this email. This is no gimmick. The only "string attached" is that the winners of this prize must commit to 4 public appearances (in your region) and participate on our Trek Blog,writing about your adventures on the bike. Please do not respond if a) you don't want either of the 2 bikes offered OR b) if you are unwilling to make the public appearances and blog entries.

Reply Quick and Good Luck!

Waterloo, Wisconsin
Trek Bikes
http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/
801 W Madison St
Waterloo, WI 53594

My reply was:

"Hi, I'd sure love that bike!"

Just on the off chance it wasn't a total load of crap.
She did make it look pretty pro with the official looking Trek Bikes signature, but there was one problem...the email address it emanated from was:
trekbikegiveaway@gmail.com
Made up. Trek doesn't use gmail addresses. That's for sure. The jig was up.

That was then, this is now. She must have spent the year at some sort of Super Secret Ninja-Jedi-Prankster training School. I was wondering what all those late nights were about. This is the email I got just a little earlier tonight from Bill Hand, IBC's Outside Trek Rep:

Hey Thom,

I am writing with some very unfortunate news. There is an impending recall of all 2009 Superflys. We have recently learned of several instances of a catastrophic delamination failures at the head and downtube joint. Obviously due to the seriousness of this type of defect, immediate action is required. We have been advised from Trek to instruct all Superfly owners to not ride this bike under any circumstance. Luckily production was limited, so getting in touch with all current owners should not be too big a problem. This situation just came to my attention earlier today and we have not had a chance to talk with shop management yet. Trek/Gary Fisher is planning an official release of information to all dealers by the end of the week, but as a personal friend, I wanted to get word out to you asap. I know the race season is upon you and I don’t want you suffering the same fate as a couple of other riders. I am hoping that you can keeps this under wraps until we can properly notify Gregg and other shop managers. I will be in later this week to discuss warranty replacement options. We will not be able to provide you with another Superfly as the issue has yet to be resolved, but we will do our best to get you on a ride that makes you almost, if not equally as happy. Look for a new and improved model for 2010! I am in meetings the rest of the day, but shoot me an email so I know you received word. I will sleep better knowing you aren’t out there riding that bike. I will call tomorrow to see when you are in to talk about a replacement bike.

Thanks for your understanding


Bill


Let me try to describe the runaway roller coaster of emotions I went through over the very few minutes Miriam allowed me to swing in the breeze for. I was devastated, honestly. Maybe this will sum it up. After staring glassy eyed at my monitor, my chest tightening, my breath becoming shallow (I'm not exaggerating here) I said to Miriam "I have some really bad news, I mean, no one died...but it's pretty bad". My Superfly being recalled - Someone dying. Scale just ever so slightly tipping toward death.

This line hurt the most:
"we will do our best to get you on a ride that makes you almost, if not equally as happy".

Equally happy? Other ride? There is no other ride! No other ride! BWAAH! Oh, the places my mind went. So dark. I will try to list them.

Shit, what am I going to do? I'm racing Sunday, I have to ride it. No, I'll have to get the Ferrous race ready again. damn. My shoulder's still jacked, the rigid fork will kill me. I'll get a suspension fork, can I get it in time? I really don't want to spend that money. Shit, what bike could replace the Superfly. The Rig is alright, but the Superfly, so light, so stiff, so much better. Argh, I was going to go on a four hour epic and stop by the shop tomorrow and do some silly, crazy crap with the bike,
it was going to be so entertaining for the readers of Big Bikes, it really was, now what? NOW WHAT? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

I'm not kidding, except for kind of with the last part, not the
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
part, the part before that. But there is still some truth there, you'll have to wait and see. Maybe Monday for that, I have to drink some more red wine and try to get my heart to stop palpitating.

Explanation. Apparently Miriam talked to a few people who helped add credibility to the scenario. These are the folks who were complicit in this crime:

- Jason Paige and Jason Girouard for giving up Bill Hand's email. I hate guys named Jason.
- Pete Verdone for providing the technical sounding jargon. I'm going to start sending people Xmas presents this year. Pete is getting poop.
- Bill Hand for sending the email, which Miriam scripted 100% herself, he just sent it along. Bill, next time you stop by the shop, you're getting a banana in your tailpipe.

Thanks guys, you really got me. How shall I ever repay you (bastards).

I have a feeling this is going to be one of those stream of semi-consciousness nights

A 10 1/2 hour workday coupled with 2 1/2 hours of training'll do that to ya. For some reason I'm not that whupped. Must be all the chocolate milk...or the Larry David sandwich I had for lunch. Pastrami with Swiss, coleslaw, and Russian dressing on Rye. So much for the whole yogurt, apple, banana plan today. Without that sandwich in the tank I don't think I would have gone for the second half of my double-session on the Arlington Water Tower tonight.

Doing reps up the water tower at night is actually pretty cool. You get a killer view of the Boston Skyline as you crest it each time and the traffic is really light. just watch the potholes on the 40MPH descent. I had a thought while I was out there. Yes I'm riding a road bike, but it's a bike and riding a bike is always better than not riding a bike...even if it's a road bike. Riding a road bike up and down hills is really the most compelling thing about road riding to me anyway. Bright side. The soundtrack was good too. Thievery Corporation is excellent to listen to while riding at night. It pays to have hip young friends to tell you about such good musical things.

Ah, another good thing. I cleaned my bike. It was in a sad, sad state. Sandy like a beach and greasy like a bag of onion rings. I threw on some new (to me) parts too. I work at a shop where things like perfectly good 9 Speed (yes, 9 Speed, and eight too many still) Dura Ace cassetttes and chainrings and partially used 10 speed DA chains are discarded. Looking down at the clean space between the cassette cogs and the space between the arms of the crank spider is a happy thing for me. Feeling a less clapped out chain engage less clapped out cogs ain't a bad feeling either.

While I was riding up the hill along route 2, staring at me shiny drivetrain I recalled something Levi Leipheimer said about Alberto Contador's climbing. I won't put it in quotes because it's half-remembered from a T.V. interview but he said something about how Contador is un-effected by gravity, how he pedals uphill with no dead-spot in his stroke. I thought about that while I pedaled but I still felt the gravity and the dead-spot. I'll keep trying.

OK, one more thing, then I go. I was over catching up on The Dickiness this morning, he had a link to Fat Cyclist's "Live blog" building of his Superfly. I was enthralled as it related to Superflies. What I found was that the mechanic he had building up his bike was none other than Troy Michaud. One of the two guys who I would say truly inspired me to dedicate my racing life to single speeding. In fact I wrote about him and some other awesome single-speedin' dudes a while back. Just thought I would mention it here instead of commenting over on Fatty's blog. Who the hell reads all 8 billion comments on his posts anyway? I am so glad I have such an immensely unpopular blog so I don't have to worry about such things.

I am a man of constant sorrow, I've seen trouble all my day...
like having to ride road bikes and not getting as many comments on my blog as Fat Cyclist.

Human - Superfly

Editing video is time consuming...especially if you suck at it. I know someone who sucks pretty bad at it. I wouldn't say he's a close friend of mine but we do wear the same shoes. At the same time. Every day. And his shoes smell. Must be all the rain-riding. Or the not showering and wearing the same funky Adidas sandals for six years.

Before I let you go watch a TOTALLY SICK MOUNTAIN BIKE VIDEO that makes Danny Macaskill look like, well, Danny Macaskill and makes me look like...me, I'll tell you all the exciting news.

I am not doing my one token road race of the year, Battenkill. It conflicts with The Fells opening day festivities. Doing things like that is now actually part of my job description so in the interest of not sucking at what is a pretty freakin' cool job and in the interest of not doing a road race, I will be foregoing Battenkill and going for The Fells Opening Day Celebration. You know what's cooler than a Battenkill? A Macaskill. Seriously, go watch that video...after you watch mine. He makes me feel like I took a helmet cam video while pushing a shopping cart through Johnny Foodmaster's. And not on a Saturday either.

Now you can go watch!



Human Superfly from thom parsons on Vimeo.

This was footage taken during my Old School ride the other day. The Helmet Hero was offline for a while there. Relegated to be used a hand held digital camera. The thing is awesome, so much fun, the only drawback I've found is that the fastex style fastener which attaches the camera to the helmet mount becomes brittle in cold weather...and breaks. Twice. I'm sure if you don't try to reverse the position of the camera on your head during a sub-twenty degree road ride you'll be fine. Except for the fact that you are on a sub-twenty degree road ride which is inherently horrible, for at least two reasons. I've now replaced that bit and you all have hours of poorly edited video scored with my idea of good music to look forward to.

Duckies, you are really quite freakin' lucky!

When I Don't Ride I Don't Write
(About Anything Interesting)

Yes, I have trouble writing when I don't ride my bike. A rest week produces very little material for a bike-based-blog. I generally try to steer away from boring people with the banal existence I stumble through outside of my biking life. So While I wait on the uploading to Vimeo of the totally wicked awesome video I edited during the extra hours my insomnia gave me this morning (thanks insomnia, you rock!) I will share some more super-secret-crazy-crap with you.

If you are actually versed in the intricacies of diet and nutrition then the following will look like the ravings of a lunatic. If you are more like me and base your day to day actions on a hodge podge of half-remembered and misinterpreted articles and incorrectly overheard advice (that often...er, sometimes works), this will make a lot of sense.

Since I've been here, doing this blogging thing, I have generally been pretty skinny. There have been fluctuations (wild!) in my weight during that period, but mostly I have stayed pretty thin. Therefore, in the great American tradition of having a mild amount of success in a given area, declaring yourself an expert, and getting up on a soapbox to tell everyone else how they too can have such mild success I will share my "diet" with you.

But first...further qualifications! I have not always been thin, I was a fat kid. How fat? It doesn't matter. In the lead up to the last presidential election there were people out there trying to tell us that Obama is not black. Defining "black" as term used exclusively to describe those descended from West African slaves. The KKK doesn't care who you're descended from. If Obama had gone to Bob Jones University would he have been allowed to date white women due to the technicality that he was not actually descended from West African slaves? My point? You are as black...or as fat as people (white/jerks) think you are. And I was fat enough to get made fun of for years.

My Norwegian neighbors took Polaroid photos of me sitting in a chair in the kitchen with my shirt off, my rolls stacked up, my boobs hanging over them. They had never seen a fat kid before, they wanted to send the photo back to their friends in Norway.

After a trip to the swimming hole in High School one of my good buddies told me later that one of the girls present said that I had "the worst body she'd ever seen".

Thirty pounds overweight or three hundred pounds overweight, that shit hurt.

Unlike being some other color than paper white or gay or disabled due to a congenital birth defect or an accident, being fat is generally something you can change. I was fat, not because of some glandular or emotional problem. I was fat because I was lazy, played Nintendo constantly, ate snickers bars and drank coke all day, and did nothing active whatsoever. That is the case with most fat people I'm afraid.

I just wanted to spell that out for you because people often say things to me like "Oh it's easy for you, you have a great metabolism". I am not naturally thin, I try hard. I have the torn up fat kid photos to prove it.


The story of how I stopped being fat initially is something I will spare you from...for now. I will get on with the VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS at hand.

This is what I eat throughout the day when I want to lose weight for the big bike races while training wicked, wicked hard:

• At around 7:30-8AM I get up, have a big glass of Orange Juice with my generic Multi-Vitamin and make my two spinach and egg wraps*.
  
• If I'm doing a longer, harder training ride on the way to work I'll have a GU as well. Shorter ride? I'll just go with some GU2O in the water bottle. If I'm just commuting, no food at all.
• If I've done a hard ride, when I get to work I have some chocolate milk before I change out of my clothes. A little while later I'll eat one of my two spinach and egg wraps.
• A couple hours later I eat the second egg wrap.
• An hour and a half or so after that I have a small yogurt.
• About three hours before I plan on riding home I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
• Between then and when I get back on the bike I have an apple or a banana.
• If I'm doing a 2+ hour ride on the way home I'll have another GU.
• For dinner, if I'm being good, I'll have a big salad with tofu, chicken, or fish, tons of colorful veggies and maybe a small amount of cheese.
• If I'm too hungry to sleep later on, I'll have a glass of soymilk.
  

* Spinach and Egg Wrap:
- Begin heating pan on medium heat
- Scramble three eggs (I don't use milk) with a little salt and pepper
- Spray or coat pan in thin film of Olive Oil
- Dump eggs in, swirl pan to distribute egg evenly
- When they firm up, split into two halves and flip them
- Throw a small amount of cheese on (I usually use Feta) and some hot sauce
- Toss some spinach on top, sprinkle some salt on top (helps the wilt)
- Put a small Tortilla over each pile of egg and spinach and throw a lid over the pan so the spinach steams and the tortillas get soft and supple
- Let them sit while you go brush your teeth or make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich something
- Wrap 'em up, put 'em in a tup(perware container) and take them to work where you'll make your co-workers jealous because they ate McDonalds for breakfast.

That's about it. The idea is that you keep your energy up, never get bogged down, and never get ravenously hungry to the point where you freak out and eat something gnarly. It works for me anyway. Once a week I go out and go a little nuts with the food and maybe the drink. Other than that I just (try) to avoid fried foods and baked goods when I'm actually trying to drop weight. Once I'm racing and at a good weight I'll have a scone or cookie when I feel like it. Fortunately for me I worked in an Ice Cream shop when I was 13, and that pretty much killed my sweet tooth, by drowning.

OK, more than enough out of me for today, the alleged awesome Video will have to wait for tomorrow.

Excuses

Man, I started out strong this week (at least I thought so) and then blew up like Contador on Stage 7 of Paris Nice. I must need better blogging dope. For Chrissakes, I couldn't even get yesterday's title right. "Now, if You Really Want to Geek Out About On The Single Speed 29er Thing...". Geek about on? Geek about out on? I mean, admittedly my editing is often just plain abhorrent. I have an incredible talent for seeing what I want to see. I transpose letters, fill in letters that aren't there, fill in words, fill in whole sentences, and even read things back to myself in a way that is much more clever than what appears on the page. I'm hilarious as read by me. To myself. And a talent like that is about as valuable as having a Latin to Esperanto Phrase book while traveling in Myanmar.

Boring things about me. I am on a rest week. I didn't ride my bike today. It felt weird not to ride my bike. I made my weight goal, which gets me almost to race weight. And you know I gotta make weight for the big bike race. I don't ride a trainer anymore, I ride an Aerodyne while wearing a suit made out of big, black trash bags.

I celebrated making this weight goal by eating a bunch of Dunkin Donuts, Girl Scout Cookies, and capping off a night out a the pub with late night pizza (Calzone actually, sausage), Mozzarella Sticks, and a crime against culinary decency called "Buffalo Bites". They were so slippery and skinless and slimy with Buffalo sauce that, despite the fact that they were the size of little baby fists, one could have swallowed them intact.
Try that with an actual baby fist, you'll choke. Unless maybe you cover it with slimy Buffalo sauce.

Beer is not your friend when you're trying to lose weight either. I must have had eight or so beers over the course of the night. That's a crazy amount of calories. We'd gone out to dinner, I was beyond full, and then I drank all those beers. When was the last time you ate dinner then sat around eating four or five donuts afterward? I only do that like a couple nights a week.

Light beer is not an option. If I have to explain why, you won't get it. I'd have better luck explaining whatever the hell my last blog post was about to my couch. That could take hours.

I kind of toyed with that whole "Drip Diet" thing. It did not work for me. I felt funny and not satisfied...ever. I'm back on what I think of as the "100 Miler" diet. I just eat several small meals throughout the day. I always feel energetic and I never get bogged down from a big meal. I might elaborate more on it later if anyone gives a crap.

This kind of ended up being a rest week blog-quality-wise a well. I definitely wasn't peaking for this week. Hopefully next week I'll be on better form. Weak, weak, weak.

Now, if You Really Want to Geek Out
About The Single Speed 29er Thing...

Again, I don't have much to say myself today, so I'm going to redirect you to more interesting regions of The Internets.

My buddy Geroge from the IBC team wanted to know how to make a single speed out of a frame with vertical dropouts without using a singleator or eccentric hub. PVD can show you how. In fact, if you have any questions about super-techy bike stuff, he probably has all the answers.

If you "simply" want to calculate your chain length to make a single speed out of a bike that isn't really meant to be one without a tensioning device of any sort check THIS out.

If you want to turn your single speed into a Two-by-Two, go look at THIS. A great way to get to the trailhead without spinning your brains out then switch to a more trail-worthy gear when you get there. Or, if you're a big, lazy bonehead like me, you can just run too big of a gear all the time.

And if you want to truly be a nerd about your single speed gearing, go NUTS. There's a whole lot more to it than throwing around the term "Two to One...Two to One...Two To One".

Marshall, the maker of Kick Ass Cogs and other good things, has some SCIENCE to drop as well on the subject of perfect single speed gear selection.

Now this was a subject brought to my attention by Big Bikes reader Steven. Unfortunately he lost me at "Coefficient" but I thought you folks might enjoy some of his insight on rolling resistance. He pointed me toward this article on the Schwalbe site which basically reaffirms the conclusions I've come to over the years regarding tire choice. Biggah is bettah! My five year old nephew is better at math than I am, anything beyond basic arithmetic makes my brain sweat but if you want to go play around and see how your tire choice might effect your power output, check this out. Steve actually came up with a nifty Speadsheet examining some of the factors.



Sorry, that's all I've got today. See you tomorrow.

-t

Something Out of Nothing...or Something

I made a commitment that I would write something here five days a week. Five consecutive days, Monday through Friday. This has to do partially with modeling myself, or at least my blogging habits after super-bloggers like Fatty and Dicky. To model one's self after the biggest of bike blogs would be an exercise in futility. No one who works has that much time on their hands.

This has taken me out of race reports on Mondays and vast expanses of nothingness in-between territory into proper blogger territory. Unfortunately you'll have to bear with my lapses in and out of sanity and coherence, and of course the wild fluctuations in quality. Some days reading Big Bikes will feel like visiting a comatose patient in the hospital. As opposed to "normal" days where it'll feel more like visiting a patient in the mental hospital. Or a retarded cat at the animal hospital.

I don't have time to write anything substantive and I definitely don't have time to jabber in circles about nothing until I hit upon something worth reading, so what I'm going to do is answer a couple questions from the comments on my last couple posts.

Question and Answer period:

Q: Hey Thom,

Did you ever get the Bontrager XR1's set up as tubeless?

-Steve

A: Nope, not yet. I will make another attempt though. I'm pretty confident I'll be able to pull it off. One of the other 29er Crew guys, Travis, did make it work, he has some tips over on the site. Basically he used the double rim-strip trick. This helps the bead of the tire get up in the bead hook. Soap and water helps, as does a compressor. Another thing I'll do when I'm desperate to get a tire set up tubeless is mounting the tire, particularly if it's brand new, with a tube, then letting it sit for a while. This helps it take shape and hold its form making it easier to mount tubeless.

Q: beer?

- Jeff

A: Yes. More specifically Dale's Pale Ale and its brethren Old Chub. I had my first Dale'sPale after collapsing at the finish line of SSWC08 Napa. I was sitting there, my face encrusted in dust (more so than most people's for some reason that I cannot explic) some guy who was so awesome, he made Ghandi look like a prick handed me a can of beer. "Can of beer" I thought "like Bud or PBR, only with a much cooler can" as I brought it to my dirt-caked lips. Wrong! The low expectations coupled with the delivery of the most amazing beverage I had ever sloshed onto my palette was as close to a religious experience as an Atheist such as myself can have. Remember how I said I like to approach sponsors who's products I already actually use? Probably not, anyway, I hope after the guys from Oskar Blues experience the "Big Bikes Bump" they'll come a knockin' .

Q: Where in the general metrowest area is good riding right now? I'm here for a few days on spring break and would like somewhere good to ride my bike that's not TOO muddy and snowy.

- Luke S.

A: NEMBA has a whole directory of spots on their site. Surprisingly, from what I've seen anyway, trails aren't that wet right now. A sure bet is Otis. Reuters has a great write up on How to Ride Otis. Dogtown tends to stay pretty dry, the water pools in finite areas in the low spots, and it is technical and awesome. Foxborough shouldn't be too bad, I'm headed there Thursday and I might just write about it. I hear tell that Harold Parker is clear as well.

Hope you all found that stuff helpful and informative. Thanks for stopping by.

-t

Another Horribly Failed Experiment

And this time I'm not talking about my imaginary children which were taken away from me because I was an imaginary unfit parent. What I'm talking about is the recovery drink I "invented" after my ride yesterday. You have to understand, I was desperate, I was out of my mind with hunger. All I'd had to eat all day were a few packets of GU...it was four thirty in the afternoon.


There was a dearth of real food in the house, definitely nothing I could make fast enough to prevent me from devouring my own arm up to the elbow before it was ready. Time to get creative, time to throw all preconceptions of what is suitable for human consumption out the window with my imaginary babies and the not so imaginary bathwater.

Here is my recipe for gastrointestinal disaster:

• 1 cup or so soy milk
• 1 scoop protein powder
• 1 packet instant oatmeal
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter
• 2 tablespoons hot cocoa mix
• 1 scoop of I'm not freakin' kidding
  
  

Combine ALL ingredients in blender and push the button that makes the blender do its thing.
Then dump the gelatinous mess of glop into a sauce pan and begin heating (if you are as prodigious a moron as me). The idea here was that it would be akin to my "Recovery Cocoa" which, I have to say, is quite a delightful way to follow up a cold, winter ride. Variables here include the addition of Oatmeal and peanut butter. Those two elements caused this concoction to go horribly, horribly awry.



As it heated and began to bubble like some evil brew in a Witches cauldron, lumps appeared. Then globs. Then large masses of solid matter. It started doing that thing where the bubbles explode, sending brown nastiness sailing skyward, besmirching the cabinets or falling through the air looking for skin to stick to or vegetation to defoliate like a less palatable form of Napalm.



It quickly took on the consistency of pudding. Or a hybrid of beef stew and pudding. Now there's an idea for a recovery smoothie! Maybe some good will come of this yet. Then it started to adhere to the pan, badly. I aborted the experiment, dumping the obscene shuddering amalgam of putrid grossness into a large mug. Which, after a small amount of forethought, I gulped down. Maybe not so much "gulped". This was a recovery drink you could eat with a fork.

It was worse than the time I mixed up my Hammer Gel with my Liquid Plumber Gel. Man that sucked. The bath tub was doing laps around the house (it was one of those claw foot deals, which makes this story so much less absurd) while I lay writhing in a puddle of my own bile as my lower intestine dissolved. I didn't feel quite right for weeks.

And there you go. A recovery drink which just might land you in the recovery room of your local E.R..

Exploration Date

There was a time when I didn't even have a road bike. The only bike I owned was my mountain bike. I rode the thing everywhere. And by everywhere I mean everywhere and anywhere. 80 mile ride to the Cape on knobbies? Sure. Hour long commute to the trailhead? Why the frick not? Dinner at the parent's in the burbs? I'd be rumbling to and from without a second thought. All day on/offroad epics linking together several unconnected (by dirt) trail systems? That was my bread and butter man! Hell, I even did the God Damn AIDS ride from Boston to New York on the thing.

I don't really know what the crap happened but at some point over the past couple years, in the interest of being a "serious" bike racer I have spent way too much time on the road bike. Commuting to and from work in gnarly weather on the Fix-Ed gear is excusable, but the amount of my so called training I have opted to do on a machine that looks like it was created in the image of Kate Moss is just plain unacceptable. Over the past couple weeks I have begun a journey back to my roots. My roots happen to lie in a place where there are (oh god) a whole lot of roots. The woods. That was horrible.

A couple guys from the first shop I worked at used to drag my (then quite doughy) ass all over creation, connecting every wooded area in The Metrowest region and beyond. It was great, Half the time I had no idea where I was. We'd be popping out here and there, I was constantly surprised.

Hell, I could go on and on about those days, I'll have to save that for a later date. I just wanted to give you the idea of where it all started for me. Exploration. Going places. I didn't have a car to put my bicycle on to drive to some trailhead. Suiting up in body armor and doing rock drop repeats didn't appeal to me. I gave up Skateboarding because bikes go places. The ones I like do anyway. I was tired of hanging out behind some shopping mall sessioning a curb, I wanted my sessions to last all day and cover fifty miles.

So today I went Epic. Left from my house, crossed the street, hopped the curb and was on dirt within thirty seconds, heading up along The Mystic Lakes to Horn Pond in Woburn. The climb up that thing still hurts. Of course I used to be happy to be able to do it in my middle ring and not use the granny. Now I'm doing it in a 34 X 17 but that schoolyard Bully from my past still packs a wallop. Seems like the kids have been hard at work over there, I'm finding all kinds of new bermed trails and lines taking you over rock drops.

From there I shot down the ATV highway along the powerlines. I had a lot of time to kill so I spent a while looking for a passage through to Burlington or Lexington. Eventually the powerline trails dead-ended into tangles of impassable brambles. I did find some sweet high school party spots. Gotta remember those for Saturday night.

While looking for another inroad to the Powerlines I happened upon Cummins Park. At first I thought it was entirely new to me but under closer investigation , realized that I had been there a thousand years ago. Probably on a yellow Fat Chance. After a few swipes through which dead-ended into housing developments or ATV-shredded bogs, I chose to ride across someone's lawn (Scofflaw Cyclist!) into a kind of geriatric condo compound. I got the hairy eyeball from a couple walking their Shih-Tzu but escaped unscathed.

From there I was in my old hood of Lexington. I zipped down through the old swimming hole and over to Willard Woods. These are not destination riding spots so the folks you encounter in these areas regard you with a combination of bewildered fascination and contempt. I do my best not to startle them and then dash away like a White-Tailed Deer as fast as I possibly can.

Willard takes you almost out to the area I have always simply referred to as "Bedford". Apparently it is called " Burlington Land Locked Forest". Much fancier. The only reason I now know this is because, unfortunately, there are signs up warning of imminent development of this under- utilized gem of a riding spot. This place has always been a bit of no-man's land. Paint-Baller's stealing construction supplies from nearby work sites and dragging them into the woods to make bunkers. Cuz god knows there aren't enough rocks or trees to hide behind. Junked cars and appliances riddled with bullet holes. And on a more positive note, tons of man made obstacles and actual biker sculpted trails with super-fun technical features.

Time was running short but I kept taking turns down awesome trails I hadn't ridden in years. "Oh, I gotta do that one...aaand that one. OK, just one more". This relegated me to a blender blade speed spin back down the bike path for home. I couldn't help but take a couple off-shoots into Arlington' Great Meadows for a another dose of singletrack.

In the end a map of my ride would have looked like one of those Family Circus cartoons where Billy is running all over the neighborhood, leaving a convoluted, dotted line trail behind him. Those were the only days Family Circus didn't make me want to regurgitate my Cap'n Crunch. The comic does have a huge following amongst people who sustained massive brain trauma, fell off a boat, then washed ashore on a desert isle where they were raised by a contingent of rejects from The Care Bears who were deemed to soft too handle mainstream Care Bear society.

That's what I call a good day.

Too tired to write another lick, the story of my horribly failed experiment of a recovery shake and the video from today's ride'll have to wait for later in the week.

-t

I'm taking it back to the old school
'Cause I'm an old fool who's so cool

-Tag Team

It Had To Be Done

Today was supposed to be my big ride day. Had plans to meet up with a couple folks but the weather was close to worst case scenario. 40° and raining. Motivation was lacking, plans were delayed and delayed again. I procrastinated proactively, cleaning the house frantically, while listening to Billy Holiday...and Judas Priest. What can I say, I'm a real Renaissance man (did I even spell "Renaissance" right?). Eventually I bit the big-fat-bullet-of-suckiness and got on the trainer (realizing I would have to clean the sand and salt off my road bike beforehand almost derailed this plan as well) with this really entertaining DVD that came with my trainer with Robbie Ventura doing a Crit workout. I think I almost made it an hour, then I was ready to find out firsthand if sticking my head in the ceiling fan would result in decapitation or just minor, yet multiple annoying bruises.


Buggin' out. Drinking coffee, flipping channels, watching Guy Ritchie movies, or movies that look and feel like Guy Ritchie movies, all futile. I noticed the rain had let up, it wasn't absolutely pissing anyway. I decided I had to get outside and see what happened. I had no idea what the condition of The woods were. If the snow had cleared. If they were a massive bog. I didn't care. I've got the new bike, the new kit. I had to do it. If I came home water-logged and hypothermic so be it.

I am still nursing a weird shoulder injury, maybe something with my rotator cuff. Did it body surfing in St. Maarten. You know you're hurt when you vomit on yourself involuntarily. As opposed to when you vomit on yourself voluntarily. Somehow it doesn't hurt when I ride, when I yank on my bars. You know when it hurts? When I'm putting a jacket on. I've had to learn to put my right arm in the sleeve first then do the awkward swivel thing with my good left arm. Amazing how hard it is to unlearn something like that. And no push ups (Sorry Solo, the video might be a while).

The fact that I wound up going out solo allowed me to stop and take photos of myself
posing on a rock in my new kit. Which would have been weird if I were with other people. Because a lone guy standing on a rock in his underpants with his bike taking self-portraits is considered perfectly normal. Especially in Woburn.

As a card carrying NEMBA memb-ah, I will not ride The Fells until opening day, which is April 15th. I'll be there April 18th at the opening day ceremonies, working for The Shop. You should be there too, it's going to be wicked fun. We're going to ride bikes. I opted to go "Old School" and hit up some spots I haven't been to in quite a while. Horn Pond Mt. in Woburn and Whipple Hill in Lexington. These are not destination riding areas. They are part of a series of wooded areas which can be linked together if you don't mind riding on the road a bit. Whipple has a some super-technical, just plain awesome trails. I always feel like I'm in Maine when I'm riding around up there.

The 34 X 17 was a little steep, definitely got my mashing in. And I got my spinning in on the road sections as well. Riding a Single Speed is pretty good training for racing... a Single Speed.

It wasn't the "workout" I was planning on, it was a hell of a lot more fun.

Black is back, all in, we're gonna win
Check it out, yeah y'all c'mon, here we go again

-Public Enemy

In Other News: Threw up a little post over HERE. Basically a rehash of the Otis post.

I Know Kung Fu

Above: Got a little package in the mail today from my friends in Waterloo. I was pretty sure I knew what it was. Yup, Crew kit. I was a little bashful at first, my stage presence was lacking. Then I began to feel the power. Sort of like The Quickening.

Hmm, something's happening. I think I know...Quantum Physics. No...no, definitely not that. More like...more like KUNG FU! Kee-Yah!

Watch out now!

Time

Is short, but things is good. What means death for the writing means good things for the riding. Soon enough I'll be writing frenetic, gasping race reports. Too soon really. 2 1/2 weeks to the first event of the season, The EFTA King of Burlingame Off road Time Trial. I've never done this event, but it seems like a great way to start the season. You're racing against yourself, no fear of getting dropped by the group. It's The Race of The Painful Truth (About your fitness).

In other fascinating news, I've stepped up my commuting/training. This I accomplish by incrementally increasing the distance and or the difficulty of the route. Here, I'll outline it, so if you care to, you can be as tired and grumpy as me at work and unable to blog effectively at home:

• I love this bullet point list function, don't you? So neat.
  
  
• Monday - Easy, active recovery, spin the 45 minutes to and from work through Arlington/Belmont/Waltham/Newton in my 39 X 19/21 (don't cheat, no pressure to the pedals). 1:30 total.
  
  
• Tuesday - Depends how I'm feeling. Feelin' good? I ride hills on the Fix-Ed gear. I add one climb every week and do all climbs to and from work. All stuff that's just off my standard commute route in Arlington and Belmont. 2:00 total.
  
  
• Wednesday - Tempo commute, if I'm not too hammered from Tuesday. If I'm draggin' I do endurance, trying to keep my cadence high. At this point I'm heading out into Lexington, then over through Lincoln, Weston, and Wellesley. If you've got an hour and fifteen minutes to kill, the ride from Somerville to Newton can be beautiful and downright relaxing.
  
  
• Thursday - I have the day off from work so I try to go big this time of year. I'm a late baser. It's a long season, I don't like to start too hard and getting your hours in outside during New England winter or trying to do it on a trainer inside is often an exercise in frustration and misery. Waiting for the better weather to do long rides is advisable. I try for 3 + hours, shooting for 4 + if possible. After a few weeks of these rides at endurance pace, I like to add blocks of Tempo. Riding fast over long distances feels good. Covering ground is satisfying. I have a bunch of routes for these rides, but I tend to favor heading west toward Harvard and Littleton.
  
  
• Friday - Same as Monday, or completely off. Usually not, I have to get to work and I hate public transport. I don't get sick a lot, there's a reason.
  
  
• Saturday - I'm working at The Shop. I try to get in at least an hour on either end of the day. Hopefully soon I'll be leading NEMBA Explorer kids rides in the AM. Check IBC's event calendar for info after April 1st. Those'll be a great workout. I am going to run those little buggers 'til they puke! Kidding.
  
  
• Sunday - For the past little bit it's been a repeat of Thursday. Of course last Sunday we got out for the Otis ride. I'd be psyched if I could get out for an MTB epic every Sunday. I'm so much happier when I get to ride on dirt. The road is just a tool. It helps get me up to speed for the dirt with less impact than mountain biking every day. If I had my druthers I would ride road only for recovery and spend the rest of my pedaling life on trail. Sorry roadies, it's true. The choice between riding road and riding mountain, for me, is like offering a kid the choice between going to the Dentist or going to Six Flags.
  

Between this and the ipod loading post I have shared far too many super-secret training details. I'm going to go swallow a cyanide pill now before they get to me.

It's not about the bike. It's about the Waffle Sandwich.
Forget the Cyanide pill, I might just eat ten of these things instead.

Otis, My Man!

I'm going to try out Speed-Blogging here. Expect more mistakes and less attempts at cleverness. The idea is that I need to find more time in my life somewhere. The ride time is going up, so is the work time, but the writing time has remained constant. As a result we've seen major cutbacks in the sleep department. This may have lead to a decline in quality on the blogging front as well. For one thing, I try not to talk about blogging when I'm...blogging and here I am doing it.

The World's Foremost Authority on Otis was away. I believe he was being brought before an International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague to address charges he utilized Cross Top Levers during the 2007 Cyclocross season. Irre-re-regardless of that fact M and I loaded up the car with friend Jane and my new IBC teammate Kevin and drove down to Bourne for a 10AM start time.

Above: Precious Thing's first ride in/on the car. It thought we were goin' a-racin' and got all excited. It'll have to wait just a few weeks for that. Yikes. Big Dan Barry at the meeting spot. Supah-Dupah-Fly. Weird photo of normal trees or normal photo of weird trees?

The crew was huge, fourteen people. I love watching a group that big snaking through the trees on twisty singeltrack. It was my first real ride on The Superfly. The 34 X 17 I was running for a gear made much of the ride feel like weight lifting. Like something was going to go "Pop!". Hopefully I'll be stronger for it later on.

Above: Top and bottom left; Tom Greene was our fearless (seriously, try holding his wheel, he is a Ninja) ride leader. He did a great job showing us all around Otis on this refreshingly warm and sunny day. Top right; Andy shows The Stoke. Bottom Right; Will ripping on his rigid SS.

I had this misconception, that I believe, I share with many others that Otis is a place you ride when there is nothing else available due to snow or ice cover. This place should be a destination. I imagined the terrain was predominantly flat, buff, and sandy. Not true. Miles of high-speed, swooping singletrack, punctuated with areas of round rocks, small drops and enough punchy uphills to remind you that it is still early season and your lungs are still hanging out back in September somewhere. The curves become hypnotic. You get so many chances to dial it in, to lay it down just far enough...or just a bit too far. You get the feeling that if you clipped your bar on a tree you might end up in the hospital. Everything becomes technical at speed.

Above: Me and M. She was out for her first ride on her New Bike. Great place for a late in the ride snack stop. Post ride ihop hooked it up. Mountains of horribly excellent food. Good night and good legs.