The Big Ring Rumpus Report

Is not here, it is HERE of course.

In other news. Although no one has sent me anything for Doug's Big Box-o-Bike Porn, I have begun to fill it in earnest. It now contains a copy of Hell on Wheels, Some random free-ride video, and 24 Hour Solo. And it will soon contain Race Across The Sky (which I need to watch first). I'm hoping to get a semi-substantial amount of stuff in the box by next week so I can deliver it before Doug is back on the bike.

And in other news still. Montana "The Loose Hamster" Miller has overtaken me in the Breck Epic blogger grant poll. Come one internet buddies, let's show that dude what's up. Vote now!

Cycling Videos on CyclingDirt

Bring The Rumpus

I chose to use my time...unwisely. Well, maybe it will prove to have been a wise use of time in the long run, who knows. I spent all my blawging time learning how to use the new (to me) version of imovie and editing my Helmet Hero video from the EFTA Big Ring Rumpus, a 100% fire-road "mountain bike race" that occurred in Auburn, NH today. It might not be the most exciting race video ever, but it has a sweet soundtrack and some goofy captions to break it up. My video-ninja skills definitely require some work.

Oh yes, the above video. I'm flattered. I just feel really, really internet-famous right now. I'm so internet-famous that internet-famous people are doing impressions of me. I'm like the Christopher Walken of the blog-o-verse.

Today's race was the final installment in what, in my mind, was a four day "training block" which involved three days of heavy riding in Vermont. The idea is that I will not entirely embarrass myself at the Lumberjack 100 in a couple weeks. Although I did do a pretty damn good job of embarrassing myself today, but not before I filmed all the hot, first lap action in the Elite field. Mike Rowell, Dan Vaillancourt, Jesse Anthony, and Stephen Humphreys were riding wicked strong. There's more to the story, but it's going to have to wait until tomorrow.

EFTA NECS #3 Big Ring Rumpus 2010 from thom parsons on Vimeo.

Jump The Climb

I am shelled. The 4.5 or more hour ride I did with The Whittinghammer today has left me bombed out and depleted. Will do my best to describe what is going on in these photos (that I edited while I still had a semblance of alertness going on) and then I will commence passing out, face down on a pillow, only to be awoken repeatedly by night terrors spurred by anxious thoughts about the suffering I will have to endure during tomorrow's ride in the Northeast Kingdom on the single-speed.

So ya, that above photo, that's breakfast. We had to have a substantial breakfast before embarking on our tour of the valley.

Procrastination and caffeination

The forecast called for "sprinkles," it was not sprinkling when we got back to the house. By the time we had suited up to ride, it was pouring, by the time we were ready to roll out of the garage, it was deluging. I quietly suggested that we go back inside, make another pot of coffee, and wait it out. I don't mind getting caught in the rain, but there's just something super-sucky about starting a ride in the rain. My semi-subliminal message sunk in somehow, and next thing I knew, Jeff was offering to make another pot of coffee. Just as we sat down with our cups, the sky really opened up. We made the right choice.

Not that it was bone-dry when we finally did roll out.

Long Vermont roads

Before too, too long we were on the singletrack and the rain capes came off. We wouldn't need to don them at any point for the rest of the day. Despite the overnight rain, the trails were relatively dry, having soaked up every drop of moisture they could after the recent dry spell.


Going up? My goal for the day was to do a whole lot of sitting and spinning on the climbs. My goal was achieved.

Would ya look at that? Gorgeous.

The new Olympus Stylus Tough was a little slow on the draw, and definitely not a champ in low light situations but its sequential mode allowed me to take a few decent action shots, and it held up during this wet, gnarly day on the bike.


Last time we rode these trails, the ferns were just barely poking their little heads through a light dusting of snow. This time the air was filled with their sweet, kinda damp smell. Man, these trails are amazing, just freakin' amazing. So much flow, but you pay a heavy toll for that flow in the form of relentless climbing. We climbed for weeks and descended for days.



A jump in the river right in downtown Waitsfield put a nice ice-cap on the end of the ride.

Monday...there might be race report from the EFTA Big Ring Rumpus, or, if I blow that off entirely, there will at the very least be photos and maybe video from the Kingdom.

Oh, and don't forget about the Box o' Bike Porn for Doug. I'm serious about this thing, and you should be too. Wouldn't you be stoked if you were laid up and folks put together a big box of bike movies for your busted ass?

Feckless

I don't smell good. I smell really, really bad actually. There's something about sitting in a car for a few hours that does that to a man. It does it to me too. Did I fail to mention that I was going to Vermont for three days? I think I did. Yup, I'm pretty sure I did. Well that's where I am, up in Waitsfield. The plan is to ride around here tomorrow with the legendary Vermonster, Jeff Whittingham, and then head up to East Burke to ride the Kingdom trails for Friday and Saturday with the likes of Andy Sanidas and some other peoples.


You may have noticed that these are not my, typical as of late, Helmet Hero, wide angle-weirdness photos. I finally got a new point and shoot digital camera, an Olympus Stylus Tough 6000 in (greenish) yellow. I figured if it's good enough for Gewilli, Linnea Koons, and Jill Up in Alaska, then it's good enough for me. I did get the model several levels below the one Jill uses to take all those sick shots of the Alaskan landscape, but I'm just taking sickening shots of the environs of Somerville, MA, I think the 6000 model is up to the task. And besides, the claim is that this thing is "Thom P. proof" — it is shock-resistant to five feet and water-resistant to something like ten feet...something like that. I'm not going to try it, so it doesn't really matter. No scuba-diving or intentional dashing of this camera on the hard ground is going to happen any time soon. Although I might throw it at K-Sweet's head if provoked.



Ya, I don't read fine print when it comes to these things. And that is why I didn't know that Olympus uses a different memory card than a Canon (or just about anything else). And of course the camera doesn't come with the card, something that was clearly stated on the Amazon page I bought it from. So I had to run out to 'The Shack" before hitting the road to buy a card for the wee-greenish-yellow bugger, and I got absolutely reamed for a paltry 2GB card. But hey, what you gonna do? Stop being a dumb ass all the time? Nah, that'd take way too much effort.

When Jeff Whittingham's through making people cry on the bike, he goes home and tries to make his daughters...not cry. I'm sure there was a clever way of putting that, but I'm just too damn bleary-eyed to think of it right now.

Once I got the memory card in and started playing with the thing, I noticed some marked differences between this camera and my old (broken) series of Canon Digital Elphs. For one thing, it is HUGE compared to the Elphs. Not something you might notice in a photo. I'm not complaining, the Elphs are simply incredibly small, this guy is plenty small enough. Next thing I noticed was that it starts up much slower than the Elph and the functions are less intuitive and harder to scroll through. Turning off the flash or going to macro-mode is a slightly more clunky process. Again, not complaining, this isn't a real "shoot out," the cameras I'm comparing are completely different, the version of the Elph I had costs twice as much as the Stylus Tough 6000. It's like comparing factory-farmed apples to organic-local oranges. Or something.

Burgers the size of our heads for dinner

Where the Stylus Tough kicks (I just wrote "licks" instead of "kicks." That would have been a great typo.) the Elph's ass is in durability. My Elphs have only ever lasted about a year, and my last one only made it about six months before dying in the midst of one of the most photo-friendly events of the year — SSWCs in Durango. The horror. I am hoping the Olympus' claims of near-indestructibility hold true.

Time to crash, Whittingham has a four to five hour hilly-ass-beatdown planned for me tomorrow. If you don't see a post on Friday morning send out the search and rescue.

Get it?

We Have a Piper Down

Before I go off yammering on whatever I'm going to go off yammering on today, I want to take a moment to talk about Doug "Hill Junkie" Jansen. Doug is far and away one of the most dedicated cyclists I know, I mean, the guy is a nut about his freaking bike. Legend has it that he use to weigh 300 Lbs. and that through cycling he was able to drop almost half of that — HALF OF THAT. He now weighs in the vicinity of 160 Lbs. Contemplate that for a moment, and if you haven't read his description if his ankle injury, you should check that out too.


Think about it, we all go into the season a little heavy and some whiners even go on and on about that last ten pounds they have to lose to make "race weight," the douche bags (irony alert). Imagine trying to lose half your body weight. Now think about what your bicycle might mean to you if it had been the vehicle responsible for delivering you from the land of life-threatening obesity to the land of riding your bike up hills all day like some kinda freak.

This is Doug's idea of a good time these days:

He seeks out hills like a crackhead seeks out crack.

Due to his severely jacked up ankle, he is going to be off the bike for two-and-a-half months. In the middle of the season. Imagine how much that sucks, and then put yourself in Doug's shoe (and air-cast) and imagine how much it sucks for him.

What I'm proposing is this:

We all get together and fill a box with (mainly) cycling related DVDs and books and get it to Doug so he has something to help occupy the 15+ hours per week he usually spends riding a bike (up massive, horrible hills like a psycho). If you've got old films you've already watched and you just want to get rid of them, great. If you want your stuff back, send it along with a self-addressed envelope and I'll see it gets back to you. Better yet, just make a copy. One of the first items in the box (which is a Sierra Nevada Summer Ale box by the way) was a burned copy of Hell on Wheels, the Tour De France film. I know that Doug would be interested in Klunkerz or any of the latest greatest free-ridey-type films.

You have a couple options on getting your stuff in the box, you can either:

a.) Send it to me:

Thom Parsons
33 Irvington Rd.
Somerville, MA 02144

or

b.) Come find me at events like the EFTA Big Ring Rumpus on June 6th, the box will be there. It may also show up at various NEMBA rides, I'll keep you posted.

We'll see how fast stuff comes in, and once the box reaches something like capacity, I'll get it to Doug, either via mail, or by showing up at his house unannounced and standing in his driveway yelling about how I have a "big box o porn" for him.

Why, why no youtube clip for the box-o-porn scene from The 40 Year Old Virgin? Shakes The Clown I can understand, like twelve people saw that movie, but 40 Year Old Virgin? C'mon! I went to youtube and all I found was a video of an interview with Peter Keiller (more on that in a second).

Cycling Videos on CyclingDirt

Doug Jenne (a different Doug) killing Dicky's dreams, one revolution at a time.

Yesterday I lamented that Dicky and Doug weren't live-blogging from the Transylvania Epic Stage Race down in Pennsylvania. Shortly after writing that I noticed that cyclingdirt had updated their coverage of the race, complete with smack-talking-filled interviews from Doug and Dicky and Peter Keiller. I'm actually haunted by the voice of Peter Keiller. For whatever reason his Dirt Rag interview at Interbike is the first thing that comes up when I start to punch "youtube" into my browser address bar, so every time I got to You-tuble something, I hear, "Alright, uh...we are with uh, Peter, uh...Peter Keiller." So ya, I'm not so much hearing Peter's voice as much as the voice of the interviewer. But I hear his name. I guess I'm haunted by his name. Oh yes, and he is live-blogging (pretty much) from The Transylvania Epic. From what I've heard so far, that thing sounds wicked, wicked hard.

Speaking of wicked, wicked hard (mind out of gutter now!) that is how I am going to hit my pillow in about twenty seconds.

Is this thing still on?

I Get High With a Little Help My Friends

Not on drugs. Not like Flandis (not that the drugs he took got him high. A little Roid-Raging and throwing water bottles at reporters maybe; but not properly high). No, I'm gonna get high like elevation high, like 37,000 feet high, with a little (or a lot of), help from my friends. This is just my really convoluted way of saying thank you to people like VeloCB, Gewilli, Stevil, and assorted facebook friends for corralling people in the general direction of the Breck Epic Blogger Grant facebook page and in the specific direction of voting for me. As a result I have held the lead in the poll for several days now, but I'm not out of the woods yet. Guys like Fixie Dave "Sweet Jiggles" Nice and Montana "The Loose Hamster" Miller are steadily creeping up on Sarah "Ms. Tique" Uhl and me.

Fixie Dave is scary for two reasons: he has a nickname AND a porn name. He's got me beat there. He also has way more facebook friends than I do, and due to the voting format it is really going to come down to a battle of who has the most facebook friends, for that reason I am so glad I am not up against Gary Fisher or Adam Myerson in this contest.

Montana...shit, the dude's named after a state that is way bigger than my home state (although my parents did almost name me "Massachusetts Bradley Parsons." Luckily they sobered up before they did anything legally binding) and he lists "making grunting noises" under his "activities" on the facebooks. Did I mention that he drives a monster truck? None, I say, none of this should be misinterpreted as me making fun of him.


My mother always told me: "Don't make fun of men wielding swords (who are named after large states and drive monster trucks)...especially if they are riding viking cats." I took that advice to heart, but I was never sure if I'd get to apply it in any way. Thanks mom, I think you may have saved my life.

So I guess what I'm saying is this: if you haven't voted yet, please take the time to do so now. Only you and you, yup even you back there, can help me stay on top so I can "win" this thing and earn the distinct privilege of riding 240 miles with 37,000 of vertical over six days. Vote Here now. Thanks!

Oh ya, correction: the other day I was yammering on about how, if I do win a spot at this thing, I will get to blog for Outside Magazine or some other reputable-type publication. That was last year. This year the winners of the contest blog for Mountain Flyer, VeloNews (Singletrack.com), Bike Magazine and Rodale.

And in other news. I'm jealously watching the reports from the Transylvania Stage race. Doug Jenne is sitting in a not-so-distant second just in front of a third place Dicky in the Single-speed race (if only they were live-blogging so we could hear Dicky's smack-talk...), but what I find super-interesting is that Boston-guy, Alec Petro is leading the Masters race. Not only that, but the dude put up a prologue time that would have landed him in 9th place in the Open category, just a couple spots behind Mark Weir. Alec and I have had a few tangles over the past couple years, but recently they have tended to go his way more often than not. Damn I hope I can get to be as fast as him by the time I'm 46. Which is a great thought to have, seeing as I just celebrated my 36th birthday. I've got ten years to work this shit out, Ten years! Sweet. I feel young again.

Hey, if you'd like to do some homework for tomorrow's post, check out Doug "Hill Junkie" Jansen's post about his horribly broken ankle. No matter how crappy you might feel on the bike right now, Doug's situation will make you thankful that you are out there at all. So study up 'cause there's gonna be a quiz on this stuff. OK, not a quiz, but we are going to talk a little bit about how we can make things better for Dougy.

It's Gonna Be a Caption Cop Out

What can I say dude, I finished a 5.5 + hour ride with my buddy Colin at 8:45 tonight. I am shelled. No, not that Colin, because I try to avoid calling that Colin by his real name (I steal some of his power that way). A different Colin, a secret Colin. We went from Somerville to Arlington to Concord to Chelmsford to Bedford to Lexington and back to Somerville, mostly off-road and none of it in anything like a direct way. It was epic in the truest sense of the word.

So Ya, photo captions...


Steve Cobble from NEMBA and K-Sweet (I called him "Kevin" the other night by accident and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in a pool of my own blood and feces) from...the Finger Lakes region of New York move a massive pile of gravel at the Cutler Park Trail care day in Needam a couple weeks back.

VeloCB at Cutler, dropping the hammer in the wheelbarrow race.

Staples (like the office supply store) gives their employees major incentives to ride their bikes to work. One "major incentive" is that I check their bikes out for them during a "bike to work day." There's always one person who rides fourteen miles to work on a Huffy at one of these things. We all cheer and throw ticker tape as the paramedics charge up the defibrillator .


Craig Mello took this while Colt was interviewing me for my Wicked-Frickin' Pro Bike segment on cyclingdirt. I guess a real pro would have had someone clean his snazzy XX bits before the cameras started to roll.

In a still photo, no one can hear you laugh (nervously).

Craig Mello took this shot before I blew apart during the Glocester Grind race a couple weeks ago. You can tell I was doing well because I'm still in front of eventual third place finisher Big Timmy D.

Have a good weekend, and remember what Mike Ramponi says: "I wanna ride my bike all day long!"

And you know what's better that a caption cop out? A Borstal Breakout.

Bikes, Burritos, and Breck Epicness

Man, the fact that the Breck Epic blogger grant poll is LIVE is a massive time suck for me right now — refresh page, "did I get more votes? Damn!" and repeat. It's extra-ridiculous too because there are fifteen days left in the contest, anything could happen. Right now things are looking good though, thanks to you guys I've closed down the gargantuan gap Sara Uhl had put on me in the first 24 hours. Right now she's only up by two. If you haven't voted yet, go to this link, click the little bubble by my name, which is Thom "Rocky Donizetti" Parsons, and then hit the "Vote Foo" button below. It's wicked easy kid, and word is you no longer have to "expose your privates," or give up your privacy in any way. Ya, I only have to finish top four but I don't want to get too comfortable and I definitely don't want to not bug you guys about this for a single day until the end of the contest on June 11th. It's like a public radio fund-drive except I don't have any fucking tote bags to give you. Sorry.


Way back on Monday night I went to see the Follow Me premiere at the Middlesex Lounge, it was awesome. It was just cool to hang out in a crowded bar, watching a sick mountain bike film. The place was packed to the gills and people were walking by going "what the hell are they watching in there." I felt like I was in some place like Durango, where every sub shop has mountain bike videos playing 24-7. The film itself was incredible. It had all the insane drop, X-Games type stuff, but it also had style behind and in front of the camera. I get down with the sort of extreme XC scenes, stuff where I'm saying "I could do that. Sort of. Just maybe slower and with way less style."


I meandered over to the premiere in Central Square solo (while wearing my favorite shirt), stopping at Olecito on the way to grab a burrito. They are really the only game in town as far as I'm concerned. I'm still not drinking the Anna's Taqueria Kool-Aid.

The only camera I'm using right now is my Go Pro Helmet Hero. What it lacks in playback ability or low-light capability, it makes up for with its spy-camera, I'm so damn wide angle I can shoot everything in sight qualities. I just leave it on photo every two seconds mode and let 'er rip. I might not know what I'm getting but the fact that I'm taking six-hundred photos increases the statistical likelihood that I will get something that isn't total crap.



Sometimes, if you're as awesome as I am, you forget to put the memory card back in and then you go to lead a NEMBA ride and your Go Pro stops shooting after ten shots (that's all its internal memory holds) and all you get is a couple sweet shots of the parking lot. The ride went well though, only one guy almost knocked his teeth out.

Something I was chatting about with folks at the movie premiere was that, no matter how sick the riding in a mountain bike film is, the music is almost always frickin' horrible. Ya sure, I wouldn't want to subject people the stupid crap I listened to when I was a kid, but man...the stuff they put in these things is bad. Seriously. That's why I was stoked when I happened upon this video of some dudes trying out the Sram XX out in Santa Cruz. It's a nice, little piece with lots of fastness and flowiness, but what I found particularly sweet was the Murder City Devils soundtrack. Good stuff.

Brendan Fairclough and Curtis Keene in Santa Cruz from Taylor Sage on Vimeo.

Well, I gotta get up early again to work a bike rodeo with VeloCB, and ya, it's 2AM now. Hopefully I can keep it together and not go all Shakes The Clown on the kiddos this time. That "Shakes The Clown" clip isn't really appropriate (not sure what it's appropriate for) but there's a dearth of good Shakes clips on the Youtubes. Somebody should do something about that. Screw the Breck Epic blogger grant; somebody should do a "Put More Shakes The Clown Clips on Youtube stoner grant." Just pay some thirty-five-year-old dude living in his mom's basement with a bunch of weed to sit and watch "Shakes The Clown" a couple dozen times and post the best clips on Youtube.

That's all I got, that and this one, final shot of the Varsity in sepia-tone.

Breck Epic Blogger Grant/

Geekhouse Party Photos

Today is my birthday, it's true. I know I didn't get you anything for yours, but don't let that stop you from getting something for me. Well, not getting something, more like doing something. And that something would be going over to the Breck Epic facebook page and voting for Thom "Rocky Donizetti" Parsons for the blogger grant. It won't cost you a thing, except maybe a little bit of your privacy apparently. But don't let that stop you, get over there and do it, it'll just take a second.

There are fifteen contestants and the top four get into the 6 day mountain bike stage race in Colorado for free AND they get to blog about on Outside Magazine online or some other reputable outfit leading up to and during the race (at least that was the deal last year, not so sure what, precisely, the deal is this year). I'm pretty sure you don't even have to be a facebook member to vote either, so you have no excuse for not voting other than the fact that you hate me and think I'm kind of a dick. Actually that right there is a great reason to vote for me. Six days of brutal racing at elevation...cast your vote and watch me squirm.

Do it out of love, do it out of loathing, but whatever you do, don't not do it.

I took an early lead this afternoon, but I was quickly and summarily overtaken by former track phenomenon Sarah Uhl. Not far behind me are two guys:Steven "Johnny Oak" Thompson and Fixie Dave "Sweet Jiggles" Nice. It's fun we all have porn names, mine is not made up, which is kind of incredible. Voting ends June 11th, this will not be the last you hear of this I'm afraid.

Below is my Breck Epic Blogger grant contest application, interspersed with totally unrelated photos of the open Geekhouse last Saturday night. I had to make two quick edits from the original — I mixed up the words "site" and sight" and the Animal House characters Otter and Boone, other than that it is in its original form.

Brian Kelly mooshed up his face BMXing

Porn Name: "Rocky Donizetti."This is not made up, I swear (going with the first pet/first street name formula). Our cats were named "Rocky and "Snowball." You may have heard of my sister: "Snowball Donizetti." I think my parents were paid a visit by a seemingly unstoppable cycborg-assasin who had been sent back from the year 2029 by a collective of artificially intelligent computer-controlled machines bent on the extermination of the human race, but when he got to their house he just said, "Hey you guys, you know what would be hilarious..."

Hometown: Wrentham, MA. Where we drop our R's, pick them up again, and put them back in words where they don't belong. "Dyude, I need a slice of pizzer (pronounced pete's-ur) wicked bad kid." It is also not unheard of to punctuate a sentence with an F-bomb for no apparent reason...F-in'.

The event was sponsored by PBR and they couldn't keep the stuff in the house. 90 beers lasted about 9 minutes.

What bike you gonna ride?: Gary Fisher Superfly with the crazy SRAM XX. I've been racing exclusively Single-Speed for over three years, I'm going from one gear to 20 gears, so it's gonna be wicked weird.

Why does it rule? (100 words or less): The Superfly is the baddest bike I have ever ridden. It is lighter, stiffer, and better-handling than any bike I have pedaled. I have tried to set up "B bikes" to ride so I won't trash my race rig, but they don't compare. I'm miserable riding anything besides my Superfly. I'm lucky though, this season I'll be racing a new geared Superfly and my Superfly Single Speed will become my B Bike (for now, the roles may reverse some day soon).

This guy has a blog called "Big Bags"

Best day ever on your bike? (100 words or less):
The Swank 65 '09. It came at the end of a semi-lackluster season. As far as I was concerned, I was fat and out of shape; just doing the race to have fun. But something weird happened. From the start I was able to keep up with guys like Garth Prosser, Matt Lee, and Sam Koerber. I rode around all day having weird, not-race-like thoughts such as: “Wow, this air is so clean…feels so good in my lungs” and “God damn that is a beautiful view.” And somehow I finished 3rd overall...on a Single Speed.

High Life

Your favorite bumper sticker slogan?: "Practice Random and Senseless Acts" (I made it myself by cutting up and re-wording a "Practice Random kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty" bumper sticker. I was 19 years old, I thoughtit was very clever.

Who's gonna play you in the Breck Epic movie?: Vince The Slap Chop guy.

Favorite quote/words to live by?:
Hey, I could whip him without a reason, cuz I got the guts. Hey, I got the guts...but the guts need fuel!" -Henry Chinaski, Barfly

Bike polo — the best argument for a disk wheel

100 words (or less!) about you. Feel free to lie.:
I put my pants on one leg at a time, just like everyone else; but you'll never catch me putting on a shirt before my pants. As a child I was traumatized by the scene in "Animal House" where Boone goes over to Katy's house and Donald Sutherland wanders by, wearing nothing but a cardigan. He reaches for something in a high cabinet. The sweater rides up...exposing his pale as porcelain ass to the audience. I remember thinking to myself: "If I gouge my eyes out with chopsticks — right now — will I stop this sight from reaching my brain?"

Quien es mas macho, Glenn Danzig o a Wolf?(Insert two ridiculous opponents, choose the winner, then defend your position about why your victor would dominate: A wolf has big teeth but Danzig knows Jeet Kune do (the Bruce Lee sh-t). A wolf has sharp claws but Danzig knows Muay Thai. A wolf has protective fur but Danzig has lots of bad-ass tattoos and a mesh tank top. A wolf has an acute sense of hearing but Danzig has an acute sense of rocking. Score: Danzig - 1, Wolf - 0 feet from extinction. Danzig once said: “There’s no point in fighting when you know what the outcome will be…me victorious.” For that reason, I shouldn’t even come to the Breck Epic.

Hi, did you vote yet? Go vote, we can do this thing. Thanks youz.

Doug "Who Let The Dougs Out?" Klein, tall bike consultant.

Follow Me Behind the Scenes Sneak Peak from Anthill Films on Vimeo.

Follow Me/ Demi-Pro Bike

Wow, I am wicked frickin' spent. Just got back from the Follow Me premiere party at the Middlesex. The thing was a resounding success. Bob and everyone else involved did a killer job setting it up, and judging by the capacity or bigger crowd, they must have raised a metric buttload of money for NEMBA. And more money for NEMBA means more trail access for anyone who rides a mountain bike. This is a huge, good thing.

I've gotta be up at 5AM to work and event for The Shop, so I am really, really glad that Randy Jacobs alerted me to the fact that Colt from cyclingdirt posted the goofy Demi-Pro Bike interview he did with me after the Glocester Grind because that is what is going to serve as content here today. Well, not here, more like HERE.

I know I normally only make you go traipsing over to the 29er Crew blog once a week, but this is a special occasion.

So pleased that Colt decided to use the photo of me in my ghetto-basement looking like I just finished dismembering a body, I love that photo. Some day soon I hope to show Colt my basement in person, and I always give my basement tours while wearing the clown suit.

-t

Photo Cred: Double Hop

EFTA NECS #2 - Weeping Willow -
You're Making Me Cry

Most mornings when you see my post up at 6AM it's because I wrote it the night before and then scheduled it to post then...not this morning. I woke up at 3AM for no reason and wrote a race report for the Weeping Willow. It's a little extra-special.

Oh right, it's over on the 29er Crew Blog.

Double oh right, don't forget, it's the NEMBA "Follow Me" premiere at the Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge tonight.

Something For The Weekend

An incredibly long day of riding calls for an incredibly large number of photos.

Free-form photo captioning (and not talking about Floyd Landis at all) begin:

In the above photo I'm driving out to school to drop off my final final of the semester. This was exciting to me, hence the stunt-driver, I'm Jason Statham in the Transporter one through three stance there. I'm easily excited, like a bi-polar Jack Russell in a manic phase.


After I delivered my final (I had a nightmare last night that I never actually did drop it and woke up in a panic) I drove over to MKR and C(don't know her middle initial) R's house to drop my car and cooler of beer off for later...

Then I hit the bike path, woo! Sick dude, I railed that thing on my cross bike. Not like THIS, but in my own way. (If you haven't watched the video linked back there — do it! Stevil linked to it earlier this week, but I just wanted to share the love in case you missed it. But don't miss it, go watch it, it's some real inspirational shit. Gorgeous.) I don't know a better place to drop this litle gem of bike path wisdom, or riding wisdom in general, so I'll drop it right here —

BARK AT SQUIRRELS, IT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE

You see the little bastards skittering this way and that at the edge of road or path as you approach at twenty-plus miles per hour. They're nervous, they're making you nervous, you have no idea where they are going or go or what they are going to do. There is one way to make sure that they don't run directly into your front wheel — bark at them, like a schizophrenic, like a crazy person. They will move and you will potentially avoid an unenviable occurrence like this:

I still don't know why they don't make forks out of squirrels. Squirrels are obviously stronger than carbon fiber.

On the way home from Bedford, I stopped off in Lexington to check out the now open Ride Studio Cafe, a bicycle shop/cafe. In the above photo you can see one of their customers heading in to get a fitting for her new, custom Seven.


I got some great shots of the interior with my Go Pro Helmet Hero. I can't wait to get a new camera.


There's a Pete's Coffee in Lexington center. I always look forward to going there, I am a huge fan, but now that I can get Diesel Cafe quality coffee in Lexington center I'm afraid that Pete's will not be seeing too much of me. Sorry Pete. I milked my coffee with soy milk all the way from Lexington down to Arlington center. Nothing pisses off recumbent riders more than seeing a "Wedgie" rider rolling down the path no-handed, drinking an ice coffee. It's the kind of pissed-off that cats get when they see humans using their opposable thumbs. I once had a conversation with a cat that went like this:

Mittens: You know what I would do if I had opposable thumbs?

Me: (operating can opener, opening a can of cat food) I dunno...open all the cans of cat food in the house?

Mittens: No.

Me: What then Mittens? What would you do?

Mittens: I would take a gun and shoot you right in the face.

For some reason it was really unnerving.

When I got home from bike-path-raging, I took some recovery time on the porch.

A short while later Dan Barry showed up all a-rarin' to go after his three hour morning road ride.

Randy Jacobs' bike was coming apart like a meteor entering the Eaarth's atmosphere on the way to the meet up in Arlington center. We got his grips electrical-taped back on and we were rollin'.

We learned that riding up the front-side of the Turkey Hill water tower is stupid. On a single-speed it is insanely stupid. Won't do that again.

Then we climbed up Whipple Hill. I still think I climb better on the SS.

Fueling for this long, hot day was key. After Randy whupped our asses and then peeled off, Dan and I hit a convenience store for Cokes and Gatorade. Like that shot? Just be happy I didn't post...

This one.

All that riding was just a pre-ride before meeting up for a brutal beat-down ride with MKR and company.

"Hey Thom, follow us into the pain cave!"

A do-over session on this rock provided a rare respite amongst all the relentless hammering.

Keith cleans it.

And so does MKR.

Then Calhoun Roker's quickly-cobbled-together bike broke. In an email exchange earlier that day MKR had said:

Your date is your date, which means if you bring 'em to the prom,
you dance with them and make sure they get home

I don't know If Colin, er, I mean "Calhoun" was technically my date, but I decided I should make sure he got home anyway. At the very least I didn't want him to end up getting date-raped under the bleachers by some football player (prom metaphor...). Colin's problems involved bad chainline and bad chain. Just say NO to Shimano chains on singlspeeds. More on that in a future post.

I did a great job leading us out of the woods: "Ride this way" — CLACK! — "OOF! Ow...ow...ow."
I'm still icing my hand.


And long story not quite so totally unnecessarily long...
we ended up back at MKR and CR's house for beer and barbecue and talking about bikes and biking and some watching of some Cat-tro-batics.

Altogether a great way to celebrate the end of the school year.

I hope your weekend is as good as my Thursday was. My EFTA Weeping Willow report will be on your desk first thing Monday morning.

-t