Snowed In

Yesterday I put off my ride in order to be there when Glinden got off the bus. That little snot made me postpone my ride. Obviously I can't stand the kid - evidence of this can be seen in this picture:



So I took off at about 4 on a ride. Trail conditions were decent - not great but definitely not bad. Last night I was reminded how much I enjoy riding on small, twisty, intimate trails. The picture below shows a typical part of the trail I was riding on.

This one shows the same trail from a couple of days back.

I was out there well past dark and made it about about 15 miles down the trail and then turned around and rode those same 15 back. 30 miles in 7 hours? Just over 4 miles an hour? I was thinking that I was in good shape and that training had been going fairly well. But maybe it's not. Well I am fairly adept at living in denial and I will be doing just that for the next three weeks.

And as the new owner of a Surly Pugsley which is a bike that can go where other bikes may not be able, I fully intend to do stuff like this (if I can figure out how to put a motor on it). I still have a single speed bike to ride in the summer and pose myself as cool and attract any number of ladies.

Well as I look out the window of the coffee shop where I am (our internet connection at home is still pathetic) I see that it's snowing rather hard. I like winter and all, and snow is something I like a bunch. But I prefer to be at our house and snowed in rather than at the coffee shop. (I probably won't get stuck anywhere. After all I have 4 wheel drive. So I'd better wrap this up so I can get home. I can always ride into town. Bikes are much more reliable than cars, they start every time.

I'll leave you with this picture.

trail conditions

Well I haven't been biking all that much in the last several days so I'll have to really stretch to tie this in to Arrowhead:

I may have a moose encounter out on the trail. Despite the fact that I have only even seen a moose once as I was out biking (and that one was running the other way) and that – to my knowledge – nobody has had any sort of moose encounter on the trail.

I did go for a short ride yesterday, it was less than an hour and Jenny went with me. She doesn't have a snowbike and I don't really think that it mattered much yesterday as the trails were packed pretty hard. Maybe not quite as hard as Arrowhead last year but she wasn't at much of a disadvantage. Here's a picture of the Arrowhead trails last year fairly near the start:

The trail was so hard last year that you had to look closely to even see bike tracks.

Contrast this with the year before last where the it had snowed 3 inches the night the start and it looked like this: (photo by Mike Curiak and it was actually taken during the race)


I don't point out the difference in trail conditions (and I have to include this one too since the first video reminded me of it) to complain. I'm just trying to make a point kinda like Hope springs eternal or something like that. Which kinda makes me look like a dolt since I have entered myself in four snowbike races in the past (the shortest of which was the one I quit at 40 miles in after pushing my bike for about 30 of those miles) and am actually looking forward to this one. Why should - after a 100% of the snowbike races I have been in have sucked - I be so optimistic? Remember that picture I put up of myself on last post? There's your answer.




Or maybe this one of me watching the campfire by headlamp-light:

I am kinda a dumb-shit.

And now for something completely different I'll put this video up. And then put this picture up here:

And to keep things bike related here's something

All parents get frustrated with their kids. But if you're a parent deal with this frustration maturely by simply removing the child from the situation:

Acorns and axes

As the saying goes “the acorn don't fall far from the tree.” Well here's my excuse for eating shit-like substances in another post - I have a father who does stuff like this:

Now to add to the things I do that are weird: Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Speaking of weird things I've been driving by this hotel outside of Ashland that is on the way to our house west of town.

As I've mentioned previously I was the recipient of a Surly Pugsley for a Christmas present. When I got it it came with gears. Since I am lazy (and wanted to ride the thing ASAP) I didn't bother taking the gears off of it. After riding it I quickly realized that it would be foolish to un-gear the thing. So despite what this picture cation says I think that I'll leave the gears on:

And since I now have no hope of keeping the girlfriend I have – and once I lose her I'll never attract another then I might as well post this:

And I might as well become a Catholic priest and go around saying: “Mawwiage is whot brings us togevor today”

Yesterday I went for a ride that was a bit on the short side – only three hours. Because I knew when I started that it was going to be on the short side I went a little harder than I usually would have. Because I went harder I got hot and sweated more than usual – so about 45 mins into the ride I stopped to take my bulky wool sweater off. I really didn't have a good place to put the sweater so I stuffed it in the front pocket of my windbreaker. It was bulky and a little awkward and it looked like I had a huge beergut (I tried to find a funny beergut video on Youtube but they were all kinda gross and disturbing but I did remember this video that I saw a few months back) but it worked fine. I was expecting the ride to take me around four hours and I was nearly to my parents' house and I had only been riding 2:45 and was pumped to get it done so fast and stood to climb a short hill when the sweater fell out of my pocket and went directly into my gears and was immediately wrapped up in my derailleur.

A no-chain setup like this one would have prevented the sweater/chain jamming. It also would have prevented almost any forward progress – except for downhills where my experimental gravity-drive system works.

When my brother and I were both at home we ("he" mostly since the video camera and all the editing equipment were his) made a ridiculous video of me riding my Pugsley in the snow. Here it is for your viewing pleasure

The Real Thing is Actually Gross

Pugsley or no Puglsey riding in the rain when it's 33 degrees is no fun. While I have no first-hand experience in pulling a sailboat while swimming I'm thinking that it may rate similar on the Fun-o-meter. Actually that's not true - riding in the rain (which was more of a light mist, to tell the truth) on a Pugsley is less un-fun than a skinny-tired bike. The trails were a little mushy/punchy and there is no question that if I had been on a regular bike it would have been a looonnggg 5 hours as I would have been pushing virtually the whole time.

To get back to the swimming with a sailboat:

A couple of days ago I went for a good fairly lengthy ride on snowmobile trails near Jenny's parents' place. It was the first time I had had the Pugsley out on longer ride. OK so the ride was only five hours which, if I'm lucky, will get me to the first checkpoint in Arrowhead which is about a quarter of the way into the race. The new bike is awesome!!! So awesome in fact that I felt a need to end that last sentence with no less than three exclamation points!!!

Speaking of the checkpoints in Arrowhead makes me think of how the race is going to go. I was reading one account to Arrowhead and the competitor said something about starting slow and getting slower. While in reality this is probably what will happen I kinda hope that things go better. “Better” as in “faster.”

As seems to be some sort of tradition I plan on eating a nice healthy, fat-filled omelette such as this:

at the Chocolate Moose where I've eaten on a couple of other occasions:

Then head over to the start line:

where maybe I can get Lance Andre to strike a Heisman pose for me.

I mentioned eating at the Chocolate Moose for breakfast before the race and I also mentioned that I had eaten there before. I ate there before the race in '09 (when I did the race) and last year also (when I spectated). So I knew it was there. And so when I took a canoe trip this September I had the other guys stop and eat there. And it turns out that Jenny knows the place too.

Before the canoe trip is where I saw the "Destroyer" picture above. And I also saw this:

Haagen-Dazs' ad directly targeting people who have lost their teeth and just had semi-circular sheet metal installed in their gums.

and this:

There are many dumb things with this ad but one stuck out: in the small blurry writing in the picture it says "Tickle her fancy with the real thing." That is actually kind of a disgusting thing to claim considering what a "french tickler" is

And speaking of the nether regions reminds me of this. I'll leave you with that for today - it really has nothing to do with biking but I just thought it was funny.

Pugs

We were opening presents and Jenny excused herself to go to the bathroom...and when she came back she had a Pugsley with her! This is true love now!

Of course the first thing I did was set up a close-up video shot of the tire deformation as I rode over an obstacle. After all the main reason I wanted the bike in the first place was for the cool-factor of such big tires - not because I actually wanted to ride the thing.

Yeah right.

Here's several pictures of me heading out for a ride:

There and back again

The day before yesterday I went for a little ride from here to there with a little foray in between when I thought I was going north but was really going south. (Hey it was overcast cut me some slack). So I got there a little late and had to eat soup and bread all by myself. And I had a headwind. And it was cold. And my mommy wasn't there. And I can't beat Ed at Perplexus.

Speaking of cold I happened across this flyer the other day:



I have never heard of the quality of service being judged by temperature before though I may be missing some sort of deeper meaning. They seem pretty excited by it though. Being excited by small stuff reminds me of this picture I took of Glinden at his request. He was pumped to find the toilet during a camping trip we were on.

But while I can complain about bike rides and Perplexus I realized after I saw this video that, according to this commercial, I can't complain about the strength of Bounty P.T.

Another thing I can't complain about is how the last year has gone. It's been pretty great. Especially meeting Jenny and her fam. If you need proof of how well it's going between her and I then here it is:


Back to bike riding I got precisely one picture during my bike ride the day before last. It had been raining on me a bit (yeah, I was complaining about the cold...and it wasn't really very cold) and it froze on me and so I snapped off this picture hoping that I would look all tough and icy kinda like this or this (I especially enjoyed his claim of the suit being night proof. No darkness when you're in this suit! It is worth noting that this suit is brought to you by Troy Hurtubise who made the bear suit that he tested by jumping down a hill and getting hit by swinging logs and I've linked to before and will again here)


In the spirit of the season in which we celebrate the birth of Christ (or just celebrate life) I thought I'd throw into the hat my halloween costume from a few years back just before I cut off my hair:

I hope you've learned by now that I don't want to be taken all that seriously

Badass

I'm trying to justify not riding much in the last week as using this as an R&R week. But that wouldn't be totally true as I'm spending the next two weeks with family and could have used the time off to hang out with them more. I think the truth is more that I'm just a slacker and as such I don't always want to ride my bike for 6 hours in the cold.

And as most slackers I have worked hard at not working. For example I built something much like this to save myself time mowing the lawn:



Actually as a true slacker I simply don't mow the lawn.

It has been brought to my attention that Vosges Chocolate offers a bacon/chocolate bar. Now, I have no inherant problem with that flavor. If you like it that fine with me. What my beef is is with the picture of the creator of this bar - and her little chocolate-based autobiography on the back of the bar. Here is a picture of her:



In the little autobiography on the back of the bar she confesses to being "obsessed" with both bacon and chocolate. Really? I would think that someone truly obsessed with both bacon and chocolate couldn't really go for a long time without eating some. I don't mean to be superficial but I would think that someone truly obsessed with bacon and chocolate would look more like this.

Speaking of obsessed I happened across this video in which the star tells how to pick out a laptop for your dog and seems to be obsessed with with several things, computer and idiocy being two.
And he reminds me of the creepy MC of the pageant in Little Miss Sunsine.

But to get back to yesterdays ride: it was about 5 hours long and at about hour 3.5 I ran across this gate:



I'm guessing the person responsible for locking this gate is totally badass...or else is related to this dentist.

Here is a pictures of me being totally badass (I think that the slippers help):


I was looking at youtube just now looking for funny videos to post on this blog and came across this which reminded me of this video that I put up on here a few posts back. It really has nothing to do with anything, I just thought it was funny.

Now back to Arrowhead. It's generally a race done by yourself with almost no fanfare through out or even at the finish line. Or at least that's what it was like when I did it before in '09. This year there are more than twice as many starters and I'm expecting the finish to be like a mountain-top finish in the Tour de France.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go knit something for my cat

(Another thing I found in the ridiculous knitting book I was looking at in the craft show awhile back. I put a few of the pictures I found on the last post)