Have a cold one

It was another beautiful day in the neighborhood this weekend. I've been watching the temps and wondering what the next gravel slog might be like with the reports of how terrible the gravel conditions are around the state. With one of the snowiest winters all ready on the books and the snowiest February ever, it wasn't looking promising. The forecast for cold weather this weekend intrigued me. Cold on Friday with an overnight low plummeting to near zero should ensure hard packed frozen gravel that would be great for a ride.

Now who in their right mind would be crazy enough to head out with me. Strangely enough, I wasn't alone in my thinking that a frozen and cold ride would trump riding the mud any day. One of the gravel crazies from the January ride I missed was all ready deep into his planning for a new route this weekend. Originally, he was shooting for a Sunday ride so all I had to do was change his mind on that little tidbit and we were set to go. It looked like it would be he and I with the possibility of Fuller joining us for the full route and maybe a couple others for a shorter ride. Alas, it would just be us two brave souls headed into the wild on Saturday morning.

The temperature was a balmy 5 degrees above zero when we left the comfort of the Hy-Vee Grocery store. The one thing I noted was that even though it was cold, I wasn't. A number of people all ready made the comment to me that I was nuts for riding Saturday due to temperature alone. In my mind, the temperature was the reason to ride.

I was dressed about as perfectly for the conditions as could be expected. I'd actually overheated a fair amount on the last ride so I left my clothing choices the same thinking I'd be in good shape for this ride and I hit the nail on the head. My gear choices were as follows: winter weight under armour base layer, hammer nutrition bibs, smartwool medium cushion snowboard socks, pearl izumi amfib bibs, nashbar siberia winter jersey, shimano winter riding shoes with stick on toe warmers in the toes, pearl izumi wind and waterproof jacket, performance windproof microfleece balaclava, and a pair of waterproof snowboard gloves from Menards.

The above combination of clothing with the exception of the shoes and socks has been my riding staple this winter. The shoes, socks, and toe warmers, definitely have the nod for anything over a few hours out in below freezing weather. Unless I'm standing still, I've never gotten overly cold. For the most part, I've got my vents, jacket, and jersey unzipped at least partially as I'm sweating like crazy. One other thing I added based on a recommendation from Dennis Grelk, are my handlebar covers. I started with them and my heavy gloves for this ride and by mile 20 I was ready to switch into my lightweight mechanics gloves.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming... Tom and I rolled out a few minutes past 7 from the confines of West Des Moines. We quickly left the trappings of suburbia and hit the gravel within a few short miles of the rollout. From there we wandered our way south to Booneville and on to a short stretch of pavement before heading south once again. Somewhere in this stretch from Booneville to Winterset at mile 27 we hit some of the hardest parts of the ride. There was a sustained 19-20% grade hill that rose for about 1/2 mile and a level B road that hadn't apparently got them message that the snow was supposed to be mostly gone by now.



The level b road was the only spot we had to get off and hike because of the snow pack and drifts. We kept breaking through the hard crust of the snow and the drifts ranged up to roughly 5 feet deep at the worst spot. Luckily we could push around the drift and didn't have to break trail through it.




I also noted that my bike seemed a bit "loose" going down some of the hills in this stretch. A brief inspection led me to believe my cones holding the axle may not have been tight enough. Strangely I couldn't recreate the problem on Sunday when we checked it at Squirrel's. It may have been something as simple as a slightly loose skewer, but it was unnerving to say the least. Having the bike move more than you're anticipating when bombing down ice and snow packed gravel is not something I'd recommend unless you really like that clamped down puckered up feeling!

We hit Winterset with little fanfare and made our way to Kum & Go for some calories. I decided to be a bit daring and hammered down some pure sugar in the form of a couple Krispy Kreme donuts. Tom played it more safely with the breakfast burrito.



A scant 15 or 20 minutes later and we were back on the road. With Tom and I matched pretty evenly for pace, our plan was to keep moving and minimize our stop times. We rolled back south out of Winterset and into more hills. Thus far we'd had some nice hilly running, but it had been interspersed with a few minor flats as well. Now we were well into hill country. Winding our way south and west towards Pammel park, we were still fighting a headwind out of the south. It definitely had picked up more of a bite since we stopped for breakfast.

A mile or so before we crossed the next highway, we had a hitch hiker join up with us in the form of an overly friendly farm dog. Usually it's an all out sprint to avoid certain dogs or at the least some stern words to ward off impending doom. This happy fellow was feeling his oats and enjoyed running next to and up in front of us. As we came up to the highway crossing, we really didn't want him following any further. It took us a good 5 minutes of hollering and yelling at him just to get him to stay put as we barrelled down the road. He gave a brief chase, but we'd all ready opened a gap and he gave up pretty quickly. Hopefully he made it back home without any harm.

We were soon into new territory as neither of us had ridden the roads west of the park. Part of the route was scavenged from the upcoming "ridges of madison county" ride that is taking place later this month. We hoped the "ridges" implied that we'd be coming out of the river valley and riding on top of the hills for a while. This was partially right.... We did right up and out of the valley, only to descend right back into it, rinse and repeat for the next 30 miles. As we approached a sign that simply stated "Hills" we knew it was going to be fun. The saving grace to this section was that we turned north and now were taking as much advantage of the tailwind as possible.



Somewhere in the extreme southwest corner of our route, we missed a turn. It very well could have been the level B road that we both scoffed at possibly being the "correct" route, but either way, we wound a bit further south than was shown on the route map. A strategic decision was made to turn north and search for the next known east-west numbered road on our route map. We handily found it and then worked our way to the next major north-south road on our journey. Tom was started to feel a bit shelled out at this point and the route we had planned gave us an easy out to cut off about 7 miles of our trip putting us down to 100 even. Seeing as I could stand to be home early and Tom was feeling a bit weary, we decided to cut the route off and cut straight north to I-80.

The only downside to this planning was we were also cutting off our planned lunch stop in Stuart. We knew there was another town just east of Stuart that we should run almost directly into, but for the life of us, we couldn't remember the name. Luck was on our side though and we easily found the little town of Dexter with no problem. I stretched my legs and hammered out this section with the wind pushing pretty hard at my back. Big ring and 20+ MPH were the name of the game for a few miles as I motored off the front. At our designated turn, I waited for Tom to catch back up and we eased in to Dexter.

Casey's was the name of the game in Dexter. We strode in like we owned the place and made ourselves as home. The two guys working the register were pretty amazed at our tail of gravel and century rides in the middle of winter. I'm sure they thought we were nuts, but they accepted we were doing what we wanted and made us feel welcome as we stripped a few layers off and settled down for some lunch. We stopped for roughly 40 minutes and hit the door about 2:40 with 67 miles all ready under our belts.

The next stretch of road led us to Adel and I really don't remember much of that road. I suppose one gets a bit jaded after hitting 4000+ feet of climb in a scant 60 mile jaunt. I do remember we passed a nice lake with a park called "Beaver Lake" and then made our turn east to head into Adel. We were treated with our next surprise on this leg. The south wind had turned slightly west and now was blowing us towards home once again. Our pace really picked up in this stretch with a quartered wind and very minimal climbing compared to the morning. We hit Adel in no time flat. Another stop at Casey's to suck down a donut and to check the map.

The route out of town looked pretty straight forward. We had 15 miles to get home including a short jog on highway 6. As we headed out of town, we noted the route we were supposed to use included a long since closed bridge over the river. Luckily the paved bike trail runs parallel to the road and has a converted railroad bridge. We jumped on the trail and BAM! Wouldn't you know it, I went down on a ridge of ice. My left hip and helmet took the brunt of the fall. I distinctly remember the sound of my helmet scraping across the snow and the crunching noise it made. The only casualty beyond a slightly bruised hip (yet again), was a small tear in one of my vaunted handlebar covers. I hopped back on the bike and just past the bridge we found a short trail that took us to our gravel road again.

This push seemed to take much longer in my head. We hit some headwinds again as we had a few south spots to ride, but for the most part it was quartered tail again. We hit the edge of Waukee and the pavement around 5:50 and celebrated with a brief picture stop. Tom soon parted directions with me to meet up with his family as I hobbled back to my truck another mile down the road. I had to ride one loop around the store as I got there to finish with 100.3 miles. Another century down! Only 10 more to go.

The avalanche

I hope you're ready for some venting.

Some of this is my own doing, some of it is life. Have you ever felt like you're in the middle of an avalanche and known there was nothing you could do but hang on for the ride? I'm there baby!

I'm doing everything, but doing nothing well. I'm not sure what to give up on, what to put more effort into, and where to turn. I think my first step is talking things over with my lovely wife and see what things we can team up on. My biggest hurdle is going to be with work. I have a huge tidal surge or projects piling in front of me and every day something new from one of the projects adds to the height of the wave that's ready to come crashing down any time. I've asked for help, but there's none available. It just means I have to dig deeper, work smarter/harder, and for longer.

That's the very beginning of my crux. If I dig into this work which pays for our lifestyle including my wife being a stay at home mom, it means I have to ditch on being there for them as a good husband and father. If I work harder on being a better husband and father, I have to spend more time with them as I'm severely lacking in giving them any quantity and the quality isn't anything to write home about either. Throw in the fact that I like to have some me time on the bike just to keep my sanity and my time is more than gone. Of course we can't forget about our burgeoning lingerie business, a custom engine that needs to be built, my own project car, friends, side projects, and everything else that goes along with life as well.

It's shaping up to be a spring and summer from hell in regards to the amount of work I have to absorb and process. If I had an option open to jump ship, I'd seriously be looking that direction. I take pride in making money for the company I work for and making the most from each project I run. When I see a challenge like this looming, I just see mistakes and money going down the drain as I hop from issue to issue so fast, I don't get to analyze or make decisions based on costs, but time management. It's not good for me. It stresses me, it hurts my productivity, and makes me like my job less and less. Being the top earner has it's perks, but it also has it's downfalls. As Squirrel has now permanently inked on his body, it's time to "Suck it up!"

If you don't hear from me as often as I'd like, I'm sorry. If I don't be the husband or father I want to be, I'm sorry. If I seem like I'm in a hurry to go somewhere else when I'm talking to you, I'm sorry. This summer is going to be rough. Wish me luck.

A long slog in the saddle

Saturday was my first century of the year. It definitely won't be my last, but it will stick in my memory for quite some time and probably help me make it through other long rides. My morning started off with a jolt about 3:30 AM waking up thinking I'd overslept. I took a peak at the clock and realized I had another hour before the alarm would actually have to get me up. Around 4:40 I rolled out of bed and was thankful I'd spent an hour prepping all my gear the night before so everything was in it's prescribed place and ready to roll.

A quick text from Squirrel acknowledged we were indeed on for the ride. I was bummed about missing the first installment of his gravel centuries, but soon I'd be making up for that. I was excited and more than a bit nervous, but I figured I should do all right in making it through the ride. I had no bail out plan as the wife was working and I volunteered to drive Dennis and Squirrel to the start. I picked up the boys around 5:20 and we headed off for breakfast at Hy-Vee. We were a bit early, so we sat and enjoyed a pretty leisurely breakfast. A little too leisurely on my part as I needed to transfer my backpack gear over to a borrowed seat post rack and mount my handlebar covers. I was about 5 minutes slower than the rest of the group getting ready to roll. Hmmm, an omen of things to come for the day?

We rolled out about 7:15 into some damn chilly temps hovering near the single digit mark. I was pretty thankful for my handlebar covers, but my choice of lightweight gloves to start with left my fingers a bit numb until the blood got flowing about 20 minutes later. I felt great for about the first 30 miles and rode pretty much with Dennis who was riding fixed gear in a pretty damn tall gear to boot! Once we hit 30 miles I started noting little things to fix at the lunch break- seat post height and saddle position were the biggies. I hadn't ridden this bike over 30 miles and only had it for 6 weeks or so, so this was it's first real test.

Lunch found me rolling slowly off the back of the pack and keeping company with Sumpter on his 26'r fixie. At least I wasn't alone, yet.... We hit the lunch stop with a shade over 40 miles in. I still felt pretty good at this point, though my IT band was starting to ache. I was reasonably confident I'd be good for the rest of the ride. An hour or so later, we rolled out of the sports bar with our stomachs full on tacos, chocolate milk, and whatever else we could scarf down.



As soon as we cleared the edge of town I knew I was in deep shit. I was leading the rollout south out of town with the others lined up behind and the headwind showed up. We only had a mile or less on the paved road before we turned back west and found the roads had started to thaw during our luxurious lunch break. I figured my best bet was slow and steady so I geared down, pushed easy and focused on keeping my heart rate manageable. Of course this led to my first way off the back experience of the ride and definitely made me start questioning whether or not the full 110 was a wise decision. Too late now!

At the first south turn on X avenue, the group was patiently waiting for me. I rolled up and they announced a pace line which was for my benefit I'm sure. Unfortunately for me, I didn't have enough gas left in my legs to even keep up to the tail of the line. Fuller and I slowly worked off the back again and I fell even further back. I geared clear down to my granny gear up front and put the rear cassette near the middle. The ground was mostly flat, but the combination of soft roads and headwind near 15 miles per hour kept my pace somewhere around 6-7 mph.



I began to formulate my drop plan on this stretch of road. Hopefully, I'd catch up with the rest of the boys somewhere (I knew they'd be waiting somewhere along the route), I'd hand off my keys to Squirrel or Dennis, and hunker down for a long ass haul to make it back. I remember joking as Squirrel pointed out my granny gear that X Avenue should be renamed to XXX avenue because it sure screwed me like no other. Little did I know that Squirrel was pretty serious when he said no one gets dropped on these rides.



The guys took off again and I kept plodding along until they were no longer in site. Somewhere in this stretch I stopped to stretch on the side of the road, snagged part of a bar, and took off the handlebar covers. The temps had warmed to the low 30's and even with lightweight gloves, it was too hot to keep my hands from sweating. I was treated to some more sludge on this route, but finally caught site of the guys waiting for me at a quaint little church in the middle of nowhere. A brief photo op of me smiling through the pain and we were off again headed to Perry.



This stretch treated us to the worst of the roads yet. I saw my first spot where Dennis had to hike a bike and cleared the top of the hill around 3 mph myself. Definitely not having much fun at this point, but I didn't have many other choices. I started thinking about the route sheet and how it noted a shortcut that knocked off about 7 miles by bypassing the stop in Perry. I really was considering it until I rode back up on Sumpter who either was waiting for me or not fairing any better than I at that point. My opportunity was lost as we took the road on in to Perry.



As we hit the edge of town, I was never happier to see blacktop or any other form of paving for that matter. My mood instantly picked up as my speed did. We found the rest of the boys hiding at a local watering hole. Some time was spent here evaluating the remaining 40 miles considering it was now 4 PM and we had to ride back through some of the same slog we'd just come from. Fuller called it a day and bummed a ride home from his wife. He offered me one as well, but something told me to trudge on even if I didn't make it for the full ride.



As we headed out of Perry the boys stopped for some chow at the Casey's. I was chided a bit for not joining in the grease fest of pizza and whatever else was available. Smart move on my part, but I'd later succumb and suffer for it. The only real redeeming quality for the next 20 miles was that we had a decent amount of north riding and east riding. We finally rolled into Woodward around 6 PM as dusk was really settling in. Another stop at the Casey's for lights, blinkies, gear change, and for me two slices of pizza. Note to self that I won't suffer that mistake again! As good as they tasted sliding on down, I suffered the next hour as they churned their way through my stomach. Uggh!

The roads were now pretty firm and our speeds were back into the double digits. I was even keeping up with the group or they slowed down as to not drop me again. I'm not sure which was the true case, but I was excited for the company and to be making a better pace. My knee was still hurting and I'd been chugging ibuprofen like Pez at every stop. It was now starting to get cold enough that my joints were getting some relief. Somewhere along the route I saw two deer fly across the road about 20 yards in front of me.

One final stop in Granger left us with 10 scant miles to home. I did a little victory dance in my head as we rolled 100 miles just after leaving town. For some reason I had it in my head that we'd have to transverse the single level B road again in the dark. The road itself wasn't bad, but it had icy drifts on it that made me a little nervous in daylight as I slipped around a bit even then. I was pretty sure I'd be going down if we had to do it at night. As luck would have it, we'd long since passed that stretch of road as it wasn't on the return route. This section would have the only near crash of the day as Sumpter went on a wild hop, skip, and jump after crossing up in some frozen ruts. The road definitely sucked in that respect.

Finally, we hit street lights, pavement, and the edge of civilization. My legs picked up some much needed energy from being so close to home. Of course this leg also led us to the only assholes of the ride who honked and made a comment or two. I guess most Iowans just don't expect a bunch of cyclists out on the roads at night in the middle of February, who knew?! At least we were all well lit (and we had lights on too).... We finally hit the Hy-Vee around 8:15 and tossed our bikes back in the truck. After hobbling around in the warmth of the store for a few minutes we emerged with our spoils of victory for the day- protein drinks, ice cream, brownies, and my own little treat of a lemon parfait.

Great day, great ride, and a lot of learning done. Time for more gravel goodness is definitely in the cards for this year so stay tuned.

Burning Man part 1 (prologue)

I just realized I've failed to write a report on one of my biggest adventures from last year. Beyond all the time spent on the bike, spent chasing my daughter, and just spent in general, I accepted the invite from our LA friends to attend my first Burning Man. I'd heard them go on and on about it for years and had even managed to hear a little about this wild party in the dessert before I even knew them.

They through the guantlet down towards the end of 2006 and the plan was for both my wife and I to attend. I approached the day that tickets went on sale with some aniticipatory nervousness and at the prescribed time clicked on "buy tickets". I suddenly was propelled into a queu of ticket buyers several thousand people long. Damn, I thought to myself, how popular is this thing?! An hour or so later, I was able to finalize the transaction and now with my credit card several hundred dollars heavier, the tickets would soon be on their way.

After the tickets showed up, they were carefully tucked away for later in the summer and for the most part forgotten. Every few weeks or so, Freddy would shoot me an email with some weird characteristic about Burning Man or gently prodding to make sure we were still coming. As spring turned to early summer, we (my wife) decided that Burning Man probably wasn't going to be her thing and that our daughter wasn't going to be ready to be left in the care of grandparents for that much time. Alas, it was now solely up to me to make our clan proud.

As the summer progressed and the event drew near, plans were laid of how this adventure would go. I'd fly into LA a day before our friend's departure, take a few supplies with me, and purchase the rest in a mad rush before we left. Knowing our friend's propensity for throwing things together mostly at the last minute, I pretty much expected organized chaos in getting ready to go. Alas, I was not disappointed...

The plan was for me to drive their old Toyota pickup filled to the brim with supplies behind them in the minivan all the way to the middle of nowhere. At least I was to have an attractive driving companion...

Though, even her smiling face doesn't do much for staring at the ass end of a minivan for 10 odd hours. I tell you, that picture sure brings a whole new meaning to the term "nut swinging"

A mental note to self made along the way, "Do not buy from freshjerky.com"


So after many hours in the car, we were finally rewarded with our first sighting of what would become our wayward home for the next week.

The realization was finally setting in. I'd be in the middle of the desert for a week with no phone, no electricity, and no running water. Sure there were generators, portable showers, and port-o-potties, but EVERYTHING there had to be brought in and taken out. This is a leave no trace event, so nothing is left as a permanent structure and no trash receptacles are provided. Now we were treated to 2 hours of crawling through the check in line. I'm sure some of you are wondering just how big is this thing. "Official" attendance topped out somewhere around 43,000 at the end of the week this year, but it would be suggested that closer to 50,000 people were actually in attendance. My guess is that the event will soon top out at 50,000 "official" attendees and not be allowed to go any larger due to Bureau of Land Management regulations that change to the extreme once that number is eclipsed.

Slip sliding away

2 hours of black label goodness yesterday. I threw them down with some good company in the form of Squirrel. We putted prety much all over town to the north and west hitting mostly pave trail until we got to a section out by the ice arena in Johnston that hadn't been plowed so we took an off route through some neighborhoods.

Early on we stopped by El Bait Shop for a quick brew apiece and then hit the road again. Met another friend Courtney that I'd ridden with on a few group rides last year also sitting at the Bait Shop. Seemed like he had plenty of good brew to keep him company as we headed back out. We took the Neil Smith up to the old Targhetto aka new Trestle to Trestle trail. This section of trail had some nasty ice and snow spots on it.

As I soon found out, no matter how wide the tires are, they don't grip well on ice unless you've got studs. I was clipping along around 15 or so across a pure ice spot. I can't remember if I was actually pedalling at that moment or not, but both tires decided to head due east whilst I was trying to maintain a northernly path. I went down pretty hard on my left hit and took a nice slide for a good 20 or so feet. Luckily I still had my right foot clipped in and kept ahold of the bike so I could pull it back to me and out of Squirrel's path. I'm sure I put a pretty good show on for the few people out walking their dog a little further up the path. Like any good guy, I jumped back up and mostly brushed it off even as I was wincing in pain and jumped back on the bike.

I know how these guys feel now...


Amazingly enough, I didn't have a scratch on my AmFib bibs where I went down. After that I seemed to spend more time chasing and following than riding next to Squirrel. Of course it could have just as much to do with the fact that I'm way out of shape as well.... I prefer to blame it on the injury!

We spent the next hour or so working our way up through Johnston and then back down through Clive and West Des Moines on various trails before hitting the home stretch. By the time we got to the Wal-Mart on 73rd I was running out of gas and the head wind didn't help. Squirrel pulled out to a small lead and I just kept pushing away as good as I could without blowing up. We got back to his place and cooled down a bit while hanging out with his wife and daughter.

I'm looking forward with a lsight bit of trepidation to this weekend's hundy. Here are the details if you want to show up for some fun:
Meet @ Dahl's on Hickman & 156th @ 6am for some grub, leave 7am for the ride. See ya there:)

BRR it's cold and a frosty morning

Last Saturday was the annual BRR ride from Perry to Rippey and back. I'd never ridden it before, but several friends recommended it and I thought it would be a good time as well. Luckily the weather was fairly mild with temps hovering around 25-30 and only a little headwind on the way out. I drove up with my friends from Team Cow and rode most of the route with them. My lack of cardio conditioning is really showing up now with getting my butt kicked on a few recent rides. We hit a few small rollers on this ride and I couldn't hang onto the draft so they left me in the dust.

I know my heart rate hovered in the low 170's on the way out and the high 170's low 180's on the way back once we put the hammer down. They still walked away from me, but at least I had a good time cruising along on my road bike. We covered the 26 miles in a little over an hour and a half so we were moving pretty decently for February. We had a nice bowl of chili to finish off the ride and headed back home so I could watch the little one while my wife had to work in the afternoon. An attack of the munchies hit us on the way home with my two friends being way too modest to ask for a donut break so I made the strategic decision to call one myself and we helped ourselves to a chocolate iced Casey's donut each! Perfect end to a great ride.

The rest of Saturday was spent hanging out with my beautiful daughter. After her nap, we bundled up and headed to run some errands. After dropping a borrowed bike rack off we hit the local bike shop. We just missed the guys coming back from the Des Moines winter games and the ski bike competition. We still headed over to Sleepy Hollow to watch the games for a bit. Little one had a blast running around in the snow and trying to stay upright. Everyone there got a kick out of watching her run around.

Sunday started bright and early with some texting from my favorite rodent. We set up to meet at 8 for some putt putt around town. I loaded up the mountain bike and met him over at his place. As misfortune would have it, his mountain bike was down for repair with some nipples (teehee) starting to break through the rims. He mounted up on his trusty fixie and we headed off to ride some streets. Ice soon pushed us off the bike trails and back on to the roads. Soon enough we hit a nice spot to take a quick snapshot.



Damn that reminds me I've got to find a nice small camera that I can stick in a jersey pocket. I've had my eye on this little guy for a bit now. If you've got an opinion on it or another camera, please leave a comment.

We putted south of Jordan Creek and onto the gravel which was smooth, frozen, and in excellent shape. A scant hour and a half later we were back at Squirrel's to do some slight defrosting and shoot the breeze for a bit. Gotta love a guy with an entire room dedicated to bikes! After enjoying yet another day or cold toes even after I stuck hand warmers in before the ride, I asked him about his winter riding shoes. Alas, his choice of gear has been discontinued (Answer Kashmir), but the guys at Rassy's have ordered me in a set of Shimano MW02's to try out. I'm excited to get them and see how they work in time for the next gravel century.

I've also geared up with some recommendations from Dennis Grelk by picking up a set of ATV winter handlebar mitts made by Polaris. They fit pretty well over the brakes and shifters. I still need to put on my new grips, but I think they should fit fine over them as well. They're my other new toy that I can't wait to check out on the next ride. I got them in a size small based on a recommendation from Mr. 24 hour who just happens to also be the Ergon rep as well. The only difference between the small and large is the outer diameter of the grip itself. I consider my hands to be decently sized and I don't think I'd want to go any larger than the small size. Hopefully I'll have a report on these soon enough.

My last bit of winter gear that I'm trying to round up before the century ride is a pair of Smartwool snowboard socks with medium cushion. The only local place to carry them is out of my size, so I'm searching for a deal online. It doesn't seem they've quite hit winter clearance pricing just yet so the deals aren't quite what I was hoping for just to try something new. Hopefully I have some luck soon.

Have a good weekend and maybe I'll see some of you out riding.

A little riding and a little craziness...

The past couple of weekends have definitely lent themselves to some great riding and little wildness as well. The last weekend of January was Squirrel's hilly hundy ride that I had to miss out on. But, not to fear, I still had my chance to ride and do something crazy.

The trade group for my work that I happen to be chapter president of as well was having our annual winter social event in conjunction with the Okoboji Winter Games. The weekend packs the area with a frenzy of people, activities, and fun times. The locals say it's about as busy as the 4th of July weekend. I can beleive it after being stuck in several traffic jams over the weekend.

Friday night started off with a party hosted by the president of our company at his lake house. Being that we had the baby with us, we left rather early to get her put to bed. On Saturday I joined the "Freeze your fanny" bike ride being put on by the owner of Okoboji Expedition Company. The shop up there is very nice and has a great selection of bikes including some high end lines that you wouldn't expect to find in a small town shop. After a few words from the ride sponsor, roughly 50 of us took off to brave the balmy 20 degree temperatures and ride around the lake. I quickly worked my way to the front much preferring to take on the slush and ice on the roads with only a few people around in lieu of waiting for someone to possibly crash in front of me.

At the first pass through town several of the front riders pealed off to hit the bar. One single local rider and I were now off the front of the pack by virtue of not joining in the beverage and also keeping a nice steady pace. I struck up a conversation with him and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the ride. He was riding a cross style bike without very knobby tires and didn't seem to enjoy the slush and snow spots quite as much as I did on the new mountain bike. All in all, we were the first two back to the bike shop with a scant 16 miles in and just over an hour off the clock. We peeled out of some layers to cool off and waited for other riders to come in as well.

After a nice relaxing ride I headed back to the hotel on the bike. I passed what appeared to be a couch on wheels being pulled across the lake by a 4 wheeler. Upon closer investigation it was the rest of our group getting ready to head out for the day. The couch contraption was put together by our local member and he was hauling everyone around to watch the various events on it. After a breif conversation, we agreed to meet back up at 3 for the main event- The Polar Plunge! Something I failed to mention from the previous night is that the local and I took up an I will if you will dare to do the polar plunge. It's something that has always kind of been on my life's list of things to check off, so what better way than to do it in front of a bunch of people to show off at the same time. I headed back to meet up with my wife and daughter who were coming back from a morning out with the ladies of the group doing wine tasting, pampering, and chocolate gorging.

I finally headed back out around 2 so I could grab a quick bite for lunch and head to the plunge by 3. Lunch would later be my undoing, but I am getting a bit ahead of myself now. As I wasn't quite sure what to expect for the plunge, I just grabbed a towel and had my trunks on under my jeans. I found a spot to park about half a mile from the plunge as there were literally hundreds of vehicles and thousands of people out on the ice all ready. I hiked off in the direction of the plunge as I really hadn't made any actual inquiries on how this whole thing worked or where I needed to go. I managed to find the sign in tent and realized there were plenty of other fools just like me who were willing to jump into a hole cut in the ice just to say they've done it. I looked around for my partner in crime, but alas, he was nowhere to be found. I'd later find out he showed up too late to sign up so I was to be the only one from our group crazy enough to jump in.

After I signed up and found what I thought would be a safe place to set my clothing, I stripped down to my trunks and huddled with the rest of the people waiting for the jumping to commence. Surprisingly enough, when you're huddled with a hundred other people inside of a couple small shelters and standing on plywood in lieu of the ice, it isn't that cold. I'd say the ambient air temp was probably in the mid to low 30's but I sure wasn't shivering. People finally started being let out to the hole for their jumps. Almost immediately, the water started to come up on the ice. The combination of the weight of thousands of spectators and numerous bodies jumping into an open hole cut in the ice started pusing a huge amount of water on top of the ice. By the time it was my turn to jump, the walk to the hole consisted of 50 yards of 6-10" of water on top of the slush and ice. That was actually the worst part of the entire experience. Each step felt like being stabbed in the feet. By the time I reached the hole, my feet had thankfully gone numb. The person working the jumping side of the hole suggested I give them a big cannonball so I did my best. I compare it to bungee jumping where you had better go when they tell you or you brain will try to stop you. So, I jumped.

The water hit me and took my breath away in an instant. The next thing I new, I was all ready back to the surface and clawing my way to the ladder. Amazingly enough, the walk back to the tents felt warm. The nice thing about the tents is they also held two large hot tubs. Of course, by the time I reached them, they were literally overflowing with bodies. I waited a few minutes and finally was able to thaw my frozen feet out. I even sat completely down in for a few minutes before I decided it was time to head back to the hotel. This is where things got a bit ugly. The aforementioned water had risen to the point that everything in the tents was now in 6" of water. Unfortunately, this included my shoes..... I quickly dumped the water out of them, grabbed my towel to dry off and threw on my coat. I worked my way out through the crowd with the stabbing pains returning to my now thawed feet. I finally got past the crowd and hiked back to the car wearing nothing more than my coat, trunks, and a towel wrapped around me. Funny, it still seeemed warm compared to where I'd just been.

The rest of Saturday was spent enjoying the water park with our little girl and having a wonderful catered meal with friends and colleagues. About 9 I headed down to our room hoping to catch my wife in time for a little amorous time. Something suddenly didn't feel right in the world. Normally, I can suck up some stomach issues and keep my mind focused on the goal, but this was different. Near as I can figure, my lunch of McDonalds showed back up with a vengeance. I spent the next 6 hours becoming intimate with the toilet. Not exactly the kind of kinky love I was looking for. I finally quite expending bodily fluids sometime around 4 in the morning and fell into a fitful sleep. By fitful I mean I rolled and tossed and threw sheets off the bed. My poor wife finally went to sleep in the other bed as it wasn't doing her any good either.

I finally got up around 11 and we packed to head home. The rest of the day is basically a blur other than enduring a pretty excruciating 5 hour trip home feeling like crap. I crawled into bed around 7 and put a bullet in the rest of the weekend.

A new addition to the family

Wow, I'm sure many tens of ones of you are thinking, gee I didn't even know they were expecting. To be honest, it was quite a surprise to us as well. Actually, I think my lovely wife had a bit of a suspicion that something was up, but she stayed tight lipped until I finally asked. Wait, what are we talking about? Oh ya, that's right, I managed to have "the talk" with my wife late Sunday night when we should have been doing much more productive things.... like sleeping.

I know many of you cyclists out there have had the same talk. It starts as a small idea in the back of your head and before you even realize it, it's a full blown desire, need, necessity. I'm speaking of the new bike talk. Oh yes, that talk! The funny thing is, since I'm still what I consider new to the sport, this is my first time having this particular talk. I know it has many other forms based on various hobbies, sports, and passions, but it's still nerve wracking whenever it comes up for the first time in a new activity.

She knew I'd spent some time at a few local shops lately and been casually perusing some mountain bikes. I think she even caught me a time or two reading reviews on www.mtbr.com (oh the shame I felt). I think it would have been easier to be caught looking at porn. At least I don't have to explain myself on that topic. I guess this was just a different type of porn this time. Bike porn! It all started with the idea that I could use some new tires for my trusty old steed. By trusty old steed, I mean an early 90's vintage rigid frame GT Outpost that I bought at a pawn shop and have never serviced beyond hosing it off and spraying some WD-40 or whatever equivalent I could find handy on the rotating parts if the squeaking became unbearable. Ya, I know, I'm the paragon for bike maintenance...

In any case, I started pondering new tires, which led to evaluating the bike as a whole. Overall, I thought the bike was decent and would still work for the use I was putting it through currently. Definitely not the best weapon of choice, but I could be stuck on a 60 pound Suck-Mart special instead. Sometime I'll have to regale you with the tail of spending a week pedalling a 24" Toys 'R' Us youth mountain bike around the wilds of northern Nevada. Just typing sends a full on shiver through my body. As I spent some time Saturday heating the garage, I thought I'd put my newly found bike mechanic skills to use and check over my mountain bike. The garage was warm, time was on my side, and I thought it would be fun. I knew the bike needed some serious TLC, but after adjusting the front derailleur I checked out the crank. It was at that point I decided it was time to seriously put together the new bike speech. The middle and outer rings on the crank were barely passable with almost half the teeth on each showing extreme wear.

Overall, there wasn't nearly as much begging, pleading, and whining involved as I thought there might be. As I alluded to earlier, my better half had all ready deduced that it would only be a matter of time before I asked about getting a new mountain bike. A nice compromise was struck that I needed to find a good used bike and then I was off to the races. Unbeknownst to her, I had all ready set my sights on what I thought was a pretty sweet deal that was lurking at the warehouse of one of the local shops. It's a 2005 Giant Rainer and had been brought in for a new fork and tires, but the repair bill must have been too high for the owner, as they abandoned the bike and now it was to be mine for a great price. On top of that, I got what I felt was a pretty top dollar trade for my trusty steed.

I had a second or two of remorse selling it off, but that was soon replaced by stroking the seat on my sexy new ride. I have a set of blue smarty pedals from Crank Brothers on order that will hopefully match the bike great. Other than that, my only plans are to ride her, service her, and ride her some more. Wait, am I still talking about a bike???? I can't wait either way.

Winter ride reminder (don't let this happen to you)

Don't let this happen to you. I saw this on the news last night and thought of my fellow outdoor junkies. Remember to keep a careful eye on things while you're out in the cold. I'm sure we can all second guess this guy's instincts on keeping running AND not checking his feet even though they were "frozen", but it's up to each of us to make sure our body parts stay intact through the cold season.

With this being my first winter of riding, maybe I'm a bit more cautious than the seasoned veterans, but I try to keep a wary watch on how my extremities are feeling when I'm out in this stuff. Shoot, I'm used to being cold as a veteran of numerous years of ice fishing without a shack on local farm ponds, but I'm usually wearing several layers plus heavy pack boots on my feet so I don't worry much. With just some wool socks and mountain bike shoes on, I'm a lot more sensitive to how cold my feet are getting. I made the mistake a few weeks back of throwing on an extra layer of socks which made my shoes very tight. This actually compounded my issues because not only did my feet get cold, but now the circulation was compromised and made them even colder. After the first loop on the trails, I peeled off the outer layer of socks, leaving just my new wool toe socks. I also made the mistake of sticking my feet under the heater in the truck for a few minutes hoping for a quick warm-up. As I'm sure many of you have experienced, that is nothing but a recipe for intense pain! I quickly abandoned that thought, laced back up, and headed out for round two. My feet were still cold this time around, but they were definitely warmer with the added circulation coming back into play.

Good luck to all riding on the gravel hundy this weekend. Wish I could go, but work forces me to be in Okoboji this weekend. At least I'll get to freeze my fanny this weekend.

No weekend riding

I had every intention of riding this weekend... No, really, I did. I couldn't really find anyone crazy enough to get out in the negative temperatures with me this weekend. At least I ended up slightly productive by cleaning our office and starting to get ready for tax season.

I'm such a procrastinator when it comes to taxes. We've filed for extensions the last 2 years in a row. It's not that I'm trying to put off paying as I don't think we've ever had to pay, it's just that with running a couple small side businesses, I have a ton of extra paperwork to get filed and for anyone that knows me, I don't tend to keep up on organizing them through the year. I do just fine on keeping all of my receipts together and being able to find pretty much everything once I get to doing it, but there are literally hours of sorting involved that I dread!

Saturday, I finally got out to the garage for the first time this year and the first time in quite a while actually. I have my own car/engine project to finish and one for a customer that has been dragging on for almost 3 years waiting for payments and such. It's finally paid in full and about 90% of the parts are here for that project so it was time to figure out what was left to order for both the projects and see how that impacted my fun budget. As it turns out, I had quite a few of the bolts, seals, and misc parts all ready bought for the customer's project so I just need to finish out my build list of parts and get it going. The nice thing about my garage, even though it's a bit packed with material since my enclosed trailer is doing storage duty for my parents, is that I have it heated with a pretty kick ass 90,000 BTU radiant heater that runs on propane. Even with the outside temps completely negative it was 60ish in the garage! As I shut everything down for the night I noted a few places where frost was actually building up from the cold air outside coming in through gaps and hitting the warm moist air in the garage. It's pretty wild to see steam coming into the garage.

Sunday was a bit more of the same household stuff with the exception that we got a few hours kid free in the afternoon thanks to Grandma! It was a nice change of pace to be kid free since little one has been sick this past week and extra clingy/whiny. I'm sure any of you parents (or spouses) probably know that whine and cry they get when they're sick. Definitely a nerve wracker! So, with her out of the house we got some productivity in the office and the bedroom ;)

That's using your head

This weekend was full of riding the center trails both mornings. We met for a hearty breakfast and coffee around 7 and headed to the trails at 8. I chased the group for close to 2 hours each morning and ended up totally soaked with sweat by the time I was done.

Saturday I was initially worried about the trail conditions as they were a glaze of ice the previous weekend and we opted to do a road loop instead. As I was fiddling with my bike I didn't notice the group head off to tackle Rollercoaster so I found myself off the back before the ride even started. I never really got close to catching them after that. I passed them a few times where the singletrack makes a close pass while it's winding back through Denman's woods, but that was about it.

My fears about the ice had been alleviated by the light skiff of snow that had fallen a few days earlier making a semi grippy crust on the ice. Sliding around was fun, but not hair raising like the last ice ride I did with Fuller. I saw him lawn dart it numerous times and went down hard a few times myself on that ride.

About halfway through Denman's I was making pretty good time for me and just enjoying the flow of the ride. As I was coming through a relatively easy section, I got a bit too close to a tree with my left shoulder. I smacked it fairly hard (I didn't realize until later that day when the bruise showed up) and then shot off to the right side of the trail. As I was in the process of being propelled off my bike from the force of the hit, I managed to stop myself. Unfortunately, I was stopped by driving the top of my head dead center into a tree that was a good 4 or 5 feet off the side of the trail. I remember hearing a distinctive crunch as I hit the tree and rolled off to the side groaning loudly.

As I flipped onto my back with pain shooting down my neck and into my back, my first thought was how long am I going to have to lay here until someone finds me. Luckily I ride with my cell phone and thought about grabbing it to call the group right away. I slowly cleared out of my daze though and realized I could still feel and move everything just fine. I lay there for a minute or two getting my wits back about me and sat up to survey my situation. As luck (ha!) would have it, I wasn't seriously hurt and my bike was just fine. I did later find that I'd twisted the handlebars about 1" off center line.

I gingerly got back on the bike and resumed my chase of the group. I kept the pace down through the rest of Denman's and started to slowly pick it back up again once I got to Squirrel's nest. Just shy of getting to the old firepit, I ran into the group making the return loop so I called it good for the day and turned around. I didn't last long hanging on the tail, but managed to catch up and share my tail of woe back at the parking lot. My helmet still looked to be in good shape with no visible damage other than some scratches to the outer shell. I'm still planning on replacing it which pains me a bit as it is less than a year old. Luckily I found it for closeout at half the price I paid new so I don't even need to think about trying for a crash replacement through Bell.

Sunday we repeated the ride right down to breakfast and were joined by a few different riders in the group. I didn't fall off the back as quickly and managed to make the firepit before meeting up with the group returning again. I even avoided all the trees. Squirrel was kind enough to shoot a picture of a few of us hanging out for a second at the firepit.



Even though my neck and back were hurting off the bike, I felt great on the ride and really enjoyed being out on such a beautiful day. I'm slowly getting back to feeling normal about now. I saw the chiropractor first thing on Monday and though he adjusted me, it didn't do much for the overall "cramped" feeling I was having in my back. At least that's starting to subside just in time for the weekend! Now I just wonder if we'll be riding in the new powder and frigid temps...

Shameless self promotion

I'm pretty sure there are still very few people reading the blog, but for those that do, I've got a bit of a self plug here, so bear with me.

We're having a sale for Valentine's day at our lingerie/toy store. Check it out and hopefully you find something you like.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming, whatever the hell that may be....

Tuesdays with Punks?

The last two Tuesday mornings I've managed to drag my butt out of bed in time to make it downtown for coffee with these fine people. The banter is mostly light and fun with some great people who've been very inviting even though nobody there really knows me from Adam.


As I sit here and should be fiendishly working on my projects, I can't help but ponder a few random thoughts. It's been a number of years since I've worked to make any new friendships other than with people I'm thrown into some situation with i.e. coworkers, friends of friends, etc. The last group of people I found myself entwined with of my of volition were a group of various people on one of the car forums I frequent. I just showed up one day, starting reading the forums and engaging various members. Soon enough I guess I'd built up some street "cred" and even had people referencing some of my posts and such. I even managed to meet up with a guy that happened to live about 20 minutes from me who was another maniacal tinkerer. We struck up a great friendship and sadly we've actually both moved into other areas of interest for our hobbies so the friendship has drawn down to a low simmer.

So what does this all have to do with cycling? Nothing much, other than they're the object of my effort to make some new friends. I definitely found a few new friends by attending the group rides all summer last year and I have to say the vast majority of the people I met were extremely nice. The odd thing about this time around is that there is no security blanket of a forum to learn, expand, and be recognized in. Other than reading some of the local blogs and stirring the pot a bit, I actually have to show up and meet people without really know them which is a bit odd for me. While I wouldn't necessarily classify myself as a loner by any means, I do seem to keep a pretty limited amount of friends at any given time, with few of those being what I'd consider close friends, and rather find myself spending a lot of time hanging out and doing my own thing.

I think part of that mentality about hanging out alone is what brought me to the sport of cycling. It gives me the opportunity to go out and be by myself while engaging in an activity that I can focus on in lieu of the million other things that typically run through my head in a non-stop stream. Yet, the ironic part is I find myself wanting to be a part of the fellowship of riders and slowly driving myself to be a better cyclist to better fit in. Of course, the funniest part of all is, it's all in my head. I'm sure I could show up at just about any given race, ride, coffee time and be treated just as nicely by any of these people. They're really a great lot.

Remodel woes

I'm sure my ones of readers missed me over the holidays. OK, so I was too busy, stressed, and otherwise unmotivated to post anything up for a while, but I'm back for better or worse (probably more the latter). I'm sure any of my close friends, who I'm pretty sure don't even know I have a blog, have heard me drone on and on about my basement remodel. Now I'll entertain you good people with the same tales of woe....

My source of frustration, stress, and late nights this holiday season was not the holiday itself, but a simple mandate from my loving wife?! We were to have a family Christmas at our house, but in order to do so, I needed finish our basement remodel or at least have it presentable enough that we could entertain down there. A little back story is that I've been slowly working my way through our basement turning it from a semi-finished 70's hangout and my high school/college bedroom into a place we'd actually willingly put people up in. I started the project over a year ago by ordering all of the construction material we'd need at once which was my first big mistake. Having all the lumber, drywall, electrical, and insulation material sitting in the midst of the area you need to remodel isn't the best plan of attack.

I started off with great enthusiasm and some good help from my lovely wife. We stripped out the old finishes and painted the bare block with some new waterproofing and sealer. After that, we had various friends come help with a couple projects in trade for my labor on some of their projects. I put in a new egress window, framed, drywalled, and ran electric in the new guestroom. This first phase seemingly only took a month or two. Then the project sat while we worked on a few other things. I think namely this was about the time our daughter was born and I had to turn my attention to prepping her room for arrival. Eventually I got back to the basement and another long weekend with help had us framing half the main room and having drywall put up. This phase then took on a death of it's own and sat pretty much untouched from last winter through most of the summer.

As summer wrapped up to an end, the idea was again floated of having family Christmas in the space and that I should probably start working again. I slowly managed to get most of the mudding and sanding finished up in the first half of the space. As I briefly mentioned before, it was a huge mistake having all the building materials for the entire project delivered at once. I'm not sure how many hours were spent working around or laterally moving various piles of material. Finally, late in October it was decided that I really better get my butt in gear on trying to finish this off if we were indeed going to have family over to celebrate. I put together my schedule of work to complete and managed to have a full week off before Christmas. Heh, anyone who knows me or has worked on remodels, knows the schedule never rings true. As such, I worked every night and weekend for at least 6 weeks to transform the main living space in the basement into something worthy of having friends and family gather in.

Here we are roughly the end of the summer:


Here's a shot with about 12 days left until Christmas:


I won't leave you with a cliffhanger, so suffice it to say, my hard work did pay off. Although we didn't set our tree up until Christmas eve and there still remains a few evenings worth of odds and ends work, everything that needed to be done, was done.

Here are a few pictures of the (semi)finished product:

First road ride of the year

With the warm temps outside on Saturday, the roads were beckoning. As luck would have it, I scored information and an invite to tag along with a group ride mostly comprised of guys from All 9 Yards and a representative of the local orphanage. As I suspected, I was severely outgunned for the ride, but alas, such is the life of a non-racing, newbie roadie.

Even though I showed up with a gun (regular road bike) to a knife fight (knobby tired cross and mountain bikes) I still ended up getting slashed to bits as soon as the road turned steep. I actually did pretty well on the flats and slight grades, but as soon as we started hitting anything over 5% grade I flew out the back of the pack quick as lightning. Unfortunately for me, the only slower rider was even further back which meant riding by myself for the back half of the ride. Poor Steve fared worse than I bringing a rock to the fight as he was on an old steel Schwinn that looked like it was built to the same standards as a Sherman tank and probably weighed roughly the same.

All in all, the ride was an excellent burn. 48 miles, 2000 feet of climbing, some good conversation (when I could keep up), and enjoying the sun on my face. I couldn't ask for a lot more other than that pesky quad cramp that threatened to send me to the ground sobbing like a baby.... but I digress. I guess one of my goals for the year should be trying to keep up with the fast group for an entire ride. I'm sure I'll get used to being shot out the back!

Sunday was supposed to be a couple hours of winding my way through the center trails on the mountain bike. Alas, it was not to be. With the warm weather I was anticipating slushy and wet conditions, but not ready for the single track to be hard packed ice due to thaw and refreeze. After a scant hundred yards or so, my friend and I decided we'd fare much better and probably with less pain by heading out on the pave trails and road. We looped through Water Works, through Gray's Lake, and around Principal Park for a relaxing 14 miles. It was just enough to get some endurance miles in and keep from stressing the muscles relaxing from the day before.

I know what I did last summer

And now you will too. I actually spent the vast majority of my summer on the bike. I logged over 3200 miles since May of this year. I did a number of things many non-cyclists will think silly and even I wonder why I did a few of them. I think fun is the main reason behind a lot of what I did. A sense of accomplishing something personal is another reason. I love being able to set a goal for myself on a ride and then getting the gratification of hitting that goal when I'm done a few hours later. It's something of an immediate gratification. So, with that being said, here are a few of the interesting things I did this summer on my bike.

1) I failed at my first attempt to do a century ride. Why would I start of my list with a failure? This just goes to show you that some things aren't meant to be easily attained no matter how well you think you're prepared. Some friends put on a ride called the 10 trail tour. It was meant to touch parts of most of the paved trails in the greater metro area. The day started out rainy and cool, but dried off by the time we started. As the ride was open to anyone who wanted to show up, we attracted a few very new riders. Alas, the new riders, the weather, and a general relaxed attitude towards the ride came together in a perfect storm to dash my hopes of hitting that magical 100 mile mark for a single ride (aka a century ride). We ended up around 70 miles total and I succumbed to the realization that my bike fit was pretty far off as well. All told, we still had fun on the ride and I knew I'd be better prepared for my next try.

Here are a few of us hearty soulds ready for a nice sloppy day.


2) I rode through rain and thunderstorms. I know most people don't think much about getting out in the rain when you're driving somewhere, but you definitely think twice about being out in it when you're not surrounded by the comfortable confines of your car or house. There were several accidental rain rides and a few purposeful jaunts in the rain. I managed to learn I hate going down hills in the rain for fear of my front tire losing control and seeing my crumpled body skidding like a jelly donut with the red filling spewing out across the pavement. Other than that, as long as it isn't too cold, the rain really isn't that bad. I've ridden with and without rain gear. The rain gear really makes a difference if it's cold, but in the summer, it's actually an interesting change of pace to ride with the rain covering you. I also learned that lightning and thunder are excellent motivators for increasing your average speed!

3) I rode 2 days of Ragbrai. I rode with my friends from Team Cow. They have an old school bus converted to a RV/Camper fittingly painted like a Holstein cow complete with the requisite horns on the front. They're easy to spot as you'll most likely never encounter another couple riding a custom carbon fiber tandem painted like a cow. They graciously invited me along on their annual pilgrimage across the state. I only had enough time to ride for 2 days, but I had a blast while I was there. Something about riding with 10,000 plus other cyclists down back highways through rural Iowa is just a hoot. I rode about 75 miles each day and on the second day was lucky enough to speak personally with Lance Armstrong! He mentioned something about "on your left" as he rocketed past me with a few other riders pumping along in a pace line. I tried vainly to catch their draft, but by the time I accelerated to match their speed, they were too far away and I'd never have been able to maintain that pace for long as it were.


4) I did a century ride, double metric century, and rode on a racetrack all in the same day. I took part in the first of what I hope to be annual Track and Back bike rides. The entry fee was a bit on the steep side, but they did have a good lunch (for the first handful of riders), a good dinner, and the proceeds all went to a good cause. The start was a blast as it was my first experience with using the police to blockade the roads through to the edge of town. Against the advice of my friends riding their tandem on this ride, I actually rode to the start of this ride from my house. It was a short but hilly few miles to the start and I figured I'd still have enough pep after the ride to get back home..... The morning was a beautiful crisp August morning without too much heat or humidity to start off. As we rode I stayed with the front pack and as we approached the first turn I suddenly found myself all alone off the front. What was this? Did I suddenly find magical powers in my legs that beamed me ahead of the other riders? No, it was a simple missed turn by the lead rider that sent the pack splitting in two directions. I just happened to be the first person that actually knew the route. My joy was shortly crushed as the racers in the group whizzed past on the first of many climbs that day.

The course consisted of good ole Iowa Rollers. For those that haven't ridden in Iowa, an Iowa roller is just big enough that you get a good run down one hill, but not enough to get you more than about halfway up the next. I locked in with a group running a good pace and drafted them through the hills. Once we hit a flat I broke off with a few other riders running strong and enjoyed a healthy pace out to our halfway point.

As I mentioned earlier, we got to ride an an actual race track. It was a lot of fun riding around the oval at the Iowa Speedway and consequently I snagged a few good pictures taken by the event photographer.




We were to complete 7 or 8 laps in order to get the full 100 miles for the day, but since I'd ridden to the start I only road 3 laps and took off. As I alluded to earlier, there was a snafu with lunch. The first 10-15 people to arrive were welcomed by Subway sandwiches, pop, and snacks. However, the food ran out shortly with no replacements in site. We later learned that an error was made in the delivery of the food and lunch showed up sometime a while after I had all ready hit the road back home.

I felt good on the start of my return trip. Shortly, that feeling would be replaced by struggle. The day had heated up and a strong headwind was now bearing down. As I fought to keep my speed up while going DOWN hill, I wondered why the weather was being so cruel. Miraculously, about the time I was begging for it to end, a pace line pulled through and I caught the tail. Local cat 1 racer Lou W was leading the train and we were all hanging on for dear life (or at least I was). We rolled into the next town and thankfully a sag van arrived with fresh water and snacks again. A stopped for a short breather and took off again while most of the other riders were still hanging out.

The rest of the ride was pretty lonesome as I passed occasional single riders, rode through a brief but windy rainstorm, and found out the last sag stop for water was running late. As I rolled up the last big hill before heading into town, Lou again passed me. This singular moment stands out as the best part of the ride. I'm struggling up this hill and the speed at which he passed along with his comment of, "You're doing good" struck me as monumentally funny. The only retort I came up with as he blazed away was something along the lines of, "that's just not right!" I'm sure it's not nearly as funny to the rest of you, but the scene in my head is downright hysterical.

I finally rolled into the starting point and found myself amongst the first 10-15 finishers and felt pretty good about the whole ordeal. My friends on the tandem were all ready there and I guess my appearance was a bit humorous as they started in with the jabs about having to ride home and how I was contemplating adding another 25 miles on to get my first 200K as well.


I'll admit that I did sink down in the booth completely drained and blanked out for a good while. However, after we were fed and my water was replenished, I decided to go for it.

I bid my friends goodbye and headed off to the bike trail in search of 200K on the odometer. I felt good again at the start, but quickly that led to feeling drained and wondering why the hell I was even out here in lieu of hitting a nice hot shower at home. Sheer will power and stubbornness got me through the remaining miles. I did end up cheating my original plan though and road all my miles on the trail and called for a ride home in lieu of riding home as part of my miles. I couldn't stand the thought of any more hills on my dead legs. It just wasn't going to happen.

That's more than enough for one post. I'll make sure to catch you up on a few more rides and some other happenings from the summer soon.

Two wheeled fun?

Enough all ready with the past and let's get on to something a little more present. At least this news is only 8 months stale. Along about the middle of April I was headed home from another of my seemingly endless trips to my latest jobsite at the Isle of Capri Casino in Waterloo. The weather was nothing short of beautiful for that time of year, sunny, mid 60's or 70's, and a bright blue sky. An urge hit me that I hadn't felt for several years. OK, judging by the layer of dust I later found, it may have been even longer than that. In any case, I decided today was the perfect day to break out our bikes and go for a ride with my wife.

I called ahead to tell my wife so she could get ready. I was figuring it would be a nice simple process of getting the bikes down, possibly putting some air in the tires and heading out. Little did I know that a few years (or more) of sitting in the garage can play havoc on all sorts of bike parts, let alone trying to find your helmet and shoes after that period of time. So several hours later we finally hit the trails. I'd like to tell you that first ride was an epiphany of epic proportions and I suddenly found my life in focus with a clear purpose again. I distinctly remember the weather was nice, but other than that it was a lot of work, waiting on the wife, and fiddling with my bike to get the gears to work properly. So began my tenuous agreement to start riding again. I think we made it a whopping 8 miles that day only to find we were sore in places we didn't know existed the next day.

At least I had a smile on my face because, overall, I did enjoy the ride. I actually decided that day to start riding more often. Little did I know the beast that was about to be unleashed. You see, once I get into a hobby, I tend to go the whole 9 yards and usually a little further. After a few more rides and learning that I was not a patient person when it comes to waiting on others (my wife), I did a bit of research and decided we needed a tandem. The theory was perfect: I could work as hard as I wanted, she could work as little as she needed, and we'd both get there at the same time. Perfect! We started scouring the local bike shops only to discover that damn these things were expensive. However, we suddenly found ourselves at one shop that had a barely used Trek T900 that was just traded in on something a little sportier. They were selling it for a song and it all ready had a few extra goodies like a cyclocomputer on it. We took a short ride around the parking lot which incidentally was just long enough to rip the cuff off Miranda's pant leg after running it through the sprocket. Add in a few more imnutes of debate and we decided to buy it.

After a few fits and starts, we eventually got the hang of riding together. We even managed to put over 200 miles on it this year. That's a far cry from what I had in me head when we originally bought it, but it's a solid start and I'm sure a lot better than many other couples do when they buy a tandem. We're still married and still have the tandem too! Here's a shot from mid summer.


So the tandem was just the start of my cycling addiction this year. Early in May I found there were a number of weekly group rides in our area. As luck or possibly fate would have it, I found myself alone with nothing to do on a Wednesday night that had a ride scheduled. I showed up not sure what to expect and was a bit concerned by the amount of spandex, high dollar rides, and mostly athletic people that greeted me. I nervously unloaded my old steed. I should mention here that my old steed is a rigid frame mid 90's mountain bike that has never had any real maintenance done and I bought it from a pawn shop back in 1997 or so. In any case, I pedalled up to the group where I was greeted by a middle aged gal and some others as I asked where the slow group was. I ended up with the medium to slow group and pretty much got my doors blown off the entire ride by groups of middle aged women on cruiser bikes with tennis shoes. Crap, there goes my image.....

My next foray into the world of group rides would actually turn out to be the beginning of the end. Again, I broke out my trusty green steed and turned up for a ride the following week. This was a different group of people and since I was finally starting to get my legs under me, I at least did a passable job of trying to keep up while not vomiting in the bushes. As one rider sprinted off the front about halfway through the ride, I uttered the phrase to a fellow rider, "I wish my bike accelerated like that." As it just so happened, my fellow rider was the ride leader and manager of the bike shop where we started the ride. He kindly offered up a test ride on an actual road bike. Anyone else addicted to cycling knows exactly where this story is headed. One ride and I was hooked. I took him up on two rides the next week and knew it was a matter of time before I would have my own road bike.

I started searching in earnest for a bike that I liked. I tried all the local shops, I scoured Craigslist, and then being the frugal bastard that I am, got a great deal on a used bike through Craigslist. I picked up a full carbon bike that was a couple years old, but had less than 500 miles on it for about half the price it cost new. Being the wise consumer that I am, I figured this would be the most expensive part of my bike habit. There are few things in life as wrong as I was....

I don't know how much I've spent on clothes, shoes, helmets, tires, saddles, Gu, and you name it since that fateful day in May of this year. I've done my research and tried to be careful in what I bought, but somewhere along the way I just went horribly wrong and my spending spiraled out of control. I now know why cyclists aren't car guys, we don't have room for that much crap in one garage!

So now that I've lamented about all the costs of cycling, how about a few of the gains. There's something about cranking out mile after mile on my bike that just makes me feel alive. It may suck riding through rain, heat, wind, and snow, but there's something at the end of each ride that gives me an enjoyment I can't put into words. I probably spent too much time on my bike this summer, but I truly enjoyed it. I made some great new friends along the way. I visited a few areas I'd probably never have seen if I weren't on a bike. I even managed to meet my goal of losing a few pounds that I'd been packing on over the past few years.

For those that haven't been on a bike since you were a kid or possibly ever. Give it a try. It might not be for you, but if it is, you're in for the ride of your life.

More catch up please

Since you all asked so nicely, oh hell, who am I kidding, nobody asked, but I'll tell you anyways. Here's yet another post dedicated to sitting back in the old easy chair regailing you with tails of my past two years. Let's see, thus far I've covered family and cars so that leaves business and biking. Can I get a woohoo? No? How about a, oh hell, let's just start.

I posted a hint back when I first started this blog about going into an adult industry business. We threw around a bunch of different ideas and even went so far as to look at a few rental spaces. As we guessed, most shut us down before we got past the words "adult oriented". Considering our friends in LA had trouble finding a space, we weren't too convinced that we'd ever find anything here. So, scratch that idea and let's look at something else.

We now were considering doing home parties. Hmm, sex toy parties for couples? What's not to love. Well, other than the fact that we pitched it to various friends and most thought it was an ok idea, we'd be jumping right into competing with some various other established home parties that were catering to similar crowds. Albeit, these other companies target strictly women, we weren't so sure about following this line of thinking.

Now we were starting to get a bit daunted by this task. We were just so enamored with the way our friends set up this awesome business and seemed to enjoy all the freedoms and interests we could see ourselves enjoying as well, we knew we had to find our niche. As luck would have it, we were soon to find that niche. During a visit to our friends in LA, they invited us to attend a lingerie trade show in Vegas with them. From there, an idea was hatched. Why couldn't we do for lingerie what they were doing for sex toys: find quality pieces, give them a personal review and stamp of approval, price them reasonably, and most of all have fun with the process.

We were sure we'd have people beating their way to our webstore in no time flat. Heh, those are the dreams that launch and fail countless businesses. We did some homework, put together a loose plan of attack, and jumped in head first. We went to Vegas on our own, bought a number of pieces for review, met manufacturers, and picked out some product. That's the easy part. We didn't figure that learning how to build a webstore would be the equivalent of setting up a colony on the moon. With neither of us having any real experience with website building, e-commerce, or anything much more advanced than using email or posting pictures on an internet forum, it's been a struggle.

We enlisted the help of some friends and I dug in to do our research on e-commerce. After what seemed like an eternity, we pieced together what we felt was a good start to a website and a fair e-commerce store. We modeled it loosely after our friends site with the store being secondary to the main page of reviews. I'm still not sure if this was a good idea or not, but it's up and running. We did a soft launch in January of 2007 in hopes of hitting the Valentines Day rush. Alas, our dreams of orders flowing through the door as soon as we hit the "open store" button were quickly dimmed. We're still plugging away though and working to make our store a success. We think the idea is the right way to go and eventually we're hoping to build a loyal base of customers along with a rock solid reputation built on quality, fast shipment, and excellent customer service.

Our future plans do include hosting some parties locally and a revamp of the store to make it fit better with our overall theme for the rest of the site. We even have a few ideas up our sleeves for some private label products. So, if you're still reading this and want to peruse the site, store, or even purchase something check out The Possibilities Room. I'll even throw in a bonus here. Use the word "blog" in the coupon code area when you check out and it will save you 15%.

Getting busy part II

Well, since I unavoidably swerved off into sex talk last time, I'll try to keep this a little more on the straight and narrow this time. Really, it was time to get busy. Life was cruising along at a comfortable clip, finances were starting to come into a healthy picture, hobbies were established, we were enjoying our freedoms together and separately. So why not throw a wrench in the works and see how it ends up?

Ahh yes, the talk of children.... The subject was broached, I was found to be in a more receptive mood than in the past, and an exchanging of thoughts occured. I can't say I was fully on board with the entire idea of becoming a parent and even more worried about being a good one at that. After many hours of discussion, some good soul searching, and a good many more hours of discussion, we decided it was indeed time to "get busy" starting a family. See, this is the direction I originally intended this post to go!

We set a rough timeline involving the stopping of birth control and the start of taking our chances. Our timeline was to get pregnant sometime near the center section of 2006 and have a baby by the time 2007 rolled around to join us. Well, we're nothing if not punctual. OK, so that's a flat out lie for anyone that knows my wife. She's nothing, if not 15 minutes late! I swear she'll be late to her own funeral. In any case, it figures she'd be on time for this. As September rolls around, we get the note in the mail saying congratulations you're pregnant. Well, maybe it didn't come by mail, but instead involved attempting to pee on a little strip of paper, following by some sort of archane hyroglyphic reading, and a follow up to the clinic. All in all, we were indeed pregnant. Woohoo, now comes the roller coaster.

A little side note here as I've taken some flack on a forum for talking about pregnancy in the terms of "we" or "us". That's my own personal preference since I believe if you're as involved in the pregnancy as I think a person should be, you actually have as much stake as the woman who is carrying the child.

In any case, we were now pregnant and though we thought we'd prepared by reading and researching, we were in for a world of fun over the next 9 months. We really hadn't gotten to the point of figuring out how we wanted to have this baby. Typical doctrine dictates you pick out an OB clinic, wait 9 months, and head to the hospital. This didn't sound like us. We wanted to take an active role in the pregnancy and use this as a learning opportunity as well. Our search for something different led us into the world of midwives.

For those that haven't a clue about what midwives are, what they do, or have heard from a friend of a friend who had a midwife and delivered in a barn in Coonsfoot, Kentucky, you owe it to yourself to learn a little more about them. We had a truly awesome experience and spent hours with our midwife learning about the pregnancy, learning what we could due to stay healthy, and learning more about our own physiology than we ever thought we'd need to know. Granted, it wasn't an easy process for either of us, though I was definitely less affected than Miranda. There was a new diet to follow, a fair amount of recommended reading, and a number of guidelines to follow. I'm sure there are a number of you reading this and thinking, why would you subject yourselves to so much extra work when you're all ready dealing with being pregnant? Trust me, there were a number of times we asked ourselves and the midwife the same thing. The bottom line was to maintain the health of the mother and baby throughout the pregnancy is the single most important thing you can do.

As we would later piece together, our midwife set us on course for a wonderful pregnancy that resulted in a very healthy baby girl being born on Good Friday of 2007. It was, indeed, a Good Friday! Our close friends know pretty much all the details of the birth, but I'll highlight a few things that astound most people. Labor started around 4 AM Friday morning, we went for a walk completely around Gray's Lake during the course of labor, saw our midwife around noon, and went for an accupuncture appointment after that. Around 3 PM the ball really started rolling and we headed from the accupuncturist back to the birthing center and the care of our midwife. Our beautiful girl was born a couple hours later completely without drugs and with the use of a heated whirlpool. Miranda was awesome during the entire process and kept her focus as I tried to keep up with her needs. It was a great experience and best of all, we were home and in bed by 8:30 that night!

Little did we know how much our lives were about to change. How in less than 2 years this beautiful bundle of joy:


To a fun, demanding, wildly adorable little person:


Ahh how sweet life is!

Business Time

Oh ya, somewhere in all of this fun and frivality it was time to get busy. No, really, it was "business time"

Some guys at the local bike shop were listening to this one day when I stopped by. It wouldn't be nearly as funny if it didn't apply to so many people including myself at times. It's amazing we've managed to shorten and put so little effort into one of the things that should really be a focal point of relationships and something to really look forward to. There is an appalling lack of effort put in for so many reasons. I should know, I'm way too guilty of using them myself (when I get the chance). I can't even begin to count the times I've had the conversation in my head about knowing how I should be giving her a long hot massage, covering her body with kisses, or even just looking into her eyes more, only to have it replaced by a desire to get in, get off (both of us thank you very much, I'm not that cruel), and get to bed or busy doing all the other things that seem so damned important in life.

Wow, so this thing has taken on a totally different direction than I was thinking. As long as I'm ranting, I'm may as well keep right on going with the flow. Now something that gets me crazy is hearing about all sorts of ED problems, women in their 30's and older having all sorts of sexual revelations, complaining how their husbands no longer satisfy them, and how I think this all ties together. My theory is that guys tend to go through their mid to late 20's and 30's mostly in long term relationships. As such, we've all heard and I'm guessing at least a number have experienced the beg for sex routine. I think we tend to become so used to being shot down all the time, we accept it, and move on to other activities. I don't think there would be nearly as many middle aged guys doing so many other activities besides being a good partner if we'd just get sex without begging. Now to tie this whole idea together, since we don't get sex and turn our attention elsewhere, the women now feel like we're neglecting their needs since we're no longer begging for it. Then they hit that turning point in their life where they decide it's not time to play games anymore and actually want to have sex with us. Woohoo! Of course, our libido has been run over by the repeated bashings we've taken throughout our early years and now we're being asked to perform like an 18 year old porn star. It ain't gonna happen. Cue the ad for the side by side bath tubs and getting cock blocked by a surprise party. Bingo we have the perfect recipe for needing ED drugs.

So that's my crazy ass theory about why ED drugs, begging for sex, and long term relationships are all conspiring against us. It's a viscious circle I tell you. So recapping- ladies: say no a little less, guys: don't stop asking and pay a little more attention when it does happen. There's my public service announcment for the day. Oh and if you're looking for anything to spice up your love lives, check out the two stores I've listed on the left hand column. Freddy and Eddy are some good friends of ours and The Possibilities Room is owned by us. We actually set up our store after being inspired by our friends at F&E and to act as a compliment to the products they all ready offered.