- Bad Idea Racing - HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

I finally registered for my first “real” race of 2007. Yesterday registration opened for the most exclusive mountain bike race on the planet, The Death Marc… I’m sorry the Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure Race. I was sure to jump in as soon as I saw the announcement as the fifty spots are going to sell out faster than barf bags at a John Tesh concert. The best thing is we now have three whole months for trash talk on MTBR.

Who invented these things called calenders anyways? In the back of my mind I had a logical progression in May. Do PMBAR on the fifth, two weeks later do the KTR, and two weeks later go to the Burn 24 hour race. Well I looked up at the calender this morning, and what do you know? MAY IS NOT 34 DAYS LONG!!! There is no weekend between KTR and the Burn. Shit in my oatmeal and tell me it’s Splenda. I had a semi-firm grasp on reality up till this point, but I seem to be loosing it.

Does this harness make my butt look big?

I guess I’m going back to the drawing board for May, but at least I have SOMETHING to work around. That’s a start.

I suckered The Wonderboy into going to The Icycle this weekend. Less of a race, more of an excuse to hang out by a fire and exchange war stories. There has already been some excellent smack talking going on and now I can chime in a little harder now that I am going. I think I’ll be able to talk the talk, but my “training program” may make walking the walk a little hard. This year rumor has it that the SS class won’t be chugging a beer after the first lap, and I was counting on making up time at the refreshment table.  I guess it’s time for plan B.  Today will be base mileage, tomorrow intensity work, and Friday will be tapering.

Current list of goals:

Get out of bed

Drink a pot of coffee

Ride to work

Stay away from free food while working 

Ride home 

Eat and bathe

Drink beer and hang out with the family unit

Do interval work throughout the day (intervals of internet time and stressing over a need for better goals)

So far I’m achieving the shit outta my goals.  Hope your season is going just as well.  Well.. unless you’re going to line up at the start line with me this year.  Then I hope you are having a really horrible “base mileage/core workout/threshold lactating” phase. 

Man alive! Why? Why? Why must all the good races end up crowding themselves into small chunks of the year? I had already made permanent plans to never miss the Shenandoah 100 in the near future. The race is just waaaay too much fun to not do it over and over. I already pitched a fit when they announced that the 24 HOA Solo Worlds would be on the same date, but now the Single Speed World Championships is on the same date in Scotland. Three events that were in the back of my mind as options all on the same weekend. Phooey.

On a side note, I just checked out the Shenandoah 100 site while I was linking it, and I found out I was not the winner of the “Rock Star Award”. What is the Rock Star Award?

The Rock Star award is our GC award (sort of a stage race GC) you need superb performances Saturday night around the kegs, Sunday on the bike, and Sunday night at the party!!!!!

It wasn’t one of my goals to win it, but I thought I had a shot. We (we being The Wonderboy, Bill Nye TSG, and myself) were pretty much hovering like vultures at the keg Saturday till they eventually tapped them. I ate the disgusting black duck egg that Harlan and Topher had supplied for a pre-race meal. I woke up hungover as hell and won the fixie division in my first ever (and last) fixed hundie. As soon as I finished the race I went straight to the adult pleasures, and we didn’t leave until we had all the victims floating, all the unattended food scavenged, all the victory champagne bottles emptied, and made a vain attempt at collecting money for a beer run. The RSA went to David Bender who did his first hundie ever on a single speed in 10:02:02 (besting my fixed gear time by 25:44)

From the SM100 site:

The Rock Star award was won by the Bender Master from Cupcake land in 2006. He rode in his first 100 ever and did it on a singlespeed and he was the strong man both nights keeping the party alive. Greg Moore and Matt Ferrari came on strong, but Bender was in a class all his own showing amazing endurance both nights.

I figure he must of stayed up all night doing shots of Bacardi’s 151 and fornicating woodland creatures to beat me. I’m thinking the only way to win this thing next year would be to wear a constantly re-stocked beer helmet from Saturday night till Monday morning while wearing ass-less chaps and bunny slippers. I don’t think I have time to train for that this year.

Local news: I decided not to do the short track race this Sunday. I just rode out to the course and did some of the XC loop before The Boy’s race. The papparazi took notice and snagged a photo of me poaching the course. At least I was wearing panties. 

image from Rick at ImagesRW.photosite.com

Late edit:  It was 19 degrees outside on the ride in this morning.  The weather channel said “feels like 8″.  I think that was an incomplete sentence.  It should have read “If you ride more than thirty minutes it feels like 8 of your toes are freezing off”.

I know I just bitched about it the other day, but this year is driving me nuts.  I really can’t figure out what I want to do.  It’s not so much a matter of what I want to do, it’s what races will I have to miss to do something else.  I had The Pie semi-talked into traveling to The 12 Hours of Razorback (which is on her birthday).  She was going to go to Orlando with The Boy while I raced.  Whoah… that’s when I realized I don’t really want to spend sixteen hours in a car (round trip) to do a 12 hour multi-lap race.   I’m just grasping at straws now.  The race is three weeks away, and I haven’t done a lick of extra riding that some folks would call “training”.

I got an email from the promoter of the Georgia Single Speed Championships.  This year they are having a Marathon (48 miles) and he is considering (after I suggested it) making the fixed gear class go 24 miles (instead of the planned 12 miles).  I thought about going last year, but it was the same weekend (or close to it) as the North Cackalacki SS Wompass Rally.  I couldn’t make up my mind last year, so I skipped them both.  Now if I go the the GSSC I will have to choose between the Marathon (nice length) or the fixie class (warm spot in my heart).  There’s also a rumor floating around that there is no beer allowed at the venue.  What kind of SS Championship can there be if half the field isn’t hungover or still slightly intoxicated? 

I start getting stupid thoughts in my head.  Chuck the concept of a “season” and just start riding west in the most direct way possible.  Down the road, through parking lots, in the woods, whatever.  The Pie doesn’t like the idea, and it sounds more like being homeless than riding a bike.  I do NOT FUNCTION WELL without a clear goal, or at least a group of ideas that when put together resemble the notion of a goal. 

On the bright side, the Fastest Bike in the World was making a lot of creaks and groans for the last month or two.  Occasionally I would make a half-hearted effort to silence the complaints, but to no avail the bike continued to voice unpleasantries.  Well, the other night I finally won.  I can stand on it, flit, flee, and fly whimsically and never hear a peep out of my work companion.  You have to ride a fixie to understand.  All you ask of it is to quietly float through the air and support your weight as you glide gently through the lower realms of the earth’s atmosphere.  Every unwarranted noise slowly eats away at your soul, and messes with the whole meaning and purpose of your life.  Once again, I am now a silent ghost attacking climbs and slicing through society like a hot knife.  World beware.  I am a hot knife with no goals or agenda.  Random acts of cycling may occur.

Some sunny photos:

Sexy cable routing from the front

Jerry and Cheech’s work under a shiny coat of paint

Close up of the cable guides

I got the (soon to be renamed) Dissident back from David at P2 Customs of Charlotte, NC.  I woke up at 4:30 this morning so I could get it back together ASAP.

Whaddaya think?

A little rear end action.

BB macro porn.

My Viking fjork.

Close-up on the fjork.

The whole reason this project started, the beautiful cable routing made possible by Jerry and Cheech.

And the big shitty indoor shot with poor lighting and shoddy camera skills.

Another piece of the puzzle showed up yesterday.

Thomson was kind enough to me trade a seatpost I won for this chubby little hunk of aluminum. This big chunky thing is history now. If you look close you’ll see that the stock face plate bolts have been replaced by ti. Why do I have ti bolts in my Thomson? Because back in 2001 when I was an uber weight weenie I sold my titanium Titus hardtail to finance the lightening of my Ellsworth race bike. I have a small surplus of ti bolts, and of course I’m gonna use ‘em if I got ‘em.

Here’s some more:

That’s eight bolts in the brakes, four in the stem, and I also replaced the bolt in my Salsa seatclamp. How much weight did I save? How the hell do I know, but I’m sure that it will make me faster.

I’m still not “training” yet. I still have very little idea what races I’m doing. This is what’s in my head:

The NORBA Series makes me want to try the Razorback 12 hour race on Feb 17th. That’s my wife’s birthday. I know she won’t buy the “vacation in Florida for her birthday” trick if two days are in the car and one is standing in a field watching me do laps.

Then we’ll slide over to April. We won’t even talk about March because the only thing going on is the North Cackalacki SS Wompass Rally. The entry fee is a six-pack, so it’s hard to consider it a “real race”. A “real race” would have a twelve pack minimum. April starts with The Pisgah Gathering. No racing, just riding and fun. Two weeks later is the Cohutta 100. I won the SS category last year, and I planned on returning, but a coupla good friends are tying the knot that day so it’s out. Two weeks later you got the Dirt, Sweat, and Gears 12 hour in Tenn. $1,000 for first place SS, but it’s 7+ hours from my house. Seven hours in the car to do laps for 12 hours? I don’t know about that.

May? PMBAR! No doubt. Then there’s the Kokopelli Trail race smack dab in the middle of the month. I really want to go, but it is contingent on some other travel plans. At the end of the month there is The Burn 24 hour race. I’ve never missed this race in some fashion or another. The Boy wants to race solo, and I don’t know what the hell to do. I have a not-so-secret goal of doing 200 miles there, but then there’s a race I want to do one week later….

in June. We start off with navigationaly challenging Mohican 100. If I do The Burn solo I’ll be too wasted to have a good time. Unnghhh. The Cowbell 12 hour race is right here in Charlotte later in June (and part of the NORBA series). Drive 15 minutes to do laps for 12 hours? Heck yeah. Taylor has upped the prizes, and I am the SS champ two years running. Also on the plus side I have been there every year of the race, so it’s kinda like a family reunion.

That’s half way through the year. I won’t even get into the “Will I get to do Seven?” or “Why is Shenandoah the same weekend as the 24 Hour Worlds?” problems. The rest of 2007 brings even more decisions to clog up my brain. I will be doing SOME of the Ultra Series races (but not enough to qualify for the series) and SOME of the NORBA series (not enough to amount to much).

So why “train”? I really have no defined schedule right now, and no idea when my first BIG race will be. The only goal I have right now is to establish some goals. Stay away from my brain cloud, and save yourself. Go read about tomi mcmillar’s life. This guy can train for the hardest races on a fixed gear by throwing darts and downloading music.

For those of you that don’t read the MTBR.com 29′er forum here’s some of what you need to know about my Sunday with Jerry:

I love my Zion, but the one thing that bothered me about it was the cable guides .Thanks to Jerry (Enoch) I now have five beautiful Paragon Machine Works cable guides.

Here’s the frame ready for slicing and dicing action,


and the pile of parts that have been on and off the bike a lot in the last couple of weeks.


Jerry “I’m no stranger to danger” hacking away at the old silly guides.


Jerry pointed out that my rear disc mount left a little to be desired.


Once he got the ugly parts outta the way he smoothed things out all nice like.


Then we were on our way over to Cheech’s “Shop of Wonders”.  Cheech made quick work of mounting the cable guides.


“You paid how much for this frame?”


The guides were made to look like part of the frame when we got back to Jerry’s place.


When I got back home I just laid the cable in there to see just how pretty it would be.  Nice.


This is the perfect shot.  If I ever get my custom 29′er I hope the guides will be this inconspicuous.  I placed the guide nearest the seat tube as far back as I could for shouldering it during nasty hike-a-bike La Ruta style climbing.


Now it’s off to paint.  David at P2 Custom Works right here in Charlotte, NC is picking it up tomorrow to give it some paint which will hopefully bring my Zion just a little closer to my $6,000,000 budget.  Jerry’s frame already got the same treatment, but he was in too big of a hurry to document it.

Here’s how it looked when I originally built it up,

and another picture after I made a few adjustments.

It’s been through four forks, two seats, three stems (four by the end of the week), two rear tires, and two seatposts.

If you missed it I posted up the weekends short track action here.

Today was the first day of the Winter Short Track Series. The Boy is already mentally committed to doing the series, but I wasn’t to sure about my plan. I decided to ride over to the course early in the day and try my big wheels on the banked and graveled course. I decided to race “casually” and try to have fun. I dressed appropriately for a fun day in the woods. If I suit up in the full scaries I might slip back into race mode and do something stupid (and painful). I ended up sleeping in and leaving late because I was up most of the night listening to the new foster puppy complain about it’s sleeping quarters. It was yelping pretty much every other hour all night long. Sure is cute though.

The Boy’s race was first and he had a decent amount of competition. There were 11 juniors in the 14-18 class, but The Boy was the only one rocking the SS. Unfortunately cool points don’t count towards the final.

The Boy was smart enough to leave the hoodie in the car. It’s hard to get a kid to leave the hoodie behind.

Keeping the wheels on the ground, and moving fast.

The Boy worked it pretty well today and ended up 6th out of 11. Not too shabby. The competition gets better every year. Used to be that his class only had about 3-5 riders.

Conveniently this year my race went off as soon as The Boy finished. He used to go off first thing in the morning and then I would stand around in the cold rain for hours waiting for my race to start. We had a large field of 15 SS’ers, inlcuding a guy who would go out later to crush the expert men, and last year’s overall champ Ross Dowswell.

I was very excited to be lined up right next to “The” Patrick Swayze.

I had to make sure I didn’t have on my X-ray specs. It looked like Mr Swayze was racing in his Underoos.

I decided to go all in at the start and get the hole-shot for good old time’s sake. I sat up as soon as I hit the first turn. It was worth it.

Arleigh was racing in the 93% male single speed class.

I ended up getting a little too into the race. I was back in about 3rd or 4th place when I had to get by one of the super-sport women. I made a rather unsafe pass on a sweeping turn in the woods. It was kind of a reality check. I realized I was giving a shit about an XC race, so I decided to sit up at the top of the climb. It was time to turn off the asshole mode and go back to the business of pissing away $13 in the name of fun.

The Pie saw me backing off the pace, so she screamed “Don’t come home unless you win!” I let her know how I felt about that.

Screwing around beats the pants off giving a shit.

Here’s Swayze rocking it out and looking all “Velonews”. I can see his wiener.

Arleigh needs Twin Six to make her some argyle shoe covers to match her jersey. She can’t be riding around in fifty degree weather with cold feet, for crying out loud.

Mmmmmmmm Skittles bike. Taste the rainbow!!!!

Good Lord! Cylingnews.com really needs to give this guy some coverage. I mean, he looks sooooo Euro it’s just sick.

ALLEZ ALLEZ Monsieur Swayze!!!!!!

Here’s Singletrack Jack Crouch, the Godfather of Mountain Biking in Charlotte, NC.

Here’s Drew “The Great Pumpkin” Hager working his way up the final climb. Drew’s representing Lucky Cycles in fine fashion. Thanks for the “I Love PBR” patch I found on my stem.

What are you smiling at you piece of poop? Oh yeah, the race is over, and you don’t have to do anymore. Sweet.

A big thanks to The Pie and The Boy for snagging some photos.

All yinz in the photos can click on ‘em and get the big versions so you can print them off and make big vanity posters for your personal shrines.

Late edit:  Just in case you’re keeping score at home The Boy and I are both children of Zion.  

Yesterday was such a disappointment. I was ready for a day of freezing rain, and all we got was a little occasional drizzle and above freezing temps. Hardly a Viking worthy day. I had taken my gloves off when I got to work so they would be dry for the ride home. When the weatherman decided to provide slightly less than epic conditions I made a change in the plan. I rode home without gloves. I wanted to see just how bad 34 degrees and a slight drizzle would feel. It was interesting. My hands got red and wilted looking, and then my fingers started throbbing. Not in unison, but more like in-a-round like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat ” style. The pinkies started first, joined soon after by the ring fingers, and so on until my thumbs started singing bass. The best thing about the experience was that my hands hurt so bad that I really couldn’t think of anything else. That’s what I call training.

All dressed up and no place with snow make giant messenger angry.

Yesterday I stopped by a local heroin dealer and picked up a new spoon, I mean fork. I think I am addicted to new forks, as I’ve had as many forks on my bike as I’ve had rides on it. Looks kinda sexy. Salsa Cromoto in tomatila green.

Tomorrow The Boy has a short track race. I’m going to support him, but I don’t know if I’m racing this year. After last year’s fiasco I’m not sure I want to risk injury, although I did just injure myself washing my bike. Short track racing is fun, and then the first lap is over and the pain begins. I’m not saying I have an aversion to pain, it’s just that short track racing is like repeatedly hitting yourself in the head with a blunt object. It’s fun at first, but eventually you start wondering exactly why you started doing it in the first place. Just like that. There use to be beer at the short track races, but it got taken away and replaced with soup. When they had beer it was a lot easier to find a purpose in doing it, but great memories are not associated with throwing back a cup of soup.

Late edit:   I rode the Dissident to work today.  Last night I just couldn’t take looking at the too-long rear brake line any longer.  I snipped it and bled it in a big hurry.  I felt I should test it today.  I promise not to have any fun, I’ll just “test” it.  Now I’m staring at the too-long front line and trying to deal with it mentally.  Look at it.  Just dangling there, taunting me.  Mocking my very existence  It has to go.