How much can fit in a Fit

We had a bit of a transportation dilemma tonight - Emily needed the Element to move her bed down to her new house and tonight is Anger Buddy's annual garage gig.

Think all of my bass and PA gear can fit inside the Fit? I've got four speakers, two practice amps, two power amps, mic stands, bar stool, fan and associated wires. I thought maybe I had put this stuff in the Fit before, but I couldn't remember if I had the PA at that point or not.

Ok, Jackie's not going...

Yep, it all made it, with room to spare, I guess that means I need more music stuff. The Fit is a really versatile car!

Variability

I did my normal lunch loop today, nothing special in length or difficulty, but what I found interesting was the intensity I was able to maintain. I contrast this to Tuesday's road ride and Thursday's MTB ride, this was full on effort for the entire loop. I guess this kind of goes to the comment the other day about getting serious about training. If I was in tune with this sort of thing I could probably explain why this ride was great and the others were so lackluster.Considering the storms last night and my lack of sleep this is really interesting.

Anyway - good ride, max power just about the whole ride, and my second fastest time on the lunch loop.

Hardtail - fast impressions

I had the opportunity to catch a quick ride on the hardtail at Crandalls yesterday. It was a bit slippery, but really only two mud spots in the whole ride. I suppose this is really the second ride on the Big Unit, but it was the first where I was riding somewhat hard - I felt lazy so I wasn't exactly pushing the pace. While it was great on the smoother trails, I really did not enjoy riding it on the more technical ones. You really have to be aggressive with a hardtail, anticipating rocks and picking a good line. It is so much easier to ride a full suspension bike, if you're feeling lazy, you just sit down and let the suspension do its thing.

I do think that riding the hardtail sharpens up those skills you let fall by the wayside on the full suspension, so I'm going to try and force myself to take it out.

Lunch time road ride

After the weekend at KT I figured today's ride would be a ride on a rocket ship, that was not the case. It took a good half of the ride before my legs really loosened up. It was a superb ride though - felt great to get out even for 50 minutes or so - the temps were pretty good - a bit hot, but not stupid.
I keep telling myself that I'm going to really buckle down and work out a training program instead of just riding what I can when I can. Maybe someday I'll do that, but for now I think I'm just going to enjoy things as they come. I sometimes think I should be getting a lot more out of all this riding I do - it doesn't seem like I am getting any faster or losing more weight.
 
With all the rain lately I've been doing more road riding than mountain biking, I really noticed that during the first few hours of riding up at KT - my technical skills had gotten a bit rusty. Riding the road surely helps with your stamina and leg strength - I definitely felt that, but it doesn't do much to help with riding technical stuff.
I got one of those Halo bands to keep the sweat out of my eyes, initial impressions are very good. I kept thinking maybe I wasn't sweating, but that's not really possible given how warm it is.

NEMBAFest weekend

I made and unmade the decision to go to NEMBAFest probably 50 times. Last year I could have gone, but didn't because, well because I didn't. I had the weekend free and really could have gone. As people posted pictures from last year, I was really slapping my head wondering why I wasn't there. Despite that memory, I still waited until the last minute to sign up. Once I got past all the "early bird" special pricing, I figured I might as well wait and see what the weather was going to be like, the weather guys said great weather 10 days out so I bought my ticket. I hadn't really made plans to hang or ride with anyone in particular, I know a ton of people who were going so I figured worst case I'd find some folks to ride with when I got there. About a week before launch I was talking to Pat and I guess I kind of invited myself along with the group he was hanging with - its a group of guys I've ridden with many times in the past. I decided the Fit would be the vehicle of choice, it surely gets better mileage than the Element, I had no problem getting my stuff in there: And yeah, I brought the new bike with me figuring I'd take it out when we were hitting the XC stuff, but honestly it saw little use besides running back and forth to the car once or twice.

I had no idea what kind of production I was getting involved in here. When I got to the meet point for the caravan there was a fully loaded trailer being set up, it seemed excessive at the time, but the canopy proved to be the saving grace for the weekend: The "campground" was a hillside at the mid-lodge point on Burke Mountain - far from ideal for tent camping as I think there were three flat spots on the entire hill. It really wasn't that bad, but it could have been better. As soon as we got unpacked and the 10x20 canopy set up we were off on our first ride. I think we were all sort of thinking of this as a warm up ride, but it slowly got out of hand until at the end of the day had ridden 21 miles or so. We basically hit all the cool stuff on the XC side, and there is a lot of cool stuff there. We were lucky to be there with a near full moon, terrible picture, but it was very cool, and gave a lot of light:

Overnight the last of our crew of seven arrived and in the morning he was raring to go for a ride. Most everyone was pretty beat from the mileage we did on Friday, but three of us set out for a morning cruise. We did some XC and lift served and ended up back at camp in time to rally the team for another afternoon ride.

I can't say the afternoon ride was "fun" exactly, we hit up some more XC trails and they were cool and all, but my legs were pretty cooked and I would say I survived it rather than really enjoying it. I didn't take any riding shots, but the trails at KT are among the best I've ridden - they are super fun, buffed out with just enough technical stuff to make it fun. Riding it with good riders made it even better.

On Sunday we pretty much concentrated on lift served, although to get to the lift we had to do a bit of climbing, it was hard!

I have never done any kind of lift served riding before. I had the impression that it wouldn't be fun on my bike, man was I wrong. It was fantastic. A view of Jester from the lift - this trail is 100% berms and jumps top to bottom, just amazing.

Here's a video I found on line of someone going down Jester - I can see they've made improvements in the trail since this was taken, but you get the point, just more fun than I can describe in words.

At the bottom of the lifts they had a bike Expo which included free demo bikes from a ton of manufacturers. Getting the bike and the size you wanted proved to be tough, but I did get to ride two bikes. I took a Rocky Mountain Instinct out (5" 29er) and a Niner RIP9 Aluminum out. The challenge of course is getting a bike set up to your liking in 10 minutes by a guy who is rushing to meet the demands. I did not like the RM at all - perhaps something was set up wrong, but it felt very XC and not at all comfortable when I pushed it a bit. The RIP felt perfect, it was a lot like my current bike, but it was more stable, lighter and of course being a new bike it was crisp all around. I could have waited around for more bikes, but I wanted to spend that time riding. Santa Cruz seemed to be a crowd favorite there was literally a line outside their booth all the time.

We got some rain (actually quite a bit of rain) on Saturday night and again as I was leaving on Sunday, but really it didn't interrupt the riding at all, though if we didn't have the 10x20 canopy, I probably would have left on Saturday after riding. Being able to have a few beers and move around was pretty key. The trails were pretty slick after the rain though making for a few scary moments.

So despite the rain and the somewhat crappy showers at the campground, it was well worth it. I'm going to do everything I can to do it again next year, great time. I know that I could just get a crew together and go ride there anytime, but its nice to have set date when everyone is aiming for. The fact that you can ride the lifts all weekend doesn't hurt either.

First ride on the Big Unit

Dawn and I did a short spin at Crandalls tonight - great night out there. Finally its dry after weeks of being literally under water. It was the first ride on the new bike. It was a lot of fun - in a harsh way. I say this every time I ride a hardtail now, but you have to remember how to ride, there's a lot more rider input needed to keep things moving and smooth. That bike is a rocket though, it carves really nicely and the efficiency of a hardtail is pretty nice too (not to mention its probably 5 lbs lighter than the RIP). I know it will be hard to reach for that thing when the RIP is right next to it, but I hope to ride it more often than I rode the purple Unit.
I have the Fit packed to go to KT in the morning, I'm pretty excited to go. It should be a good time with three days straight of riding, hopefully my legs are up to it!

Off to NEMBAfest

I finally bought my ticket to NEMBAfest. I was bummed to have missed last year, but I didn't want to commit to this year until I knew what the weather would be like. I guess I paid an extra $50 to know I was going to be riding and not sitting inside a wet tent all weekend. 

Now comes the preparation. I know my bikes are ready (I'll bring both up), but I need to get so many things together. Its camping for 3 days, which really shouldn't be too hard to plan for, but I have so many things running through my head. I need to get organized. From a fitness perspective I'm close to where I want to be, I guess. I've been riding a lot, although the last week has been more road rides than anything else due to the high water table. Riding this much for three days straight will be a challenge for sure. 

...but I can't wait, it should be a great time and the weather looks amazing. 

A few Father's Day thoughts and a long road ride

Out of any accomplishment in my life, the two biggest have to be my kids. I know how cliche that sounds, but it really is true. If I think of anything else I have done, it really pales to the pride I feel in my kids. I try not to be one of those people that brag about their kids all the time, they don't make that easy.

Its also not always easy being a father, but its funny that the hardest things are the things you don't do, rather than the things you do. Telling a kid not to do something is relatively easy, knowing that sometimes experience and failure is the best teacher and letting it happen, that's hard. Kids think parents have some guidebook or something that tells you what to do, I wish it was that simple, I feel like we're always sort of making it up as it goes. Its strange realizing my parents also didn't have a guidebook. I feel like we have somehow done things in a non-traditional way, but luckily that has worked for the most part.

While the kids have absolutely flourished in college, I can't wait to see what the next five or six years brings. It will be interesting to see how they meet the challenges of advanced degrees, work and everything that comes with those things. Based on what they've done so far I have pretty high expectations, shhh don't tell them.

On to riding: 
The trails are still too wet to ride, I've heard from multiple people that the ground is saturated at many places, holding and weeping water in places not seen before. I rode in the woods last weekend and honestly didn't feel great about it, I hate wrecking the trails. Rather than going through that mental anguish again today, I joined the NERAC road ride. It ended up being me and the ride leader, John, he's an experienced road rider, while I'm a relative novice. He talked about a 40 or 60 mile loop, even the 40 mile loop would match my longest ride to date.

John did a great job of managing the pace to keep me from blowing up. There were a few hills that slowed me down (a lot), but over all it felt pretty good. There's no way I could have maintained that pace without John leading the way. I decided going in that I was going to draft as much as possible, I stuck to that plan. I felt guilty not taking my share of the pulls, but I kept telling myself that if I didn't go on the ride John would be riding solo and not drafting off anyone. I know, terrible logic, but I felt like I needed that to do the mileage John had planned. I'll get better at knowing my limits and where I can push as I get more experience on the road bike.

We ended up doing 58 miles at nearly a 19 MPH pace - fastest pace I've ridden and longest ride I've done. The ride was hilly in the beginning and end, but nearly flat in the middle, but I feel pretty good about that pace and length.



Oh and today's ear worm, Shame of Life, not a great song, I regret listening to it yesterday :-D

New whip

The Big Unit is finally done, I got the hanger in the mail today, and hey! its the right one!

I can't wait to take this thing on the trail, but I think it will be next week before the woods are dry enough to ride.

Rain and more rain

I did a quick ride at Crandalls last night to assess the conditions, I guess "mixed" is how I would describe it. Most of the trails were in good shape, but there were these huge puddles at random spots along the way. If we had a few days of warm, sunny weather they would probably dry up, but considering we're getting another 1-3" of rain today I think riding in the woods will be off for a week or so. Some of the puddles out there are over a foot deep!

Get ready for a bumper crop of mosquitoes, there's so much standing water out there, once the temperatures rise and they get to laying some eggs, its going to be nasty.

I guess its going to be a road bike weekend.

Living on the hill

Our house is at about 900' above sea level, in some parts of the country we'd be in the low lands, but here in Tolland we're nearly the highest property in town. There are some realities of living here

• There are times where we measure snow by the foot and I get to the highway entrance (less than 3 miles away) and there is a half inch of slush
• All of my road rides include a solid climb
• The first part of my road rides are down hill (generally)
• When there are forest fires in Canada we get to smell it
• A simple errand on the bike (like going to the bank or to the library) is not a casual affair.
• Fog is a regular and dense thing

Today I went to the bank to cash a few checks we had laying around - It was a great ride, as with so many, the bad part was turning the handlebars to point home. Not many places around here where a 5.5 mile ride will get you almost a thousand feet of climbing. 

Ear worms

Ear worms combine the best and worst of two of my passions - music and biking. An ear worm is a song that repeats over and over in your head, I find its usually at its worst when I'm doing something like biking where my mind has time to wander. I listen to music whenever I can and Pandora is always on in the car on the way to mountain bike rides, this is usually where my ear worms are gestated.

In the worst case something like this makes its way into my head, not because I heard it, but its like a latent memory in the back of my head just waiting to pounce on my sanity "love me, love me", oh man, I hope I didn't wake the dragon by even thinking about that song (click play at your own risk!).

I love listening to Pandora and hearing both familiar and not-so-familiar music. Lately I've been stuck on the Butthole Surfers station. Not that I'm a huge BHS fan, but I like the music on that station, it combines a lot of music from a lot of eras that all speak to me (Primus, Nirvana, Beck etc).

Yesterday on the way to the ride I heard "The Distance" by Cake, this was a past ear worm and I figured I was in for a day of "He's going for speed...", but alas this did not stick.

 

This was today's ear worm. Perhaps the most repetitious chorus in the history of music, I really like the groove in this song though and this was one of those times where the ear worm was actually ok and I really didn't mind singing "get down, get down, get down, get down, get down...., yee-haw". I must have sang that out loud a hundred times in 3 hours and probably had it run through my brain 200 more times than that. 

Weekend

I did a semi-long road ride on Saturday finding a few friends to talk to along the way - good to catch up with people. Due to the way in which the ride unfolded I ended up riding one stretch of road 4 or 5 times in course of 3 hours, I'm sure people who live on that stretch must have been wondering what was going on.

Good ride on high ground on the dirt yesterday, we were without the guys who knew the place so it was a bit clustery - though we ended up spinning for a good 3 hours and did a lot of climbing and technical riding.

Off to the work week, the bright spot being that the parts will be here to complete the Kona Big Unit sometime this week.

Kona Unit, down and out

I stripped the purple Kona Unit down and cut out the bottom bracket (to be returned to Kona for crash replacement verification).

It was a good bike and my first introduction to 29er bikes, sort of sad that this is where its ending up, but not much else I can do with it now!

 On Thursday I got an email from Kona saying that the dropout for my new bike was on the way, and surprisingly Friday there was a package in my mailbox from WA, so psyched! When we got back from dinner I opened the package ready to put my new bike together only to find that somehow my package got mixed up with someone else's so the dropout I got was not for this bike. Ugh. I called Kona, new one should be here Monday or Tuesday.

Case with the Bike Rag guys

It was a reunion of sorts at Case last night, with five of the old school regulars showing up for a 2 hour romp. I decided going in I was going to relax and not push the pace at all, telling myself that I would be 3rd or 4th in line at all times. I still rode hard (those guys in front were pushing), but I kept it reasonable and felt great all night. I probably should have pushed a bit harder on the downhills, but the ascents I was right there.

One of the guys was pushing for segments, it was crazy how fast he went when he knew a segment was coming up.

Good beer session in the parking after the ride, its good to have some good friends to hang with.

Hardtail build continues

I got the headset in the mail today so I installed the fork and brakes. I need to buy a crown race and starfangled nut installer. I HATE doing those two things with the wrong tools, it takes forever and I always end up doing and re-doing it so many times, such frustrating effort.

Anyway, I got them both in and on my way. I got the bike rolling, but that's about it. I have to wait for the seatpost (not absolutely necessary) and the geared dropout. I called Kona twice and sent them an email, I'm sure I got a PITA sticker on my file, the dropout is one the way, but I probably won't get it before the weekend.

I hate that seat color, I don't typically care about colors at all, but I was reminded that I have already spent too much to get this "relatively cheap" bike together, so I guess I'll have to go with it for now. On the half lap of the pump track it felt good, but I forgot how much you need pedals and a chain to even balance a bike, so not much of a test. C'mon dropout!

Bigelow today

Hot ride at Bigelow this morning, it actually wasn't really that hot out, but it was hot and humid enough. I have had some really terrible experiences when trying to exert in the heat. My body just shuts down, its a miserable experience and can take me hours or even a day to recover. I did the smart thing today and cut back my effort at some points and I seemed to have successfully managed my way through it. I ended the ride feeling pretty good, just normal tiredness. I certainly didn't set any course records, but its probably the first time I've successfully managed my low tolerance to heat, I guess that's a success to some degree.