Some people are smart, others not so much

The roads dried up this morning and the sun came out (temporarily at least). The hubs and I made a plan to ride with Rick down here in the 801. I headed over to the Yohnson-Gammons to assist with trainer installation (on account'a mama J-G needs a little exercise whilst getting QT with la nocciolina). On my way over, I rode into a blizzard. It was a wall of white. What happened to the blue skies? Things changed quick. I helped them with the trainer and then headed back out. I met up with Rick and Steve to just do a little wintry spin. About 30 seconds after heading out, Steve flatted. Very surprising.
As Rick was getting the tire off, Steve's CO2 prematurely evacuated (you know what I mean). You can see the puff of white in the picture. Good thing those are freezing cold.






They got the tire with one of Rick's CO2 cartridges and we headed off with the plan to ride for an hour through the neighborhoods (in a snowstorm). Until 10 seconds after we started riding and Steve's tire went flat again. We used another CO2 (Rick we owe you several cartridges now) but nothing stayed in. Steve started hooking it back to the Yohnson-Gammons (about 5 blocks away) and Rick and I just headed straight for home to get the car.

We totally froze our asses off on the way home. And every light seemed like it was red. The brakes were not performing flawlessly either. An hour ride in the snow would've *maybe* been ok. A 30 minute ride in the snow with 30 minutes of stopping and standing around was pure stupidity.




We made it back to our house soaked and freezing. Lucky for us, Dr. J-G decided to just give the hubs a ride home (after the hubs did what he described as the longest walk of his bike). Best part of the day was getting to do some hangtime with Lizzie when she came over to collect her frozen boyfriend. My garmin read 10 miles and 2 hours (didn't shut'er off while dealing with the trainer at the J-G's). Rick remarked I probably could've pushed a wheelbarrow and generated similar stats. Anyway, I still enjoyed some recovery chocolate--as was my right. Now its time to do some work before Caterina's birthday.

Sometimes stupidity is fun.

Snow dustings

I moto'ed to get my butt up Emigration yesterday. Does anyone happen to know if they've recently lengthened and steepened it? It felt like it. Who's a paragon of fitness right now? It was FREEEEZING cold and there were some snow dustings up there. It was definitely under 40 degrees in certain parts of the canyon. There weren't many people out but I did see a guy WITH BARE KNEES riding up. OMG. This pic doesn't really capture it (and maybe I was shaking with the cold) but the trees were definitely snow dusted up there.

It was a nuking headwind on the way down. Thanks to the dude in the red who blew by me on the downhill but didn't object that I was glued in his draft on the way down. There was no way I was going to pass up a ride.

I had to work again on a friday off. Kind of a bummer. However, I've determined that being in cars makes me grumpy so I carried my backpack on my ride and went straight to work. Since I'm not motivated to train right now, I'm going to motivate to drive AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE. I find I'm happier that way.

Last night we got to pay a visit to the Yohnson-Gammons to visit Miss Hazel (aka La Nocciolina) on her one month birthday. She is a real cutey. The hubs demonstrated an amazing ability to calm La Nocciolina down (at least temporarily). The Yohnson-Gammons called the hubs the baby whisperer. That was funny.

On the baby scene, Sleaze, Melanie and Presley welcomed Mason into the world a few days ago. I've only seen pictures but he's another cutey too.




Subie snow dusting this morning--YIPPEE.





Its looking quasi-wintry out there! Very exciting. We have Caterina's sushi berfday tonight with the DBs, Woodies and MINI-G. I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Looking for a little moto

Woke up this morning to some great ideas for the garden and a stomach ache from all the chocolate (see previous post). Was met with another quality post from the hubs. I hope the random surprise hubs post gives people a reason to check the blog--to see if the hubs will grace us with his quirky (though SO belated) worldview.

In other belated news, have been meaning to tout the #3 in the nation Albany Sirens rugby team after nationals last weekend (of which my studly little sister is a member). After winning their first 2 games. The sirens lost to Pittsburgh in the semi-finals. However, they won the consolation:

"After playing 3 matches in 24 hours it was an understatement to say our players were battered and tired and few would of blamed them for not giving 100%... but our women dug deep within and played every minute of the consolation final on pure guts, determination and a lot of Albany pride...When the final whistle blew it was 7-5 Albany, and we were #3 in the nation."

Mary Pezzulo, former captain of the Syracuse women's rugby squad also reported:"The Syracuse rugby guys that live [in Houston] came to watch and screamed at the ref like overprotective dads on the sidelines."

We had a little Albany rugby rally this morning to celebrate:




The hubs chugs his coffee instead of a boot





In other upstate NY family rockstar news, Papa esq had a huge victory in the courtroom. Its been all over the papers and TV. I will refrain from posting those links in the interest of demonstrating that said attorney has absolutely NO TIES to the social or political views that have at times been espoused in this forum.

In any event, he successfully took the city to task for mismanaging funds intended for firefighters. While the dollar figure was pretty amazing, I'm personally inspired by the fact that said attorney's father (an Italian immigrant) was himself a firefighter. While he is very unfortunately no longer with us--I'm pretty sure there were some celestial anisette and wandies broken out in heavenly celebration of the "Chief's" son's victory.

I on the other hand will provide a nice foil for the accolades of my amazing relations.

Hey motivation: are you in there?

Hostile takeover of Tiff's blog

Right, so I’ve (the Hubs) been placed on the lifetime ban list. I feel like what Jerry and Kramer must have felt after getting banned from Joe’s fruit shop. So I orchestrated a hostile takeover. I hypnotized her with gardening magazines and chocolate in order to get the password and well... Terribly sorry about the delay, but for those who were curious about rest of the details from the 25 hour frog hollow thing, here it is.

Jem being sent off with the the team slogan "Nice Ass!"

When we left off, Jem had just spanked the course and was placing the team into the capable hands of Clem, who was the 2 in the 1-2 punch combo. Unfortunately for Clem, 10 minutes into his lap, his bike’s top tube discovered the seat tube cheating with the down tube, which explosively resulted in irreconcilable differences. Apparently, in the middle of a sizable dip, he mistook a huge “Bang!” for a bottomed out suspension (which was now dramatically squishier). At some point, I’m sure he looked down and had the “ohhh #$^&#@” realization, but it didn’t faze him a bit. He decided to ride the rest of the lap out of the saddle, running the more techy spots (to help prevent his bike from completely exploding). Even with his bike being held together with a shoe string and a prayer, he was able to punch through with a time just over 1:10… absolutely amazing, for the bike and him.

Clem handed the ass off to Tiff and while she was crushing it, asked me if he could borrow my bike for his next lap. I think I saw my bike shudder a wee bit, but I was confident it would work out (he’s only 3 or so inches taller than me, so raising the seat would be the only adjustment). Plus with the new tube and spoke, the bike should be riding like it had just been taken from the showroom floor. Of course that is if I could figure out why the shifting was grumbling more and more. On that note, I quickly went to work tuning the sram grip-shifting when I noticed that the derailleur was at a slight angle to the cogs. At the time I thought this was a bit odd, the engineer in me told me to refer to a working bike (yeah, the derailleur was perfectly parallel to the cogs). A slight yank (ok, maybe a bit more than slight), and the thing was shifting a tad better even though it was far from parallel. I comforted myself by chalking the difference to a sram vs shimano thing. In the back of my mind, I knew that I could always just stay in the biggest cog (that should be safe as a two-speed after all). As for Clem using it after me, I was sure I’d get the shifting figured out during my next lap.

Fueled with soft ginger cookies and some string cheese, I was charged up and ready to make up for my last lap. The going was great for most of the lap. 40 minutes in and I only had to adjust the shifting cable tension 4-5 times, but as this can be done on the fly, I didn’t even lose any time. Up comes this techy section that I had practiced about 8 times to find the perfect line. On one side, the train had a step up, on the other side of the step up was a tight fit between another huge rock. I chose the line straight over the step up. Just as I got my front tire over, bang, I nail the center of the step-up with what I thought was my big chain ring. No prob, at worst I crushed a chain ring tooth… there’s like 40 more where that one came from, so I should be good. The next pedal stroke however was not to be. It was the same feeling as when you swap out your chain but forget to put new cogs on (chain skip). When I looked down though, to my horror I saw that my derailleur had now found a home around one of my spokes. The current predicament brought some fond biking memories flooding back. A riding buddy from grad school, Chris, had powered through this situation and had ended up with a trail of derailleur parts sprinkled along the road like a trail of tears. Well, at least that didn’t happen. I sighed in relief and looked back down at my sad rig, but noticed that the derailleur hanger had broken clean off, bummer, so now it was more than simply getting the thing unstuck from the spoke.

The broken hanger reminded me of the same poor Chris who had also been afflicted with this problem 85 miles into our ride around the White Rim in 92-106 degree weather and 40-50 mph gusts of wind (but that’s a whole other story). The moral of that story was, aside from the obvious, never put your bike upside down to fix it. A flat, a gust, and in an instant, his hanger was no more. It’s not as if it was a unique experience, but it did clue me into the idea that I could turn my bike into a single speed (which is what he had to ride for the remainder, not exactly a gimme). Without further ado, I got to work trying to decide what gearing to choose and a short 17 minutes, some hard lessons in chain tool usage, and 6-8 “got everything”s later and I was back in the game. As I was finishing the lap, my only thought was ‘sorry Clem, I guess your gonna have to ride a single’. My other thought was ‘I wonder how much time I lost’. Turns out a lot, I was also the proud recipient of our team’s slowest lap at 1:24.

With the exception of a “I heart my bike” bell that deserted Tiff in a moment of need, the next few laps were run without incident. Clem wisely decided to use Jems bike instead of mine. While resting before the next night lap (how the hell did I end up with three of these) I thought it better to fret about which single speed to use rather than to recharge my lights. I seemed to remember that one could get at least 3 hours out of a single charge and a combination of recharging them after the first night lap and doing the math I figured I had a good hour of charge left. If I just used one light at a time, I should have plenty of charge left for the whole lap. About 5 minutes into the lap and that logic wasn’t looking too hot when my head lamp winked out. Now it was a race against time on a more lethargic single-speed and significantly more lethargic (and crampy) legs. Although the moon had been full and shining brightly for my last lap, it was setting for this one. So I guess I don’t have that going for me. I spent the next 50 or so minutes trying to re-calculate how long I had used the lights on the other two laps and wondering how fast I’d be able to go in complete darkness. Luckily, I made it to the final section of single track before my last light gave up. At least I wasn’t surrounded by snakes. One doesn’t realize how bright these bike lights are until they go out in the middle of a ride. You really can’t see a damn thing. I had some vague notion of the trail, but I can’t be certain I stayed on the single track. All I can say is that some heroic sage brush sacrificed itself for my cause.

The next few hours were a blur, but along with Clem getting his best time on his fifth lap, some smack was being thrown around about batteries being unplugged prematurely and clothing being donated to the Frog Hollow organizers. All in all, it was the best mountain bike race and 25 hour event I’ve ever been a part of (also the first of each). I’d do it again in a heartbeat, but I might take the Dawg into the Wild Rose for some rehab first. Since Clem won’t be needing that frame, perhaps I could steal his derailleur hanger.

Looking at the milk carton

Because my motivation and the top of my bike bell are both missing.

What is the deal with that? Maybe they are on vacation together in Southern Utah. That's about the time both were last seen...

I have got some serious laziness happening. I did, however, motivate to make some decent minestrone last night (yeah frozen tomatoes!). Root vegetables are in season and are sounding good. Had a little bit of a scare regarding some green potato situations. All seems to be ok though.

Breach of contract

Well, my guest writer breached his contract (failure to deliver the contemplated product in a timely fashion). In other words, the hubs didn't get around to part II of his 25 hours of frog hollow race report. Oh well. He didn't get to talk about how he broke his derailleur hanger, flatted and crashed; or how Clem broke his frame, and how I LOST THE TOP PART OF MY BIKE BELL (let's face it, the biggest tragedy of them all). Well let this post constitute the hubs' official ban from writing on my blog. Until he decides he wants to again, that is. Hell, if Michael Vick gets a 2nd chance, so can the Hubs.

If you want to drill down for more details, you can check out results here.

In other gnus, the hubs and I had a fun night ride with Rick on Thursday. We re-lived some of our glory and generally had a good time. Friday was another gorgeous day in the 801. Though I don't work on Fridays, I had to work in the afternoon so after downward dogging I slooooowly pedalled into work. Friday night we helped the Woodies move a hot tub. It was an impressive feat of engineering and everybody's lower lumbar is still intact. We got to see the DBs and the Nezzies.




Most positive person on the planet (PPP) Lindsay with Nezzy jr.










Dr. Evil and Mini Me. Yeah!






It was super great to do a little catch up and hang time with some of my favorite peeps.

Saturday, I woke up and decided to not race 'cross. I registered but was not feeling the love. Coach K says no bike related stress right now so in lieu of racing I crashed this bro-brah boyz ride.




The hubs, the Insane-o and Sr. Simonis







After riding the low stuff in PC, we went over to Rick and Lizzie's. The hubs went out for ANOTHER ride with Rick while Lizzie and I took their 3 dogs for a walk and did some smack talking...

Saturday night we had dins with uber Bad Ass Professional esq Laura and her finance Rodney. Super great to catch up with these kids.

Sunday morning was another downward dog morning and then we had my favorite brunch at Trio with Richie and Renee. Heard about Richie's ski vacation involving the small MT resorts and a trailer that he and il Sturgino will be sleeping in for a week.

Otherwise, the hubs and I are enjoying a mellow fall with minimal travel, some mountain biking and a lot of hang time. Last night we watched an eh-spanish movie with Penelope Cruz called Volver. It was sort of trippy but pretty good. Penelope Cruz is a single mom and she doesn't have much money. I couldn't help but be reminded of the Jim Gaffigan line about Halle Berry in Monster's Ball--where he says that she's so good looking its distracting: "I was watching that movie Monster's Ball where Halle Berry plays this impoverished woman, and the whole time I'm thinking; 'why doesn't she just become a model'." She could get some photos together--she could be the next Halle Berry.

Penelope wasn't as impoverished--but it is kind of ridiculous--especially when she's cast with normal looking people.

Anyway, it was a decent flick.

While this mild fall weather is pretty nice--the air is starting to get a little yuck--and I really wouldn't mind some SNOW (even if my knee is poopy)

The details

So here's a little write-up from the 25 hours of Frog Hollow race...

The hubs and I arrived in Hurricane late Friday afternoon. We stopped by Over the Edge Sports in Hurricane to pick up our numbers. Owners DJ and Quentin gave us a little course beta and specific directions. If you are riding in that area--that is definitely the place to hit up. The shop is really cool too. DJ advised us on a specific lube to use which ended up serving us well on the dry dusty course.

We made our way over to the course. It was nuking winds with not much protection. I did what any sane person would do--hunker down in the car and eat pita chips and cookies. The hubs eventually convinced me a pre-ride would probably be smart so we headed out onto the course. It was several miles of gradual up-hill on a dirt road followed by a mandatory dismount into a SUPER FUN swoopy downhill on the JEM trail. The single track was a lot of fun, very flowy with a few technical ups. This was followed by a slightly downhill dirtroad section and then a pretty technical section of the hurricane rim trail.

All the pita chips and cookies were really doing a number on my tummy so I was definitely walking the dog. We made it back to our camp and waited for the JemClems to show up.

It was a VERY mellow event. I think the race had less than 100 participants (and that's for ALL the categories). So we felt like we had tons of space at our campsite and unlike 24 hours of Moab it wasn't a dust clogged generator purring cluster.

The JemClems eventually arrived with all the fixins for a legit 25 hour race: spring bar stand up tent, table, chairs...the full deal. And tons of food. And more beer. Rick (our 5th) eventually showed up in the middle of the night.

The next morning we headed to the meeting...in costume.





Jem gets the double take.




We got our final instructions and then took up position to cheer on our runner and 1st rider, Clem. (These 24+ races usually start with a run in order to try to spread people out).

At the start line there was definitely some legit costume action:



Wonder Woman is my favorite!








This guy had the fastest male lap. And he did it in disco pants. You can't see the shirt he's wearing--which says "NOTICE ME".





Clem was 2nd behind Mr. Notice Me in the run.

He had a fast first lap, finishing right about the hour mark. So I was up next.









The first lap was my favorite lap. I felt great and had a total blast on the course. I crashed on the switchback after the mandatory dismount section, but luckily it was not the same side I crashed on at the cyclocross race. And I had a nice sagebrush to break my fall.

I finished my first lap in 58:46 which ended up being the fastest female lap and handed the reins over to the hubs.

The hubs ALSO had an awesome first lap, riding the course in 57:57--which was the fastest lap on our team! He ended up breaking a spoke on this lap--but didn't realize it till later...(that is foreshadowing)




Rick was up next and also rode a sub hour lap, and then Jem rounded out our 1st rotation.



She *hearts* her mountain bike.





I got the last full daylight lap and then it was into the night...(imagine ominous music)

Enter guest writer, the hubs...
please forgive the change of style. I'm a blogging beginner. This one is for the Sleaze... and all the rest of the folks that know me well as the "junk show".

So, backing up a couple of steps, imagine what normal people do before a big event like this. Yeah, they take their bike into a local bike shop (aka. The Wild Rose) and get em tuned to racing perfection. Joanna, Tiff, and Rick all took a ride on that luxury cruiser and guess what, with the exception of Rick (perfectly demonstrating the "moth drawn to the light" effect and it's obvious consequences), they all had mechanical free laps. Clem and I, on the other hand, were confident that our Konas were in prime shape and up for the challenge. A few pre-rides in the weeks before the event, and I was pretty psyched with how the Dawg was loping. Although the shifting did seem to be a tad on the "auto" side. But I thought to myself... that'll probably work itself out on the ride. Oh, I forgot to mention that I had a slow leak in the front tire, my line of thinking was that as long as I topped it off before each lap, it should be money, I mean, why waste a perfectly good tube.

Pre-second lap realization: Fast forward to the 25hour Halloween madness and the few hours before the night laps. During my first lap, I had this sense that there was something a bit noodly about the rear wheel and was wondering if I had somehow missed another slow leak in the rear tire.

Clem came blazing in after his second lap (also under an hour), but seemed to have decided that he needed to round out his costume with a bit of makeup (so that the ass would blend in better with the recently attached rubber balls which were a good light weight substitute for the trucknutz we had been contemplating). Alas, the only thing he could find on the trail was this redish-brownish powder. Luckily, his rolling around in the dirt hadn't affected his time and had left his balls in tact.
At that point, Jem, feeling as though the trail had unabashedly been staring at her ass, decided that she couldn't wait another four laps before she went out and slapped it in the face for the offence. Which I'm happy to say she accomplished quite well. She had no idea, but she had unknowingly given me even more time to neglect the slow leak in my front tire. When I was getting ready to hit the course again, I looked down at my rear wheel and noticed that one of my spokes had given up the ghost. Now that wa-wa sound I remember hearing from the back wheel a few weeks ago was starting to make sense. I was contemplating just riding without it when Clem offered up his wheel until we could fix mine. A bold move on his part.

After Jem got back, the trail had learned it's lesson and Tiff turned another amazingly fast lap (just over an hour). She was loving her Yeti, and it wasn't letting her down. Dusk was approaching and that meant lights, balls, and glowsticks for the Dawg. After the long rest, I was feeling super fresh and ready to attack. Two other 5-person coed teams had taken off at about the same time as me, so for the first time I had some rabbits to chase. I soon left them in the dust and was feeling pretty good so I decided to see if my Dawg had any handling skillz when to my surprise, it did but I didn't. I went down pretty hard, got up, and quickly realized I had a flatted the front tire. Hmmm maybe it was leaking a bit faster than I thought. Nearly 8 minutes later (turns out the pump I had borrowed from Rick was capable of an impressive 1 psi per 100 pumps), I finally had the rig back up and running and finished out the course with a respectable 1:10. I was thinking to myself, "sweet, at least I got the 'first wreck' jitters out of the way, and I even got a new tube out of the deal". Other than the flat and the slightly worse auto shifting, the Dawg was still being my best friend.

I sent Rick off into the night for his second lap, we exchanged the team motto "nice ass!", and I promptly went back to camp and plugged in my lights' batteries. I hate to say it, but this may have been my smartest and perhaps only sensible move of the event. Out on the course, however, Rick was putting his stans no-tubes to the test. He had contemplated recharging the old glue before the race, but adopted my "I'm sure it'll be alright" school of thought. And I'm certain it would have been, except that he wanted to re-enact the "it's so beautiful" line from a Bug's Life. His sirens took the form of a lone sharp rock in the middle of an otherwise perfectly graded dirt road (i.e. the super fast portion of the course). Luckily a CO2 cartrige did the trick and he didn't even have to change the tire, only a couple of recharges with his pump. His mishap cost him less time and he Armstronged it in (think Leadville) to the tune of an amazing 1:07.

Next up was Jem, and now that she had shown the trail who was boss, claimed a great time, her ass hanging out tauntingly the entire way. A quick check of the results, and Jem had helped us put the next closest team more than a lap behind.

(To be continued...)





a little trailer for the next post...