Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Begin again

I have been a Batman fan for a long time. When Michael Keaton took the time to do a good job with the role in the first modern remake of the old Wham! Bam! character, there was a lot for me to identify with. And it was just a damn good movie. That Jack Nicholson guy is gonna be big, you watch. Anyway, I got me some Netflix and I just watched the new Batman Begins movie. As Apu would say, 'Holey Cow.' Damn, it was good. I'm not a critic: I like what I like. This director needs to go again. I wish I could see his next Batman film RIGHT F'ING NOW!

Woof. Fun to watch. Nothing like the Morgan Freeman helping the white man out role coupled with my favorite Madness song guy (Michael Caine) playing Alfred. Oh, and a nice brunette hottie for the '13'ers' in PG13. The 'having fun' sequence where he rolls into the hotel with two models in the front seat of his Ferrari or whatever and then they get in the waterfountain is pretty funny.

Oh, shouts to JoFo for turning me onto this madness across the pond. 500km for $600 in Wales including 'non-timed riding transfers' from campground to campground? Ho lee sheet. I'm down. Night-time time trial? F yeah. He's getting us a spot and figuring out how to pay them in foreign money. It's about 2 weeks before the SM100 so it will either be great training or a great way to blow off the race and just volunteer.

Emma's now into eating sloppy joes. Age 4. Not bad. Jeremy is happy with corned beef hash. I know, I can't believe that I eat it too...

Pictures soon, I promise. They'll be mostly of bikes and the kids but whatever.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Jungle Fever

It was only a matter of time... Blending the good with the bad now requires you to carry TWO spare tubes. Always with the criticism first, right? Well come up with your own redfish/bluefish ideas and see what they are doing in Maine.

It all seems to make sense to me. If I was still riding rigid bikes on a regular basis, I would probably be interested.

I added some perma-links to the right =====> for the boys. I gotta get some pictures up here, this place is boring as hell!

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Rockin' the Shox

I've been a devout non-RockShox guy for a long time now. Not to bring up bad subjects, but I got so good at replacing the Judy cartridges that I got it down to about three minutes. When the Sid came out, I couldn't believe they made a fork that weighed less than my stool. Talk about flexy... The Duke stuff didn't last and Reba scares me. Boxxer crowns don't seem to last half of a pro season. Did I mention the Quad 21 or the Mag 21? I won't go back that far. It would be too painful...

Turn to model year 2006. I've managed to befriend Big Ed at SRAM (problem with pre-SRAM Juicy brakes) and he recommended that I check out one of their new Revelation forks. I need something around 130 (hit), with a 32mm stancion (hit) and some sort of adjustability (hit). Oh, and it needs to look good (hit). I've been seeing ads for the Motion Control Damping (MCD) that SRAM has on the Rock Shox forks, I just never swayed from the world of Fox/Marzocchi long enough to take it seriously. I gotta hand it to Ed. He knows his stuff and he doesn't fluff.

I got one of the forks and plugged it into a new SWorks Stumpy 120 with the brain fade to check it out. I spent the entire 2005 'season' on it and rode that bike in the SM100 so I know how the damn thing feels. In a word: good. Good like chocolate. I like chocolate.

Anyway, just putting the fork on the bike made me thing positive things. The 'platform' that I'm so used to hearing about was way different on this fork. I've had some bad luck with the Manitou Minute forks and I'm not a fan of the Fox F100x stuff so I've just avoided anything that has 'platform' anywhere in the marketing materials. But I digress...

The Rock Shox MCD stuff is killer. On the Revelation 426 fork that I'm checking out (non-Uturn), it's 3.7lbs of travel at 130mm. They have 20mm thru forks but I declined. The MCD gives you about 2cm of travel before you bump the MCD (when it's on). The MCD is a 3000lb spring that you can either hit or not, depending on where you have the handlebar switch set. The gate gets turned on and off by the switch and the gate is the thing that really makes the magic.

The gate controls whether the MCD spring is engaged or gets bypassed. Set the gate on max + and you can barely get the fork to move under large hits. Click it a few notches towards the - and it blows open when you hit something of reasonable size. I haven't turned the MCD switch off once yet. It's killer.

Some forks bump you around when they are locked out. This gives you just enough to smooth it out and manual over stuff or preload for hopping. It also engages when you land on the other side. It's the best of all worlds.

So, way to go SRAMShox. This is a good thing and I'm sold on the fork.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Turkeys

Not a good time to be a turkey...

The usual over-eating and family blahs occur when you travel for the holidays. I understand why my dad sits in the big chair and trys to fall asleep after the meal. Socializing can be so unsatisfying...

The kids seem to have the most fun. Big surprise there. I'll stick to hanging out with them.

Friday, November 18, 2005

The sun rises over the mountaintop...

I don't get it... What the hell is a blog? Weblog, right? How about Webl. Whatever.

I've been riding and racing mountain bikes for over a decade now. It seems like it's all I know anymore. If I go out, I'm looking for the SockGuys peeking out from underneath the pantlegs of everyone. I'm odd enough that I find things in common with guys who shave their legs. I don't, but I used to and I, at least, understand it.

Kids. I fell in love when I moved back to the right coast from NorCal and I married the poor girl. Two kids and a few years as professional bike advocates later (the guidance counselors don't mention that career choice), we find ourselves restarting our lives with a family. Susan and I couldn't have planned this.

So I'll try to keep up with this. The kids, the job, the wife, the riding, the trailbuilding... it all adds up. It's hard for me to imagine making time for something else in life. I used to write quite a bit growing up. It helped me deal with the insanity of life. Now, it serves the same purpose and maybe I can draw strength from the trials and empathy of others.

So here we go. Gwadz, Joe, JoFo and the boys will be proud.

Welcome to the world...

Getting dirty

Another trail work day at Patapsco. The crew had some other volunteers do a lot of the legwork for a new section of trail on the west side of the swinging bridge. We rolled in there with Joe, Shawn and friends, chainsaw in tow, and finished it off. There's a steep falling left-hand turn with a solid 3 foot berm. We put in the rolling grade dip at the bottom to keep the water off. We'll see how it goes. It's not one of the more well-used trails out there and it's generally downhill only so who knows how it will hold up. We all did our level best. Check out MORE for dates, times, pictures, etc. of local riders giving back to the trails.

I did a quick loop on the Sworks 120 up cascade and then down the section, including the sketchy roots, in the 'ol Carharts, pantlegs rolled up. Classic. Bike rides nice, the leaves are deep and it was a 60 degree November day in Baltimore. What else is there? And don't let anyone tell you that Shit brown isn't the BEST color for a bike...

Rolled back to the house, grabbed the family plus one and hit Annapolis for a quick rolling bite and cruised the town and fed the ducks. It was a Sunday after all.

Tomorrow, Rich from IMBA will be around to look at a piece of land with me and lay out some trails. We'll be mapping out a few miles of trail and flagging the route. The boy will be alond for the ride. It's supposed to rain so that should be fun. There should be some TTFs (technical trail features) going in. We'll let the county know. Mike from Racer's Edge has agreed to come down and do the construction if we need it (and we will).

Cheers.

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