Days To Go...

So we are just days out from the SM100. Brian is flying out, we've got travel plans, I only have a little work to do on the bike (great timing)... I spent 6 hours out in the Watershed and Gambrill with MattyD and Joel. We ran into superfast pro guys Chris Eatough and his buddies. Talk about a$$holes. Both times we saw them (in Gambrill in the AM then the 'shed in the afternoon) we were climbing, they were coming down. I almost locked bars with two of 'em. I'm not mr. nervous on a bike, but they (edit) didn't even slow down, smile, say 'hello,' or leave any room. There really aren't any hard and fast rules for passing going opposite directions on mtn bike trails, but simply showing some respect to other riders out there is the cool thing to do.

I'm obviously no pro, nor will I ever be able to keep up with those guys but at least nobody could ever accuse me of not being friendly. (edit) At least I know that we were doing the right thing if THEY were out there too.

Whatever. Reason number 927 to not own a Trek. At least Bishop is a consistently nice guy.

(Edit: Three people have called me out for this posting. I acknowledge that Mr Eatough is probably a totally cool guy. If I saw somebody else that I knew out there acting like this, I would mention it here as well. I was mostly upset by the lack of courtesy to other riders from this 'famous' pro rider and his buddies (Todd Helmick, I later learned, was also there). The fact remains that it was unfortunate that anybody would come away from a run-in with these guys with a negative experience. I did and I stand by my feelings on this. Nice guy or not, it just wasn't the way to be. I expect more of these guys and I wasn't the only rider in my group to feel this way).

We've made our Interbike plans. Not cutting it to close, or anything. It's less than a month out. We've got a lot to do: OnDirt Demo on Mon/Tue (WOOHOO!), Wed-Fri is the floor show. I've got to hook up with Jamis, Yeti, Moots, Bell/Giro/Easton... It'll be a lot of time on my feet. I can't wait. It looks like we'll be staying at Treasure Island, which could be worse. Now to find direct flights from BWI...

Also complete is our 2007 stocking plan. We'll have fixed road bikes from Masi, Jamis, Spec'd. Jamis will provide a new race 'cross bike (SuperNova, no pic) and Spec'd has another TriCross over $2k this year AND a carbon Sworks bike. There's a lot going on for 2007. We'll be full of some fun stuff.

I'm going to try and get out on the fixie for 45 minutes or so today, just to stay loose. No hard efforts this week, here come the butterflies...