I’ve just started on a new adventure. I’m hoping to provide more updates on this as they happen, but for now I’m going to let you know what’s up. Back up a bit… back in February, Chris Carmichael put up a call for people to join a team going to La Ruta. That’s short for La Ruta De Los Conquistadores a four-day long mountain bike race across Costa Rica from the Pacific to the Caribbean. Nuts to begin with, so why would I even want to do this? I’ve heard about this race for a few years here’s Carmichael’s summary of what he has in mind. It’s his 50th birthday year and this is his plan for what to do. Now Chris is an ex-pro (the 7-11 team) and a very strong athlete himself, so why do I think I can keep up with this? I don’t know, but I filled out an on-line application and waited. I was a bit surprised when I saw that I had made the top 25 cut and was asked to make a short video application. They asked that this be less than 3 min long and the instructions were: “please record a video that gives us a better sense of who you are and what you’re passionate about.” So here’s my video application:

The next step was waiting and I finally found out that I’m in. So now that I’m in, what’s next? I guess I have to starting thinking out about 7 months and refocus my training on how I’m going to get into the kind of shape it takes to do that race, not that I know what that is. I figure I’ll find out soon enough.

We (the entire hand-picked team) will be meeting at Carmichael Training Systems in mid-April. At that time, they’ll run us through the battery of tests, including Lactate Threshold, VO2Max, do a proper bike fit and do some riding too. Then we go off and train for some time, coming back to Colorado Springs in mid-July. I’m sure some of us will meet up at Leadville in August, then September, we go to Costa Rica for a pre-ride of parts of the course. The cool part of that is we will be joined there by 2009 winner Manuel Prado and he’ll show up the trail. Good recon beta in that. Then some time to put the finishing touches on my training and we race… November 17-20.

Meanwhile, I’ve decided to start a Video Diary and did  a couple in the last week. Mostly this is for me to see, but I thought someone else might be stuck at work and bored out of their skull and watch this…

Or this:

Bike FTW!!!

photo by Bike Portland

This was sent to me by my cousin-in-law, Dan, as told to him by his hairdresser, Roy. (names and relationships have been changed to protect, oh what the fuck, it was Dave and Ray.)

 

Last week Roy was riding to work down Plumb and making the right onto Kietzke and a truck made a late right and almost hit him. 

He yelled at the truck “Nice Turn Signal!”  This set the guy off.  He yelled at Roy to go to Carrow’s parking lot so he could kick his ass. 

In the parking lot the guy jumps out of his truck, tears his down coat off and starts running towards Roy who is still on his bike. Roy just geared down and started riding circles around the guy telling him all he said was “Nice Turn Signal and that was my lane and you almost hit me.”  

The guy says that’s not your lane and to get off the bike so he can proceed to ass kick.  Roy rides around him taunting him with “A little to much caffeine this morning?  You are going to give yourself a coronary”, etc. 

By this time the guy is quite a ways from his still running truck with the door open.  Roy sprints past the guy, egging him on, and locks the door of the truck and rides to work with a shit eating grin on his face. 

The guy was typical Reno cowboy:  Tight grape smuggler jeans, big belt buckle and white tennies.

 

Strip o bacon and Tall Can to you Roy!

-M

Tokyo has a lot of public transportation and a lot of bikes. They also like robots. So it was only a matter of time until they built a robot bike parking lot:

I wonder if out Japanese friend Aki, could go give us a personal video demo… Although it looks like fatties don’t fit fine…

-M

Got back Monday. Trend did epic battle with an epic trail and wound up dazzled by the awesome singletrack, cramping and puking a little. It was pretty hot. Pyrofloptic burned out three of the four climbs and called it a day.

I hung with Scott from uBRDO Cycle and Mountain in Kirkland WA most of the day. We did some wrenching, some BSing and some beer drinking. Good guy. Sounds like his shop is pretty much what TBS Bike and Sport would be like if such a thing existed…

There were a lot of fairly beat down people sunday. I suppose that was the point. I even got in on some of that action Saturday taking a hard slammer into the lower section of the Alpine Trail (?) which we rode with Nat and his crew from Seattle on Saturday. I think I broke (or bruised REALLY bad) a rib.

Oregon is amazing. The forests are SOOOO THICK!!! Ferns, evergreens, flowers, green plants EVERYWHERE!! And poison oak. Fortunately the had Techu for us in the showers. That stuff works pretty well. Doesn’t do shit for cramps though.

We met a dude named Kris from Seattle area who is an engineer for e13 components. He and trent helped pace each other in the first few laps. then Kris punked him with a can of Ensure. (We’ll get our revenge punk!!!) maybe pretty soon, Kris said he’s coming down for a Tahoe Epic, stay tuned…

I’m really stoked to get back up there and do more riding. Super bummed that TheRestlessApe and I got squeezed out of it due to being old and broken.

But what can you do. It’s the bitching and moaning that makes the difference between a baconstripper and a Creampuff… Good work TRENT!!

-M

I looked for you in Vail, but I never saw you–pussy!

This is my buddy Dave from Allbeefjerky, Nerdmexico. I’m trying to get him to meet us for the 24 hours in the old pueblo next year…

-M

If you’re going to be in the Cascade Cream Puff Zone this weekend look me up. TBS Rider TheRestlessApe dislocated his shoulder and can’t ride. This is after I hurt my knee and couldn’t ride. So post a comment if you are tall skinny and look like an ape and want to try to take his spot!

-M

More to follow…

-M

All this talk about chuck norris blah blah blah, Let me tell you this: Chuck can come or go, but you DON’T want the Grisly Bike Geek dropping a bomb in your shitter @ 5 in the morning. That’s why I was ready and waiting in the driveway when he pulled up yesterday.

It was a simple plan and a plan that would end in disaster. Well, not really. Gris, Nooner, Huck Tater, JohnS and I started riding from the Confluence around 8 or so. 30 min later we hit the connector trail. Badda Bing Badda Boom, we ride and ride and climb and climb. Nooner and Gris are way off the front. John and Lee are riding my ass like a $5 whore. WTF! I’m gonna quit MY job, throw in a 2000 flushes blue, quit drinking coffee and ride and ski until the water turns clear again!

Nothing eventful on the first lap, but the sighting of this strange sticker on the Foresthill Divide trail. Weather was perfect, dirt was perfect (as if dirt could be anything but perfect) and the GBG seemed to be riding spry despite his advanced age.

Popping out from the Tunnel Trail I hear the sweet sweet call of my lovely-but-taken, look-but-can’t-touch (or so you believe..) Bustigator! He brought with him the DogIsNuts, Icandy, and Matty themack daddy, smokedthefatty from cincinatti Larson of The stable Quiver. Almost EVERYONE on singlespeeds! (including Nate on the Maverick with the Paul Melvin!)

We all started back up the connector trail. GBG, Nooner, Huck and John blasting it the fuck off with Matty riding them like they were $20 whores. Icandy had some issues with, of all things, getting his tires to seal. Pretty bike dude. Maybe some dirt on those tires would help thicken the sidewalls. Anyway, he and Bustigator and Schuster and I rallied pretty good around the course.

GBG said he pushed it hard as he could and didn’t cramp or bonk. I did the same, though a third lap would have pushed it too far.

Nate’s says: ”
23.2 mile lap. 2970′ of climbing per lap. 6.7 miles each way on the connector trail, + or -. The down hill to the confluence is .3 mi longer than the climb. So that puts the final leg at about 13.7 miles with ~1300′ of climbing. A-squad total of 60.1 miles you crazy bastards.”

We had a frame fatality, and a near rider fatality when John hit a kicker and went off the trail @ the end of the Tunnel Trail down by the American River. GBG can chime in with the description. Here’s the aftermath.

Then we hit Maria’s in Auburn for some Carnitas. Matty’s not a huge fan of Mexican, but he suckeditthefuck up for the good of the team. Thanks Bro!!

Good riding with all you fuckfaces! And on a WEDNESDAY!?!???!?!!!!!

-M

Yesterday Nooner, Bustigator, The Restless Ape, Aron, Juni and I found a new trail out in Sparks thanks to a tip from my buddy Martin. It was RAD!

It starts off a dirt road behind the new softball fields near Red Cock Gold Course. Follow the pink BLM access signs for now. It starts with a cool singletrack, then climbs about 900 feet over really short distance. It’s a lung buster for sure but most of the switchbacks are really well built and fully ridable.

We ran into one of the builders @ the top. Thanks man!!!

The trail loops around from the top there by the chicken sign. Suggest going right for the loop. There is some seriously technical stuff on the back side. Steep, loose, tight, rocky and super fun! About 10 miles all together.

There was some fall-line trail on the back side and some in-sloped sections with no drainage, but it looks like these guys are out there working fairly frequently and are on top of it. Great trail. Lots of potential. I’d like to see it go all the way south to I-80…

Also: check out all the new trail work being done over on Peavine!!!

-M