Night Ride Video

The weekend is here!  Hot Dogggieee!  We finished up the week in fine form last night by hitting the Quarry Brewery and then heading up to The Hummingbird where there was a band and a variety of desserts spread out to gorge on.  We ran into lots of familiar faces and saw some very interesting costumes throughout the night.

The highlight might well have been listening to Keith weave a story about his recent haircut which included an ear wax and nose wax...OUCH!  I have not laughed that hard in a long time - classic!

During out recent evening ride, I took some footage and tried to put a quickie vid together:



It is hard to capture all the action at night given the light limitations but hopefully it catches the mood of our Thurs evening rides - although they usually don't involve costumes.

Tutu Night Riding

Night Riding Halloween style - woohoooo!

We took to the dirt trails last night in full Halloween regalia.  Some twisted soul (won't name any names but their initials are T.R.) suggested we ride in costumes to celebrate Halloween..the mention of Halloween always takes me back to Ashland, Oregon and having grown up in a town that fully embraced the day/evening and all the peripheral buffoonery (of which I was a part of) that usually ensued.  It has since become much calmer, but they used to close down Main street and just about all of the Rogue Valley would make their way to Ashland to show off their costumer, party, fight, etc.

All in all a good time for the po po to have to try to manage (which might just explain why it is a lot more subdued these days).  My favorite costume that I saw during that era was this dude who wore a trench coat and he would go around flashing people and saying 'Happy Halloweenie'.  When he flashed you, he had a fake donger about 2 ft long and he would proceed to stroke it and squeeze it, and whatever he filled his fake dong with would squirt on those unfortunate enough to be in the squirt zone....so to all, Happy Halloweenie

The sordid crew included the usual suspects for last night's ride and it started a little something like:

I must admit I was feeling especially sassy with my pink tutu, leg warmers, pink tank and long black hair...what the picture does not show is the cute panties underneath the tutu...Warren remembered to put the fig leaf in front but conveniently forgot about the fig leaf in the back while Sean rocked the Mormon Mullet, or Momo Mullet, or better yet the Mollet and Mike sported a killer fro'.  Bob and Gary were smart and did not partake in costumes or pictures that could  be used for blackmail at some point in the future.

The funny thing is that everyone thought I was wearing a costume....little do they know that working from home enables you to wear whatever the hell you want! 

We rode up Thompson Park, over to Drunken Indian trail and then back up to the Archery Range and down Black Tail...both climbs were short and punchy...or maybe it is the return of the winter legs....

I was on the wifer's bike since my bike is still out of action for the time being...I supposed it just all made sense, wearing the tutu and all...speaking of, where did I place that tutu.....

Halloween Night Ride & Country Hip Hop

We have a scheduled night ride this evening and each week we ride at night makes me wonder if this will be our last ride of the season on these trails before old man winter shuts us down....now to find an appropriate (or inappropriate) costume for the evening....We got some snow earlier this week and it feels like we are in extra time with being able to get out on these trails.

Another upside of this nocturnal riding action is the continued testing of the Magicshine light series.  The little brother of the Magicshine 1400 came in and the Magicshine 900 will be the perfect compliment mounted on the helmet and for a backup.  The last thing you want when riding at night is for your light system to go belly up and be stuck out in the dark.  While doing the 24 hours of Steamboat 3 yrs ago, this happened to me and it was a very very rough descent back down.  By the time I got back to the start/finish area, I was so motion sick that my day was o-v-e-r...It is a weird sensation to have your body moving one way while your mind sees something completely different.

speaking of weird sensations...this is just PRICELESS - wonder why it never caught on?

Hand Down Pants Workout

The NBA season started yesterday and  I debated whether or not to buy the NBA League Pass again this year. After thinking about it for a little bit, I folded and ordered the package - what else are you going to do mid-winter in chilly Montana??.  It is harder and harder to support pro sports every year.  Most of these guys act like spoiled kids who get paid millions to play a sport that at times seems manipulated by the league.  This little conspiracy theory of mine flows over into other sports too as there always appear to be some serious reffing calls that at times give certain teams a huge advantage (Pittsburgh Steelers, LA Lakers?).  There is always the argument of how the NBA does not want small market teams to succeed, etc...As a fan, it makes it hard to support a product that is sometimes difficult to believe in.

It could also just be a sign that I am getting older and ornerier as time passes?  At the end of the day, I bought the Kool Aid and drank my first sip last night as I watched the season kick off.

Given our recent weather, the bike of choice last night was the indoor trainer - while watching one of the NBA games.  The pedals spun for an hour and the workout was about trying to keep a steady power output for 30 minutes, then taking a quick light spin for a minute and holding steady power for another 15 minutes, then a 1 min off and another 5 minutes of steady power, 1 more light min, and the last 5 min hurrah.  Our indoor trainer tracks most of the critical data points like wattage, HR, speed, distance, cadence, etc.  The workout out looked a little something like:

The good thing about tracking power is it keeps you honest...it makes it hard to convince yourself you are working hard when the numbers tell you differently.

I also managed to hit the Y yesterday for a quick lifting session.  I have been trying to get into the gym a little bit as of late.  It is good to cross train - especially in the winter.  It was also good to get the upper body moving and working.  Biking does not really work the upper body so lifting helps in that department.  As I was at the Y I ran into this new phenomenon....

I saw three different dudes, who must have all learned from the same tutor, doing the same thing in the gym free weight area (at different times).  They were talking on their phones with the other hand buried in their pants.  I suppose they were either trying to imitate Ed O Neal in Married with Children (but they were much deeper than the surface fingers around the belt like Ed above) but it gave me the heebie jeebies as I realized that they were putting their hands on their junk and then working out, using the same weights and bars I was.  It became a game of trying to figure out which weights they did not 'touch'...sort of like one of those kids' memory games but with much higher stakes.  It was so bewildering and bizarre that I could not find the words to say anything.  Now that I have had time to process it all, me thinks I might have to remind them they are in a public place the next time around - unless they want me to tea-bag them to help explain that it is a little ummm...inappropriate.

Not sure whether to think it is a Butte thing  (not to be confused with butt, although their hands were buried deep enough in their pants that they might just have been trying to give themselves a prostate exam)?  Or is it a function of getting older and less tolerant again?  wow, it is a sad day when the expectations get lowered so far as to contemplate whether sticking your hand in your pants and fondling yourself between sets while working out becomes OK...

no vids today...the database in my head could not find a relevant song ...unless of course you bring up the whole 'pants on the ground' vid...can't bring myself to do it....

Bike Blues

My recent bike mis-fortune has had me consternating over the options of which route to go for the next chariot of choice...What is a girl to do?  I have read a lot of reviews and gotten on a few bikes and will continue to mull it over as there is no need for a quick decision - unless of course there is a deal to be had and then all bets are off the table as I am a sucka' for deals!

Another reason for the start of the bike blues is that our weather is changing and the outside options of riding are disappearing faster than the use of words 'honest' and 'politics' in the same sentence.  And since we know politicians are about as sincere as professional bike riders (in regards to doping that is), we connect the dots, throw our hands up in the air, and accept the unequivocal certainty like we do death and taxes...after all, what is a girl to do??

I did manage to get a indoor ride in last night on the trainer and the sad truth is the riding window will get shorter yet when the time changes and our days get shorter once again.  If you are pragmatist or engineer you will jump all over that because days are not really getting shorter...they remain 24 hrs, and the daylight is the same...it just shifts from p.m. to a.m. daylight but then again....what is a girl to do?? but to join the 'group think' and sheople nature of our mainstream phrase-ology...yes I just made that up, but I don't want to be a sheople!

and where exactly is all this going you ask?  I have but not a clue...so here be some old school  Mississippi John Hurt (what a cool and humble man) blues to close out this entry:

First In-Town Snow of the Season

We woke up to a light layer of snow this morning.  There is only about an inch on the deck right now and it will probably be gone within a couple of hours but it is a good reminder of just how nice the weather has been...The forecast looks like more of the same and it really does not bother me all that much considering I am still in the middle of trying to figure out what to do bike-wise.  The upside to the bike situation is that there is no rush to make a decision and it might work out if there is still a lot of 2010 inventory out there.

There is the single speed but I am not sure my knee is healed 100% to be able to get out and mash some big ratio...then again, it might all be a non-issue for the fatty tire since the trails are higher up and probably got a hit with more snow than what we got here in town.

This should be a good week.  There are a couple of loose ends that I am looking to get tied up this week which should bring some good closure to a couple of slow-resolving doors...Work wise, it should be a good week too.  A big chunk of the team is out in Vegas at a tech conference so it should allow me to get ahead on a couple of planning items....

not much to say yet this a.m...let the Boomtown Rats tell it like it is...

Bike Reviews: TallBoy, Blur LT, & Epic

We hustled up to Helena on Saturday and decided it would be a prime day to demo some bikes.  We went up to Great Divide Cyclery where Eric had three bikes on the menu for me to taste test...

Great Divide Cyclery was AWESOME!  They were very patient, answered all my questions and made the experience very enjoyable.  Eric really knows his stuff and it is great to get objective feedback based on what you are looking for.


29'er frames were not originally on the radar when all this looking at bikes came into being but my idea was to go in with an open mind in order to look at all options objectively.  Eric put me on the TallBoy and off to find some dirt...I did the same loop each time on each bike so that I would have something to compare the bikes to without having to think about how differently they would handle...so it was a good way to control the trail aspects of the demo.  The trail of choice was a nice long climb up to Mt Ascension and then taking the downhill to the Archery Range trail and back into town.  There was enough varying terrain to put the bikes through anywhere from technical climbs, to buff climbs, to tight switchies, to steep descents, to buff singletrack.  It would be a trail I would get to know very well by the end of my 3rd lap testing the 3rd bike...It was probably around a 5-7 mile loop with around 1500 ft of climbing from the shop (guesstimating seeing as if I did not take the Garmin with me).

Tall Boy review:

Pluses:
The first thing I noticed was that it was a good climber over technical terrain.  It soaked up the bumps and there was more wheel contact with the ground where it felt a lot more stable going through the rough than its 26 inch brothers...It climbed pretty well, was fairly responsive and not too bouncey when getting out of the saddle to pedal.  Switchbacks took a little extra caution but were still very doable in light of the bigger frame and wheels.  There was also more clearance from pedal to ground meaning you could pedal through some tech sections without worrying about scraping your pedals on rocks, etc...It did a nice job of making bumps that you would feel on a 26 inch wheel, feel like little pebbles.  It was extremely stable...to be honest, I have no idea how you would ever crash on one of these bad boys...they are that stable (even at slow speed - seemed easier to be able to track-stand, etc).  Santa Cruz seems to have really dialed in the geometry and in general this bike exceeded my expectations of being pretty responsive.

Minuses:
Even though it handled well, it still felt like I could not be quite as precise on my lines as the 26 inch bikes.  It was not nearly as easy to 'man-handle' the bike and the bike was generally less 'playful' than a 26 inch version.  It was a little more difficult to catch air on this set up but it might just be a function of dialing in the suspension, etc...It was almost the difference between being on a long-board skateboard vs a little trick deck.

Blur LT Review:

The 2nd bike to demo was the carbon Blur LT.  Wow - what a totally different feel after being on the TallBoy!
Pluses:
Whatever the TallBoy lacked in playfulness, this bike more than made up for it and excelled in this area.  It was extremely maneuverable and you could throw it around pretty easily.  It soaked up big bumps really well and the suspension and engineering on this bike were pretty amazing.  It handled switchbacks like big cruiser turns and you felt like you could keep motoring through tight sections.  It did well climbing in terms of not being too squishy while going up hill.

Minuses:
The geometry was too compact for me.  This was especially noticeable on climbs where my front wheel would bob off the ground while trying to put pressure on the pedals.  It was not noticeable on the downhills as much, but very noticeable on the climbs.  This bike is not nearly as stable as the TallBoy at slow speeds.  The bike had a lot of travel suspension wise which was great for bombing downhill, but it is not my preferred setup...like being in a limo.


Specialized Epic Review:

The last item on the menu was the Specialized carbon Epic with the brain set-up.  This was yet another totally different bike than the prior two.  It had the brain setup so it was good to get a feel for that option.

Pluses:
This bike climbed like a hard-tail.  Not once did I feel like there was any squish while getting up out of the saddle and laying down the hammer.  Being a single-speeder, it is nice to have that feel when getting up out of the saddle on climbs.  This bike was super responsive.  I felt like I could pick a line, point the bike and it would just nail it.  This is probably the most responsive bike I have been on.  The XC geometry seemed to fit me much better than the Blur LT.

Minuses:
I am not a big fan of the brain on the suspension.  You could definitely tell when the brain would engage the suspension as it would be a sudden movement (as opposed to the gradual, somewhat linear travel on most other bikes).  Since the bike was so responsive, the downside is that you felt most of the little bumps until the brain activated.

All in all, there is a lot of food for thought but I think I am ruling out the LT, and ruling out the 'brain' option on Specialized.  I would still like to ride the Blur XC since the geometry is not quite as compact as the Blur LT...The good news is that there is no urgency to buy a bike at this time of year considering we are approaching the cold time of year and riding options might be limited.