Reflection, Reparation, Repentation, Rejuvination, and Recreation

Reflection, Reparation, Repentation, Rejuvination, and Recreation
Having fun on the Midnight Beast

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

OK slap me upside the head.......

I've been riding the road bike more......but I have excuses.
1) less time to prepare and cleanup from offroad rides (kids are home for summer)
2) I know alot of other people are in the same boat
3) Neck pain. Saw my chiro yesterday. Feeling alittle bulge above the normal bony one at the back of my neck, which pops out time to time depending on my postion and what I'm doing. Was thinking the worst, (OMG it's a herniated disc!), but chiro says no, it's just one more of my many bulging muscles, and in need of adjustment. Well that's what he does for a living, so why not say that? But he (and his massage-therapist wife)has taken good care of me and my family for many years, so I trust him. So I'll ho a couple more times, get a coupla massages, then we're off on vacation anyways.
4) I'm still waiting for my rear CM Enduro to come back from a Mavic rebuild, but my friend Eric gave me his old CM ceramics that are in fine shape, so that's not really an excuse.
I have of course been able to ride with the kids more, so I take out the Teddie for that......
A ride's a ride, anyways. As long as there's not too many cars involved.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

My season's over

Her we are it's summer again. Even though it's the last week of school, the kids are home due to a teacher strike(really bad timing on their part...and there's no end in sight....) which makes it hard to get a ride in even to work.
Soooo, I'm still on the road bike kick. This morning I got up early enough to get a 40min ride before the wife was off to work. 6:30 am is really not too bad on the streets of Quincy. It's obvious which way the traffic 's flowing, so I mainly go the opposite way....but I am finding that I am really terrified of cars(and pavement in general).....
My Ted is still on the stand, waiting till I can take it to a friend's house and borrow their derailleur-hanger tool. Shifting is not right, even though I replaced the rear der., chain, and cassette, all at once, basically. The chain first, of course, which didn't like the old cassette, so next the cassette, and it was good for a coupla rides, till I wacked the derailleur on 'something'....all I know is that I remember that whatever it was, it hit hard enough to cause me to think, 'oops!, hanger's bent again'..
Weird, I just can't place that moment. Only I know that it happened.
Anyways, I still used that for an excuse to orderup a new SRAM X-7 from Dave's and install it correctly, only to find that shifting still sucks.....
So that's why I'm riding the road bike. Besides the fact that it does feel good, to get a 40-70 min ride in and not even have to check for ticks, nevermind shower, and then get on with the day......
Of course all this road bike blah blah is only basic maintenance, to keep the legs and heart in shape for my next mountain bike ride. I'd never go 'that way', after all this IS mountain bike church!
I'm hoping to get a few good Sundays to shoot up to Maine, NH, or VT to ride with buddies there. And there's always our Killington/Rochester VT vacation to go exploring the Green Mountains........
Anyways, I'm hard-pressed to find an open spot on the calendar to ride with my friends on the trail. Summer does that. The good thing is, that I do have more time to ride with the kids. They're still not totally into the trail thing, though I think my daughter really likes it. I'm really afraid to push her, I don't wanna break her.....after all she's a ballerina, pianist, violinist, trumpeter, soccer player, and scholar even before she has time to ride. But it's in her blood.
Stephen just figured out how to use his plastic '1080' skate ramp to get air with his 16" bmx bike, and really gets a charge out of it....he also owns 2 20" mountain bikes and a 24" Gary Fisher with a front shock.....but he just loves that little racer....it's all about control...and when his little friends are being taken down by their 50-pound Target bikes with gyros and huge-ass pegs 'cause they can't keep em upright, Stephen just keeps on spinnin'!...
So that's my intro to summer. Less trail riding with my friends, more quality time with the kids....but still time for an early Sunday ride or roadtrip to somewhere for an all day epic.....Just like Maine's license motto--'The Way Life Should Be'.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

One pet peeve.....

OK I was riding my road bike the other day, as I very seldomly do, but lately have had the inclination to 'get back into it'--funny because I was never 'into it'.......
But anyways I do have that nice Specialized 'Epic' carbon fiber-framed beauty that I do enjoy taking for a good workout especially those times when:
1) the trails are too wet
2) my mountainbike is up on the stand waiting for parts, or needs a major cleaning before I dare ride it again
3) I just wanna keep up some level of fitness and only have one hour(a one hour mountainbike ride needs at least one more hour just for preparation, maintenence, and cleanup/tick checking, etc)--this I can do right from my house, no driving to the trailhead.

So I was riding my road bike through the Blue Hills the other day. I came upon a Columbiano who no hablas ingles. Yo pregunto Que Pasa? He point to front tire of he nice aluminio K2 and I see that it is flat. So I stop completely and of course I offer my only tube. I quickly realize that he no comprendo taking the wheel off the bike. Now this guy is in full 'team' regalia and should know what the hell he's doing.
So I proceed to remove the offending tube and replace it with mine. He offers me 3 dollars, and I tell him best I can, that I'm just gonna take his (newer than mine)tube home and fix it and put it back in my seatpack. Muchas Gracias he say and we shake hands a few times and he tells me the Colombian restaurant where he works and I say yeah I'll come checkitout sometime, etc......all in my broken spanglish and his no speaky eengleesh......After I was back underway I realized that I never checked the tire for the offending particle, so he probably didn't make it far--).
What I no comprendo is how anyone who's out there obviously riding regularly not have the proper tools and parts and knowhow to fix the most basic of all repairs--a flat tire?

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Blue Hills Mountain Bike Day(click for pics)




OK it's been a few weeks since my favoritest event of the year--Blue Hills Mountain Bike Day. I need to report before too long or my memory will fade to 'it was a good time'.........
Well the day started out by raining all night--I could hardly sleep, for one because I always have a hard time sleeping when I have a big event early the next day, and also I just don't sleep well when it's raining. I think the latter is because rain sometimes puts a 'damper' on a planned ride--not always though.
As of 5 am it was still raining, and I got maybe four hours sleep( bed at 1 am) but I was determined to make the day happen either way. After a good breakfast(I already forget what it was, but probly eggs and toast and coffee) I loaded ALL the bikes and gear--The wife, kids and mine on and in the car and trucked over there. To be fair it was really just an incessant drizzle, not really raining, but the radio/tv/internet could not tell me what really the day would be like.
I met Mr Boles and he handed me some yellow arrows and I set out to pre-ride the int/advanced side. Of course anybody in their right mind had decided to pull the covers up over their head and stay in for the day, so I proceeded to do my duty. Fortunately, the arrows we had put up before the 3 days of torrential rains started were amazingly still up and not all curled over from all the moisture.......so I had a fairly consistent ride with only a few stops to add an arrow or three.
I got back and things were starting to swing--tents were going up, Joe Sloane was there with the coffee and donuts, ( Joe is the tireless soul who has organized this event almost singlehandedly for 12 years!), volunteers were actually showing up, and everyone was smiling in the mist!
By opening time, 10 am, all the vendors were ready to show their stuff, and riders were starting to 'trickle' in....... I was fairly drenched, and proceeded to hang out and chat with my friends at NEMBA and make the rounds with the vendors. It was probably 58 degrees, and even with two layers of everything, was kinda chilly.
The sun did try to show a coupla times.....
Anyways, wife showed up with the kids as planned and they rode circles through and around the venue, mostly on the obstacle course, which was soaked, and the plywood teeter-totter and ramps were slick. They had no trouble though, being the experienced riders that they are........
I took Isabella for a ride around Houghton's Pond--just happened that the heavens opened up and we got even more thoroughly drenched--but we had a great ride together.
back at the roundup, I needed to focus on getting the scheduled rides going. Having plenty of ride leaders, this was easy, and more and more riders showed up despite the weather....
A few rides went out, and it seemed that the vendors were bored, but as the day progressed more people showed up and made it worth their while(I hope).......
Quadcycles' with their pro trials rider doing a coupla shows for the crowd, pumped up the scene......
My turn came to lead my 'Buck Hill Leisure Ride', and I had I think 12 of us! A dad and his 6yo son peeled off after a few miles(that's REALLY tenacious of a 6 yo to even hang on that long!), and I introduced the group to the climb. Buck Hill is one of those loose rolly rock drainage ditch type of trails. Really shouldnt even be a trail, but it's our only legal way up and down. Once we were at the top, we enjoyed the 'top o the world' view only available at Buck Hill. We took our break up there to enjoy the view, and most were smiling again(read:done cursing me) by the time we set on going back down.....
The rest of the day:
Trials Show again
Bike Limbo(didn't win)
Raffle(didn't win)
Talking with friends and sponsors
Final count waas t least 300 riders, despite the rain and miserable drizzle!!
Bike ride again with Stephen at home, before I got into dry clothes and took a nap.