How to Stay warm in winter, and other musings

In English class I was always told to start a story with an attention getter to grab the audiences attention. I never was very good at English though. But how about a picture? Those are supposed to be worth 1,000 words right?

What do you think of? Maybe cleaning up after puddles and puddles jr?

Trust me, they are not as innocent as they seem in this picture.

No actually I am using the poop bags for help with staying in cold weather riding. When I woke up this morning and made the usual bad decision to ride to work it was a balmy 34 degrees. Since I don't really want to go dropping over 100 George Washingtons on a new pair of shoes I did the next best thing. Put the doggy poopy bags over my feet and slide them into my shoes. Not only does it block the wind from getting through those pesky foot vents in the shoe, it also acts as a sort of a sauna to help keep them warm. Oh, and the bags are also good for picking up poop.

The other piece of cold weather gear in which I would recommend would be the Gore Windstopper gloves.

With a coupon and a gift certificate from my birthday the total for these quality gloves came out to $20. Not to shabby for a $50 pair of gloves. So far they work as advertised. Wind does not get into them leaving my hands warm. I have yet to try them in sub-freezing tempertures so I guess that will leave a review for when I do the short track series updates.

On the riding front I did have the pleasure of going with the MaddSS and the Mrs. MaddSS for a easy (to them) ride at Fisher Farms up in Davidson. I am sorry I left the camera at home as the new portion of the trail has some great photo ops of riding some boulders. I also spend some time bailing out on those said boulders trying a new line. I went 0-5 with it, but I will definalty try it again. If your not falling off the bike, then you probably shouldn't be riding it as you don't challenge yourself.

And in other news the Charlotte Auto Show came to town so me and the guys went down there to check it out.
Before we were even able to get our admission tickets, an attractive female (I think they hired her to do that for a reason) approached us and asked if we wanted to drive some cars. Heck yeah. After crossing my fingers that I passed the breathalizer test we got into our respected vehicles.

I ended up in a 64k Yukon Denali Hybrid and GMC Terrain as my choices. Nice rides, both of them.


B Lee and his truck.


Casey in his Camero. He actually couldn't come out of the car for a few minutes after driving it if you know what I mean...


Look at that smile.

And just because I can, here is some guest appearances by local celebraties taking time out of their busy day to take a picture with me.

Fall is in the air

You know how I know? Because the calendar said so. Oh, and the reason I bought the house, the trees.



Had to have some fun with the camera settings with all of the colors


The weather has been so great here. After the morning chill is done it has been some of the best riding weather all year. I think the 3 weeks I have been playing roadie during lunch and going to and from work have been paying off on the trails. My cadence has gone up, although I think I have lost some of my leg strength. I am looking forward to trying in staying in shape during the winter and hopefully it wont be so wet like last year. I went crazy not being able to ride for 2 months.

I did get an email from Bart at Southpark Cycles with some good news. Winter short track series has been set up!


I have been looking forward to this since last year. Last year I did the beginner class (still came in almost dead last every race) but that was the last time I did the beginner. I figured I enjoy riding so much the more time and more miles on the bike the better so I moved up a class after that (and still had my ass handed to me). I am determined to be in shape for this series.

In other news, the burrower had a goal for this year in which we just did. The Turkey Trot. She had 2 goals, one. Enter a 5k run in which she gets a t-shirt. 2. Beat her time last year of 57 minutes. 3. Goal of 45 minutes.

Congrats, she did all 3 and just completely smashed her record and beat her goal. Time was 39 minutes 27 seconds. I am not sure if she is hooked on this running thing fun time, but it is great seeing her meet her goal.

Weekly Update

It has been probably the best riding weather this year so far, but due to the time change it has been hard to take advantage of it. I guess the good news is that I have been trying to get my cardio fix in at lunchtime on the roadie bike. The mallard creek greenway is actually pretty busy around lunch time in the university area. A lot of runners, hikers, and even roadies taking a extended break from work I am guessing.

The highlight of last weeks "training" rides was going on the greenway and passing a group of roadies. While that in itself isn't funny, the look they gave me riding with baggy shorts, t shirt, and helmet with visor passing them was. Needless to say I didn't look back and they didn't catch me. Score one for a mountain biker. I don't think they knew who they were dealing with.

It has been almost three weeks since I got to ride The Culprit on actual trails, and I was jonesing for a real bike ride. Yesterday I attempted to go ride the local trail at Fisher Farms up in Davidson, there was a few miles of added singletrack up there that I wanted to check out, unfortunitly I wasn't able to do so. Due to an accident on I-85 I was stuck for 20 minutes going 2 miles. I got off on the exit, a little frusterated but still willing to ride, when I hit another traffic jam.

Due to people wanting to see this bozo I couldn't get past anybody on a two lane road. Stupid Renaissance Festival

I ended up not even getting close to the trail and turned around and went home and decided to drown my sorrows for missing out on a perfectly good day of riding. This is what I should have looked like, all happy and intoxicated (from riding).


But this is what I ended up looking like.


Since Saturday was a waste of a good day to ride I was determined to ride Sunday, and I woke up early and hit up my favorite local trail (mostly because they sell beer there) at the Whitewater Center. I did take some pictures of the new bridges on the figure 8 loop, but I formated my computer last week and some reason my SD card reader isn't working. (EDIT, found the driver I needed, here are the pics)


I don't feel like messing around with it right now so just believe me that the bridges are there and they defiantly help with the water run off problem.

I think that about wraps it up for rides this week, only 10 miles on the trail, but about 30 on the road. Not to shabby, but looking forward to staying in shape for the winter short track series in 2 months. Maybe I won't come in last place in the races this year.

Stupid Rain

Yeah, I took today off. In retrospect I should have taken some more days off in the summer, but I was looking at my calandar and haven't taken a day off since August. My sanity at work has about had it and I could use a 3 day weekend, just like most folks.

I took it off with the intetntions of going riding today but with the rain the past couple of days the trails arnt going to be open today but hopefully tomorrow. Oh well I am sure I can find something to do today. But probably not.

I ended up going with a roadie friend of mine last night to the Race Across the Sky movie. How much fun can a normal person have watching a mountain bike race movie? A lot actually. The race was more of the side-plot with who wins and what time and all of that competitive stuff. What a normal person would get out of it is that like most events like this, it is a competition of the human spirit against themselves, to push themselves to limits in which they normally wouldn't have.

People were riding for a purpose, to support their friends and family in their fight against cancer, to show themselves that even though they have MS they can still ride this brutal race for 7 years in a row, to do it while being blind, and even the people who just want to expand their horizons and push their own limits.

Oh and movie spoiler, Levi won, but you probably knew that. It made me want to go out and ride, but it doesn't really take much to make me want to ride so that might be an over statement. But it does really make me want to do this next year.
Burn 24. Thats right, a 24 hour race. It should be a good time, at least thats what people who suffered through it before tell me.

I think I have spent to much time on this post on my day off, so we will see what this weekend brings. Hopefully the trails dry up to have some riding fun. Enjoy this weekend. Bye everybody

Don't Call me a Sell Out

Yeah, I finally took the plunge....and got me a road bike. (Thought you were going to say 29er huh?) I am not going to drink that Kool-aid. I ended up getting one online at Bikesdirect.com. Although I am on the Southpark Cycles team the quality of bikes there is just a little bit out of my budget for a road/commuter bike. I spend my money there on mountain bike parts.

It didn't take long to put it together, just as advertised.


Put a few more pieces in the right place..


And here it goes. Nothing was tightend yet, just wanted to see how it would look in the back of the garage.


And the final photo after everything was put together


I had an extra set of crankskins

You can never have to much camo on a bike. And thanks to The Mutt for an extra set of SPD's to put on it

I took it for a spin around Ikea and didn't have any problems.
And then today started my "training" for the winter short track series. Not that I really expect to win, but not to come in last every race would be a nice change of pace. Any races under the 2 hr mark I just cant seem to get going fast enough fast enough (say that 3 times fast) to come close to the top of the ranks.

Today I rode to work, a nice casual 3 mile ride. I then took a few hours off the bike to help some customers, and then decided to run some hills in the business park. A 45 minute 9 mile ride at lunch and then back to work.

The part that sucks about riding to work, is always riding home, and after the hill sprints in which I did my legs were burning for the ride home.

Well that was all biking related that happened this weekend. But I do have some good pictures from Halloween, maybe that will be tomorrow.