This is Precisely How I Feel...

...when I am riding some really sweet singletrack.  Click on the picture and look at the expression on that kid's face.  At the moment this picture was taken, he was in another world altogether. Totally.

I saw this postcard in a tacky little gift shop in Saratoga last year. It spoke to me so I bought it and shoved it in my pocket (hence the crease). Now it is taped to my dresser mirror so that I see it every day.

Now you can see it too.

Chris

Honeymoon

Honeymoon Buster

Lately I've been exclusively riding my 26" geared HT in order to work out the kinks (I just built the bike up with garage spares) and to save my favorite ride (the Rig) from the muddy trails. It's been a great diversion - the 26er is nimble and the gears help make up for my poor (winter) conditioning.

But yesterday I couldn't resist. The Rig called out to me, so for the first time on months I saddled her up...and it felt soooo good. The last few months of small wheels, cheap frame, and gears had left me in a dark place and now everything was right again.

Halfway through the Bonus Loop the honeymoon was in full swing when the rear brake started making some really unnatural sounds. Not honeymoon types of unnatural sounds, but fingernails on chalkboard types of unnatural sounds.

I pulled off the rear wheel and discovered the spring-doo-hickey that separates the brake pads had somehow gotten mangled, and it was rubbing between the pad and rotor. Diagnosis complete but what to do besides take a picture? I tried to bend back into shape but the spring metal was not co-operating, so eventually I just twisted off the mangled portion, reassembled, and just like that the honeymoon was back on.

Looking forward to more honeymoon in the near future. That nasty little distraction is behind me now.

Chris

"29 and single"
  -- On a t-shirt I saw once

Mud and Hope on the Bonus Loop

Mud and Hope on the Bonus Loop

We're in it now. The depths of mid-winter despair. Months of rainy overcast days, cold moonless nights, sloppy muddy trails. We are wallowing in the trough of disillusionment.

Presumably it can only get better, because it can't get any worse. And yesterday, maybe just maybe, we started the long climb out.

Oh it was overcast. And cold. And God awful sloppy muddy. But the 4:00 Friday meeting got cancelled and I found two other depressed mountain bikers with cancelled Friday meetings who were eager self-medicate. Medicate the soul with an evening ride, and medicate the liver with a couple of Blues. It was our first Bonus Loop Happy Hour in three months. We even found a couple of runners on the trail and roped them into our self-medicating madness.

No doubt there is more mud and disillusionment coming our way, but when there are Blues on the Bonus Loop there is always hope.

Chris

"Keep riding, Nancy. It's just water and dirt." 
     - Huck And Roll