infinitely sustainable pace

Froze my toes off this weekend to get an outside ride. The fisti has a rear flat and I haven’t yet gotten it together to figure out if I have the right tools at home to change it. So I rode my geared cross bike, which made me feel bad as I was called out over the weekend for not riding singlespeed anymore. What can I say? At least I’m riding something…

There were some cookies. These were a reward for K managing to pull it together and not get sent home from school the last three days of the week. Yes, that means he was sent home the first two days for being a jerk. On the plus side, he was not a jerk on the last three days. He was into the cookies, “chocolate and peanut butter are a perfect combination” and he called Saturday, “one of the most memorable days in a long time.” Awesome, kid. Now stop being such a PITA in school.

The sun shone. Two months ago I went swimming here, now ice clings to the shoreline. I miss summer.

Aaron and Tab brought over wine called ‘Menage a Trois’. I questioned their motives. Then we watched Spinal Tap because Aaron had never seen it. Ever. For real. Talk about sad. He’s also never seen Supertroopers. They’ve promised to bring over more wine with sexually explicit titles next week so we can continue to catch Aaron up with pop culture.

It’s like a country song. I’ve been here before. I’ll get out of it eventually.

This is what trainer time looks like chez moi. The boy sets up some sort of crazy battle station out of cardboard blocks and keeps me company by imagining epic sieges. Invariably, everything gets destroyed in a massive pretend firefight and blocks and star wars guys all go flying around the basement.

The trainer is not so bad. It’s worth it to get to AZ in February with a smidge of fitness, it fits into my schedule and it certainly beats getting frostbite on my poor feet. An hour or two on the thing is totally attainable without that much suffering. Having the road bike this year, instead of the cross bike, means that the gearing is better suited to the activity. Namrita has put together a schedule for me, and it feels good to be starting to build some sort of base for all the fun that will happen in 2012.

Also been thinking about my core strength. The groin injury also affected my core and I can’t just bang out a few minutes of planks and expect everything to be happy. More like a couple of 30 second planks and then expect the next day to feel like I got punched in the gut. Slowly it will come back, surely.

Looking forward to a weekend of doing nothing special at all. Sounds perfectly boring. Maybe I’ll clean up my house, get a little work done, ride the trainer or maybe even ride outside a little bit. Or not.

I went to Toronto to meet with my Canadian colleagues. It snowed. I had a lot of meetings and ate some good Indian food. Then I went home.

It wasn’t easy to get there from here. Crappy weather made for some crappy travel. Canceled flights, delays, runway sitting, more delays. It brought me back to the travel drama I had at the beginning of this year.

xmas shopping while sitting on the runway

Thankfully, it’s the end of the year. This was my final trip for 2011. Tell you what, I’m ready to stay in one place for the next four weeks. I’m tired. I’m still fat from the thanksgiving pies. And I’m cool to just hang out for a little while and maybe go through that pile of mail or put the laundry away. January looks like it’s going to be a wild month, so better rest up while I can.

Cabin disco ball

This summer I spent a lot of time riding with my friend Aaron. On our rides in Waitsfield and Waterbury we talked about all kinds of stuff. He was going through a bunch of personal stuff and change in living situation, in his case getting back to his own place that he was building. He kept promising that as soon as his house was ready, we would have a mudslide, wood stove and disco ball night. That night finally came.

The sympbolic Phoenix of Waterbury

This weekend was the River of Light parade, organized by the art teacher at the elementary school. The kids made lanterns to carry and artists collaborated on large, elaborate lanterns and everyone marched through the town to the sounds of Sambutacada. I walked with Keiran and a lot of friends. There were spectators lining the streets and it just seemed great to see the town alive again, even for just one night.

From the trenches of the parade

Dragon lantern

Heading out of town for a couple of days for work. This should be the last one until the new year. Believe it or not, I’m ready to stay in one place for a few weeks.

November 30 in Town Loops

Now it’s December. Mother Nature decided to finally ‘act her age’ and is presenting us with some seasonally appropriate temperatures. Maybe yesterday was the end, maybe there’ll be a few more days of cold trail riding before it’s shut down. It doesn’t really matter, but I’m happy to look back at November and know that I have yet to ride the trainer.

Thoughts are turning away from the structureless laziness off Softober and towards getting in shape for SSAZ in early February. In the meanwhiles, I just discovered this. Kinda a good anthem for this year.

The Mountain Goats “This Year” from A Bruntel on Vimeo.

Warm out there. Sixty-one degrees. No time to ride during the day and no desire to hang out inside while the weather is so warm. For some reason I’m a bit freaked out about riding alone at night, so it took a bit of a personal push but I got out there. And it was dark.

Dark and windy.

Flatted after I climbed 2/3 of the big hill on the ride. Since I wasn’t carrying anything remotely useful, I turned around and went back to my house and swapped bikes and reclimbed the hill. Once I got going it wasn’t nearly as creepy as I thought it would be. Dark, windy, but not cold. I had a spare light. Just in case…

No moon. Just a couple of stars peaked out through the clouds. From Valley View I got to see all the lights from the houses in the Center, all two dozen of them. Lots of Christmas lights out already, even on the houses far removed from neighbors — making some places just a little less dark.

Thanksgiving sucked. Not only did I oversleep and miss the annual thanksgiving bike ride organized by the local club, the entire day was far more sad and depressing than I imagined it would be this year. Even surrounded by my family, cousins, grandmas, etc, I just couldn’t get into the spirit of it. And if that was thanksgiving, I really don’t think I can bear Christmas.

Old Trexler roadbed

Thankfully the day eventually came to an end and Friday was a new day and a chance at redemption. Sunny and warm, I finally got out for my ride. The Trexler Nature Preserve is literally right around the corner and across the street from where my folks live, so I did a little ‘ride to the ride’ exploring to figure out the best way to put together a solid ride.

Poor covered bridge isn't doing so well...

First I rode over on back roads and private alleys, crossed the busy highway, and then rode over to the parking area and trail head via the closed covered bridge and the roads. This was a great warm up and delivered me to the trails ready to roll.

Dozer trail

Rolling, fast, smooth Schnecksville shale. They’ve made great progress on the trails since my spring trip. They’re still new and a bit raw, but a ton of fun. Several Sidewinder-esque sections and lots of great berms to play with. On the way home I ended up exploring some of the old roadbeds for an alternative route, much better than the road.

The barely used white trail

The ride was well worth it and since the weather forecast for Saturday was just as good if not better, I went back for a repeat. It’s so awesome that these trails are so close to the house, literally about 2-3 miles from the garage door. There are now several great options for riding in the Lehigh Valley, but the ride-to-the-ride option will always win out. From the Valley Mountain Bikers website, looks like they’ve got permission to really develop a big network of trails there and that’s exciting.

After my Saturday ride, K and I got back in the car and headed back to VT. There was much slack to pick up and mental gears to change to get ready for school and work on Monday.

Having found myself with some leftover vacation days, I opted to take all of Thanksgiving week off. K and I headed down to PA on Tuesday night, after what was probably the worst parent-teacher conference in the history of parent-teacher conferences. I mean really, when the Principal shows up at your conference it’s never a good thing.

After an awful drive south, we arrived at my parents over an hour past schedule in the middle of the night. The next morning was still rainy, and I wasn’t sure about my poorly formed plans to visit NYC to see the balloon inflation for the macy’s parade, but in the end the skies seemed to be clearing and we caught the Bieber bus into the big city for an adventure.

My little mountain boy has been to London, he’s been to Boston, he’s  even been to the thriving metropolis of Montpelier, but he hasn’t been to the Big Apple since he was a little baby of 4 months. As we approached the city via Newark, the scene outside the bus windows became more urban and K become more and more excited and interested in the whole process. By the time we arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal (can you get more authentic NYC?), he was very intrigued indeed.

We saw Times Square

We saw Rockefeller Center. We walked a lot. We ate food from a cart. This was suggested by multiple people via Facebook, which i thought was funny because we actually eat food from carts weekly in our little mountain village. Hot dogs, wood-fired pizza, burritos — all come from carts during the weekly farmers market.

The Met!

Armor, swords and guns were a big hit.

We walked through Central Park and managed to find all the hullabaloo with the balloon inflation. And it was cool. Crazy, but cool. We were right up front to see all the balloons at our own pace. If you ever have the chance, do this. It’s fun, it’s free, and it’s festive. After exiting, we had a bit of a hike until we found a little hole-in-the-wall for some pizza. One more trip through Time Square and then back to the squallor of Port Authority to queue up for the bus back to Allentown.

kool aid man balloon

It was a BIG day, but both of us enjoyed the city. Not sure I could ever live in a city like that again, but it is fun to visit.

Did you know that Nashville is on central time? I had no idea. Seems so east coast. And Chattanooga? EST. The time zone line goes right between them.

This was a fast rocknroll weekend bike trip to the land of country music and churches (as an aside, according to wikipedia, 82% of Tennesseeans identify themselves as Christian, 9% are non-religious. compare that to Vermont where 55% identify as Christian and 34% as non-religious). And the whole thing was nearly totally derailled when I discovered one missing spacer on the axle of my rear I9 hub. Try to find one of those in the middle of TN late on a Saturday afternoon. Just try.

Enter Nashville Bike Lounge. Totally saved my butt by calling in a favor and producing a wheel to borrow for the weekend. Love the cycling community, turns out we’re all really just one friend removed. They hooked me up, and if you find yourself in Nashville looking for a true bike shop, that’s where to go.

Food, hanging out with cousins, and Rock n Roll. Making good times and lots of smiles in Nashville on Saturday. Sunday — not quite so good. Woke up to pouring rain, pounding head, and food poisoning. Nothing like a violent vomit session to start off the day. It was a fog of unpleasantness, through which we somehow made the trip down to Chattanooga before I passed out again.

Not to let one rough day ruin the trip, Monday was a fresh, new opportunity and time for me to finally ride. Raccoon Mountain. Fun and fast trails on a warm, if a little grey and misty, morning. It’s been over 8 weeks since I rode a singlespeed mountain bike, since the great groin crash. Damn, I missed it. And I love riding my travel bike, the belt drive gearing was perfect and performing in that flawless, no-drama way it does. The trails were mapped, and signed and there were fantastic vistas filled with clouds. Oh, and it was 70 degrees. Loved it. Thanks Chattanooga, can’t wait to come back again with more time to hit more trails.

Time was ticking. Airplanes don’t wait. Time to head back to Nashville and return my loaner wheel and pack up the travel bike. This trip was fast and furious, but whet my appetite for more of the South. Can’t wait to get back again soon.

This was my lucky week. Not really. I’ve spent the past two days at home dealing with a terrible allergic reaction to some Aveda lotion. Nasty nasty. Watch out for that brand, though their branding has the ‘natural and pure’ thing going on, a little bit of time on google showed me that I wasn’t the only one to have a bad reaction.

Now I’m finally able to go back in the office, just enough time to wrap up some projects for the week before I take off on some more adventures. First up, putting the Caletti back in the box and heading down South for some singletrack. Next week is Thanksgiving already, looks like the weather might be fine to join the annual thanksgiving ride down in PA.

Leave you with a little trailer from a ski movie I saw earlier this week.

SOLITAIRE: A Backcountry Skiing, Snowboarding, and Telemark Film from Sweetgrass Productions on Vimeo.