infinitely sustainable pace

This weekend I went to the dump with a subaru full of trash, returned a subaru’s worth of $31 in cans and bottles, disposed of icky mouse carcasses, put the lawnmower to bed for the winter, cleaned the garage, lifted heavy things, then sat on the couch and had a beer. who really needs a man anyway?

Unfortunately I didn’t make it up to the kingdom for the CircumBurke. I know, after all that. I’m pretty disappointed with myself as well. But instead I had the chance to catch up and go for a ride with a friend that I never get to ride with, and that in itself was worth missing the CB. We rode for a couple of hours up in Sterling Valley and I didn’t crash once, not even on the slick-as-snot bridges.  Enjoyed the WTB Bronsons on the Superfly 100 at about 20 psi, they made the wet leaves and soft trail totally a non-issue.

Best of all, I didn’t really go near my laptop all weekend. Now to catch up on all the office work I should have been doing over the weekend…

Nothing like a surprise sunshiney, 65 degree road ride to fix your attitude problem. I snuck out at lunch yesterday in a foul, angry mood and ready to take it out on some unsuspecting pavement. Three miles into the ride i had to stop and take my jacket off. Another couple of miles and I was having trouble focusing on why I was so pissed off, it was that nice outside. Of course once I returned to my office the sky got black and it started raining again.

Commuted into the office this morning with the Route 100 Commuter Club, all two of us. Took the backroad from the Village and I had my geared cross bike. Opted for the tires with a little bit of knob and 55psi for the dirt road descents as opposed to no knob and 90 psi on the road bike. All that was a good choice, however the gearing is a lot stiffer and I realized that I got soft over the past month. Welcome to Softober!

Steel gray sky today, hoping the rain holds off until after my ride back to the village. Looking forward to this weekend, it has potential to be a nice change of pace.

Late fall climb up to the Trout Club. Such a nice little ride from the office, just about an hour twenty there and back, plus or minus.Think I have one of these photos for every season, from every year.

Nebraska Valley is quite pretty. No cars. Not many people.

Work is crazy, I didn’t see any possibility of riding, but I made myself go anyway. The work will get done regardless of whether or not I take an hour to take care of myself.

When I flatted on Sunday we found that my tires had a non-optimal amount of Stan’s left, and what was there looked much like the floodwaters of Hurricane Irene, not like happy tire spooge. They were also Kenda Karmas, pretty good tires in almost every condition (and a great price too) but maybe not as knobby as one might want in late October in VT. In expectation that this weekend I will be riding around Burke Mountain and that it will likely be muddy, damp, wet, slick, rooty, and in general what they call, rugged — it seemed prudent to select a beefier tire for the task.

If it was possible, the Continental Mountain King 2.4 would be my tire of choice for this sort of thing. At least I think so. They’ve totally revamped the tire for 2011, so much so that the 29″ version has yet to become available. The new X-King would also be top of my list, but again, not available in 29 yet. So, I had to find something else. I turned my nose up at the Nevegals, they seemed too brutish and far too obvious. The used tire shelf was looking pretty bare since the summer-long yard sale, but I did find a pair of WTB Bronsons. George expressed distaste with them, but since we seem to have consistently opposite tastes in tires that sealed the deal and on they’re going.

They’re only 2.2, but high volume and significant side knob. The web copy sounds promising enough:

The Bronson 29er tire from WTB is a fast rolling, high volume tire. The open tread pattern penetrates loose, wet surfaces for traction in less than perfect trail conditions. This tire features a lean, friendly profile with tons of grip.

I’m all about “friendly profiles” and it’s like I wrote the copy just for this coming weekend. I’ll let you know how they go.

SSUSA 2012 ladies belt

In other big news. I’ve mentioned before that SSUSA2012 is in VT. Welp, the date is set. Plan on coming to VT to ride bikes, drink beer, and make lots of awesome, new singlespeed friends on the weekend of July 28, 2012. There are a lot of details that we still need to nail down, but likely it’ll be here in the Stowe area. The course will be epic and fun. You should like the facebook page and follow @singlespeedusa on twitter and then go schedule yourself out of work for a long weekend in beautiful Vermont. I promise that all the organizational work will be done in advance so I’ll have plenty of time for hanging out and riding with all of the out-of-towners.

Here’s the river crossing from my sunday ride. The water was just up to my knees and pretty darn cold. Luckily there’s a long, painful climb to warm up the feet afterwards. Surprisingly I didn’t get that cold.

Here the singletrack begins. As you can imagine, route finding at this time of year can be tricky. As it had been several years since I was back there I really had to work the brain to remember the layout of the trail and stay on track.

The results from my sunday ride included sore abs, multiple bruises, and sore groin. Sigh. The general soreness was to be expected as I hadn’t been on my mountain bike in a while and hadn’t had a two hour ride in quite a few weeks. The bruises are just the way it goes, but I really didn’t need to exacerbate the groin injury again. My plan is to back off the mountain bike for the week in hopes that I feel good to ride the 20ish miles of the Circumburke this weekend at a nice leisurely pace.

Road bike on the roof of the car to reward me for when I finally finish these press releases I’ve been procrastinating.

Friday was the day I was waiting for. I had the last appointment of the day at Dr. Steelthumbs and I was eager for him to give me the thumbs up to get back on the mountain bike. Not so eager for the groin torture that would surely accompany my visit, but willing to put up with it if it meant that I could get back into the woods.

Everyone was in agreement that things were improving. While at four weeks post-trauma I’ve still got an impressive lump and some pain, it’s decidedly less than the week prior. I have no idea if these visits are actually helping my hematoma, what I do know is that I’ve got an awesome chiropractic benefit with my health plan and since it’s probably the only awesome thing about that plan I’m determined to use it.

He cleared me for gentle mountain biking. Gears, full suspension, and nothing too rugged with lots of bumps or drops. And definitely no crashing. Remember that for later.

After my groin torture (that should be good for some interesting search engine results…) Tab and I headed into Burlington. After a month of single-moming at home every night, I hate to waste any chance to actually go somewhere not-my-house and do something not-in-front-of-my-computer. Tab and I grabbed a burger at the Bluebird Tavern (good!) and headed to Higher Ground to see Rich Robinson. Rich and his brother founded the Black Crowes. Now, I knew that Tab was a fan of the Black Crowes, but before Friday night I didn’t quite understand exactly what that meant and how much of her fandom was directed at Rich in particular. He was good. A little bit jam band, a little bit blues, a little bit rock, a little bit singer-songwriter. Can’t complain about a night of good live music.

"Warning! Kids throing spike balls at gown ups."

Saturday was damp, windy and filled with chores. I went to a party with a bunch of people that I know from waaaaaay back in the day, who I hadn’t seen in a long time. K came along and as the oldest kid there he eagerly held court as the ring leader. He penned the sign above, translated for those of you not accustomed to reading the handwriting of 8 year olds.

riding the Wall

Sunday, finally getting back on the mountain bike and feeling pretty good — in other words, not in pain before the start of the ride. Rode from Stowe to the Wall. Almost 1/2 way through the Wall my front tire started washing out, it was way low on air. No problem. Except I didn’t have a chuck for my CO2. Turned around and headed back toward the trailhead in an attempt to limp back to the car 3-4 miles away. No dice. Luckily George was just heading out of his place and met me at the trailhead and very kindly (and quickly) got me sorted out and rolling again. While I’m capable of dealing with a flat, it would have easily taken me 3-4 times longer than it took him.

climbing

Instead of heading back through the Wall, I went down the hill over to the Connector for a little SSUSA trail recon. Wet feet river crossing to long, steep climb to singletrack. They’ve done some logging back there recently and with the leaves mostly off the trees there were some nice views. Also, some hidden slick rocks.

hard to see the slick rock under the leaves

Crashed. Over the bars, luckily it was a slow, gentle sort of crash. But I still felt it in the groin that I was not supposed to be crashing on. Damnit. Extra, super careful for the rest of the descent. Finished with pizza and beer. Felt good to be on the mountain bike, but still a bit tentative. Think I’ll continue to focus on road and dirt road while continuing to heal. I want to be outside, but I also want to get better.

Meanwhile, a beautiful back road ride into work Wednesday morning. The back way is much more rigorous than the highway, but prettier.

Took this photo, then 2 minutes later my chain dropped while I was shifting into the little ring and proceeded to get hopelessly stuck. There’s not a lot of room between the carbon and the chainring and nothing was moving. Trek put a metal plate in there, presumably to protect the frame from the chain should it drop, but it takes up space and probably makes it more difficult to unsuck the chain. Anyway, five minutes of careful chain wrestling and I finally got it back under control.

The back way is an extra 15-20 minutes ride. Totally worth it. Dropping into Stowe via a different direction. Shout outs from friends passed along the way. It’s a great way to start the day.

Speaking of things that seem pretty cool. While I was down at VT50 I met the folks that are putting on the CircumBurke Challenge. It’s a 20 something mile ride around Burke Mountain to Victory and back. It’s not the Kingdom Trails that everyone knows, it’s totally different rough and rugged terrain. The event honors Dave Blumenthal, a customer of the shop, who was killed while riding the Tour Divide last year. It’s likely to be classic late fall VT weather – grey, gloomy, and damp. The route is likely to be muddy and gross. But it sounds like a cool adventure into the backwoods.

I’ll be there. Riding it if I get the green light from my doc or just volunteering with registration if I’m not cleared for mountaing biking yet. Yep, the groin is still messed up. Getting better, less pain this week. We’ll see what Dr. Steelthumbs thinks tomorrow afternoon.

Big sigh.

Was inspired to get off the main drag last night and take the long way home.

Helped that the main drag is currently, and inexplicably, being repaved. In the middle of fall foliage season. There was quite an impressive traffic jam last night. One that I smugly rode right past.

To keep it spicy, I climbed Dewey Hill and Stowe Hollow burdened with my laptop in my pack. My goal was to catch the sun dropping behind the mountains from the top of Barnes Hill — I was too late. It was still beautiful up there. What a difference it is between the hubub of 100 and the peaceful quiet of the back roads. This morning will likely be the last bike commute for a while, the rain is supposed to start back up again.

Let’s not forget, today is a very important day. Happy 8th birthday to Keiran! Couldn’t ask for a more creative, exuberent, intelligent kid. Looking forward to another awesome year. His favorite, tacos, for dinner tonight.

Finally, after a couple of nice frosts, the leaves are in good color. Scarlet reds, brilliant oranges and gold across the hillside. I missed out on the beautiful indian summer weekend, but mother nature was kind enough to extend it another day or two into the week. 72 degrees in Stowe yesterday afternoon, like a summer afternoon.

After work I grabbed my bike and rode home, with a stop along the way at a secluded spot at the Waterbury Reservoir for one last swim. The water was brisk, but not colder than swimming Maine on a summer’s day and you get used to it. Totally awesome to be swimming in VT on October 10 surrounded by red and gold mountains.

After my swim and a quick stop at home, I headed down to the village for ladies night at the new wine bar. Crazy, doesn’t feel like Waterbury in there. It’s far more stylish, urban, and pulled together than any other place in town, but yet it’s still comfortable. At first I didn’t know what to think of a wine bar in our somewhat redneck town, but I think they’ll do fine.

Here are a couple of links for you:

Surly’s account of their SSWC Ireland trip. Nice.

Bicycling Magazine lays out the top trails in VT. Clicking through the trails makes me itchy to ride some of them that I don’t know yet, but not sure if I’ll be back on the mountain bike before the snow flies.

Put away the bike for the weekend and headed down to PA to celebrate K’s upcoming 8th birthday with my parents.

It’s not a short drive to PA, but my road trip companions were up for the challenge. We got down there close to midnight on Friday night.

We took K’s 2nd cousins out for an afternoon of corn-mazing, mini-golf, and little boy-ness.  K’s in the middle of the three boys age-wise, it’s always fun to see how the cousins pick right up where they left off even though they only see each other a couple of times a year.

Caught up with my Grandmother, brought her a few little boxes of wine (unobtainable in PA) to help perk up her days in the senior apartment complex. She’s been having a hard time since her husband passed away a couple of years ago, so if a little bit of conveniently packaged booze helps her out – i’m happy to provide.

Picked up some conveniently packaged booze for myself while I was down there. The weather was spectacular, warm and sunny. Once again I got to wear my late September summer shoe purchase.

It was a little sad to not ride bikes all weekend. Seeing everyone’s FB updates on their amazing Indian Summer rides was hard, but I enjoyed the family time and since my groin still hurts, it’s probably the best thing.