Fall Ride

Here are a few shots from my ride today, which was a two hour and forty-five minute slog fest through the northeast part of Clark County. I guess saying that makes it sound like I did not enjoy the ride, but really it was nice to just go out and ride for a long time without any real aims (I have felt like I have been focusing too much lately on training, etc). I rode out past Charlestown on State Road 62 and then turned off onto Bull Creek Rd. The first picture is of a harvested corn field there on Bull Creek, just before dives down to the river, which meant a twisty downhill and a long, steep uphill to get back to the upland. I then rode through Hiberia, a small, old farm settlement. The second picture is of a small canyon that is on the roade into Hiberia. After stopping at the little country store there is get something to drink, I continued on my way up to New Market, which is another old settlement that has a few houses till, one church, an abandoned church and general store, and an old school. For some reason, New Market is one of my favorite places in the area. After that I headed back to Charlestown along some of the winding, roll-coaster like roads that we have here in Clark County.

Cyclocross & Beer

So, some people here in the Louisville area have started to have some impromtu cyclocross races on Thursdays, called the Thursday Night Throwdown. The one this Thursday was the first one that I heard about and since it was over here in Indiana, I figured what the heck, go give it a try. The whole idea of them is to go have some fun riding and then enjoy a few cold beers afterwards or actually during the race too. There is the "Beer Lap" which was the third to last lap of the race and if you stopped and drank a beer you got only had to do one more lap, but if not, you had to do two more. It might sound kind of lame, but actually it was a lot of fun, far more relaxed than "real" racing, kind of more like a pick-up soft ball game.

So, here is the beer, there are a few guys who did the A race partaking in the "Beer Lap" and then a couple of shots of the fancy cross bikes that people had there. The last shot is of some brakes that look more like jewelery than bike equipment.

Family and Friends

This weekend, Mom, Dad, Britta, and Matt came down to visit Kate and I. They got here on Friday, and we just hungout that night. Saturday was full of running errands and sight seeing. We got doughnuts and coffee in the morning, walked around Cave Hill Cemetery (got to see Colonel Sanders grave). We capped the day off with going out for a birthday/anniversay dinner to the Charlestown Pizza Company with our friends, Cat and Charlton (if the picture of Cat is a little fuzzy, its cause we all had a little bit of beer by then). Mom, Dad, B and Matt left this morning after a nice pancake breakfast to send them on their way.

As for the pictures, the first one is just a late fall corn field that I took on my lunch break last week. Dad is teaching B the better points of beer (not that she needs to know that information for at least another year). And then Cat finding that she actually does like beer.

Next Up - Getting my Picture on the cover Rolling Stone

Hey, I am now famous. Yeah, that is right, I am on YouTube (albeit a little fuzzy looking). Someone posted a video of various crashes from the race yesterday (actually all of them were at the first set of barriers) and I made the highlight reel - No, not one of my crashes, but I am the guy who carries someone elses bike over the barriers.

What my bike needs is more gold...

I'm looking forward to the next Lug Bros. family reunion in Tokyo, since I know now where to find cool bikes in abundance. Here are a few parts that I think would look sharp on my Buddi!

First Cyclocross Race

Today was the first cyclocross race of the season in Louisville. The race was at a new location, a county park in the far southeast corner of Jefferson County, called Fisherman's Park. The first picture is of the one paved section of the course. The course was far from my liking, as it was extremely bumpy and much more suited I thought to a mountain bike race than a cyclocross one, with lots of off-camber corners, tight switchbacks, and basically no road sections that would have worked to my strengths.

I decided to do the category 4 (lowest level) race as this was my first race of the season and I was not sure on my fitness and ability (I have only ridden my cross bike twice so far this year). There were probably about 4o people in my race, and like all cyclocross races, at the start we all rocketed off trying to get the hole-shot at the first corner. I was probably in around 12th place at this time and was able to move up a few spots before the first really tight 180-degree turn. However at this point everthing just kind of collapsed in on itself and the whole field came to a complete standstill while people made their way around the corner. Once around the corner, I started to try and move up in the field and that was pretty much the story for the rest of the race, me trying to catch as many people as I could.

I did wipe out twice in the race, the first time at the barriers, which was on an off-camber hill and placed at a 90-degree turn into a hill run-up (in other words a really difficult location, and another poor decision in course design in my opinion). The other time I bit the dust was on a turn where my front wheel just slid out from under me and I went down pretty hard. It twisted my stem about 30 degrees out of wack, and so I had to quickly try to straighten it out. I was not able to get it back to its exact position and so I finished the race with my handlebars at a slightly off-center angle, which made steering kind of difficult. At this point I had two other racers catching up to me, one passed me on the backside of the course, and the other drafted off of me til we had about a hal-mile to go, at which point he passed me at another dismount. I was able stay with him till the final hill when I put in a sprint that dropped him, but I was not able to catch the first guy that passed me. That sprint really took a lot more out of me than I thought it would, because as soon as I crossed the finish line I looked for the nearest place to drop my bike and lie down. For a second or two I felt like I was about to pass out, but luckily I didn't. I did not stick around for results, but I think that I ended up in the top ten, which was a decent result.

Kabuki & Bikes?

Um, not really sure what to make of this website I just found for some aftermarket XTR parts from Shimano. The parts are nice and shiny, but the website is great on its own, never thought of Kabuki inspiring bike parts.

http://www.shimano-yumeya.com/