Pages

Sunday, January 27, 2019

Riding instead of Hiking, either way it was cold

We gave a shout out to people that may have enjoyed a hike this morning with us, but when we showed up to Castlewood State Park, it was just the Beautiful Mrs K and I.  As luck would have it, we (surprise!) just happened to have our bikes and riding gear with us.  We didn't expect anyone to show up at 8am on a Sunday morning at 25 degrees.  Maybe on a warmer morning, at a later time we can get some people to enjoy the outdoors with us.
Not that riding was that enjoyable today.  It was cold and the wind was pretty strong.  My fingers were numb in a few minutes and I stopped once to warm them up.  Deanna didn't have her contacts in and her everyday glasses are not for riding mountain bikes so she was like Mr Magoo out there and had to stick to the easier stuff.  I climbed the big three hills (Ranger Station, Cardiac, and Lone Wolf) so it was a semi-successful ride anyway.  Just not long enough.

Thursday, January 24, 2019

Aluminum is supposed to be Recycled

There are so many great cliche's that I could use when talking about the original Shit Bike.  The shit bike is like:
-A bad penny that keeps turning up
-A cat with nine lives
-A dung beetle that repeats it's sisyphean behavior
-A comfy pair of sweats that you just can't throw away

Or, you could say it just keeps getting recycled.  It is aluminum, after all.  And gosh darn it, it's a loyal companion that never says no.  Since 2010 when I got it as a shiny, polished alloy Sette Razzo, it's been used and repurposed more times than I can count.  First it served as my only mountain bike.  Then it was relegated to cyclocross service.  Then back to mountain bike duty.  For quite some time it served as a bad weather road bike.  Then back to mountain biking.  However, a couple of years ago it found itself in an interesting niche as a gravel bike, and it's stayed in that capacity.  Kind of an odd gravel bike, but it works really well that way.

Now it's going to be the Beautiful Mrs K's gravel bike.  It's been modified, but it takes it like a champ and it literally costs NO money to swap pieces and parts to make it fit her.  It won't even get a new coat of spray paint because she says she likes the color.  Fair enough: we can ride off into the wild blue yonder together on our spray painted Shit Bikes.

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

A Box is a Box is a Box

Awesome is the word that comes to mind when I think of the scrap wood in the garage that went into building this box for plyometric work.  The beautiful Mrs K and I spent about 30 minutes with a circular saw, a drill, some deck screws, and a tape measure to create this hunk of awesome.

Sunday, January 20, 2019

Hiking at Chubb because it's Godawful Cold to be Riding

The beautiful Mrs K and I had work to do this morning, but after we finished we had time to be outdoors and to be active.  It was only 16 degrees.  We decided to go for a hike and chose Chubb Trail.  Right off the bat, we were surprised to see a small stream going gangbusters.  Most everything was frozen SOLID.
The lack of trees and the spotty snow really highlighted the hills and contours of the surrounding area.  We hiked up the Flint Quarry trail because the effort was sure to keep us warmer.
Not quite warmer, but taking the Flint Quarry Trail down to the traditional Chubb route was still fun.  And there were really interesting ice patches.  This would have been a pelvis breaker on a mountain bike.
And this is what you do when you get to the top of the mountain.  Just because.

Tim Versus Truck

 This is the truck.  It's an old Ford F350 diesel dually. 
 This is the part.
That little part is responsible for this big, industrial strength plow.  It's no joke, it's the same kind of plow that MODOT uses to plow the roads.  That little part failed over the summer and I replaced it with an inferior part....so it failed again during the first snow of the year.  I replaced it, you guessed it, with an inferior part.  And...it failed.
This time, I put the P-36 Anti-Gravitational Space Modulator in and it's going to take this old truck and that plow into the next century.

Monday, January 14, 2019

Stair Club - Viva Club d'Escalier !

The snow did a huge number on the stairs. It's Monday night, though, and that means Stair Club.  That meant the snow had to go.  The beautiful Mrs K and I came, we saw snow and ice, and we went to work.  Yes, that's 60 steps plus two landings as well as the entrances at top and bottom.  I shoveled, she swept.  She broke the broom.
We whipped the snow and ice.  It never had a chance.  We put our OCD heads together and got the job done so we could continue our streak of Stair Club appearances.
We are old and feeble and we could easily break a hip on slick stairs, so we took it down to about 90 percent.  Ah, I'm kidding.  We ran fast and took a selfie afterward.  Yes, that's a light on her stocking hat. Viva Club d'Escalier!

Blizzards in St. Louis - A little snow goes a long way

Snow in St. Louis is a disaster.  It doesn't matter how much.  Just a bit of snow turns out to be a disaster and it's been that way for my 51 years.  It started snowing with some fury Friday afternoon and got pretty bad by quitting time.  So instead of getting into the scrum, I hung out at the warehouse and did some snow shoveling.  More on that later.
It turns out that waiting around in the valley for the traffic to die down and the roads to clear was a mistake.  It just got worse.  If you've ever driven around in the valley, you know it's a valley...every road goes up and it's pandemonium when it snows.  So I hung around even longer.  I went to Walmart.  I ate at Panda, which was packed because so many places were closing because of the weather.  Finally, I went west and drove out to St. Charles, up north, and then down south to get home.  It was a move I should have  made hours earlier.  I only got stuck on my own street, 50 miles later.  My thoughtful neighbors and my family dug me out and I got the Focus into the driveway safely.  Whew.
The weekend was spent inside.  A lot of inside time.  Me and Mrs K cleaned the kitchen and I came across this beauty on top of the cabinets.  It weighs about 15 pounds.  I remember this day pretty well, it was an mtb race at Spanish Lake.  A little TLC and it looks good as new, which is really industrial.
After another trip out to the valley on Sunday to finish shoveling the snow at the warehouse, we did more housework.  A big thing was getting the Christmas tree down.  A very funny side story is the cramming of the tree into it's original box.  It's comical.  There ain't no way that thing is going to fit in this box.  But somehow, every year it goes back in.  Zip ties and duct tape hold it together.

Monday, January 07, 2019

Gate Practice Video - 2019

Boys and girls, don't use this as a how-to video.  There are way better ways to learn to get a kick ass gate start than to watch this old guy.  Rather, take solace in the fact that if you're in your teens, you've got decades of joy to do the things you love.

2019 - 40 years of Racing and Complaining about it

Mostly, this blog has been about a lot of things other than racing.  It's just a nice milestone to reach: 40 years since 1979, when I started racing bikes.  Day to day, there are a LOT of things that have nothing to do with bike racing.  Such as Rex here. This majestic looking mutt loves the outdoors and absolutely loved hiking Greensfelder with Deanna yesterday.
Tyson is NOT a car mechanic.  But he's not afraid to get his hands dirty and he changed an outer tie rod end.  Even the best mechanics start somewhere.
There are times where improvisation works.  On the day that Eli lost his jersey and had a game to play, duct tape was precisely the improvisation we needed.  They won the game, too.
I wish this was the only time I was up on a ladder this past weekend.  Hanging pictures on an 8 foot ladder was child's play in comparison to hefting a 27 foot ladder up to the gutters of my house.  Mrs K and I were struggling with that one.  There are NO photos of that, thank god.
 I just put this picture of Hanna up here because.
 The beautiful Mrs K and I.
 Gate practice with the boys in Lake St. Louis.  These old dudes are good.

And just because.