wait a sec...

....what do you mean we have to move?

oh i love this bike

after a fitfull night of sleep, and an early wake-up call by king elijah (and his explosive poop), i made my way out to chubb again. for whatever reason, i've got a chubb itch to scratch.

today i did a couple loops of the flintquarry/tyson side, counterclockwise. it was a blast to do this section with the rush. i'm having so much fun right now! i definately have the man/machine syncronization thing going.

(did you know that the decals on this bike glow in the dark?? it's true.)

memorial day

my dad was a navy man during world war II. he worked on a ship, of course. his job was radio man. nothing glamorous like a gunner, i suppose. but the navy needed radio men, too.

he never liked to tell stories about the war. as kids, my brother and i were always so hungry to hear about real live bullets and guns and war planes and stuff, but he very rarely indulged us with any of that stuff. actually, he very rarely indulged us with speaking, at all. he was a quiet guy, until he got angry, and even then it was short and to the point.

on one occasion, he did tell us a story. apparently, the seas were really heavy one day, and the giant waves would take the ships in his convoy up and down, out of sight. one of the war ships in the convoy, the one closest to his, would go in and out of his view with each monster wave. at last, when his ship was low and the war ship was high, he and his crew members saw that the side of the ship had been completely removed. the big, floating city had been hit by a torpedo and had been blown nearly completely apart.

that story didn't scare me when i was young. i thought that it would've been a better story had my dad actually been IN the ship that was hit. and, he told the story with no real emotion, with very little discription, as was his way. he didn't sound scared, why would it scare me?

it scares me a lot more now, thinking about it with a more mature mind. the idea of his countrymen, the poor souls on the other ship, who weren't going to make it. the idea that it could've just as easily been his own ship.

there are a lot of military grave yards out there. in each and every one of them are people who experienced the same things my dad did, and worse. a lot of those people never told a lot of other scary stories, either. stories most of us really didn't want to hear anyway, but should have.

chubb trail and natural selection

"there are no stupid questions, just stupid people"...mr. garrison, shown here with mr. hat.

ah, the chubb trail. so familiar, yet still so fun. the trail continually evolves and changes, so even if you know the basic route like the back of your hand, the surface is always a surpise.

i was finally able to get the brakes bled properly on the rush, making it trailworthy. what a fun bike. actually, it is the most fun mountain bike i have ever had. if it were a pound and a half lighter, it would be the best one, too. i'm working on that.

so i loaded up the rush and set out to ride chubb this morning. the trail was superbe, no mud whatsoever and a grippy surface. i was sweating like a fat man in a sauna, though. good lawd it was humid.

as i approached the rock garden along the meramec, i was presented with a sight that i have never before witnessed. sort of like a woman in a wheelchair driving the wrong way in freeway rush hour traffic, but worse. there was a couple, a man and a woman, on department store mountain bikes, no helmets, struggling along the rocks, with child carriers on the backs of the bikes, WITH CHILDREN IN THEM. yes, you know the kind. the old kind. the child carriers that sit on the back of the bike, like top-heavy little racks, holding the child high above the ground so that, when the parent crashes, the child crashes harder. the kids did have helmets on, which didn't seem to matter much to one, which was screaming bloody murder as dad pounded over the rocks and her head bashed back and forth with each hit.

these people were not experienced mountain bikers. they didn't have good bikes. and they were on one of the more technical parts of one of the most technical trails we have in our area. i guess, whatever your beliefs are, that most would agree that natural selection is alive and well, and will dictate whether or not kids like these will reach adulthood. it's sad that the kids themselves will not be making the decision.

on a brighter note, besides feeling like poop, i had a lot of fun riding. i stopped at the west tyson side on two occasions to rinse off at the pump, which helped with the heat. more hikers than bikers today, for sure, but i did run into cw as i was exiting. he was just getting started.

tropical turquoise

this is not a picture of the '65 mustang i owned. all my pics are printed, no digital. but, it is the same oddball color. tropical turquoise. it was a rare, 1965-only color. i'm pretty sure i know why it was rare....

the car was a bit unique for a number of reasons. first, the color. second, it was a 289 4bbl v-8. third, it was a manual 4-speed. fourth, it had white vinyl interior. none of these things alone made it rare, but the combination of all four did. i bought it in the spring of 1987 for $2400. the body was exceptional and it ran well. the interior was perfect.

i wasn't as mechanically confident as i am now, so when i got it home i was disappointed. once the car warmed up, there was tons of axle hop. (i now know that the crappy air-shocks that were on the car to make it ride level instead of low-rider-ass-down position were mostly to blame) it overheated a couple of times in heavy traffic. and, it fell on it's face at high rpm's. today, i would be positively giddy at the prospect of tearing into something so simple as a '65 mustang. even then i remember looking under the hood and marveling at how little there was. the engines in my modern mustangs seem like rocket science in comparison.

the "classic" cars that i have owned:

1965 mustang coupe
1966 mustang coupe (6cyl 3spd, very cool dark blue. slow.)
1968 torino (302 v8, swapped in a 351)

the beautiful mrs. and i would love to have a classic car of some kind to drive around with the kids on sunny days. right now, we don't have the time to waste in the garage with a project car, so it will have to wait a few years. i'm not sure it will be a mustang, though. for the most part, they aren't that satisfying to drive in the early models, at least. and she frowns on the 71-73's that i like. we both like some of the pontiacs and buicks, and even some cheby's. but, that would mean removing myself from the comfort zone of ford. there are thunderbirds and fairlanes, as well as '60's ltd's that we like, too, so i may be able to avoid gm for our classic car fix.

the only real requirement is that it be a good looking car with a v8.

dreamin', that's all.

this thing is soooo cool

bronco concept. i really hope they make this thing and ford doesn't dumb it down. really makes you forget all about o.j., doesn't it?

me and my dog

look, i caught a ferocious, man-eating beast!

camera shy

are you going to take my picture?
listen, i just woke up. take that thing outta here. seriously, i'm not kidding! i haven't had my morning formula and my hair is all over my head. and quit using that flash!!

busy weekend

i heard something funny on a sitcom this week. something about being cuter than a duck with a hat on. i really cracked up. it just struck a chord with me. when looking for a really funny image of a duck with a hat on, i came up with this one. not as funny as i thought.

we're going to have guests from out of town this weekend. my sister and her husband are going to stay with us. i told them they could use elijah's bedroom, but under no circumstances are they to sleep in his crib. out of the question.

hanna has been staying with us this week. three kids in the house is sort of like a herd of elephants chasing their tails. hanna changes clothes every hour or so. then she changes back. laundry is a dirty, dirty word here in our household. when someone mentions laundry, i feel like curly and the words 'niagra falls'....slowly i turned, step by step, inch by inch...

the rush is 90% finished. i have to hook a longer brakeline up for the rear brake and i'm set. woo hoo, that thing is going to be fun!

elijah has decided that crying is much more important than anything else. so he does it all the time. i wonder when it is a person finally decides that crying, although quite fun, isn't as fun as doing something else, say, eating, sleeping, laughing, playing, etc? i for one, would like this to be learned quite quickly. perhaps today. tomorrow would be good, too.

tuesday night worlds

yuck!

hard race at matson

i knew matson was going to be a hard mtn bike race, but daaaaaaaaaaaaaammmn. it was tough. my lungs are still burning from that crazy gravel road leadout. i thought i was going to slow to a complete stop before the top. plochmeister pretty much waved bye-bye at the base, and i thought i was clear once we hit the asphalt road at the top, but not really. i did hit the single track in 2nd, though.

i fought off the charge of whacko's behind me while i was hacking up peices of lung and other vital organ tissue. the first half-lap at matson is down-ish hill, so of course i wasn't going to get too far away. but what goes down has to go up, right? once the course turned upward, in it's grueling, twisting, unrelenting way, i went clear of the pack. i fought pretty hard, but plochmeister still put 5 minutes into my aging, wrinkling, coughing body. i ended up 1:30 ahead of second and third. i even enjoyed the course by the end, and being 1/2 lighter by the end from ejecting flegm is an added bonus, i guess.

kaiser looked good as he came by at the finish. he was the only ultra geezer out there today, as the rest have either catted down to sport or just stopped showing up. maybe the all-ages expert field is not such a good idea, eh??

poor clyde frog

before rosco got to him, clyde frog was a happy, healthy stuffed animal, and pretty much minded his own business.
afterward, not so much.

just a couple pictures of chubby

a little stroll around matson hill

i first rode matson hill back in 2001, i think. i didn't like it very much. pretty choppy and just not very rewarding. i rode it again in 2002, maybe a couple of times, and came away with the same feeling. yuck.

the kaiser and i met up out at matson today. i would've never gone, except we're supposed to have a race their saturday. we parked at the parking lot on the katy trail, and we were of course the only people there. i've never seen another soul out at matson, which never shocked me because, well, it sucked.

kaiser and i pedaled slowly up the gravel road toward the trail head. he had never been there, so i was sort of giving him the scoop about the course as the road steepened into an impossibly steep wall, then leveled out.

"this'll be a great warmup, eh?" i asked. he agreed, and we both bitched and moaned a little about this gravel road being the lead-out train for the actual race on saturday, too. ug. then, a short jaunt on a perfectly paved road, and we reached the trail head.

we zipped around the trail at a leasurely pace, and i was really amazed at the difference. it was no longer choppy. it had the same g-outs and creak beds to jam through, but somehow it was much nicer than i remember. i also like the clockwise direction that we did, which is the direction the race is supposed to go, too. we finished our first lap, and it only took 20 minutes or so. i was up for another lap, but kaiser sat it out. he was still a little pekid from last weekends 28 mile romp around castlewood.

i went faster this time, and finished up in about 17 minutes, still not taxing myself. it's looking like a race loop will be 15 minutes or so. did i mention that i was having fun? i was. i'm glad i revisited matson. i don't think it's a good race course (too narrow, no spectator area, too short) but it's a fun place to ride.

kaiser and i coasted down the big hill to our cars. it's much more fun going down than it was going up.

here she is