Riding Bikes, Having Fun, and Proving things ACTUALLY HAPPENED

It does my heart a lot of good to see two of my goobers mixing it up out there with other cyclists. Both Hanna and Eli have frequented the fast ride on the Thursday GNO rides.  Of course, that's my selfie queen herself, giving us an amazing shot of their ride downtown tonight.

This might be the coolest shot of these two that I have.  I love seeing them enjoy cycling together.

And who can argue that this enormous Hound Dog isn't the cutest hunk of clumsy canine around??

With all of the good going on lately, there are bound to be sharp, pokey things that try to crush my groove. Pokey thing removed, tire repaired, ride completed anyway.  I didn't get screwed!

And all of this (except for the Hound Dog) gets recorded on Strava.  Because Hanna knows, if t's not on Strava, it didn't happen.
 

Father's Day and Stuff

The Beautiful Mrs. K always makes a big deal out of Father's day.  She knows I don't like gifts, so she just told me to do whatever I wanted.  Like, really?  That's a pretty awesome gift! We did go to dinner with Eli and Hanna, and Tyson was our server at Aya Sophia. The food there is so so good and Tyson treats us like...well...family! Then Eli gave me a $50 gift card to Dairy Queen, so how amazing is that??

What did I want to do for Father's day, you ask? I wanted to ride my mountain bike. I drove to St. James to ride Forest City.  I had the whole place to myself.  I put in almost 25 miles on the killer single-track trails, redemption from the awful race that I had there two weeks ago. I was faster for the same amount of mileage with zero cramps. I call that a win. Father's day: managed!

Speaking of riding, the Girls Night Out ride from the shop on Thursday nights has been incredible. Even in the heat, so many people have been showing up.  I've made certain to have water and alcohol available for them when they return.  If it keeps being so hot, I may have to provide popsicles. 

So you say you haven't been seeing many spray painted bike frames on this notoriously bizarre blog lately? Well I'm glad you've stopped by because you get a sneak peek at my oldest shit bike frame, resplendent in Rustoleum Cobalt Blue Metallic. See all those sparkles?? You don't get sparkles from just any old rattle can. This baby is going to be lapping the cyclocross courses in just a few short months!

I mentioned heat earlier. Since I don't like riding in the crazy hot temps we've had lately, I've taken to riding my bike at night.  I've been getting all of my stuff ready to rock at 9pm.  I've had some great rides, too. Knowing full well that iPhone's take awful photos of the moon (I'll blame the phone), I took this one the other night as I embarked upon a raid of South City.

 I don't know why I found this so funny, but when the Beautiful Mrs. K and I stopped by to eat at Super Smokers the other night I had to get a picture.  And oh hell yes...that door is HARD to open.

Mountain Bike Racing can be HARD

Today we made the trip to St. James to race one of my favorite courses.  Forest City Trail is a gem.  There are so many kick-ass aspects to it, from rock gardens to drop-offs and pine sections. Eli opted to do the Juniors race, which I kind of figured was below his potential but he's still not convinced that he's capable of doing the category classes.  He won his class, and his time suggests that he should have been in the Category 2 race, which is not only filled with great riders but it's a longer race by a factor of two.  I think he will do that from now on.  Proud of him!!

I also may have raced in the wrong race. I've been racing mountain bikes since the Spring of 1988, overwhelmingly in the XC Expert/Cat 1 category.  Lately we've done a couple of races with different formats, like the St. Joe Last Miner and Wolf Creek in Poplar Bluff.  I had a blast at both.  So I decided to do the Marathon race at Forest City instead of Cat 1. It was the biggest class of the day, with 24 people. I felt things were going really well for the first 10 miles or so, but then not so much.  The photo above is a pic of my Strava file, which showed that my body thought it was extremely hard. (I have only scored higher one time, in the off-road half-marathon that I ran in 2018.) I started cramping very early, which is odd since I felt like I was going at a moderate pace. It went downhill from there. The object of the Marathon class is to do as many laps as possible in 3 hours.  I pulled the plug at the end of my 3rd lap, having gone just a few minutes under 3 hours. I think I got 6th or 7th place? I'll chalk it up to a bad day.  I've had so much hip pain over the last couple weeks that I'm getting very little sleep, which can make for a bad race day, but your guess is as good as mine.

The beautiful Mrs. K was nowhere to be found this weekend.  At least not around here.  She went to a NICA thing in Steelville for the weekend.  Don't worry about me, though.  I still had plenty of company. 
 

Big Big Things have been Happening!

Big, big news here! My oldest child Hanna (or Hanna G as she's been called) has graduated from Mizzou.  Oh yes, she smashed that degree up and down, with honors. We're so proud of this woman! She already has some career prospects in the works, too. Thanks to Flannery Allison for the fantastic graduation photo.

After Hanna's graduation ceremony in Columbia, we had dinner with the extended family and the Beautiful Mrs. K and I posed for a glamour shot with the grad. Nevermind that I look more like her grandfather here than her dad....

We were both surprised and delighted to receive the excellent Small Business award from the Blues organization. Hanna and Eli were in attendance for the festivities. The award came with a fat check that will get donated to the Otters NICA team, too! Eli also got to ride the Zamboni, and Hanna said he looked like the King on his throne.  Love it.

Mrs. K and I had a plan to do the 12-hour mtb relay race in Poplar Bluff (called the Wolf Creek 6/12/24) with Eli to make it a family affair.  He put the kibosh on that and formed his own 3-man team with some NICA friends.  So Deanna and I enlisted our old friend JT and remade our relay team.  The concept was pretty simple...do as many laps as you can of the 11-mile mountain bike course in 12 hours. This would be Deanna's FIRST mtb race. Lots of South Side Cyclery peeps made the trek down to Poplar Bluff to do this race, and none other than Mr. Selfie himself, Matt Johnson, took this photo of just some of the awesomeness before the race.  The tents were stuffed with South Side madness and enthusiasm.

Pow! We got the party started at 10am sharp. You can see me in my natural habitat, leading at the start, along with my boy Eli just behind, and another South Sider and longtime friend Kyle on the far right. Dry, dry, awesome course...for ONE lap.

Once the first lap was done, the skies opened up and it poured.  The course held up, but our clothes and kits were soaked straight away.  Most of us brought extras (I brought 4 kits, anticipating such antics), so we looked different every lap.  I was stunned that the Beautiful Mrs. K finished her very first lap of her very first race with a smile under a thick layer of mud. She's fought pretty hard to get comfortable riding her mountain bike after her collar bone surgery last year, so this was quite a leap. Who's the photobomber??

The South Side ladies were every bit as tenacious as the dudes, putting in lap after lap.  The course held up so well that when there was a few hours of dry time, it was fast.  But you can see me in the background, with my skeptical face, knowing from years of hating mud that more rain was coming. Us mud-haters just know.

I'm not sure why I look like I'm about to kidnap Mrs. K after her second successful lap. Nor do I know why I look like I'm 300 pounds. I was actually getting a CO2 cartridge from her pocket, and I swear I haven't gained any weight.  Photogenic I am not.

Well...the skies opened up again, and in a big, big way.  Lightning and thunder called an end to the race at 6:30pm or so.  But that was AFTER South Siders Angela S and our own team mate JT had gone out for their laps.  It was pitch black and POURING rain.  But from the deep dark woods, Angela emerged and the all-women South Side team won their class.  Tough, tough women.  Congratulations! Although I don't have the photo, a South Sider also won the 6-hour solo women's race.  Congrats to Angela W for a job well done, and she's already plotting her return next year.

Also busting out of the woods during that awful storm was JT.  He had pulled through for us and our team won the Co-Ed class. He's had a rough go with some health issues and I hope he knows how proud we are that he helped us win Deanna's first mtb race! I had some kick-ass team mates for this event!

More success came from the South Side boys. These guys are friends and riding partners that race for various NICA teams in the St. Louis area.  They blasted 7 laps before they called it quits and went to eat bar-b-que. That was enough to net them second place.  Super consistent lap times from these boys, even though they had to endure some really horrendous storms during the day.

Some things are just really interesting, like our room at the Hampton Inn.  Funny that we'd get the little room-number icon of a kid on a bike.  Random, but that's us.  Just kids, big and small, on bikes.
 

April is Almost Done Already?

April is almost over and Friday was the first time I was able to attend one of Eli's high school baseball games. I feel ashamed of myself! It's such a struggle to make the afternoon and Saturday games since we own a retail store.  I'm so glad I was finally able to go. The last time I saw him play baseball, he was a wee lad.

You know what isn't a first? Breaking a window.  Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and think...what the hell are you thinking?  I wanted to clean the outside of one of the dining room windows.  I released the window to swing inward, and I turned around to grab my towel and window cleaner. As you know, it's been very windy lately, and as I let go of the window I thought: The wind could blow that window down.  And it did.  Crash. It broke the outer glass, not the inner.  

Another bit of unhappiness was the untimely issue I had with my carbon Trance frame.  I needed a replacement piece for it, and because of supply issues it won't be available for quite some time. It's a nice piece of wall art for the moment. Good fortune shined on me and I was able to get the orange creamsicle Trance frame as a surrogate.

We took Creamsicle and the rest of the Giant mountain bike arsenal to Poplar Bluff on Sunday to pre-ride the Wolf Creek race course.  There is an endurance race there next month so a bunch of fine people converged there to do some laps. The Beautiful Mrs K, Eli and I were supposed to make a 3-person relay team for the event, but Eli has since decided to gather a team of his own.  Now Deanna and I are searching for a 3rd to complete our team.  Oh yeah, there were creek crossings. And oh yeah, Mrs K and I scrubbed the bikes clean.
 

Spring is (probably) HERE!

Spring! We've been waiting, getting a taste of it, and then getting the backhanded slap from winter. But maybe, probably, spring is here. Bout damn time! Hanna dropped by the shop to take advantage of the warm weather by grabbing her "Hellcat" bicycle. Put in those miles, girl!

Also a good sign that spring is here: photo shoots for new shop clothing.  Hanna and our newest employee Adam didn't mind posing for the camera.  Yes, they really did want you to feel like they meant business!

Oh, Focus, Focus. I like this car. Fits me perfectly.  But for Eli's 16th birthday, I sold it to him. No, I didn't fleece him. I wanted him to have a great first car, and now I need to buy a new one. I even had it detailed for him.

And he passed his drivers test on his birthday.  Aced his parallel parking test! Better than me!

Naturally, his birthday cake had to really say a lot about his personality and I think this one did the trick.

It was fitting that today was the Chubb Enduro. So many cool jumps, drops, berms, and generally heart-stopping sections! He's good at these and has a ton of fun.

I did sweep for a few of the stages at the Enduro. I don't jump off big drops, but I get a charge out of riding really tricky stuff. There was a lot of climbing to get to the start of the stages, and that was good for a sunny-day workout. Now I'm ready for some good old fashioned cross country riding. 
 

Greensfelder Enduro - Fun with a capital FUN

Enduro racing is a fun thing.  Yes, to some it's very competitive.  But it's mostly fun.  Blasting down trails with drops, rocks, roots, turns and surprises is just fun.  I've never done one, but I've been to two now and watched Eli have a blast.  Today was the Greensfelder Enduro and let me tell you, it was hard and fun.  Hard because there was lots of climbing to get to the start of each stage, but the fun was the reward for getting there.  Eli did all 8 stages today, although the Junior category was supposed to skip a couple of the hard ones.  He didn't skip them and therefore had ALL the fun.

It took a few hours to do all of the stages.  I followed along in 5 out of 8 of those stages, which is why I'm now convinced that it's just about the most fun a person can have on a mountain bike and still call it racing.  17 miles total, with 2500 feet of climbing.  We earned our bowl of goodness from Camilla's.  Eli more than I, but hey, I like to eat, too.

While everyone was finishing up their stages, we had a while to wait.  The day started out really cold, and only warmed up a bit from the sun.  Eli and I had the luxury of hanging out under the new South Side Cyclery tent that the beautiful Mrs. K procured for us. She also stocked the tent with drinks and snacks.  We are a spoiled bunch! Yes, Eli is sleeping.

My young mountain biker woke up pretty quick once the jumps started.  What you can't see here is a cool modular ramp, set up just behind the killer airbag landing.  Great way for newbies to learn to jump..or for the more experienced to get a little crazy.  I caught him mid-flight on his first jump.

He made a few more runs at it, and me and my iPhone missed some good shots.  But I caught this last one that I'm pretty proud of.  Thanks to Matt Johnson and his fine crew, along with all of the sponsors of this wonderful event! And thanks to the crazy group of women racers who represented South Side. You girls are awesome!

So much F.U.N!

Last Miner Mountain Bike Event

The racing season has started for mountain bikers in St. Louis! Actually, it started in Park Hills, at St. Joe State Park.  The Noah Foundation, dedicated to helping families with children affected by Congenital Heart Defects, put on an amazing fund raiser to kick off the season.  My family, along with a lot of the members from the South Side Cycling Club, descended on the park early Saturday morning.  Great weather, great turnout, great course, and great people.  The idea was simple: Every racer lined up at the same time at 8:00am.  When the starter said GO, every rider had 1 hour to complete the 7.75 mile course.  At 9:00am, every remaining rider had to line up again, riding the course again within the next hour.  That happened at the top of every hour all day long.  As long as the rider was there at the start, they got to do another lap.  58 riders started (and another 9 NICA kids, who started 5 minutes later each hour and did a slightly modified course).

Bang!  The first lap was off and running.  You can see Eli and I on the left side.  It was the first time we were able to do an event with each other.  We knew we could beat the hour time cut pretty easily, so we paced ourselves and were pleasantly surprised at the condition of the course after a rough February of weather.

We played it just like our normal mountain bike rides...I ride behind him, letting him pace, and giving him tips and encouragement along the way.  We finished our first lap in 44 minutes.  Plenty of time to eat a little PBJ, drink some water, take a quick bathroom break, and line up for the next run at the course.  We were well taken care of by our South Side crew, and it was nice to sit down for a minute between laps.

Most people made the time cut and lined up for the second lap.  Eli kicked it up a notch and chopped a minute off of our first lap time. About 20-25 people were time-cut or just dipped out by the third lap. These kind of events begin to wear a person down after a few hours, though. On the third lap, Eli was going well and then began to fade a bit.  I urged him on, and we still turned in a sub-47 minute lap.  He's a tough kid! Each time out, we had a group of people following us, happy with the pace that Eli was setting.

On the 4th lap, Eli and I parted ways.  He wanted to chill and just make the time cut.  Hindsight says we should have gone a bit easier in our early laps, but that made 30 miles for him and a total of three hours.  More than good enough for a 15 year old stud.  I took the opportunity to take a hot lap on lap 4, and was able to come in at around 36 minutes. Kinda stupid, and it was only good for the second fastest time of the day!

Eli finished his 4th lap well under the time cut, in 52 minutes.  But, he had enough and called it a day. 

I kept going for another few laps.  I was feeling tired, but I turned in a couple more 40 minute laps after my hot lap.  This photo is at the start of lap 7. I knew this would be my last lap.  The promoter gave us all a surprise and decided that we would run this lap BACKWARD...by starting at the finish line and finishing at the starting line.  Sounded crazy enough to be fun.  The course was a strange bird in the opposite direction, and I missed a turn or two but got on track for a 42 minute lap to end my day.  

I smiled a lot this day, even though I was hurting.  My legs started cramping just a few minutes into the last lap and I suffered with them until I finally finished. The park was nearly empty by this time, as all but the race promoter and timing guys had gone home.  They still had to hang out for the 5 guys left standing!

The results.  Lots of hardcore riders out there.  I ended up 6th overall with a little over 53 total miles, which didn't have much to do with speed.  It was tenacity, and 5 guys had way more than I did.  Eli ended up 17th, which was super cool given that he's technically a junior.  Super proud of him.  Very proud also of the people that showed up and made this race possible.  I think this should end up on people's race calendar for the coming years.  What could be better than an early season opener benefiting such a good cause?