pumpkin carving

hanna and tyson go to work on the pumpkins we got on saturday. for the last 6 years, we've gone to rombach's to get pumpkins, but with the pumpkin run going on, we figured we'd be swamped with people. so, we just went up the street to a local lawn and garden place and found some cool little pumpkins. after carving, we even had roasted pumpkin seeds. that mrs k sure is a good mom.

another pic

Robert
sent this photo to me. it must have been during the time hanna and tyson were feverishly cheering me on to "go faster". otherwise, why would i have such a smile on my face??

better, but i really suck!

NOT dead last this time, but NOT AT ALL GOOD. great photo though, from Action Images.

scenes from the halloween weekend

we took the kids to get pumpkins on saturday. pooper thought this one sat well. tyson was confused as to why we wouldn't buy this one.
at the halloween party at church saturday night, the kids got to make their own pumpkin decorations. this was tyson's.
hanna got two, man and wife.
she chose to break out the dress she wore for our wedding. smashing, isn't she?
hanna displaying her works.
the kids enjoying story telling time at the party.

clyde frog R.I.P.

this is what happens when you become rosco's chew toy. poor clyde frog.

the world series

didn't really impress rosco. he was unfazed.

two cuties

awww.

i took this while driving

i held the camera over my shoulder while driving this little one to our house tonight. little did i know what kind of craziness was going on back there. i can't believe i let her drink a blueberry slushi while we drove.

Cards win!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and this is my new cross bike!!

just the cutest little thing!

new wheels

not new, really. actually, they are old. i've always liked the 96-97 cobra wheels, so when i saw a set for sale cheap locally, i jumped on them. the 17" wheels that came stock with 99-04 mustangs just don't interest me at all, so they had to go. a bit of luck--the place where i took the car to have the wheels swapped over had a mustang owner on staff who promptly bought the stock wheels from me.

the fed ex man keeps 'em comin'

this box came today because, frankly, i have to buy myself a placing in the 'cross races. the good folks at orbea keep things incredibly easy and attractive for us to buy bikes. matt long, long-time midwest fattire rider and former gary fisher rep, now works inside for orbea. he is a great guy and really into his product. orbea is just too darn cool to pass up.
opening the box treated us to a euskatel-colored 'cross bike. this is the same frame as the lobular road bike, albeit tweaked for 'cross. can't wait to get it up and running.

bedtime

and then we went outside and then we painted pictures and then we ate lunch and then we did work and then we went outside again and then mrs O told us it was time to do more work and then...
bedtime? i didn't say it was bedtime yet! i haven't even spit up my dinner yet or had my evening poop, how can it bedtime already? i've got way to many things left to do before i conk out on the couch with dad rubbin' my belly!

the President, in (almost) Full Glory

this is what excess is. never mind the cheap ritchey stem, that's for sizing purposes. the rest of this bike screams "Exotic" like an Enzo or a Murcielago, only it's probably more reliable. Some lucky individual will plunk down $14k or so and ride off blissfully into the sunset. Either that, or hang it on the wall of his entertainment room and brag to his buddies that he has the sexiest bike on earth.

i really need this

i wanted to see pictures of me going fast. at least reasonably so. anything to erase the dreadful thoughts of yesterday's humiliating display of low performance sloth. so i dug up pics from greensfelder from action images. i was going pretty well that day.

i'll just keep thinking about that day.

snug as a bug in a rug

i raced 'cross today

...on my mountain bike. who knew how bad of a mistake that was? i worked my ass off to be in DEAD LAST PLACE. not only DEAD LAST PLACE, but i got lapped by 6 or 7 people. i didn't even feel bad! i won't blame it all on the bike. i'm sure my intensity level wasn't quite up to par. but DEAD LAST PLACE? puh-leeeeez. i'll have a cross bike next week, guaranteed!
you can see that pooper was saddened by daddy's poor placing. he and mommy spectated from the back of the escape. it was so cold and windy, that even his puppy dog coverall wasn't doing the trick.

photos courtesy of kurt at action images

i'm motivated, too!

sneaking around

i can crawl quite a distance now, so you'd better keep a close eye on me! think i'm kidding??

and even more decadence

the colnogo president graced our humble store this week as well. no, not the president of colnogo, the colnogo president bicycle frame. this is the mac daddy of colnogo's. the cream of the crop. top of the mountain. the steak AND the sizzle. if you have to ask how much it costs...well, you know the rest.

the president's partner in crime showed up as well, the classic C50. this has been my favorite colnogo for a while. lighter and, in my humble opinion, more elegant than the president, it has long been a benchmark for ride quality. everyone should ride one of these at least once so they can see how the other half lives. sort of like staying the night in a luxury hotel. or riding in first class on a charter jet.

some people have celebrities as their fantasy world...i have cool bike stuff as mine.

egads!

a campy group showed up today, as well. this is the new record "skeleton" brake. very trick. light, too.
the new record cranks showed up, as well. the carbon "ultra torque" design is beyond cool. campy waited out the crankset revolution, and came to the market with some really unique stuff.
another view of the ultra torque. half spindles on each crank join in the center and mate on toothed splines. exactly the kind of high tech you'd expect was capable of, once they brushed off the old-school stigma.
a pair of these showed up today, too. i have not seen a pair in real life before, and they are impressive to say the least. and light. and expensive. and expensive. of course, they are expensive, too.

sing bling in the spring

the fine folks at industry nine were kind enough to send us a pair of their ultra fine industry nine mountain wheels. we rapped with them at the las vegas show and the kaiser, of course, was the first recipient. they aren't crazy red like the ones in the photo...they're all black with stan's 355 rims and they are LIGHT. the kicker? they are strong, too.

they don't give the wheels away, that's for sure. but, strong, unique, light, and super cool never cost peanuts.

i ordered a pair for my mountian bike, too, but i made the mistake of asking for blue hubs to go along with the blue highlights on the oiz...i was paid back for my frivolous aesthetic feat of fancy by having to wait several more weeks for that. bah. i think i will switch to black so that i can have cool wheels like the kaiser. anthony b is in worse shape: he ordered road wheels built with zipp 303 rims and is being rewarded with a 3 month wait!!! we ordered more stock road wheels for the shop from I9, and those will also be a while.

i guess the shop will being blinging in the spring with cool wheels, but not much before!

woot woot

2nd trip to the world series in three years! and we were doing so BADLY there for a while. pretty darn cool, i tell you!

yeah, uh huh

where can i trade the convertible in on one of these???

nothing cooler than dad driving a minivan...

running

the beautiful mrs k and i ran together the other night. yes, i know, i don't run. but i used to. and the mrs ran the chicago marathon in 2004. we both think it would be great if we could get some runs in together, and i think it's time i try to branch out from just cycling again.

we ran around st. francis park. curiously enough, that was where i did the majority of my running way back when men were still using smoke signals instead of cell phones. i love that park. yeah, yeah, so i only ran a bit more than a mile. the other day, i ran 10 minutes on our treadmill. gotta start slow, dontcha know???

brrrr

today started off warm enough. kinda drizzling, but at least it wasn't cold, right?

i had to take the opal on it's maiden voyage. i was just dying to get out on it. i took all my stuff to work with me so i could ride at 5. anthony was down with that, so i had an accomplice. getting closer to 5, the wind started blowing, the skies got darker, it got colder...typical. there were even rain drops when we started out the door. geez.

so we pedaled into the impending winter storm (or so it felt like) on our usual after-work loop. it wasn't so bad. it was only drizzle. the traffic was really a bigger hassle than the weather, except for the occasional gust that would nearly blow anthony off the road.

first impressions? i love the bike. i see why everyone is so wild about carbon now. it felt great to get out of the saddle and climb. smooth ride, too. great choice, i think. and it even looks good!

anthony and i pressed on, past the crazed suv drivers and dump trucks and lawn service vehicles. we didn't really hit it hard, no real reason to. we complained a LOT on the way back to the shop along edison. the wind was vicious. but we were both glad to have ridden.

i also got the chance to weigh the oiz frame today, too. 4.93 lbs. yes, the lightest full suspension frame i have ever personally put onto a scale. i didn't know it was supposed to be that light, so let's call it a bonus!

i called the kaiser tonight. word on the streets says he is selling the super-insane intense spider that i showcased a while back on these very pages. a 20-ish pound full suspension rig? you got it. he even had it custom anodized and had push industries revalve the shock on it for added performance. i'll keep you weight weenies posted about it when he pulls the trigger. anyway, the fork he is using on that bike is also worked over pretty well. it's a sid that gets nearly 90mm of plush travel, which is usually not said in the same sentence together. he did the work himself. so since my oiz came with a sid, and i have never been very fond of them, i'm enlisting the kaiser's help, since he did such a good job on his. i'm sure it will cost me some good mexican food, but a 90mm sid is probably worth more than that.

you don't need this...

...actually, no one does.

Vacation?

"Park's closed, folks. Moose out front should'a told'ja."

no, it wasn't really a vacation, but we did do some traveling in the family truckster this past weekend.

we piled a lot of stuff into grandma's minivan and headed down to arkansas to visit my sister and my aunt's and uncle, nieces and nephews, and even some cousins. on the way down, we picked up hanna. hanna was very close to my aunts because they stayed with my mom for a number of months while she was sick. she would go stir up the house for a while, and it always made my mom and her sisters very happy.

since then, patsy, the youngest sister, has become ill herself. i really didn't want too much time to go by before hanna was able to see her again, and mrs k, tyson and elijah haven't met much of my family. so, this was a perfect time to get everyone together.

after a loooooooong drive in the dark, as well as numerous stops, we finally came to batesville, a quaint little town in north central arkansas. my neice and nephew were also there, and they entertained hanna and tyson to no end. pooper was a big hit, of course, and he was in a great mood all weekend, showing off for the relatives.

saturday, we traveled to evening shade, the itty bitty little town that my mom and her family grew up in. even though they were having a parade that day, it was evident that the sleepy little town may be on the way out. main street, literally only a block long, is nearly void of business. but, i was able to show the kids a lot of the things that i remember as being special when i would visit my grandma's. first, her house. it has been repainted, but i could still picture the pale yellow paint that used to adorn the little home. we drove past the one room jail house where my aunt used to bring food to prisoners at lunch time. i showed them my great aunt audrey's house, the dairy bar, the old post office, the wishing well, the old barber shop, the old pool hall, grady's grocery, the gas station...memories that flooded back to me as i told it to them.

after the trip to town, we went to the evening shade grave yard. i have generations of family buried there. it was pretty crazy to walk down the rows, seeing some of the old stones that dated back to before the civil war. my cousin shannon, who spent much more time in arkansas, gave us a guided tour. surprisingly, the kids really thought it was cool. they didn't feel any of the sadness that goes along with grave yard visits, so they really got into the dates and names. i showed them my grandma, grandpa, uncles, aunts, mother...it was crazy.

then it was off to uncle jim's farm. he has a ham radio collection, a classic car collection that he carved out of wood, and 4 horses. the kids were interested in the horses, i was interested in the radios and cars! hanna and tyson were able to feed and pet them, which was a big hit.

as long as this day was, we still had one more errand to run. my sister and her husband are building a house on the white river. it's in a beautiful remote spot, only 100 yards down from merl haggard's vacation home. super cool. and, the kids were treated to the dog chasing a stick in the deep, cold river. cocoa is a crazy brown lab that my sister is crazy over.

we were so lucky to get as much of the family together as we did. living in different parts of the country makes it hard, but i'm sure the kids are going to remember the trip for a long time, and so will the mrs and i.

This stuff came today...

2 boxes for me. ooh, la la. couldn't wait to open them.

coolness. an xtr full suspension bike. yes!!
a full carbon road bike! yes!!
made in spain. cool.
opal is the name.
funky, flat, and flexy. awesome!!

it's cold out there!

...but i'm warm in this fuzzy little outfit! thanks, mom!

greensfelder again

i had to hit greensfelder one more time before the leaves all came down and ruined a good thing. i brought my camera along for the first loop and took pictures of the coolest stuff.
the camera never catches the scale of rocks or steepness, if that's a word.
the first part of the rock garden.
oops, double posted this pic, don't know how to remove it.
cool rock structure, don't have any idea what it was for, but it made for a great trail obstacle.
yes, that's a berm. a perfectly banked turn. lotsa fun.
my dusty old sidi's afterward. "hi"