Go Clipless

My Trans Iowa road trip

I'm on a road trip for business in the nation's heartland. There's a gang of us here from the company...four men and five women. Right now we're driving from Des Moines to Sioux City. We've split up in two mini vans; the women in one and the men in the other.

In addition to being a sausage-fest in this car it's also a total geek fest. We've got the driver navigating with the GPS built into his Windows Mobile phone, one guy on his laptop using a wireless Sprint broadband device, while another guy has created a virtual wireless network and is piggybacking off of the broadband. Meanwhile I'm lounging in the backseat moblogging on the Treo. It's tough to keep a steady hand on the tiny qwerty as the car is bouncing higher than a quarter bounced off of Britney Spears formerly tight ass.

I stayed in a Hampton Inn last night. They've got black and white photos representing tidbits of Americana outside of each of the rooms. You know, things like cropdusting airplanes, wagon wheels, farm silos, and soapbox derby races. Look what was outside my room...now that's what I call personalized service.

Whoa...we just nearly bounced into a ravine on the side of the highway...I can just imagine the carnage of laptop cables, charging stations, mobile phones, and water bottles batting me in the head while I flip upside down in this poorly designed, shockless tin can. Ok...I'll try to check in again when we reach Sewer Sioux City.

What type of pedal system do you use for mountain biking?

Ever notice that pedals and pedal systems are one of the most intensely personal of all bike components. It seems every time the subject of pedals comes up in a bike forum the conversation levels kick up a notch and many people will chime in with their preference. Sometimes the conversation gets heated, which I always find particularly amusing.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to do a little experiment here and run a quick, unscientific poll to see if there are any predominant pedal choices amongst GC readers. I realize not all of you are mountain bikers, but I wanted to keep things simple.

Of course it's not a full on survey, so I won't be asking about your experience level or anything, though it would be interesting to see if there is any kind of correlation based on experience. If you don't mind, leave your comments as to why you chose a particular system, what your experience level is, and if you've switched from another system. Here you go.

2007 Greenbrier Challenge UCI Pro Race Report, a personal account

Alternate title: Why you should take your family to a pro mountain bike race.

Woke up Sunday morning and said to my wife, "do you think we can be ready and out of the house by 10am?"

"Huh...oh...oh yeah...I forgot," she groaned.

Notice I didn't remind her of anything. All week I had been talking about going as a family to watch the Greenbrier Challenge UCI Pro Race in Maryland. She just didn't want to go for some reason...

Nonetheless, I made it happen. We packed the cooler with PB &J, watermelon, oranges, some baklava left over from a party, and of course, Diet Cokes and headed to the mountains of Central (or is it Western?) Maryland to catch the race.

On the ride up, I played up the race. "We're going to see all the pros." And I started naming the local heroes...Jeremiah Bishop, Chris Eatough, Sue Haywood...

Now Jack jumped in..."Chris Eatough is going to be there? Really?"

Jack just learned about Chris Eatough on Thursday when he accompanied me to the hometown premiere of 24-Solo, which I'll review in another post.

"Yup, Chris Eatough will be there," I said.

Next Claire (my 6 year old) chimed in..."Daddy?"

"Yes Claire?"

"Will Gwadzilla be there?" she asked innocently.

Kgirl and I just lost it and began laughing hysterically. (Of course he was there, though we left before we had a chance to catch up with him).

We arrived at the race just as the pros were staging. On the sidelines to my right was a woman with a baby in a papoose saying "there's Daddy," and pointing to one of the riders. I asked her which one was Daddy and she pointed to none other than Chris Eatough. (Were the stars aligning, or what?)

"Oh really, well Jack and I just caught the movie the other day in Arlington. Chris is Jack's new mountain bike hero...he's got the poster on the wall and everything." We continued some small talk for a minute or two and then the riders were off. But not before I snapped this pic of Chris getting a good luck kiss from the family.

It's incredible how fast the pros are! They just shot out of the gate and up the first hill as though there was no tomorrow. Since I have ridden this trail several times before, I decided it would be most interesting to watch the riders go through the first technical rock garden. It proved to be the perfect choice.

Todd Wells and Jeremiah Bishop were the clear leaders of the mens race. After only one lap it was clear they would dominate the day. But Greenbrier is a very technical race course, it's very rocky with one crazy steep hill so anything could happen.

One by one we watched both the men and the women navigate the rock garden, as each lap progressed it was obvious that some riders were becoming fatigued and began to get sloppy through the rocks. There were only a few slippages, however, and no major problems for the riders getting through this tight and twisty section of floating baby heads.

Around the fourth lap, Jeremiah Bishop was only 45 seconds or so behind the leader Todd Wells. He entered the rock garden just after one of the pro women racers and had to pass if he was to continue to make up time against Wells. Thus, he did what any skilled east coast rider would do and took a hard inside line over several boulders and zipped on by without even skipping a beat. Incredible!

Now it was time to hike back out to the finish line. I parked the family on the side of a hill overlooking the finish and grabbed the cooler from the car. Meanwhile, the announcer started riling up the crowd with announcements from the field. Will Jeremiah make up enough time? Can Wells hold on to the lead? Only time will tell. Suddenly there's a report that Wells has blown a tire with 6 tenths of a mile to go. But Jeremiah is less than a minute behind...he'll have to ride it in if he wants to win.

Next we get a report that Jeremiah has also flatted. Will he ride it in too? Where was he in relation to Wells? No one knew for sure. From a distance a rider emerged from beyond the lake. Was it? Could it be? Who is it?

Finally, we recognized it as Todd Wells who was wobbling in on a shredded flat tire still going at full speed.

A few minutes later another rider emerged...is it Jeremiah? No. It must be Chris Eatough then? No. It was Jeff Schalk from Trek/VW - East, who quietly raced consistent fast laps and held out for a very respectable second place showing.

Chris Eatough finished third, while Jeremiah finished in fourth with a final lap that was about 8 minutes off the pace from his previous lap, due of course, to the flat that he suffered near the end. Clearly not a happy man for the moment, he threw his bike down in disgust and walked off the course. Who could blame him?

Then it was the women's turn. Katie Compton, three-time U.S. Cyclo-cross champion, was out in front the entire race to take the Challenge by a margin of more than two minutes. Sue Haywood came in second and the crowd roared as she is one of the regional favorites.

After the race we were finished with our picnic lunch. From the hillside we watched as the remaining riders - Experts, Masters, Clydesdales, and Single Speed - took off into the mountain side. But we would not see these riders to the end as it was time to get home, cook dinner and get ready for the work and school week.

But not before visiting the Trek/Volkswagen tent and trying to catch up with one of our heroes.

"Jack. Claire. Come here. Quick. It's Chris Eatough. Check it out he's over there washing his bike. Let's go meet him."

Shyly they followed me over as I "stalked" Chris and asked if he would mind getting a picture with the kids. Very graciously he accepted, of course. A little small talk - the movie, Jack starting to ride with me, the Jason Berry interview for the blog - and he was off. What a nice guy.

And now, Jack (and Claire, though she may still be too young) will have a memory for life. It just doesn't get any better than that for an eight year old kid.

All-in-all, it was an amazing day. Aside from gas, the whole day cost us 4 dollars - the out of state entry price for the park. I can't think of too many other sports where you can get right up to the action and meet the pros to boot. What a day!

Photo at top of post is from Kevin Dillard. Check out all of his Greenbrier Race pics - coming soon.

Check out my other photos from the day on Flickr.

Greebrier Challenge Race Results

A "real" race report from Cyclingnews.

Bicycle optical illusion

Modern sculpture used as bike rack meets optical illusion. Equals bike as urban art.

(Via Mighty Optical Illusions)

MTB video games, pro baseball vs. pro cycling, and Lance's ladies

Finally hacked my way through my feed reader after being on the road for the last week. More than 6,000 unread posts...can you say machete! Time to trim those babies up all Ryan Seacrest, manscaping style...

Here are few of the relevant stories that caught my eye:

Mountain Bike Adrenaline looks like a pretty cool game for the PS2. Would love to see a game like this for the Nintendo Wii. Imagine using the Wii-mote and the Numchuck as the handlebar with the buttons for things like bunny-hops, jumps, and trials moves. Seems like a no-brainer. (via Bike-Community.net)

Missing Saddle had a pretty cool story comparing the salaries of pro baseball players vs. pro cyclists. Tom Boonen's $2.6 million dollar salary barely matches that of Steve Kline, 69th ranked relief pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Did you ever notice that Lance's ladies have a striking similarity to one another? TMZ.com lays it out for you, but TdFBlog is a bit more freudian in its analysis.

Oh yeah, on Monday, TypePad featured this humble blog. It's a good thing too since it was a quiet week around here. Check out what they had to say.

Breaking the ice again

  Broken Ice 
  Originally uploaded by TheDrinkNinja.

I'm breaking the ice. Literally and figuratively.

At least that is how I feel when I have been away from the blog for so long. Look, I just got busy, o.k.? Nothing more, nothing less. Yeah, sure I could have posted that I'd be away for a while, but I didn't know that. Each day kept slipping by. Truth is, I didn't even visit any blogs during this time either. And, I didn't even read any of your comments, so there.

But now I'm back and I'm breaking the ice again. Like I started saying, I never know what to write on the first day back from a blog hiatus. I could start right up again with regular content and act like nothing happened I guess. For some reason though that just doesn't feel right. You deserve an explanation, I think. Have you been good?

Oh, and about the literally part. Well the D.C. area has been nothing but a sheet of ice for a week now. Yesterday started the thaw. Finally. So what did the Virginia Department of Transportation do. They came and plowed my cul-de-sac nearly a week after the snow and piled up all of the sludge and ice right in front of my house and driveway. Assholes.

No love for the Society of People Who Actually Make Their Own Shit (SOPWAMTOS) award

Is there no respect for the Golden Toidy - that lovely little sarcastic award given to bike companies that seem to violate some sacrosanct code of ethics that is not written anywhere but understood by many.

Apparently someone from Cannondale didn't find the humor in it and threw their Golden Fist award for their "'successful re-organization' after going bankrupt and leaving their vendors SOL to the tune of 1.2 million and then 'going forward' as if nothing had ever happened," back in 2005.

Well guess what? The Golden Fist has made it's way to eBay and it's most recent bid is only $10.50 (look out for that hefty $30 shipping charge though). Hurry though there's only three days left to get a hold of this genuine article of industry shame.

Here's how the seller describes the item:

I GOT THIS OUT OF THE TRASH AT THE 2005 INTERBIKE TRADE SHOW IN LAS VEGAS

NEVER USED WHILE I HAVE HAD IT

I THOUGHT IT MIGHT COME IN HANDY IF I MET MONICA LEWINSKY

Gotta love it.

Well, if you want to know more about the history of the SOPWAMTOS the best I can tell you is to Google it and read about it through the links that you find. Like Critical Mass this "organization" does not seem to have a true home on the Internet. (Here's a link to the 2005 award winners, however).

Hey, if one of you crazies out there buys this thing be sure to send me a picture of you "using" the prize and I'll be sure to post it.

(Via Swobo's How to Avoid the Bummer Life blog)

UPDATE Feb, 10: The winning bid went for $172.50. The winner was named cannondalelover1973 who appears to have no previous history on eBay. Could it be a Cannondale employee reclaiming the award?

Ensuring the humility of a bicycle blogger

Get this. We're getting ready to go out to an informal neighborhood dinner party when Kgirl comes out of the bathroom in absolute hysterics. She was jumping up and down laughing wearing only a t-shirt and her thong. I'm thinking yum...let's get this party started! When all of a sudden I read the t-shirt slogan.

Oh you got me good my love. You do realize that you just raised the stakes. I'll be kicking it up a notch so beware...when you least expect it.

By the way, she got the shirt from Kohls for only seventy-five cents.

Apparently the kids were in on the joke too. Everybody had a good laugh on dear old dad. We'll see if your on Santa's list next year kiddies.

Is this the best job in cycling?

VeloNews is looking for a new editor-in-chief. They think it may be the best job in cycling.

Wouldn't it be great if the publishers went out on a limb and hired a blogger instead of a magazine industry insider? Let's face it, print is waning in popularity, while the Web and blogging are still growing. Magazines will have to shift to an online strategy, as newspapers are now scrambling to do, if they want to survive long term.

Anyway, being the editor of a major cycling magazine does seem like a fun job.

What's your idea of the best job in cycling?

Naked bike rides, bad music, and bombproof bikes

What about it? Would you ride naked on your bike with a bunch of others through a crowded city? Is it different if you do it painted, since you are not really "naked?" Kgirl really wants to be painted like this but she says that she wouldn't want to be seen on a bike like that. Says nobody looks good naked all hunched over. I say what the hell, you only live once.

So music just sucks lately. Maybe you've noticed that nothings changed on my current rotation list over there on the right hand side? I just can't find anything I'm really into right now. I'm waiting for the new Modest Mouse album to come out which seems to have been delayed until March. While I wait I've been digging into the old Modest Mouse albums, which I just love.

Oh yeah, can't wait for this movie to come out sometime this spring.

Lily Allen's album comes out at the end of the month, but it's already old news. WTF - why did it take 6 months to release this album in the U.S. when it has been out in Britain and all over MySpace for ages?

Would you buy a bombproof bike? Blue Collar Mountain Biking thinks some would and is experimenting with the right specs for an inexpensive, yet reliable rig. I'm pretty sure my Redline Monocog 29er is pretty bombproof. That things built like a tank. Nonetheless, I'm curious to see how this little experiment turns out.

Oh...and don't eat bugs.