life little treats

Well here we go again, I am not so good at remembering a camera to take pics on rides so the reader gets lots of text at times with very few visual representations. After all we are a visual culture these days. I will keep this post short and sweet. I should be racing at South Seatac right now, but the thought of going in circles didn't really appeal to me today, I plan to get out on the fixie for a bit of road time here in a bit, as soon as I get done with this here post. I worked late on friday night,was up early saturday to drive north towards Bellingham and a ride of 5 hours or so. I knew nothing of the route, terrain or what to expect. I planned to bring lots of food, even bought it, but you know what they say about plans, even the best laid plans..... but I digress. I had some, just not enough, good thing my riding partner did. Kevin had an amazing route planned with gobs of climbing. We started off on the interurban bike path and made our way south, after 6 or so miles of basically flat spinning the real fun began and up it went. On Thursday my legs has felt really crappy, while riding out at Tiger Mountain, so I had imagined that my legs would just be shot after no sleep on Thursday night and a long night on Friday, I was wrong, my legs felt quite good and we slogged up and up. We talked about Washington riding and compared it to other places, now I can see why singlespeeders are few and far between up here, everything is steep, wet and power robbing, oh yeah there is the roots and other slippery elements as well. On the other hand why not more singlespeeders and rigid ones at that, less moving parts means less maintence and I can't imagine the toll the weather takes on a full suspension bike up here. Back to the ride at hand, filled with ripping descents, kevin overshot a corner and hurt his thumb on one of them, it made descending a treat for him. The second climb of the day is dubbed "burnout", my immediate response to this was "why cause by the time you get to the top you are burnt out" to which he replied "yep" off we went, up and up and up, steep and steeper, grunting. My arms were taking a beating, I worried that they might actually just fail. We crest out and descend and descend on our way to the British Army Trail, a brutal hike a bike, that landed us at the top of the Blancard Mountain descent which was a fucking blast. Now at the bottom we began the ride home. We hit the lower trials on Galbraith and then the rails to trails home to kevins. All in all we had a great time kick the shit out of each other. WE ended with 6,800 ft of climbing in 43.43 miles in 5 hours and 20 mins. The numbers dont look like it was all that bad or tough, but it was. considering that most of that climbing was in the middle 15 or 16 miles of the ride. We plan on a bigger ride next time. oh goody.

Today is earth day, do something, but don't drive, love your mother earth. I will leave the sarcastic comment off then end here. Just be good people.

and finally this, and email from my good friend Dusty.....

Hey, first, I rode the cross-check fixed yesterday. I got a long way to go, but I just kept thinking about Rudy doing the puff and shut the fuck up.

So I think I bought a house here in Fort Collins and I was thinking that it had been a really long time since I had seen a Hummer. Also, there are at least two dedicated Subaru shops in town. I think this is my new criteria for judging the livability of a town, the subaru to hummer ratio. Ketchum- lots of subarus but also an inordinate amount of Hummers- no good. Back east, not many Hummers, but also not many Subaru's either, and they don't have roof racks- also not good. Fort collins, lots of subarus, especially pre-outback dark green beaters, nary a hummer to be found- ah, home.

Here is my response......

I like the theory, Tahoe,lots of subarus and lots of Hummers, after all the bay area is only 3 hours away, thats only a couple hundred dollars in gas to get your hummer up to tahoe and show it off, the ladies are impressed. Seattle, well its a city and I will only last so long here, but lots and lots of subarus not too many hummers at all, we are a humble breed here in the northwest. I will be moving on hopefully north to Bellingham, everytime I go there I fall more and more in love with the place, the riding sure is epic in every sense of the word. sounds like life is good, I would like to add that beer and the quality of beer in a place adds to this equation, reno ok, tahoe not much good beer, seattle lots of good beer, bellingham good beer,and you in fort collins have good beer, not so sure how the beer is there is sun valley.

so I lied short post my ass, what ever that means it was a long one but I hope you enjoyed it. as always keep pedaling and enjoy.