Shame

The judging eyes of Brutus were upon me.
 
I could see him thinking, "you big dumb honky, how could you possibly get road rash at a indoor spin class?"

My dog has the kind of cutting wit that would drive away Mormons and girl scouts.
I also experienced the euro lament of the injustice of nutella packaging

 

There is still snow on the ground. sigh. 

On the upside, I did order my new CX bike.

Photo Cred: CX Magazine

Wanted to give disc brakes a whirl. Will see how this goes. 

Sprung

We have been on suicide watch around here.  The first winter we had in MN was supposed to be have been really bad, but this year has really sucked.  The continued cold and an especially fussy child has had me on the brink of irrational actions several time (like driving to to texas irrational). But now it looks like things are on the up swing.  It was practically tropical this afternoon, but I was unable to gather the fortitude to get out and ride before pm church.
I am reaching that strange point where I am getting ready to be in between bikes as I liquidate one to move on up to another.  last weekend was the Slick 50 and it lived up to its name.  What just aboout got me was not the icy trails that we had to navigate on our way out of town. Rather it was the fast descents that required functional brakes once we got out to Eden Prairie/Minnetonka hills.  Even really well set up cantilevers are really only useful for slowing you down, not stopping.  Up until now I have  relied on my geared CX bike to pull road duty, and it works ok.  However the consequences for not getting stopped in CX race and on the road are very different. At this point in my life stopping has become important.
That being said, I have also listened the voices and reason of numerous people and I decided that it was time to just move on to disc brakes on the CX bike. I do not believe that cantis are dead or that disc brakes will ever be better than road calipers, but rather that they offer me more utility for the things that I do on a bike. I acknowledge that there is a weight penalty with disc brakes, but the level at which I race it is really just a wash.
I have also been dinging up a lot of rims with the really crappy road conditions.  The imperative to have true wheels is much less when your are not relying on lateral and radial rim integrity for friction.
I have also been in a bit of a weight weenie haze, and that can be a bit too expensive when you start destroying 1500 gram wheel sets at a rate of more than 1 per year.
So that means that we are on to a new standard. stand by for more.

Jasper is reaching that age where his athletic ability has exceeded his level of coordination.  This morning he had a busted lip to match what was going to be a nice shiner

This has to end eventually.

Mixed disciplines

Butch and I busted out some rural road action today. I get a chuckle out of the bus stops that some of the farmers put at the end of their drives. There is bus stop down near Hastings that consists of a tractor cab. This was right next to Acton alps hence the old gondola.

Cross Worlds

Last weekend I went to CX Worlds with my Supervisor Adam. Adam will dispute the fact that he is my supervisor, but his name is on my performance evals, so as far as I am concerned he is my supervisor. It was Adam, his 5 YO son Gerit, Dave, a dentist from Zumbrota, and I in a rental car for 12 hours each way.

It was a glorious time. By the time I got to the hotel all the Kansans were there and well into some PBR. Then some random dude from the Oregon Cross Crusade just wandered into our room, and Slater proceeds to bash OBRA and give the guy crap. If the dude had not just walked into our room I would have felt bad.

Keeping the mighty Ohio river at bay

Jonathon Page put on a good show, but had a mechanical that knoked him out of the running

The course was awesome. I came away from the races thinking that our courses are simply not technical enough.

Voss just made everyone else look weak.

Dangling.

U-23 Next year!

Little Lars was really impressive. Just kept laying the power down late in the race and popped onto the podium.

Bart had a great race too. 

Poops and giggles abounded as we made fun of Brandon Bundys aversion to germs.

I was pretty bummed that I did not get to see Mod's Race, where he brought the rainbow colors back to Nebraska. It was good to see the midwest so well represented.
The snow keeps falling in Minnesota.  Somebody should have shot that groundhog.......

Fat Bike Musing and Riding St. Croix River Ice

Last week Eddie K lent me his fat bike for an entire week. I had the opportunity to ride it in several different scenarios.  The first was at the Hillside race up in Elk River.  I did not do as well as I thought I should have, but I had the distinct feeling that to milk the most out of a fatbike you really need to be realistic about your expectations.  

• If the snow is packed, its probably going to be faster on a narrow tire bike. 
• Don't expect to accelerate rapidly.  you are pushing a lot of rubber around, capitalize on your inertia.

After getting input from Grelk, I realized that it might be best to utilize the utility of the Pugsley for exploration.  Enter Barry Tungseth: who hatched a plan to ride the St. Croix River north from Stillwater to Marine on St. Croix.There was only one other person dumb enough to join us, David Meyer of the Hub, Bike Cooperative.

A little preventative medicine for my first river ice experience

I will admit that I was scared to death at first, but Barry led the way. and we only saw open water once.

Once we got north of the High Bridge we just skirted the sand bars on the WI side of the river.

It was just so amazing to be out on a perfect day, seeing what no one else will ever witness on that day.

It was incredibly unnerving to look down through the ice and see the river bottom. You also would gauge the ice thickness by looking at the ice cracks......

 We were all on fat bikes, and tried to stay on the fringe of the river where there was some snow, as the ice could be incredibly treacherous.  That being said, I only fell a few times

Certain sections looked liked there had been a lot of Snowmobile traffic. Photo: David Meyer

Post Coffee/Pre bubble gut. Photo: David Meyer

We only had one incidence of breaking through the ice, and thankfully the water was only 20 inches deep. The hole was just big enough to sink a wheel into. Photo: David Meyer

Dave and Barry were great company and I would love to ride with them any time.  I also had some time to reflect on the utility of fatbikes.  I guess that I see the most utility for fat bikes off the beaten path.  I actually did not care for it on the single track, as I was used to super steep angles and fast acceleration.

We made Jasper a sweet school bus cake for his 2nd birthday.

The case for conservation.

PBS is currently streaming the 2 part Ken Burns documentary on the dustbowl. It a pretty good representation of what can go wrong when we disregard good agricultural practices for the sake of a few more dollars. Something that most people do not realize is that about half of the row crop farm land in the US is rented for cash. This means that the tenants do not have a vested interest in the land, and the land owners probably live in a city and do not have any connection to the land. Land rent has gotten so expensive that tenants feel the need to squeeze every last dollar they can out of an acre. I hear this argument all the time from people in the ag industry usually when someone is trying to justify a poor agricultural practice.
It drives me insane.
The most direct (but not necessarily effective) solutions involve regulation of nonpoint source pollution, but this approach will just mean that food will become more expensive and the environmental impact marginal.  Regulations are a good fit for point sources of pollution, but have historically had a extremely low success rate with non-point sources of pollution like sediment, excess nutrients, and the off-site movement of crop protection products.
It is a very complex problem.  The one thing that I am sure of is that there are a ton of ignorant people touting simple solutions to complex problems.  I happen to believe that education (perhaps mandatory?) will improve our quality of life in rural areas and for those that live downstream, but its a shame that it takes disasters like the dust bowl to draw attention to problems.

Blacking out

Parenthood is a potent drug. I did not know what it was like to blackout until last night.  I remember talking to my parents last night on skype, but have no idea when or how i got to bed.

My wife took this picture sometime after I slumped over........at least she did not give me a permanent marker mustache.

I have also been on the trai1of how to use cranberries in recipes since I can buy them for about 50 cents/lb.  So I edited this recipe from Taste of Home.
65

Ingredients

• 3 cups 4 large chopped peeled tart apples
• 2 cups 12oz bag fresh or frozen cranberries
• 1 and 1/4 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• TOPPING:
• 1-1/2 cups quick-cooking oats
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 
  

Directions

• Combine apples, cranberries, sugar and flour. Pour into a greased 11-in. x 7-in. baking dish. In a bowl, mix topping ingredients until crumbly; sprinkle over apple mixture. Bake at 350° for 50-55 minutes or until fruit is tender. Yield: 6-8 servings.

Add Vanilla ice cream. You are welcome.