waaaaay.woahbothowse.owwwwwg

Yes, this week is full of surprises. I’ve started jogging in the mornings. Stella isn’t quite up for a full-on jog, so we take breaks. It’s nice though…. just need to keep it up. I mean, it isn’t that hard, it’s only like a mile or two around the neighborhood.

Oh, also Shannon moved in yesterday. She seems super stoked to be in Flagstaff. I hope she has fun with Grad School up here. I also said my goodbyes to Audra as she was packing this morning. I was hoping to hang more last night with her and Owen, but they all got super tired super early and were crashed out.

Oh, and it wouldn’t be a blog without more crap about my bike. I need to rebuild my rear hub on the Poprad. Time to toss some $$$ at that…. but do I want to do a fancy sealed bearing hub or… just do another XT hub… hm. I’d like to do this ride on Saturday…. 1 Lap = +/– 10 miles 825 feet of vertical elevation gain Course is roughly 65% singletrack, 35% dirt roads

http://absolutebikes.net/cart/race_descript.htm

Things I dun:

• I rode rollers for the first time. It’s a lot more difficult than it looks folks! The dude that owns Applesauce has a set and has been riding me to try em out. Luckily for me, I didn’t crash and was able to ride for a solid 5-10 minutes on my fixie without holding onto a chair or wall. Now I have to work on doing this 20 minutes a day every day. One problem though… I don’t own a set of rollers.
• Rode Soldiers trail twice this weekend. That was a hoot. I’m guessing this trail will become my default bread and butter trail when I can’t find anything else to do. It’s a ~15mi round trip if I only do the trail once, but I keep seeing people looping back around the trail, thus doubling it up. I guess sooner or later I’ll be doing that, making it a ~20mi trip.
• Got caught in the rain with Stella on the way to kickball and camped out under the entrance to the NAU gym for like 45min. Stella and I played there which was ok, but I also started to practice no handed track stands. Crazytown. I pulled one for almost a minute, which is improvement in my book.

We will stand for this no more! Without further adieu, pix and random crap about my 2 current whips…
Weekend Warrior: I’ve been getting out mostly on the weekends with this bike. Most of the trails my friends do are more oriented towards mountain bikes, or I’ve become a HUGE weenie when it comes to scaling crazy vertical differences. Oh well, in the words of my friend Mark, “Hey, at least we’re getting out.” It’s still pretty much a stock 56cm Lemond Poprad which I need to get a shorter stem on. Components are Shimano 105 with a 9spd cassette which I’m pretty happy with. I also want to get bars that aren’t as wide. The fixie’s lack of width has grown on me, but then again, it comes in handy in rough spots.
Squirtle Squad: I’ve been learning how to do one foot over the handlebar skids… then hopefully no handers… hahahahahha that’ll be the day, now won’t it! It’s a Mercier Kilo TT.. I threw some chopped bars on it, which feel way better than the stock bars. Soon I’ll be building some new wheels since the rear stock hub is on it’s 3rd owner and on it’s way outta here. I’m looking at Velocity Deep V’s in pink and either IRO or Phil Wod track hubs, depending on how much $ I can scrape up. I’d like to get a nice saddle for it too… decisions, decisions.