223: message in a bottle

With the recent up roar over Mr. Armstrong’s bottom bracket message:

I thought it would be interesting to check some of my friends bikes, just to see if they had any
special or motivating messages for 2009.

First was L-Web,
That was nice. Jebalicous and Meghan must really appreciate that.

Speaking of ole Jebalicous, wonder what words of wisdom live on his bottom bracket:

Perhaps that’s the key to being fast: not seeing where you are going.

Next was one of my closest friends, and Reunion Tour teammate Buddy the Keg Breaker:

Followers of Buddy’s know he is rapidly learning the art of home brew, and frankly I look forward to sampling some soon.

Monkey’s message was pretty simple:

Gotta love monkey luv.

Zach and Jake shared a message: That’s Fast Forward Race Productions for those of you that didn’t know…

Breyla-la had perhaps a message that anyone that’s had an injury can understand:
And as for me, will when I flipped over my sexy, sexy black Niner single track ripping machine I
Found this: Well, if the shoe fits… (BTW the second sexy was a little over the top, and really for Blair.)

I had two pretty great mountian bike rides this weekend, with some pretty great folks.

Saturday had a nice group show up at the place and we headed out for almost 3 hours of Fairhill. Dennisbike, Kurtee, Rotten, Slik Rick, Keith (bobby's boy), Meatball, Buddy the keg breaker, Jan, Bad Andy, (i)Paul and myself. I apologize if I lived up to my moniker above. I was worried about the cold and pretty much went up every climb I could find in the first hour. My goal was to try and stay warm. It was a bad choice of trails that ended up flogging all of us. It was a fun ride, but I could have chosen a better loop, and controlled the pace a little better. As promised in the email about the ride, "I will be shattered when we get home." Manual dexterity and regular motor functions are just returning now. This was a pretty super group.

Sunday we met another nice group over at Middlerun and WhiteClay and did a nice 2 hour ride. Harlow, Shawn, JHIII, Bilson, L-Web, John T, Buddy the keg breaker, Jan, Matt (from out of town) , Fort James, Monkey and I. Monkey and Buddy did a much better job leading the group and keeping everyone together. We had a masterful ride.

Lessons learned this day: If you wash Monkey's bike before the ride, and it's below freezing outside, make sure to dry her cables or else her derailleur will freeze.

All in all a pretty wonderful weekend and I am happily enjoying a high life following a pretty nice nap.

respect
fm

223: splish splash

Last night I rushed home. A snow ride was in the making. I was super stoked to get out.

I finally get home, and rush into the house to kit up and grab my gear.

Monkey exclaims as I walk in the door, “we have a major issue here!” I charge into the kitchen to see soap suds pouring out of our dishwasher.

“What the hell!?” I ask in disbelief. Laughing I ask, “what soap did you use?”
Monkey, clearly a little more stressed, “ the cascade dishwasher soap, I used the dishwasher soap…”

I run up stairs to grab some towels. “are you sure?” I ask.

“Yes, she says” “I know what I used!”

Poking just a bit I comment, “ you know, I’ve never had any trouble with the dishwasher like that…”

A little more defensively, “yes, I used the dishwasher soap!!”

Sympathetically I offer this, “perhaps someone used the wrong soap over the weekend and
the residue caused this small avalanche of suds..”

At this point we have just about every towel we can find in the house on the floor. The suds are finally contained.

Diane offers this, “ you know, I did use a lot of soap on the measuring cup that we stored the bacon grease in.” she continued, “it’s possible I didn’t rinse it all off, or off at all…”

“it only takes a little.” I explain…

we both laugh. After a quick peck on the cheek, I head up the road to meet Jan for a quick ride through snowy single track.

We whisked along the frozen banks of the Christina river. The trail is considerably more raw than Middlerun or Fairhill, but very fun.

This is a trail I rode as a ten year old kid and my huffy bmx bike. As a young adult when I started mountain biking it was the staple of my riding menu.

With so many amazing places to ride here in the center of the universe, this short 5 mile out and back trail gets very little of my attention now a days.

I enjoyed flowing through the corners, and reminisced just a little about how much this trail has changed. There a few sections that in the past I might have dared to try and ride, but as an older wiser man, I know discretion is the better part of valor.

We used to be able to do one length of the trail in under 20 minutes. Tonight it’s over an hour by the time we complete the out and back. Despite the bright white snow on the trail, traction is not an issue this night. The dusting of snow does however offer some unexpected drifts through corners, and obscures some obstacles on the parcours. One of those dips grabs my front wheel and launches me over my bars.

We laugh about it as I comment, “guess my timing isn’t back just yet” I’ve got some dirt on my shoulder can you brush it off for me?

I hope to get back to this little section a joy again soon. Tonight was a magical journey…

Respect
fm

222: DCCoD Prom

this past weekend Monkey and I hosted the 3rd annual DCCoD Prom.

Thanks to everyone who made it out, and for those who missed, we'll try to catch you next year.

I need to thank a few folks who helped pull this off:

Dennis Smith for a great slide show

Jan for setting up the equipment to show the slide show

The Bahnson/Weber and Rotten Robert for housing folks.

Alyssa and Regan for cooking this morning

Everyone that brought such tasty beer and treats for the party

Myles and Tom for mixing up some magical waffle mix.

Mayhew for the fine espresso, and bringing that bad boy all the way from Pittsburgh.

Thanks to everyone who helped cleaned up, hang out, and just have a great time.

We are truly blessed to have the great folks around us that we do...

I am so fucking stoked from this weekend. Such a freakin' good time.

I am utterly exhausted, my dogs are exhausted, monkey is asleep on the couch.

Without further delay The DCCoD Prom in 3 acts:



ACT I: The Party:

the Collins were rockin'

Jeff winced in pain every time an old shot of him, when he was shorter than Diane, came up on the screen.

I will be riding D-town with Bob very soon.

international man of mystery...
the slide show was a crowd favorite.

Lots of great people and conversation

Chicks dig moustaches !

I'm trying to show Hardy where the bathroom is.

E-town was able to relax after a great first semester.

Jake and Alyssa have one last reprieve before heading back to school.
Act II: the ride

33 of us headed out for a group ride on the fine trails of Fairhill. We stayed together with minimum waiting and a wonderful ride was had by all. The trails had SUPERHERO traction and were very fun.

Kid Chris and Myles exchange war stories.


Wes adds air to the tires on the gay UPS and in the background

Kurtee is peeing.

Anne rock made the ride this morning. I think she had fun.I love this shot of Rich...Anne Rock.

Tom makes this look easy.

Monkey at the bottom of 5 bridges...

ACT III: Brunch and Re-Hydration

left over cheesecake, high life and Rock.
Life just doesn't get any better.

Alyssa and Regan started the waffles as we finished up our ride. Thanks so much.

my living room now called the living room presented by C3-Sollay.com

the kitchen was crowded after the ride.

Ninja Don gets some water and Mayhew demonstrates the appropriate

kit for mixing up some fine espresso

waffle line was long...


Monkey and Alyssa.



fatmarc needs food badly.


Rotten is wonderful...

I need to go to lay down now.

respect

fatmarc

221: Adventures...

Pretend for a moment that you are one of the mid-atlantic's best and most storied cylocrossers. We could add that you are the director of the region's strongest and deepest cyclocross team. And since we are pretending, lets just say you weigh 112lbs soaking wet, and that you don't expect to win any arm wrestling contests any time soon.

So naturally, you would plan to do a 120 mile kayak trip starting in the everglades and ending up in the Florida keys. Did I mention this would be a solo trip?

Frankly you'd either be completely insane, or you'd be Kris Auer.

Kris is teaming up with the fine folks at Adventures for the Cure raising money for Extreme Weekend for Children with Diabetes and World Bicycle Relief.

check out more info here.

And while you're at it, why not help out Anne Rock. Go here. read it and leave a sweet comment, so Anne can win a trip.

DCCoD Prom arrangements are coming along very nicely.

we are all excited for a fun weekend ahead. It will be good to see friends, and have some nice bike rides too.

stay warm.

rock.

fm

I will admit to you I thought I was over the mountainbike thing. But the past two weeks I have had amazing, and wonderful trail rides. Plus, my bike just feels so dialed in right now. So much fun. I'm really loving my mountian bike right now...

220: lookin' at my gucci, it's about that time

Found out today that Judd will now be the director of the MABRA cross series. Judd has asked that I be one of the technical advisers for the series. I'm pretty stoked about that. I wonder if that means I can get back on the MABRA cross promoters email list? Just curious.

The weatherman predicted a pretty horrible weekend for riding, but I have to be honest I had a couple of really great rides. Saturday Buddy lead a nice group of us around white clay and middle run.

For the record not a single one of us cleaned this log on this day. But we had fun trying.

Sunday L-Web, Rotten and I had the pleasure of being lead around sections of the d-town trail system by BPand Kim.

Colin told me he thought my bike was beautiful.

I couldn't tell if he was being serious or busting my ass, because last weekend I told him about my super secret crush. No, not Flo from the Progressive Insurance Commercials, although I do love her big tricked out name tags, but the caffeine 29er.I have to admit it's pretty sweet.

Been on FB for a week now. Perhaps not the devil as much as I thought before. I have 147 friends, most of which I know or have spoken to at some point in my life. But for the folks that request my internet friendship that I don't know I use the following protocol:

1. Ask monkey : " Diane who the fuck is Jeremy Powers and why does he want to be my friend?"

2. check crossresults.com: "nemesis or victim? have they beaten me, do they race cross, have they been to granogue, did I tell them no to a race refund?"

3. check usacycling.org :" why would some roadie want to be my friend?"

4. google stalk them.

If I can't come up with some realistic connection, or conversation with them at this point, I kinda have to ignore. Yeah, I could change the protocol, but I still feel kinda creepy about the entire facebook thing. It's just a little creepy, but you know then again, so am I. If I have ignored you in error, please leave me a comment and I will reexamine.

I agree with Colin, my bike is damn sexy.

respect

fatmarc

219: I know she can, she's my sister Anne

I am a crosser.
As such my training objectives for January are pretty basic:

1. Keep moving.

2. Don’t allow my arteries to clog with gravy.

3. Try to not break any all time weight gain records

4. try to ride a bike once in a while.

This is also the time of year when I do a little running. If you’d like to get a picture of me running, imagine Phoebe from Friends running and you’ll have a pretty good picture. Put me on a treadmill and it’s even worse.

Recently, I was running on the treadmill at work. I stared out flailing around as is my normal move. Finally I started to get into a rhythm my arms pumping, sweat pouring, Belly bouncing, everything was going well.

Unfortunately when pumping my arms I kinda karate chopped my MP3 player headphone cord, which was attached to my MP3 player sitting in the cup holder of the treadmill. My violent arm movement, pulled the wire attached to my MP3 player so violently that I yanked the little music machine out of the cup holder and shot it out behind me and across the room.

If not for the quick matrix like reaction time of one my co-workers, I might have sent her to the hospital. YIKES.

Luckily the MP3 player and my co-worker were uninjured. I on the other hand, couldn’t walk up stairs after my little run on the treadmill…

I put this super hot, sexy, sleek, salsa fork on my bike. I'll admit I have been lusting after it ever since I saw Peaches. Sadly I won't get to ride this bike anytime in the next since the midatlantic has been monsoon country the past two days. Look how sexy it is:

Monkey, Zayne and I had a very fun ride tonight. Well, okay it wasn't fun. It was soulless, but at least I did something.

see objective #1

Riley loves Rollers.

respect.

fatmarc vanderbacon

PS: So the fork is so damn sexy...