Wednesday, August 31, 2011

WTF is wrong with TN?

Besides being a state that appears to have an Orange disorder, after reading this article I can only go WTF?!?!?!

I biked to school thru half of 5th, all of 6th and 8th grade. Also occasionally biked in 11th. My ride in 5th and 6th was a 1.1 mile ride each way in the burbs on Scottsdale AZ. I started off with only a few friends riding, but by the time I moved away, we often had 10 kids riding out from my house, with another 2 or 3 passengers. Usually girls :). Ahhh those were the days, being a paper boy, flush with my own cash. Damn. We crossed 1 major road where there was a light and usually a crossing guard. Depending on how far away it was 10 might be a bit young, but hell kids within a half mile I think had to walk or ride, as they didn't provide bus service.

My question is if it was against the law/neglect full to let her ride to school, what would have happened if it was after school and the girl was going over to a friends? I ranged long and far in those days, often 3 or 4 miles or more. Hell several times we skated home from Paradise Valley Mall. A bit longer haul of I think 5 miles. Crazy. People need to calm the hell down.

Rode Lake Fairfax yesterday and it was a damn good workout the first half. Took a half hour phone call after an hour and never got back into a good grind. Legs felt better than Monday for sure. Cleared some minor debris piles but it appeared everything else had been cleared. Lots of fun playing on the rocky sections too.

Had to pick up new brake pads for my front as they were very weak/soft and visual inspection showed barely any pad left.

Might go up and police CJ today after work, depends on how I'm feeling.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Irene is a bad bad girl

Power stayed on for me and mine mostly in the face of hurricane Irene, only the inlaws in Bethesda lost power.

Got out for a short mixed surface ride I wanna say about 45-50 minutes. Didn't feel awesome either as I noticed some throbbing indicating some minor sinus crud and in general my fitness is way off. Though the only way to fix that is get out and do stuff, so that's the plan. I'm going to either go up to Cabin John today or maybe Lk FFX.

I've also come to the sad conclusion that during the last great gear bag clean out I accidentally dropped my Edge 500 into the recycle bin. Alas 2 weeks ago that recycle bin went out after I had forgotten to retrieve said GPS. UGH. I think I'm going to pony down on a Edge 800 on payday.

And in a bit of bawdy humor:
20 Worst Tramp Stamps

Also have a full PM of the bike due this weekend. Apparently I never quite correctly reinstall the cranks and I quickly end up with a creaky bottom bracket.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Another week, another Quake

Survived DC-Quake-Armageddon 2011, no issues, all is well.

Had a damn interesting ride last Thursday at Wake-o-tink. Arrived nice and early and got a quick start on riding, by 4:30. But within 10 minutes the storm started to roll in. I rode another 20 minutes and headed back, thunder was picking up as was lightning in the distance.

Jason M was in the lot and we bullshitted for a bit then it started to rain. We dodged to our respective cars. It rained lightly for a bit then hard for about 15 before slowing and stopping around 6:05.

Dan Hudson from IMBA arrived to ride with us and some trail builders in from out of town. We talked for a bit, and the storm line was slowly creeping south but still pretty clear over accotink. Larry arrived and reported at his house only minimal sprinkling of rain for 5 mins. A check of trails at wakefield showed minimal dampness, maybe just slightly tacky. So in a light shower a moderate pace group rolled over to Accotink.

I did okay for the first half of chasing the intermediates but after that I popped badly due to blowing 1 climb and missing a turn. Ugh, after that I was hosed. Blew up on one of the final climbs on the way back and had to push. That sucked. Finished out finally catching up doing all of boyscout in reverse. Not terrible.

Ended up riding with XXL at WF for another 20 minutes before we finished around 8:20. Probably a nice 13-14 miles total riding for the day.

Slow week otherwise, still run down from the last few weeks, hoping to get back into the swing in the next week or two.

And Hurricane Irene is on it's way! Hoooray hurricane!

Monday, August 15, 2011

Rockburn Branch Fundraiser

I just need to say WOW! What an amazing job the Rockburn Branch Skills Park team has done in building a top notch grassroots team to get this project rolling.

Yesterdays picnic/fundraiser turned out very well even without the big/adult rides. I ended up staying the whole time from 2 till 7 and helping a bit with clean-up. I was a bit concerned on the way there as the weather looked crap-tacular and with the main rides canceled I was a bit worried about turn out. Ends up people really care about this park getting done, I think almost 200 people came through during the main event.

The main part of the fund-raiser was the raffle of 2 bikes and a trip to Moab. They only offered 300 tickets for the chance, but sold them for $25. That kicked them off to a start of $7500. Pat Miller then rustled up a ton of bike gear for a $4 ticket raffle. I bought 5 and I think a LOT of people did. I'm gonna guess another $1000 raised there, though it might be a bit more. Meals were $5 and tons of waters were sold also they had a snow cone machine running constantly at $2 a pop. Say another $1000 bucks raised there. Then Jay brought a donated Keg of Clipper City beer and I think that raised about $250 bucks in donations for cups of beer. 2 Corney Kegs were acquired of Troegs Beer and I bet that was another $250. I'd say the picnic itself there raised an additional 2500 bucks or so. Putting them at 10k. Then Pat announced a local family has donated $10K in support. Amazing. There almost at the half-way mark. They also have now 2 more bikes there going to be able to raffle in the near future that were donated in the last day or two. Tshirt sales were rocking also. An excellent event.

I know they also have some grants out that could push them into the 30K range with a bit of luck.

On the down side I've ridden my bike 1 time in the last 2.5 weeks. UGh. Blows. Anyways I'm out. First short day of work in a week. Yah!