I hit the Bid button for this on eBay:

Clearly they need to do something about this over there in the Hexagon. Something's not right with this podium chick.

You be the judge...

...but in the KP's house. You bastage, KP. Did you trade one of your newborn twins for these??

Kurt is now in possession of The TRP EuroX Magnesiums. Yum.

These will be run on my rig come hell or high water too.

Juicy.

Holy crapolee, it's already here. It's starting weeks earlier than year's past with respect to when I started rolling in earnest for 'cross. Dubba, Von and I got our Sunday AM session on to kick off the season...all at the right pace and effort mind you. Thank God as I would have soiled my chamois for sure if we went any harder. We will be turning up the knob each Sunday until burn into cross season in September. and JUST like last year, without fail we had a nice rattler encounter....or at least I did. I literally endoed into this thing and it went nuts. I literally jumped like 4 feet backward (into a pricker bush) and the thing rattled for the next two minutes as it slipped into the brush.

I literally took the bike down off the wall, still bespeckeled with Belgian mud. I did however bring out my Retul measurements and my allen keys and set up the bike according to my new fit. WOW, what a difference. Seat is 3/4" more forward and post height is an astonishing 3/4" higher as well. Bars are roughly 1/4" higher but I have tuned up the hoods just a bit as well. The combination of these things is unbelievable. It feels 'right'. I feel like I am on top of the pedal stroke as opposed to 'behind' it. I may make afew more adjustments in the coming weeks but this set up feels awesome. Amazing that it feels this way after running the same exact dimensions since 2003.

All the cross wheels came out of hiding as well. Tons of work to do here with some Dugasts to stretch and glue only after I yank off the Rhinos from last season. I am going to try and bribe Dubba with Chocolate to help me glue these beeatches again this year. I still don't trust myself....

Home again. My lady and I finally are home and we were so happy to see our boys. This past week was tough and will never be forgotten, but I won't drag you all through that roller coaster ride of emotions again. Promise. I so appreciate the thoughts by the way. Tremendously helpful my peeps.

I've got to get things started, mainly to provide some focus...on something else. I need to listen to T and myself and just put one foot in front of the other...one pedal stroke before the next. Have some fun and get ready to trade paint with the boys this fall. Parsing through all this mail I have received from friends, so many are asking "..so when are the Wednesday sessions going off? Soon?". HA! Man, champing at the bit, you are. Sweet. I haven't even cleaned my bikes from Belgium! Ha! I need some more of the singletrack action before I can think about 'cross training to be honest. Some of the silent in the woods stuff that got stalled unfortunately this summer given the events. Once I am satiated, I will begin again. One two three hup. One two three hup.

No goals this year. No expectations. Just bliss. OK, I actually do have goals this year: sincerely I want to get Boups to be as fluid as Sven Sven Vantourenhout through the barriers and podium in an Open race and I am going to work AC2 into the ground on intervals so he can crush it in the 3s. Get the Brothers Squire to work it hard in the 45's and make the others hurt a bit. All these guys bleed cross. It makes my hair stand on end to watch these guys get better and better and better. I am also going to bring more new members deeper into the cult of our cross church and clinic them until they see the light. Feel accomplishments and progress in themselves. Dubba and I have been conspiring on this. Yum. More Children of the Changing Leaves need to be baptized.

I need to stretch tires.
I need to re-cable.
I nedeto re-tape.
I need to think cross.
The smiles are coming.

Hup ditty hup ditty hup ditty hup ditty.

Cross is my therapy. In fact, bikes have been responsible for most of the good things in my life and thinking about it brings me to better places. So, being out here in NJ and keeping the head above water these days is made better when I think about cross.

I went for a run in an old haunt of mine yesterday, Tamaques Park in Westfield NJ. Haven't been there since high school it seems. It hasn't changed. I knew there were trails so I went and found them and instantaneously, the only thing I could think of is "WOW! This would be an awesome cross course!"

It is akin to Elk's Lodge in Boulder where we get our training on but better. It's got a WAY better open fields to train in plus a TON of sweet single track that reminded me a LOT of the course we did in Schriek Belgium in January.

So, if you are a crosser in mid NJ and want to grab your buddies together for a little mid week training workout, I'd suggest Tamaques (after you investigate with whom you need to) the allowance of bikes in that back wooded section. It's got a phenomonal start/finish area wide enough for plenty of peeps to line up with plenty of straight aways to pass safely before diving into sweet paths with logs already put in your path to hurdle.

If you all set up a course in there Jersey-ite crossers, send some pics! I'd love to see how this turns out.

I feel at peace tonight. Truly. The last half of my life which I have anticipated for decades has begun. And that feeling is liberating in a sense for both my beloved father and for my family and me.

Seven Eleven PM

Seven Eleven 2008

We made it in time. The family gathered around. I’ll get to that….

Growing up Irish and Catholic and east coast is problematic and beautiful all at the same time. It's a vicious cocktail of passion and love and guilt and rage and peace and comedy which is combined to create a blood so thick that it can be the only thing responsible for the Faith this family has had in itself, and for a man and wife to be married for 50 years.

The prior posts have led to this. My father has not been well and his condition worsened in such a ferocious pace these last two weeks. It was startling to us all including his doctors. By 6 AM this morning, my sisters said simply “…this is it. We'll do what we can to help him be alive but try if you can to get here soon.” And within 20 minutes, I was booked and bound for the east coast later this morning.

I went over to Tad ‘s house after school one day. Took Bus 6 home with him to play. Bill showed up too and what started out fun, turned into a vicious tag team of those guys versus me in a way that made me doubt myself, my life my whole being. Them against me. I never experienced alienation before in my life and theirs came in such a frontal assault that I felt nothing but betrayal. I just ran away from them and never looked at those kids the same way again. The walk home was really long. Up and down the hills of my small town in Connecticut until I finally made it home and met my parents unexpectedly after dinner. I cried. I was betrayed and ousted out of that circle of what I thought were my friends. The next day was Saturday. Paper route day and a big route. Dad took me in the car this time and when we got to the last mailbox on the route, he did not do the U turn he normally did to go back home but drove on atypically. I asked him “Where we going? To the store?” He just said “Umm, nah, I’ve got to get this thing I forgot to pick up.” So we drove for a bit and he banged into the shopping plaza and parked in front of the new bike store that opened a few weeks prior. He shut off the Volare’s motor and turned to me and as he did so the seats crinkled with that faux leathery sound: “My son will never walk home from anywhere again.” And he took me inside and allowed me to choose the bike I wanted. It was a GT Pro Performer. White. I was 12.

I walked into the critical care unit tonight and I walked in to the room to an array of smiles. My mom, sisters and brother in law. There he was. "Papa!" I yelled but this time he did not turn to look at me like he did last time. He was certainly different than he was even two weeks ago when I came to see him. Thinner. Machines were keeping him alive. His eyes were moving with lids 3/4 shut. He was so hot when I leaned over and kissed him on his forehead. A fever raging given the chemical pneumonia that had begun two nights ago.

We are all there. My left hand reached under the sheets and found his and I interlocked my fingers with those of his left hand. I could feel my ring clink against his. Two married men deeply in love with the wives who make us the men we are, and mom next to me with my sisters and my brother in law watching over us who has guided us all like an angel these dark days. We phase in and out of gut laughs to cries of disbelief that this is it. But we mostly smile.

The machinery displayed numbers that do not lie. We watched as numbers declined.

I could smell the exhaust of the car as he’d start this old Mazda up on winter mornings. My room above the garage so the smell would just seep through. He’d be up at 4:45 and on the road by 5 to catch the 6:20 train from Stamford to NYC. A commute he did every day for 25 years. Winters in Connecticut are legendary, and Mazdas with their rotary pea shooter engines are not capable of much in snow. So I’d sit and watch him from the window from my bedroom as he try to propel the car UP the hill….then watch it come sliding back down. Then UP again….and slide on back down again. Comedy. Five children raised. All put through college on his wage. The dedication to try and get a Mazda up a snowy treacherous hill to get to work the symbol of dedication to us.

We were all there as the numbers cascaded to zero. The heat in him still raging as he shuddered and then peacefully drifted off. His spirit was long ago released and watching us watch him. Watching as we were stroking the whitening hair on his head. Forehead kissed. I know this.

My hand released his. And I ensured precision when I placed it back upon him. I laid out his fingers on his belly for a moment and then put mine on top of his. Measuring the exactness of the similarities of our hands. The largeness of our knuckles and the thinness of our fingers. I pulled the blanket back over.

My hands are his. I am like him. I am like you. You are like yours. You are needed and wanted. You are loved and you live. I say this to you my readers for whatever it may be worth.

Life is a series of choices. Choose to be there. Whatever 'there' may mean to you.

Keep the Faith my father. My choices past and future are eternally rooted in things you taught me.

It's done! The Valmont Park Project including the bike park has been approved and is a go! For guys like Pete Webber and Bobby Noyes and many others who have been pushing this for a decade, this is an amazing day. We will now be able to have a dedicated facility to do what we love best right here in town: ride off road.

You can read about last nights final voting session in the Daily Camera but I can tell you that the members of the Valmont Bike Park committee and the Boulder Mountain Bike Alliance are extremely pumped for Boulder.

Want to get an idea of what the park is going to look like? Click here. I can't wait! See that guy in the center of the park? That's yours truly. Getting my cross on in my town's dedicated cross course. SICK!

I'm learning things these days. Mainly that the boy in me needs to be a man, no matter how much I try and continue to be everyone's inner boy, externally.

As I've talked about....a lot these days...real life is demanding me be present. And I'm there. I need to continue to be a keystone for those that I love. So recreational things like going out for monster rides, specified training, fun racing like the short track's....just have to get back burnered for now. The Firecracker 50 was a blast, and I'm stoked to have had the time, a unique window these days to do it, but now I begin a two week hiatus of travel, family visits and focus on the tough stuff that life is requiring of me.

At the expense of sounding like a cheese ball and using a cyclocross analogy, now is the time for the real hup hup. The time where I need to use some of that grit reserved for throwing down in races, now to throw down for others in life. Make them feel a sense of the hup hup to put one foot in front of the other and focus on what is right...what's working in life for them and provide reasons for the next foot to be put squarely in front of the last. The mud is thick in situatons like this and often the mind has no way to slice through it. My job now is to help those that need it to float across it.

I'll be there pushing somewhere the next few weeks in some way. When you throw your leg over your ride this week for your ride, put in a one minute all out interval, max watts, max heart rate....simply for those that can't. Step outside yourselves for just a minute while on that ride and think of the fortunes you have in life. What's working for you. There's always plenty of time to dwell on what's not, right? Try to syncopate your good health and your good fortunes while you're doing something you love.

Hup hup my friends.

So I got my latest copy of Mountain Flyer mag and low and behold, my boy Mike gets a multi-page article on the virtues of aluminum and his views on working with it! Very cool! Read the article here as well as a review of Mike's 1 x 1, the Alchohauler.

If you do not have it, you NEED to get a subscription to Mountain Flyer. It's solid!

Also, SFGate did a nice article on small/custom framebuilders. Check out the artcle here and a video as well. Watch Mike get jiggity with his CAD program.

Congrats Mike!