I came across this local photographer's site on Road Bike Review announcing that he's assembled 100's pf cross pics for local Colorado racing action. They are all really great!

If you are local, come see yourself in digital celluloid. You know Winsor, I am not sure if you and I have met, but say hello this season!

So, when speaking Mike about the Revolver 29'er he made for me, I asked him who the person was behind the torch. Mike for many years had Paul's gifted hands assemble his designs on the jig, but Paul's demand has been increased given the growing popularity of 'cross in particular so trying to find windows where he could focus on Mike's bikes was growing harder. Mike was able to source a new welder and as Mike explained to me one of the best in California was responsible for sticking the tubes together.

My Revolver was welded by Jason Groves of El Camino Fabrications. His site has a great collection of photos of the types of frames and welding techniques but is building a fantastic rep for his own frame designs. He cut his teeth at Boeing before his bike lust pulled him from teh multi billion dollar aerospace industry into the less lucrative bike industry all due to the passion. I love that. He worked at Control Tech, Titus and Strong frames and other places before launching El Camino Fab. And while he now calls Oaktown home, homie, Jason lived in Fruita so he's practically a local. No wonder why my Revolver rips it out here in the CO terrain.

The latest Mountain Flyer issue has a great write up of various frame builders highlighted at the NAHMBS including a spot on Jason and El Camino fab. Keep an eye out for this guy!

Here is a picture of a happy boy. In fact, this is my bro and team mate, from Boulder Dave W. See his smile? This is in part due to the epic ride taken on this day, but mostly due to his pride and Joy, his Maverick ML-7.

Sunday, some foolio stole this bike out of his garage. I will provide info on this bike including his Maverick Head Badge "name" (all Mavericks are given a unique name on the head badge) and other characteristics, but in general, keep an eye out on Craig's/eBay/local trails/local shops for the following:

• Large Black Maverick ML7 Frame
• Rear Wheel has a prototype CycleOps PowerTap...it has an all black hub (e.g. no carbon or silver bits like the road ones do. The rear rim has no manufacturer details on it either but had wheelbuilder.com stickers on it.
  

Dialed. I have finally got the Ahrens Revolver 29'er dialed. And I will say this: TIGHT! Mike, my friend, you did it boy. You built me the perfect bike.

I ended up going for Ritchey WCS bits featuring a 120mm 4-Axis stem which I have on all my bikes. With it flipped an the steerer now cut, I feel more comfortable on this bike positionally than any mountain bike I've had before....and that is nearly an IMPOSSIBLE statement for me considering I have been saying for a decade + that my 1996 Dean Colonel frame was (and still is) perfect.
So why do I say this and not just giving props to my hombre who built me this frame (and trust me, Mike as an engineer by trade want me to nuke it if it wasn't performing)? I would say that it boils down to this:

• Geometry: Mike knows my style of riding is extremely aggressive. If there is even the slightest lip or bump, I'm launching it and he knows after years of riding with me that I'm pretending I'm Lopes most days in the woods carving and wheelie-ing and leaning. You get the picture. But specifically, the head and seat angles are spot on and tight for the type of immediate steering precision and wheel-under-ass acceleration I love. I do NOT want a hook and ladder fire engine feel for my mountain bikes and I feared that going to a 9'er would immediately give me this degradation to my riding experience and slow the whole feeling of the bike down. NOT the case! The bike feels equally stable bombing fire roads as it is nimble when I rail the big wheels and my 6' 2" carcass around trees in tight single track. Recommendation if you talk to Mike about your Ahrens: Add an infinitesimal degree change to the front steering (to slacken) and a 1/4" to 1/2" to the rear wheel base to lengthen and it will fit that nearly all-around riding style. My proto frame is perfect for me, but may not be ideal for all riders and these tiny production run changes will be the nut.
  
• Design: Yummy. What makes Mike's bikes nice to look at relates to the whole picture. The Gothic graphics are rad but it's the frame aggressive style and overbuilt appearance that make me stare at my own bike like Augustus staring at a Wonka bar. Mike is an engineer's engineer and it shines through with the over-built qualities of the bits holding the Easton 7005 (or Scandium) tubes together. Mike will CAD himself through complicated problems of his frames for his customers to eek at the best performance to weight to strength ratio. And he has nailed it. My 4.4 pound XL frame built up to approximately 24 lbs and change but the solidity of the yokes...the BB yoke in particular shown here is spectacular. It is pure beef having been CNC'd out of a solid block of 7K series aluminum and the acceleration I mention above is in part due to this and the beefy chain stays. Yet the lightness factor is still maintained. Incredible. Many frame manufacturers are now coming to Mike for his engineering work on complicated problems like sliding drop outs and other bits he now OEM's to them.
• Stuff Mike is not responsible for: Mavic CrossMax 29'er wheels and Shimano XTR Groupo. Both are capital N nuts. The Mavic's are bomber. I bought them as I have the 26" version on my 1 x 1 and they are so solid under that kind of stress it is crazy. I am running them tubeless thanks to Tim Faia's donation of the Bontrager tires to try out (which are AWESOME and hook up beautifully in our terrain here in CO). The wheels are not stupid light but I will take a bit of heft for reliability and solidity any day. There is no flex. Say again: NO flex. The way I like it. The Shimano bits are as you would expect: Flawless. I am running the paddle shifters this time (I ran the integrated set on my old Moots) and I like the feel. Shifting is super crisp...about as crisp as my Dura Ace on my cross bikes and road bike. As mentioned before, I made the mistake of getting the Mavic's in the 6 bolt pattern and not the Shimano lock ring style. So, I am running Hayes rotors with the XTR brakes and they are super solid.
  

So P-Lo sends the mail yesterday AM which I equated to a surfer friend calling up another surfing friend: Dude, surf's up. Waves are perfect. Let's hit it. In cycling translation (especially in Boulder): Dude, weather's perfect. No sand on the roads...and no wind. Let's hit it.

And so, he and I rolled our recovery ride yesterday AM talking and catching up
spinning in the beautiful sun. SO the topic turns to injury and pain and I mention that I am STILL having this mad left leg set of issues. Pain, loss of power, etc. It starts at my hip, runs like a sword through my left ass cheek, down hamstring and straight down through my shin/extensors to my foot. WTF?! So P-Lo, recommends his guy here who sees Chris W, Health Net and a bunch of other endurance folks with crippled bodies to get some testing done. Apparently he's like the Muscle Whisperer and is about 500m from my house. I'm feeling infinitely better these days (stronger ironically even before I get za plan re-launched) but I've gotta get this remedied.

Stay tuned.

I'm going for more all around tread pattern this year with a sets of 32's and 34's in the Typhoon pattern. These mofo's will sit and stretch for months down in the basement on their hoops.

It's April. I am already getting hungry.

...on the toilet. Oh, my rides certainly rank up there too if I am not concentrating on ensuring I reach channel zero when the teeter totter is all out of whack, but the porcelain throne is absolute peace and focus for me.

Take my session this week while on the road. 5 weeks in a row. 5AM and I start the day with a think-session. That in itself is good news as I am usually bound up like a cement plant when I get in the aluminum tube out of DIA and get my game on in some other city. Nerves? Not enough water? I'm becoming an old fart? Lack of activity to keep the system churning? Those are the typical variables preventing , um..regularity, but Wednesday AM the factory was moving out the product very productively. So the thoughts rolled in.

Oh, back to the porcelain-inspired thinking. Even in the wee hours the hyperactive brain is on overdrive. And whence it use to be with inspired thoughts ranging from software product design to Ren and Stimpy, i got sucked into the teeter totter imbalance problem. So, what does that mean to you, my reader? Instead of speaking all in abstract and whatnot, I'll boil it out: It's side 3 of the 3 sided teeter totter imbalancing everything....and it has for some time (as you know). Why can't I just move on? 12 years. Started there before I met my wife and got married; we grows-dup some kids during this time; lived lives in the family of the company in SF before we even had a brain-fart about Boulder. We partied together, worked hard together, struggled together and crushed the competition together. What is it about me? Why can't I just move on? Why can't I take leaps of faith? As I kept on thinking, I kept on numbing and before I knew it I was crippled and could barely walk. The thoughts were deep and the session was good but I was late for my meetings. I left too many dangling thoughts there on that porcelain Wednesday morning.

Back home midnight Wednesday. Up an at it at 7 bells today with every input firing off rid lights, bells bleeps and buzzes. I shut them all down. Had coffee at the table with my lady and boys and helped get them out the door for school and for their days to begin. I get in my office chair and the thoughts flood in again. I can not focus on anything else. Why can't you do it man? This is not an issue of anyone in particular, the company or otherwise doing shite things at me to/me. I think it is just the beginning of a chasm. A very natural and gradually diverging chasm not unlike when an ice sheet breaks apart in the Arctic after naturally wearing away a part of itself. 12 years. Crispy around the edges.

The lunchtime training ride helped anesthetize. It's always temporary though. Tangentially, what was fun was dropping some full kitted-out roadie up Sunshine on my 29'er. Hmm. Maybe I'm not so bad off after all. But that smile was short lived as the thoughts got pulled right back to: what do I do?

Real focus on the root of the problem started to materialize the more altitude I gained on the bike. While I had these realizations before, or sort of stub thoughts about them, this trip to the mother ship spoke to me about distance between them...and me. My experience was different this time. I have been working 967 miles away (according to United mind you as I know that mile accrual intimately), isolated as one of the people trying to keep this company as successful and driven as when we were tiny and obscure. The core of executive team have circle wagon meetings at will....and decisions are made in real-time. Except for my input of course. It's not intentional, it's just reality. I'm not there. The decision to move here in 04 and the conditions of my situation were absolutely different at that time. Now, more than ever, my A game and the influence it can have is...limited. And that is a pain that is extremely tough to bear when you have as much self pride as I do. I try to do the best, but it's neutered.

So, all the rants you hear me go off on about teeter totters and such....it's all rooted here. the Family (side 1) and health (side 2) sides sing in harmony and are rock solid. But side 3's challenges lie at the epicenter of the fire in my brain. I do not expect many of you to understand, but those that know me will find this all fairly typical. I do not give up. It's like 'crossing for me. I race against the best Masters in the country and refuse to give up race after race until I meet my personal goals. They began with just get into the top 20, then top 10 then top 5 and as God as my witness, I want to have that feeling again of raising hands over my head having overcome the challenges of racing against the best and training through all my drama to make it so.

So that is the personal conundrum, kids. To do all these things, at least in my tiny experience of mine, is to have absolute balance. Harmony. My instinct is killing me, which is to not let go. Not give up. Not yield and keep at it. Not let business drive my family's geography, to ensure we still keep driving towards quality of our lives. I need my time to come to the conclusion so I may have to drag you through more vetting. But Spring's coming and with it clarity.

God, the ride was killer today. I'm lucky.

Lighter, all carbon and less expensive than most after market 'cross forks, per mi hombre Dubba Dwight.

And they're white.

Behold Dwayne, mechanic super genius, displaying the awesome lightness of the new Challenge Cyclocross fork.

I saw Parbo rocking this last season and I snapped this shot of him when he was in Boulder. Meant to ask him about the fork but forgot. Now I know.

Pricing and specs to come.

My Type A is getting the best of me. I do not have the patience....hmmm, no, maybe a better word is confidence....to just allow myself to 'ride'. What the F is wrong with me??? I don't need to be going full gas now! Just flow! I guarantee that this rest and lack of structure at the moment will do me great justice and likely push out some fitness later in the season where I need it. Za Plan is going to be re-instantiated once again. I get fit pretty quickly but as these years tick on, man, I need to keep the fires turned over much much longer to maintain it. So while I wait until I hit the fitness reset button, I feel like I am crawling into a hole that I am not going to be able to train out of (in time). Somewhere between getting faster and fitter these past few years turned me into a doubtful 14 year old girl. I think I am having an identity crisis because I do not look as fit as Andy Schleck 365 days a year. And I say this (as an Abby Ale passes my lips) in the same way the 14 year old girl shoving Bon-Bon's in her pie hole stares at the People Teen Edition and can't identify with Brittany Spears. OK, crappy example given she's come undone but you get my point.

The warmth is coming. The fitness will grow. Goals are way far away. I think I need more Vitaman D in my brain. Fruita will solve that. Soon.

Wow! My main man Sven has actually gone and done it! Sport.be in an article today broke down the story like this (roughly translated):

"My relationship with Rabobank has been very very good and I thank them for their support. They are very very happy as I am the best in the world, no? They got some good advertising coverage, no? I have accepted a 2 year contract with Sunjob Proweb given my long time friendship with Sven Vantourenhout who convinced me this was the right move. We have asked that Page be eliminated form this squad some months ago. He's not fast and we needed to ensure our budget was big enough for my needs and especially my wife's needs."

Read the rest of the story here on Sport.be.