Oh dear. Oh my. My dear friends at Veltec gave me a heads up to these precious gems releasing a few weeks ago but I was sworn to secrecy. However, the Olympics changed ALL that and it was GAME ON to blab on about 'them'.

So, what did I see? Nino rocking the White Sex after he dropped Sauser like a bad habit....

Photo by www.canadiancyclist.com

Photo by www.canadiancyclist.com

Not unlike a pair of Ferrari's for your feet, Sidi has pushed the envelope with their glossy (yes glossy) red Dragon II Vernice:

There's a strange pull I have towards this....not unlike the Millennium Falcon getting pulled in by the Death Star's tractor beam.

Is this the next wave? What happened to Orange...or the return of the day-glow?

I hit the Bid button for this on eBay:

...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.

Am I a...

...piece of white sex conceptual art?
...marital aid?
...thumb cast?

Hmmm.

OK, in all sincerity, this is getting crazy. Funny, but crazy. White junk like glasses, shoes, gloves, bars, seats, brakes, yadda, yadda is certainly the flavor d'jour and I am in partly responsible for pushing this like a sweaty evangelist with my gold-plated microphone preaching to my congregation who have their hands raised, eyes closed, singing hallelujah, praise be and amen.

What have we created?

In times like these when we're all confused and need some grounding, where do we turn? Well, I turn to T-Brown. Travis, oh Travis, what does your infinatley wise/ahead-of-the-curve fashion sense tell you? Lead us out of this mess. You are the Johnny Cash of bike racing and the anti-fashion maven. You MUST have the secret sense to know how to help us traverse out of this white-mess.

Oh, God. NO! Even Travis is busted! White Sex is going viral...and going international. It's airborne. Note my boy Stef's site. He's been afflicted.

White is the new white. What's next? I've gotta think through this. Could be my greatest vision yet. Must, save the...earth....

Can you say: PRODUCTION BABY?! My main man Lane sent me this little heads up on the new TRP EuroX's for 2009. I received a set of the carbon beauties to test in Belgium and will be outfitting ALL my bikes with them for this coming season. Absolutely sick technology designed to be fully modularized. If you change wheels like me between carbon hoops for race day to 32 hole 3-cross bomber wheels for training, nothing beats a 10 second pad change the TRP's allow for to ensure your carbon pads are preserved for race day and no aluminum shavings are impregnated in the pads to nastily tear away your carbon braking surface.

But kids, TRP takes it up a notch for 2009! For years, PRO mechanics in Europe have been retrofitting their riders' brakes for small customizations on pad distance from the rim. When you swap between a carbon rim with a smaller diameter width to an aluminum one which have a generally wider tire well, the mechanics needed an ability to slightly open up the pad distance without resorting to the releasing the straddle cable. Thus the following inventions were born:

Note the adaption of the Zanconato above. A small barrel adjuster added to the end of the straddle cable to pull the brakes in...or out as desired.

Similarly, note my boy Jon Baker's set up on his Spooky Carbons. Probably from an old brake hanger adjuster.

But TRP for 09 has brought this to PRODUCTION! The detail here is astounding and as a career product manager, I applaud the PM who manages this line of business for TRP. This CLEARLY is a product manager listening to his users....and shows the cult details they want to bring to market to out-do the competition....and they have responded by not only blinging these mo-fos out in white sex, but have added the barrel adjuster AND toe-in adjustment capabilities!

SWEET!

Dear TRP: I will wear the Little Bo Peep Dress to get first dips at these. Please.

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.

Friday was one of those days you don't want to have. It was a day where I needed to play manager and to a larger extent, overseer of our business. Issues arose and they needed to be solved to ensure continuity and at the core, a copacetic group of team members who can communicate and proceed to do the right thing for the business.

Drama must end. I needed to let someone go.

Terminating someone's employment is never easy. But each time I am forced to do this, or an old friend leaves this business, it is interesting in "modern times" how the right of passage (at least for me) in acknowledging the departure of a coworker is when I move them from the ''Work Folks" bucket to the "Friends" bucket in my IM's. Sad but true. The simple click/drag/drop from one simple IM bucket to another helps me with closure. At least I think it does. It sucks regardless.

What also helps me with tough weeks is turning the brain to channel zero as I write about constantly. I do this with rides....especially rides with those I consider close friends and team mates which always helps focus on them, and not 'real life' for a while. Today, il squadra's ride was super fun and fast and woodsy and windy....and epic. Today, we railed Hall Ranch with the Rocky Mounts boys (and girl!). More on this below by way of pictures.

Some other things that helped me fight through the toughness of the week: White Sex Arriveth. I laughed to myself when the box arrived from our team deal with Boulder Cycle Sport when I normally would have been a surly beeatch due to the work drama. I literally said to myself, "Ah, the white." And I laughed a laugh to myself.

My wife saw me holding the new white goodness while maniacally smiling, and made HUGE fun of me. "Ah, nice, Greg. More white shoes. You are a little bitch." And then I walked out to my workshop and laid the new set of Sidis by his brothers. And I realized, I am Imelda Frigging Marcos.....

And the realization was understood. And it was momentary. I am a bitch, yes. But I am a sexy bitch. I will deal with my Marcosian issues at some point in the future. Maybe next year. Maybe after I quit sniffing Testers Model Airplane Glue.

I shall not apologize.

The new Dragon SRS are carbon this year. Some small style changes but fit like a glove again. 10 year sin Sidis. There is no finer shoe. Should you want to debate me on this point, save it.

We got to Hall Ranch and I pulled up with my new 9'er on my grocery getter.
And then the WB pulls up in his grocery getter. This is how the boy rolls. He, like it, is like buttah.

RM was in effect. None of us had on our new Verge kits...none of which fit the entire team after a $25K order. But that is another story...

The WB needs to eat. But for those of you out for a spot on the podium of the MSC, you will need to beat him. You ave been warned.

We almost all got blown over like dominoes at the top of Hall.

Holy crap on a stick. She climbs well. She rails like a BMX bike with 29 inch wheels. She is balanced. The Revolver is so un-f-ing-believably sick, I do not know what to say. Miguel built me the perfect bike. Note the tightness of this bike. I;d say maybe another 1/2 to 1" on the chain stay but it is so dialed as is, I am not sire if it would be a detriment to handling characteristics. More in an upcoming review....

Gregoire and Wals. RM elder statesmen railing it today.

Encore of Za crew

And again....

The Couchinator smiles....and did Hall on his 'cross bike. Good boy.

Voila. Za Ahrens Revolver 29'er. She is finished. Well, almost. I have a few parts to swap out while I try stem lengths etc. Mike D at BCS built 'er up for me in like 2 hours. He's PRO. Thanks Mike! I'll have extensive reports on the ride soon once she is completely dialed but the net is that it feels GREAT. Super balanced to say the least and spot on in terms of sizing. The pictures below will give you an idea of the parts selection, but have a look at the frame details in particular. All the bits you see like the yokes are all CAD designed by my bro Mike Ahrens who then has them CNC'd out of a block of aluminum, and welded together with Easton 7K series (in my case...Scandium is an option).

Some notes on the bike build:

• The 08 XTR is as you expect: sick.
  
• Reba fork: sick. Out of box feel is so spot on, I am not quite sure how I would modify it to get a better feel.
  
• I ordered a Chris King tall base plate to ensure enough clearance between the frame's downtube and the top caps of the Reba. Perfect.
  
• I have a SRAM front der. I ordered the wrong XTR one. D'oh!
• Thanks Tim Faia and Bontrager for the tubeless tires!!
• I swapped out the XTR rotors for Hayes as the Mavic wheels are a 6 bolt pattern, and not the XTR lock ring design.
  
• Ritchey WCS post, stem and bars will be swapped.
  
• You love the white grips and seat you sluts.
  

The argyle boys have had some bad luck mixed with some shining moments at P-N. I would still LOVE to see them get the golden ticket to Le Grande Boucle...with Friedman and his license plate dangling from his saddle and all 9 of them sporting Catfish Hunter 'staches (not sure if Farrar can grow facial hair yet though.

Anywhoo, as reported below, our main man Jonny Coln is doing his duties with Splistream and cranking out mad BlackBerry shots during the races. From the cars, the buses, hotels, etc. HE's gonna have to blog this sheeit! Check out his shot taken for me due to my shoe obsession. Ka-BLING! You go Millar. I'm gonna have to help you dial in that sock thing though. You've got the 'tall boy ++' thing goin' on strong Dave, but I'd say you need about 2 cm cut off the top. 6 out of 10 for you.