Ambition Run Amok

I’ve seen some big ones on bikes before, but check out the weight rating on this seat… This is the mother of all seats!

http://www.bicycleseats.org/easyseat-deluxe.htm

Race!

Anybody wanna sponsor me?

Last Jan. I went skiing at Brundage with Steve and others… Watching Steve on a snowboard inspired me to actually learn… Well this last week I actually started having fun on a snowboard. Bogus got a lot of snow 2′ of heavy powder so we went up and I looked down the tracked up bumped up runs and said to my self… what would Steve do… He’d go fast and hard until he fell, then he’d get up and do it again. After awhile Sarah took to calling me “snowball”

Steve made me tired and sore, but I had a lot of fun. Maybe someday he’ll get his butt down here and give me another lesson

Look at the visibility….

So, Saturday afternoon I headed out for a fun ride… I started up Rocky Canyon at 2:18 and made it to Aldape summit by 3:36 (~8 miles w/1900 ft assent)… not too bad, but not too good. Conditions were decent, not much deep or slushy snow, some ice and lots of hardpack snow on the road. There was a little mud in spots where the sun hit the road. This was where I ate my first gu.

There had been a reasonable amount of traffic so I wasn’t freaked out by cougars yet (yes they are around and I know people who have seen them, no attacks yet though). I kept going up ridge road. Here the going got a lot tougher than me and I had to stop and rest periodically. Eventually, ridge road turned into a snowmobile / 4 wheeler road (based on the tracks). I keep riding, but the climbing was really tough as the snow got softer up around 6000 feet. But it wasn’t that far (few miles) over to 8th street where I could ride back to town.

It took a long time to make those few miles and finally I started dropping back down towards 8th street. When I reached the upper gate (it gets closed to cars in the winter time) I was amused to see the gate was almost under the snow that I was riding on. I stopped took some pictures with my phone (which didn’t turn out all the good).

There were also lots of animal tracks on the trails, some I’m sure were dogs from people hiking, some were probably coyotes, some may have been big kitties. I have since read up on how to differentiate cougar tracks from dog tracks, not that it would do me a lot of good to know I was on a cougar trail or not.

I rode down a little further and started getting cold… (I’d burnt too much energy with out consuming enough food). So I stopped and put on some extra layers and broke out the hand warmers. Sarah called at this point to see where I was, when I finished I thought “hmmm, it’s going to be dark soon…” and looked to see where the sun was, it was just going below the horizon at that moment, it was really pretty, smog in the valley, snow on the hills and the sun setting over the Owyees.

Anyway onward and downward, finally after about 4 or 5 miles of downhill I saw some cars with people. I hadn’t seen any life since Aldape summit. When I got back into the north end of Boise I needed to put my lights on to play in traffic (’cause it was dark and the law says so). Unfortunately, my hands were too cold to be able to handle the lights… So I had to stand on the corner for a while to get my hands warmed up enough to put my lights on… All went as planned and I was back at my truck 4.5 hours, 23.5 hours, and ~3200 feet of climbing later.

Really, there are few people I look up to in life… this guy is one serious biker and deserves some respect.  I imagine I will be going back to his site many times learning about cold weather biking.

http://www.mountainbike-expedition-team.de/Greenland/greenland.html

I got some new Perl Izumi Amfib tights… Went for a short 7 mile ride down to the post office tonight (it was 25 F when I left the house).

They weren’t sweaty hot nor were they cold… they felt very comfortable for being out riding. Previously I had leg warmers and gortex pants. The previous combination was a good solution for cool summer nights down in the 50’s with the leg warmers and a little cooler or with rain for the gortex pants. Now I can use the pants for an outer layer with my tights if it gets too cold.

Last weekend I went out and it got really cold. Maybe in the low teens I’m not sure. I almost froze my toes and fingers. I have some really good gloves, but the metal on the bike was just sucking the heat out of my hands. If I stopped and let go of the bike my hands would warm up. My feet weren’t warming up though. Mostly due to the shoes being to tight and hindering circulation. I think I got fairly close to frostbite as my fingers and toes took a while to thaw and felt strange for the next few days. So to address the feet, I got new MTB shoes. I wanted new shoes anyway and since I was at the store I got the tights. I asked them about staying warm and they suggested the little chemical foot / hand warmers. What a well duh idea! I picked some up at wal-mart for a few bucks, well worth being able to avoid frostbite. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem since it rarely gets that cold around here.

After further research I found that there are winter biking shoes out there… sad thing is that they start around $250. So, next on my list of gear is better layering for my upper body, some serius storm socks, some Perl Izumi amfib booties, (my current booties aren’t that good). Oh and I want a good headlight ($100 and up).

Some people might suggest just putting biking off for the winter, but nah… that would be boring and then I’d have no reason to get all toe cool gear.

lI got some lights and did some night riding since I couldn’t wait to get the studded tires out into the action. We got some slushy snow turned ice come through the valley today. It was great (for slick) I saw about 5 accidents on the way home from work, lots of black ice.

While I as getting ready to head out, I saw our neighbor’s car slide out of their driveway into the street… (no one was in the car). I let them know before I headed out to see how good the studs would work on some real ice…

They worked awesome. I felt way more confident riding my bike on the ice than I did driving on it (the car has studded tires too).

I rode about 10 miles or so and the put it up and waited for Sarah to get home. When she got home we hooked up a rope and did some sledding. I had to work pretty hard to get up to 9mph or so with the sled and it made a lovely sound (not really enough snow for sledding, just enough to make it treacherous for driving).

My new gloves did great it was 26 degrees and my hands stayed toasty warm.

There are now a few swaths of sled track around the subdivision and through the park in the middle :). I had to get down into some of the hill climbing gears to pull Sarah across the grass, but it wasn’t too hard and the tires still didn’t slip even pulling a sled on black ice…

I took this picture a while ago, but it deserves some recognition. What I am holding is really one weed that I pulled out of my backyard. Every so often I actually do a little yard work.

I don’t have them yet, but I finally broke down and ordered a couple of Nokian Extreme 294’s… They sound pretty cool and I’m looking forward to trying them out up on the soon to be icy trails…

http://freewheelbike.com/itemdetails.cfm?ID=1821

http://www.bikeman.com/content/view/54/42/

I got mine off of an ebay seller so I got a decent deal, but they’re still pricey (aka more than I paid for my car tires).

A couple of pictures :).