Sitting in the Double Tree Hotel getting very frustrated at their “high speed” internet. It’s slow speed and slowing down my productivity this morning.
Several photos to upload from the trip up, but will wait till I find better internet!
The 4, I mean, 5 of us will be making our way up to Maryland for a long weekend. Driving up tonight after work, hanging around tomorrow, going out with new friends at night to wake up and find our way to a large college lacrosse tournament in Baltimore. Driving home Sunday.
This will be a first of many :
The only thing bringing me down about this whole trip is that Velo Orange will be closed as they will be at the national hand made bicycle show. BUT I did pick up a new camera today, so look out for random video and photos.
Joey & Jen from Arleigh Jenkins on Vimeo.
Currently sucking down a latte at lunch in hopes of it curing my lack of sleep. As you can see we have been a bit busy.
His name is Quinn and he’s an 8 week old lab/german shepard mix. We had gone to get grocieres last night and some how came home with a puppy. He’s very sweet and I think will turn out to be quite the gentleman and friend.
Or something like that…
“Lance is Back” is the key words floating around the bike industry and most importantly my bike shop. As a Trek Concept store we stand behind any promotions or sales that Trek has. This includes their get ready for spring push, that happens to fall on the first week of the Tour of California. Did you hear that Lance’s TT bike was stolen???
Anyways we are having a huge promo sale on parts and accessories that will spruce up your bike, or yourself. Here’s a couple things that stick out to me for any person that rides a bike and also parts that I use daily and love.
Bontrager Race Lite tires. These babies in the 700x32c are installed on both of my commuter bikes, the Salsa Casseroll and Trek XO. The tires roll well, can handle 115 psi and are pretty tough against the glass/crud that is strewn across Old Statesville Rd that is my 17 mile commute. This isn’t a high performance race tire, but instead something to rack your miles on and get ready to tear legs off, then you swap to a more racy tire like the Race X Lite and Michelin Pro3.
Bontrager inForm Race Lite saddle. I can’t say enough about these saddles. Available in mens or ladies, these beauties are perfectly aligned with your butt width with a handy 5 minute process of sitting on a special bench, measuring your sit bones and fitting this new saddle on your bike. A nice flat/long area for your sit bones for climbing, descending and hours on the saddle. Available in white or black to add those special touches to your bike. Personally, I have been riding one for about 5 months on my commuter Casseroll. Once I can afford a white one for every other bike in my stable I will be outfitting them as so.
Trek Time Computers. Simple, wireless, colorful and fun. It’s the next best thing to a PowerTap SL wireless and because it is a 60th of the price you can’t beat it. Put one on your bike, they even come in special childrens sizing!
One last push : Instore we have special “Lance is Back” promo brochures. There are labor coupons in these guys for $25 off $100 or $50 off $200 in labor. So if you have been putzing around for that spring tune up and need new cables/housing or bearings repacked this is the time to do it!
The sale run through this coming weekend so I hope to see you guys in the store.
President’s Day, a Monday off and I hear it’s cold outside.
I woke up with a goal of getting on the bike for 40-50 miles around the lake. I ran in to several SNAFUs including: An inbox of things to do that I had put off all weekend long, a couple blogs to write for CommuteByBike.com, pricing to update for the Lance is Back promotion and to send off advertising proposals for CommuteByBike and TwentyNineInches.com. I knew the list would continue to get abused if I went for a chilly ride, if I hunkered down this morning I would only have minimum admin work to do on Thursday (my next day off) and could get in a good ride on a hopefully warmer day.
Now, here I am, 3 hours into my day and I’m sitting in my pajamas with a new v-day coffee mug in hand. I’m almost done my list and it’s almost time to shower to get a couple boys off the school bus! I have a couple short entries to add to Arsbars.com so be prepared for multiple post this afternoon.
This past week has been eye opening to priortizing, settling in, riding time and of course organizing. I’ve been doing my best to clean out the unwanted time wasters.
It’s been really rough to keep up to date with it all. I’ve relegated Thursday mornings to be my CABA, LAB and other advocacy news reader days. I’ve learned that they will send out needed information by email if its time pressing.
Tarheel Trailblazers and the Dirt Divas I catch up on the mornings while writing my blog, simply skimming the forum threads.
The MTB team is a work in progress. Not wanting to over commit anyones time, but wanting the club to feel active and that everyone is apart of something special.
Now what else am I missing? What do you do to make your life a little more consistent and still get things done?
Last night I had a wild hair up my ass and decided riding home from work is what I NEEDED to do. I had multiple ride offers, the bus was running fine and I turned them all down. My issue is excuses. I always have had excuses of why I’m not training, riding, racing, etc etc. Turning down all those excuses I’m just getting it done.
Last night was a pretty stupid night to ride the full length home at dark. Weather.com was stating heavy winds, and torrential downpours. I charged up an extra Light & Motion Stella that we have at work for demo to add to my light arsenal, finally rolling out at 7:15. For the first 15 minutes my ride was warm and a little breezy. As I rolled past Northlake Mall and up Northlake Centre Pkwy I warmed up, sweating even. Taking a right on Alexanderana I stopped in a cemetery to pull out my rain coat, the sky was spitting rain on me randomly and I really didn’t want to be caught in downpour with nothing on but spandex.
Homeward bound I turned onto Statesville Rd, rolling through Huntersville and finally into Cornelius. Right were Statesville Rd and Catawba intersect in Cornelius is where the bottom fell out of the sky. Crazy rain and wind forced me to slow down and cautiously go forward down the bike lane on the side of Catawba. Twice wind swept my bike 3 inches to the side, I was fighting to stay within my lane as traffic is passing by me.
Taking a left on to 115 the wind was now at my back. Aiding me home at a faster clip. Through Cornelius and into Davidson. I must of drawn some crazy looks as I was riding through this bicycle friendly town. There weren’t many cars out, let along blinking bikers going down the dark road. Feeling good pushing my gear along down 115, so close to home I could taste it. This isn’t so bad I’m thinking to myself as the rain is falling sideways around me.
My final stretch of road is Langtree in Mooresville. This stretch takes me over rail road tracks, through much construction at Lowe’s corporate office, over I-77 and then another mile to my development. This stretch of road normally takes a few minutes and maybe two songs on my mp3 player.
Last night this stretch of road took 15-20 minutes. As I turned on to Langtree the wind shifted from being at my back, to being in my face. There were moments I was spinning 120rpms to turn out only 5mph. A slow, steady crawl home. Trying my best to remember where all the pavement chips were from the construction. Bracing myself for my front wheel to take a nose dive into unexpected territory as the rain is washing across the street.
Crossing over I-77 the rain stops. The wind is still pushing against me but the rain isn’t whipping my face or fogging my glasses. FINALLY I arrive to my development. Questioning if I should reach to my back, waterproof, pocket to pull my cell phone to let Kimberlee know I’m almost home. I turned down the thought as I knew the moment I pulled my phone out it would start pouring again.
Arriving home my body ached. Feeling like I did 3 hours at the gym instead of a 1.5hour commute home. Abs aching from keeping my balance, arms sore from holding the bars so tightly.
Last night what was I thinking? No excuses Arleigh. Suck it up and get on your bike, it will make you happier and feel better about yourself. You know what? I was right. I’m just glad I didn’t get my stupid ass run over or thrown into a ditch.
I really wanted to post the video of Dorothy in the tornado, but I realize that Oklahoma has had a pretty rough stretch of tornadoes. To respect them I’m putting up this instead. This theme is my ring tone on my Blackberry, of course last night people kept calling me so the song kept playing in my back pocket.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4kiXh8YOzk
Yesterday my bike build off was with a Trek 6000 that had come into my stable late Monday night. The goal of this new bike was the need for a hardtail with gears, the fancy paint scheme and the fact it says TREK all over the bike. Yesterday I took off about 80% of the parts, all that is left to swap out is cranks for lighter Truvativ and order a new fork once the RockShox that comes stock blows up or I blow up at it.
After building it up and fixing Kimberlee”s bike (I had stolen wheels off of her bike for my project) we loaded up all the bikes and headed to North Meck with the boys. Everyone, including the new bike, did well on a modified loop at North Meck. I left the boys and Kimberlee for 20 minutes or so to do another lap by myself that didn’t include stop and go. The bike felt good under me. Due to a snafu in one of my shifters I was running SRAM trigger shifter on my front derailleur and SRAM grip shift on my right. This also meant I couldn’t run my Ergon grips so my hands/wrist weren’t the happiest with me The fork, though super cheap, was responding like it should. We’ll see how it fairs at more technical riding. The other reason for going with Trek over Fisher was that they have an 18.5 size, a size that fits me perfectly!
This morning I’m going for another walk, organizing all my crap so that I can ride the full length home tonight. Not anything crazy <20 mile commute but I need to shake my legs out from yesterday and also get in a hour+ ride. With the high of 70 again today I hope traffic flow at the shop is high and the day rolls by to get to my ride!
Is it really the beginning of February? It doesn’t feel like it in Charlotte. The last three days have been in the 60-70′s with blue skies and a nice breeze.
Now a catch up :
Yesterday was Monday. I worked at the shop and was able to squeeze out a 45 minute spin around Huntersville during my lunch hour. Back to the shop and showered to say hello to old friends (Sue) stopping by the shop, and also new customers picking up more accessories and parts for their new addiction.
The day before yesterday was Sunday. Sunday’s in early February mean short track madness and man was the weather pulling through for us. If you remember the first two, it was freaking cold. The turn out for the first two was better than the last two, and I blame the doper bowl, warm weather and ADD. Folks want to get out and ride their bike when its super nice out, and banging out laps for 5 Sundays in a row is rough. Add the economic slump, paying the last two weeks for the two boys to race at $17 a pop is also rough. It’s $22 for adults without a license. $22 to race around for 45 minutes? I guess I can’t complain too much, I did it on the road for many years but my sanity was that of a 18 year old. This is the last weekend for racing this coming Sunday hopefully everyone will pull through and show up for the season finale.
Today is Tuesday. My day off and day to get shit ready for my plan to take over the world. No, not really – that’s TwinSix job. On the daily agenda is to get some blogging down first thing over at CommuteByBike and then start tearing a frame to build it back up with higher end parts that suit me a bit better. I’ll show photos as we go along. Follow me on twitter to see the process. @arsbars