Monster Cookie 2008

Yesterday, Nate and I got out and did the annual Monster Cookie Ride, sponsored by the Salem Bicycle Club -- a 62 mile metric century. The route travels from the state capitol in Salem, out to Champoeg State Park, and back.

We got there at just a little before 8am for Day Of Ride registration, and the line was already pretty long. But it was beautiful out and no one seemed to mind waiting just a bit. I heard they had received nearly 1000 pre-ride registrations, and I'm sure there were a few hundred more waiting in line before and after us since it was the first nice day in forever. Turns out they had a record 1600+ riders for the event.

Early on, we saw a gentleman down, and wondered if it might have been from the clogged traffic as the cones forced the group into a path over the train tracks. He had several people helping him, and was talking to someone on a cell phone, so we assumed he was doing ok. A couple of times it bunched up like that, but didn't seem too bad overall. (edit - turns out a poster on Bike Forums indicated this IS what happened, someone stopped short on him coming to that spot.) The rest stops were all great, plenty of cookies, fruit, drinks, coffee, bagels, and other assorted snacks. Here's a view of the lunch stop.

The most impressive thing for me was that Nate decided to go last minute with me. He doesn't own a road bike and has never even been on one before. He rides some mountain bike, and used to do some adventure racing, but said "I'd go if you had a bike for me." The only other bike I had that would fit him, was my Redline 925 -- the previously mentioned single speed. He hopped on it Saturday night around 11 pm, took it up the street and back, and said, "Ok, I'm in." Ha! And so he rode yesterday, with ONE gear, 62 miles, never having been on a road bike before. Here's a shot of him rolling along with one gear.

I'm sure they were out there, but we kept looking and didn't see any other single speeds, or "fixies" (one gear, no freewheel - when the rear wheel is turning, backwards or forwards, so are the cranks....crazy on fast downhills!), until we bumped into Michael Wolfe from South Salem Cycleworks on his fixie. He had threatened earlier in the week to do it, and turns out he did. Here's him and Nate cruising at the same stretch, just one gear each - Michael in black, Nate in blue.

I felt bad on hills -- Nate had no option but to crank hard to get up the hill. I tried to shift as quietly as I could...with a tinge of guilt for having the ability to just spin it up. Fortunately there weren't too many on this ride, but even just the few smaller ones are plenty tricky on the single speed. (Especially for a guy on his first road ride.)
We made it back to the capitol 5 hrs and 22 minutes after taking off - 4 hours and 1 minute of rolling time, and the rest was rest stops, and a stop when we saw my family on the roadside cheering us on near the end. I was really pleased with keeping a 15 mph average, especially with Nate on one gear the whole way. Here are a few folks catching some much needed rest at the end.

We bumped into Michael again at the end, so we all put on some cheese for the camera before heading home.
And of course, the reason for the name of the event:

All in all a good day, and a great ride! (you'd really think my cheeks would stop looking so hammy by now with all this biking!)


Hasta!

Take Your Kids To Work Day

I rarely post pictures or names of my family members on my blog, for security and privacy reasons -- to many sickos and stalkers out there...(don't even get me started on what kids are putting on MySpace and Facebook these days)....BUT, how can you not put up a picture from Take Your Kids To Work Day when you happen upon such a proud moment as this???

Some fathers long for the day their kids throw that first touchdown in a high school game, or drop a 5 point buck from 50 yards out, but a tear comes to my eye seeing them all building web pages -- all on Macs. Sigh.

How can you not love Take Your Kids To Work Day?

Flower Delivery Service

I commuted 3 of 5 days last week to work on the 925 (mentioned in the post below) and aside from getting caught in the rain/hail for part of the ride home, and a near miss with the Day and Night Heating guy that wasn't looking as I drove past the parking lot he was pulling out of, I was really glad to be riding to work.

As I was leaving on Friday, the lovely lady I live with said "oh, you're riding in today? I was going to have you take some flowers to the office." Since Mike at Cycleworks has said on more than one occasion that you CAN take anything with you on the bike, I decided to live out his mantra and offered to take them anyway.

At least if the web gig doesn't work out, I could pimp myself out as a bicycle flower delivery guy. Maybe I could step it up at Valentines day and offer a singing flower delivery guy special!

Hasta.

Just Give Me The High Gear!

In a classic guilty pleasure movie of mine, Days Of Thunder, Cole Trickle (a.k.a Tom Cruise) has to pull of a minor miracle and use just the one gear he has left to finish and win a NASCAR event. He screams to his pit to get him out in front of the pace car since he's going to have to ramp up that high gear to any decent kind of speed, or he's out. Let me just say Tommy, I feel your pain, I feel your pain.

For the past week, I've been tooling around with just 'the high gear,' or at least, one of them, on a Redline 925 that I picked up last week. If you've been paying attention, you know that I ride a sweet little frame from Italy that goes by the name of Torelli, and she's set up with more gears than I will likely ever use in a years time....all mine for the taking.

The 925 is different though, it's a single speed, and has just one gear. Remember when we were kids and had BMX bikes, or Stingrays with banana seats, or any other number of bikes that only had one gear? And we got along just fine, right? That's the deal with the single speed once again. One gear, just one thing to go round, and round, and round. Here's a shot of the one I picked up.

It's set up perfect for commuting with fenders for those rainy days, a little blinky light up front, and a brake. I know, you'd think a brake would go without saying, but if you flip the rear hub around on this guy, the bike becomes a fixed gear bike, or as the youngin's call them, a 'fixie.' Right now, when I stop pedaling ,the bike keeps moving, and I hear the gentle purr of the freewheel humming along. On a fixed gear, when back wheel moves, the pedals move...forward, or backwards. You go fast, they go fast. You go slow, they go slow. And get this, some yayhoos, er....courageous souls, even go without a brake, using just body parts to get the thing to stop. Basically, you have to slow into a stop, or skid it, if you're going fast. Look up 'fixie skid' on YouTube, and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, it's been fun to just hop on the ol' bike without worrying about special shoes to attach myself to the bike with, or the appropriate matching clothes to look like I belong on said bike. Instead, just hop on, throw on my laptop bag, and ride on into work. The whole bike cost me less than the wheels on my Torelli, so I don't get too concerned about riding it in the rain and ugly weather. Not to mention it's already been called 'hot' and 'sweet' by a few of the single speed / fixed gear riders on the forum I frequent.

Riding with just one gear, although fun, can also be a little brutal...especially for an old, chubby dad. Climbing Commercial street with what would normally be the gear I ride at 15-16 mph is MUCH more work than the granny gear. In fact, I thought about riding all the way out to Cycleworks, but turned about halfway up Commercial, and pulled into DayBreak Coffee for an iced coffee instead.

Now I just need to finish up the other single speed I was building out of the Karate Monkey so other Pez family members can ride along.

Hasta.

Monday Evening Ride

Ok, so when Weather.com says Sunset is at 7:40 pm - it means it, and not a minute later. And this time of year, it gets dark pretty quick after sunset.

The picture here at the top is from my ride tonight. It was an amazing sunset. In fact, it was so cool watching the sun bounce off the clouds that I kept riding figuring I'd squeeze in a few more miles before racing home in time to beat the dark. As luck would have it, I ended up riding home a little longer in the dark than I cared too...and as luck would have it, my little blinky red light had died, so I was really asking for trouble. Thankfully, none found me.

After the family hurked down some tacos at the little Taqueria above Reed Opera House, I was feeling the need to work off some extra calories, so I geared up and headed out around 6:40 pm. I figured I could just do the 12 mile Windsor Island Rd Loop, and be in way before sunset, but it was so pretty out tonight that I just kept going, and ended up getting in 19 miles instead. The temperature was dropping at a pretty good rate, and a little drizzle even managed to sneak out on me. Otherwise, nothing major to report, and nothing out of the ordinary, but I felt compelled to pull out the phone and snap some photos. I'll just post them below for the remainder of the post.

Hop fields in North Keizer on Wheatland Rd

Waconda Road heading to River Rd


Same shot through my Tifosi polarized riding glasses.


Sun setting quickly, time to get home!

Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Snow....Wait, This Is Spring Break?

Just a few days ago I was in the sunny warm embrace of a San Diego springtime. I mentioned to Nate that if we had more time I'd be hitting a local bike shop, renting a bike, and getting out along the 101 beachfront for a ride. Oh how the times have changed.

Today I decided to work off some of the In-N-Out flab I picked up on the aforementioned road trip, and set out for a 20 mile boogie to the Bankers Cup coffee shop in St. Paul. I spent part of the morning waiting for the kids to call from the border to let us know they'd made it safely back to American soil, and once they did, I figured I could get away from the phone long enough to squeeze in some exercise. Question was, would the weather hold up long enough for me to do so?

If you've been following the local forecast, we've had wild weather. Everything from sun breaks to rain, sleet, hail and snow. The sun was peeking through as I geared up, but I saw the clouds off in the distance, and hoped they wouldn't move in on me. And even if they did, I rode 70 miles in the rain last summer....right? I could handle a few in the rain if the good Lord decided to send some on down. And send some down, he did.

For about half the ride -- probably 10 miles in the middle portion -- it rained. And it hailed. And doggonnit, I think it was snowing too. It was colder than last years Livestrong in the rain, and the hail/sleet on the face didn't feel too great, but after those 10 miles or so, it cleared back up and I rode the last 5 miles into St. Paul on sunny, but wet pavement.



The Fam drove out and met me at the Bankers Cup. It's a quaint little espresso shop built in an old bank building.

There's a great fireplace (which I wish would have been fired up) and the coffee is from our own little Governor's Cup here in Salem. I got out there shortly after one, the family rolled in close to 1:30, and the shop closed at 2, so we had to grab a quick drink and go.

I changed into the dry street clothes they brought, tossed the Torreli in the back of the Blue Dream, and hitched a ride back on four wheels. We also hit the local feed store where they sell Ass Kickin' products, Cattlepults, and every kind of feed and fertilizer imagineable.

Although it was turned off, they also had a serious 50" flat panel hanging above the rustic wooden door....nice!

And so ends the crazy Spring Break week of 2008. The kids will be home tomorrow night and everyone is looking forward to having their children back in their homes. Looking forward to some sunny days ahead for better riding than rain, hail and snow!

Hasta!

PS - Keijiro - you would have hated it....even colder and wetter than last year! That Bay Area ride is sounding better by the minute!

Road Trip

Let me just say that after 1500 miles of a 2100 mile, 42 hour round trip drive. After enough Rockstars and Starbucks canned Double Shots to own stock in both companies, and after a 5 pm dinner stop at In-N-Out in San Diego already....a group of fellas from Oregon with an all night drive ahead of them should probably *not* take this on at 1 am.

But, it *was* the last In-N-Out that was going to be open before we left California. Who knew there was such a thing as 'Animal Style' burgers there?

Hasta.