5-4-08  A smashing success, yeah baby!  The Rage in the Sage weekend was record turn out again this year with 110 racers all together.  It seems people liked the two day format, though our numbers for Saturday were not as big as Sunday, we had great feedback for Saturday's short track event.  As always the Beezley Burn was rough and rocky and the cause of many o' pinch flats.  Lots of food and brew, lots of prizes, and lots of fun!  Thank you for all the help, we couldn't do it with out all our great volunteers!

4-14-08  Woohoo! Finally the much anticipated new road bike has arrived.  A Felt F1 Team Slipstream Edition.  I swapped out the 175 crank arms for 180 and put on my 4 ti eggs until the new speedplays come in.  It weighs in at about 15 lbs.

4-13-08  Lewiston ID Devils Slide mtb race.  Made the long drive to Lewiston solo this weekend so I had plenty of alone time.  The weather was great, sunny and warm, almost too warm, I got a little sun burn.  The course was ok, a mile or so double track to about a half mile climb up to more double track then a scary fast single track decent followed by some fun twisty rolling single track back to the beginning.  A lap was only 5 miles and they ran us 3 laps so it was a fairly short race, as in about an hour.  Fast guys were Kevin Bradford Parrish and Kris Holden of which I didn't see much of during the race.  I felt a little better than the previous week, but I was still off.  I did have a good time soaking up the sun though!

4-6-08  Went to the first Indie Series mtb. race at Sea Tac with Dirk and Tom.  Met up with the more of the WAR gang there, Rocky, Tom, Shawn, Liz, Omar, and Brian and his fam.  The weather was partly cloudy, but pretty nice.  It had rained at night and the course was pretty wet, but I didn't race until 1:30 so I figured it would be pretty good by then.  First race of the day was the Beginner class.  Tom was in the 35-44 class for his first mtb race ever, and Brice was in the 12-15.  They got a little muddy but not to bad, Tom learned of the challenges in passing in a mtb race, (I think he might be to nice) and Brice had a fantastic race where he ran down his Indie Series arch rival, passed him and won the race.  It was a good race!  The Sport race was up next with Brian, Dirk, Omar, and Liz.  Brian crashed 18 times and broke his chain (after he told Brice not to crash or break a chain) Dirk had his work cut out for him in the ever growing sport single speed class where he held on for a mid pack finish.  By the time it got to my race the course was in pretty good shape.  HOWEVER, about 7 seconds after our start it began to pour and it didn't let up until my chain wadded up between my crank and bottom bracket and I walked back to my car, changed out of my mud soaked gear and looked to the sky only to see the rain clouds clear and nice warm sunshine.  I guess it just wasn't my day.  Oh well, I had a great time watching everyone else and can't wait for the next one.


3-30-08  I finally got down to Tri Cities for one of the Chinook Club's road races this weekend.  When I saw our little snow storm here this morning I decided that it was go time.  Once I got there the weather was warmer though it didn't feel like it, it was over cast and looked like it could either be sunny and nice or cut loose and storm at any minute.  There was about 22 other guys and we did two laps of 16 miles that were fairly flat with couple small climbs.  The pace was nice enough for the first half a lap until a group of 6 got away real quick.  It happened so fast that when your in the middle of the pack by the time you see what's going on their gone.  I worked with a group of two other guys to bridge the gap and I was barely able to hang on.  Apparently they were in the same boat because one by one they cracked and it was just me.  By end of the race I was feeling better, but it still wasn't good enough to catch the leaders.  I finished about a minute behind them in 7th place.  It was a pretty cool race that I would encourage others to do.  $7 to race and $15 to be a Chinook member plus give-aways, can't beat that deal.

3-16-08  Made the trip to Ravensdale, WA today for a road race on a rolling 9 mile course.  I rolled in with enough time to sign up put my clothes on and make it to the starting line.  My warm up consisted of shivering and fidgeting while awaiting our start.  Once we got rolling I told myself I would just lay low mid pack and wait until the end to make any moves.  That didn't work so good.  I was getting yo yoed back and fourth, accelerate, brake, accelerate, brake over and over.  So after the first lap I made my way to the front.  That sure seemed easier, I tried to work with a couple other guys but nobody else wanted to do any work.  No worries I just sat on the front and found a nice comfortable pace I could hold.  This went on until the last lap when everybody else wanted to be in the same spot as me.  I was able to say top 5 until the last 200 meters, that's when I sort of fell apart.  I ended up probably mid pack-ish.  I was a little bummed that I wasn't able to stay top 10, but I knew coming into this I wasn't in top form.  That's ok, it's early in the season and this was more of a training ride than anything.

3-12-08  It's official, our first wendnesday night ride of the year with no head lights.  The Beezley trails are perfect right now.  We rode the upper loop tonight hitting buckrabbit and the couch.  A coulple patches of snow left on buckrabbit, but otherwise it was clear sailing.  The downhill was a blast, it was the type of ride where you think to yourself "I should probably slow down" but you can't bring yourself to do it.  Spring is here, get out and enjoy it!

3-8-08  Sheep Canyon/Johnson loop today with no leg warmers, the sun was shinning, it was great!  First ride of the spring with bare legs.  Not bear legs, I know a few people with bear legs whose names I won't mention.

2-2-08  I tried to squeeze a quick ride in before it started to snow today.  As you can see I didn't quite make it.  I had planned on going about 40 miles or so but cut the ride in half because of a flippin snow storm.  Actually it wasn't so bad, I had my fenders on and was warm enough, it was just poor visibility and I didn't feel like getting hit by a car because I wanted to squeeze in a few more miles.  So I came home and sat on my trainer.  woo hoo!

1-1-08  We rode in the first ever Yeti ride today put on by the Wenatchee Velo gang.  What a great way to kick off the new year!  I will be the first to admit that I was a little less than excited getting my gear together this morning looking outside at the wind blowing and the 25 degree temps.  I met up with Brian who was also wondering why would we do this to ourselves.  We arrived at Garlinis to find a fairly good turn out of mountain bikes, cross bikes and a sweet mid 80's bridgestone with Bio-pace.  The ride went out towards Cashmere with pit stop for hot buttered rum in monitor, up and back down a treacherous snowy road, back for more hot buttered rum, then back to Garlinis for hot chili and  Pikes Tandem Double Ale.  All together we logged in 30 miles in a little over 2 hours.  This would have been a pretty long miserable ride solo but get a group of guys together nutty enough to ride outside in January, add in good food , drinks and a cool yeti shirt... now thats a fun ride!