Dan Action

Caught out June 18, 2008

  Got out for a ride on the ‘cross bike today after spending an hour or so trying to get to somewhere in Jersey. That place is where decent driving directions go to get slaughtered. I got caught out on the trail when the rain came. I origionally put myself under a bridge when the rain first started. Smart. I got a bit cocky as it lessened and headed out once again only to get dumped on.  Everything on the trail got real slick, and on the CX bike, that’s not my favorite, not to mention I got real cold. I headed in.

Mornings have still been my jam. Getting a few hours on the bike before work, but also riding early on the days off, giving me a whole day to do whatever. It feels so good,  plus it makes my naps that much sweeter.

I have been taking out some of the demo mountain bikes from the shop lately. Namely an Orbea Lanza 29′er, and an FSR expert 26′er. Both have there merits. I have not ridden trails on a 29′er before last week, and I have to say, I’m psyched about it. I always thought of them as being a bit unwieldy, but I was wrong. It was so fast and agile. I chased my friend Lee all over the woods and had a blast.  The Stumpjumper as also pretty stellar. It climbs like no other full suspension I’ve extensively ridden which kind of blew me away. With 120mm travel, it handles all the rocks and crap really well, but I found the bottom of the suspension right around the same time as i found the dirt jumps at the local trails. The bike definitely took the hits, but didn’t really like it too much.  So to give it a break I was checking out Spec.’s specials page during a slow time at work and happened upon a freeride hardtail they were blowing out. It’s pretty much just like my last one, which was a Santa Cruz chameleon but with better brakes.  It was cheap, and I am excited. I will get it tomorrow, so Friday morning hopefully I will see those jumps again.

A little more recent history… May 31, 2007

Oh my god.…So the beginning of April brought me closer to en event I was very much looking forward to. This was the Tour of Gainesville; a 65+ mile off-road ride on trails built within the city limits exclusively. The work the folks in town have done to build these trails in the first place is staggering, given the fact that a good number of them are parents or business owners, and in more than a couple instances, both. Which is to say nothing about the work done to organize the ride itself, which is completely non-sanctioned, non-sponsored, and totally, totally rad.

I had ridden most of these trails on the Tuesday/ Thursday night rides with Lex from Villin Cycleworks, and the Mr. Goodbike crew when I still had my mountain bike and a decent light, and even more of them from Lex’s help and hand-drawn maps during the days. I was confident in my ability to tackle this ride on the ‘cross bike. Most of the trails flow really well with not too many interruptions like log crossings or other more technical ephemera, at least not much I couldn’t make it over, on or off the bike. Hey, sue me for wanting to showboat a little and give a little exposure to ‘cross here where it’s next to unheard of outside of winter issues of Velo News.

Well, long story short, I found myself being picked up by Chris and Ted Lincoln because my right shoulder felt it needed to take a hard dive into a decidedly un-checkable tree and seperated. Coming over a log, my front wheel dug into some sugar sand and the tree came up faster than I could recover. Thanks Chris, thanks Ted. This was about a third of the way into the ride, I was a little heart-broken. Not only had I ridden that very trail a ton of times, but now I was going to have to take an involuntary break when I was just getting into shape. The good news is symmetry has almost returned to my upper body with my clavicle popped up close to the height of my left shoulder now. Time to go back to modelling now, y’all.

Other news is that I will actually be entering another road race while I’m down here. It’s the Florida State Champ race next weekend. It’s really close to here and rumor has it that it will feature some hills. Hannah K. is going to come down here and visit. To expound on that a little more, she and I are talking pretty seriously about coming back down here after ‘cross Nationals and renting a small place of our own, so the invitation is out for folks to come visit, stay, eat well, and ride this coming winter (it’s coming.). Fourth World is going to play our second show tonight and I’ve got nothing to wear. It’s at Wayward Council and it’s a rent benefit show for said space. I kind of fucked up my wrist somehow either playing drums the other night or digging holes in my friend Dave’s yard yesterday, who knows. Fooling around, this is a little video.