Today I am getting ready to watch episode 202 of The Walking Dead.

that was tough.

fell on a velodrome today...

first time ever. but i wasn't track racing.

doubled down on cross races, cat 4 in the morning and then single speeds. 40/83 cat four with two or three crashes, and somewhere toward the bottom of singlespeeds just because i had nothing left after chasing everyone for a lap.

You fell?

Woo cyclocross was FUN today! Took it easier than my first race, and had enough stamina to actually enjoy myself. Plus since I didn't overcook it and have to bail/get pulled, I actually finished AND finished slightly better than my first. 38/41. Not DFL! Yay! Pics of 4B at what they call "Heckle Hill" if you're interested

Checking to see if the winter gear is still doing its job, otherwise I want nothing to do with night rides.

Today was an all day session @ the pumptrack.

I thought that dude was sporting a jockstrap externally for a second

And, Photo #74, what bike is that with the Klein paintjob? (oh, and dude shoulda dismounted on the other side. You always want the bike on the outside for cattle run turns like that.)

Oh and today I remembered why I don't like V8. BLECH!

Clamato, it's the only way.

Today, I was at the Redbull Minidrome race. It was ****ing intense, but I didn't participate because I don't have the nuts.

For anyone who is going to go to the next one, gear it low or else you won't even make it around the corners or have enough room to pick up speed.

Did you see any crashes?

It is such a trip seeing that thing all over the place on youtube vids since it came out of here (well, down in the big city of Portland).

Seems like it would be easier to ride if it had transition on the ends, kinda like a capsule skate bowl. If the two ends went to vert that would be super killer! That would enable proper carves and you could totally whip out of the turns.

Tons, but no one got ran over...as far as I know. It is still going on but I'm going to eat something and go to goldsprint after party.

A lot of dudes ate **** when they took the wrong line out and basically flew out of the track. Some azn bro showed up with a 2012 Super Pista [Insert hideous photo here] with a 650c, grinding 80 gear inches ate it hard for so many times because his front end was way too low. He and a bunch of azn bros crash like crazy because they're all running like 48/15.

Double blech.

No idea what bike it is, but I love love love that paintjob. I think that guy fell on the way up so was just scrambling to the top of the hill so he could remount. Plus, it's the 4Bs. The race doesn't even count for advancing, so people mostly just have fun.

Yeah, they got that line painted on the track which denotes the off the track when you come out of the corners, so if you don't watch that line you're screwed. The extra room up top in the corners seems wasted to me. If it transitioned up in the corners it might make sense to go above the line, but as-is it doesn't make sense to go much above the line.

I love that neon **** too. I guess it varies a bit from ye olde Klein livery, which had pink on the fork tips and was white all the way out to the stays.

This is my turn off from participating... just the thought of going off the top part of the minivelodrome and jackknifing when I come down.

Today I spent $200 taking my girlfriend out for her 21st birthday dinner.

Sigh.

At least she's happy, amirite?

Girls? Happy?

I don't think so, son.

****, I love night rides more than anything else.

Me too. I'm a night owl, and I often get on my bike at like 2am and get home when the sun is coming up.

https://vimeo.com/31001418

this was number two, or three. already bleeding at this point.

Yikes cc, but you did good getting back in the race.

May I ask what the 'dirty randy run up' is?

From experience all I can say is: oh too true. And yes, it's in our job descriptions to appease.

Tie the knot and see what happens.

randy is an organizer and TotalRadDude on team hodala(remember the carbon raleigh frameset?) who designs courses and announces in this race series. he decided he wanted to build some stairs to see if anyone would ride up them, but as you can see the day was too sloppy for that and it was faster to run them. it was a set of six, so you could just run them if you were a *****, run them two at a time if you were fast, or run them three at a time if you were an animal. i ran them two at a time two or three times, three at a time once, and one at a time the rest because i did two races, and got maybe nine passes at these bastards today.

it was a great feature and one of my favorite parts of the course. Randy made hecka fun of everyone who lost it, and what you can't really see in this video is that you came with a bit of speed into the low section around a 10 degree left hander into the twenty foot zone that was so slippery a lot of people tried to dismount BEFORE the 120 degree right hander at the base of the runup. the course narrowed to the stairs and LOTS of people slipped out dismounting on their heels before the right hander, and even more fell through the turn trying to cut it clean to the stairs. the fastest people took the turn wide and fast and dismounted right before the stairs.
the really tricky part was that the stairs terminate up on the velodrome's hill and you've got about three to four feet of vertical height to add before you're at the flat top section and the radius of a 100 degree left hander that was extremely off camber, how off camber? enough to make a bike fall faster than a rolling human, that's how!

all the traffic (slow bastards that don't know how to remount at speed) would huff it slow up the rest of the hill to the ten feet of flat course, stop and remount, and roll down the hill on the outside. People who knew what they were doing tried to finish out their run in the turn but remount non-driveside right at the lip of the camber. well, that particular pass that dude who rides away from me in the first second of the clip had basically parked at the lip so i tried remounting off camber, got squirrely and lost it. next thing i know my bike is jack and i'm jill.

the video starts after my remount from the stairs through the turn, but already losing it down the off camber section.