Another good ride

The weekend before last, me and a bunch of the mtbr.com knuckleheads rode the usual 25 mile Steve Wolf loop at Annadel. Good ride. I put the hurt on, and it felt good. My knees don’t like me much, even 10 days later. Then again, I’ve been working in the crane truck at work all week, and that tends to put a lot of pressure on my knees, so maybe that is the issue.  

Dang, I love this MC29er bike. It is completely unlike my other bikes. It is dead simple. No gears, no maintenance, just hop on and pedal away. Well, I did have an issue on this ride. My front disc brake decided to eat its retainer spring, which made really nasty fork-in-the-garbage-disposal kinda noises. After about 15 minutes of hammering out the pin that keeps the brake pads in with an allen wrench and a rock found on the trail side, I just removed the spring and put it in my pocket, and popped it all back together. I lost my safety clip that holds the pads in, so Sparky was so kind to lend me a safety pin from his first aid kit to keep the whole works from falling apart while we finished the ride. It was all my own dang fault for letting my brake pads get too low… probably from the sandy wet soil of Marin Headlands when I rode in the biggest storm of the season the week before. Nothing kills brake pads faster than wet sand.Anyway, 25 miles… 3000 feet of climbing in about 3.5 hours of riding. Not a blisteringly fast pace, but fast enough to have a good time and not get cold. Pic credit: Biker Scout Sparky

 

Here’s a movie Sparky shot of me rolling over the rock pile:

The baby has some new molars coming in, so sleep in this household is spotty this week. We are actually starting the potty training process with the assistance of our baby sitter. She prides herself on actually potty training kids before age two. Dunno how realistic that is, but that would be really nice to get him out of diapers as soon as possible. He has also been eating like a machine this last week. I think he is gearing up for a growth spurt. He started waking a few feet at a time unassisted. Oh, it’s all gonna over soon…. my being able to just watch him from the couch. 

So the 8 hours of Boggs is coming up in a few weeks. Naturally, I feel completely unprepared for it, and do not have enough time to get prepared. What, I’m going to be able to drop 10 pounds and gain another 4-6 pounds of muscle mass in three weeks? I think not. Not enough palates in the world for that. Also, I’ve hardly touched my geared bikes this year, and there is no way I’m racing that on my SS. If it were a solo race, sure, but this is a three person team effort. I’ll easily turn the slowest laps on the SS, and …. heh… I’m not going to let that happen. 

We are also gearing up to finally go on vacation to Denmark. My wife spent a year on exchange there in high school, and stayed in contact with several friends. The original plan was to stay with them, but looking into it further we found we could rent a beach house on the cheap on the west coast near where her friends live. I’m really looking forward to it. Today I got my updated passport, and my boy’s first passport in the mail. Pics were horrible. We sent them decent pics to process, but the colors somehow got all whacked out. We both look like we spent way too much time on the sunny side of Mercury with insufficient sunscreen.  

*edit* Dang wordpress! Unless you use IE, it totally hoses all the code. Problem is, my only IE equipped Wintendo is at work.