A good week...

Two good rides happened this week. I rode cross bikes with Nate and Dan on Tuesday and singlespeed bikes with Nate and Dan on Thursday. Both were very good rides; Iceman training is in full effect.

On Tuesday, we had an interesting experience. When I arrived at Nate's to start the ride, there was a large trailer parked in the back yard filled with 4.5 cubic yards of wood chips. Nate mentioned that he had to spread those chips around the kids' swingset before he could go to bed for the night. We rode cross bikes for an hour, until Dan realized he had lost 3 of his 5 chainring bolts! We went back to Nate's so Dan could scrounge some bolts to get his bike working again. As he was doing that, Nate and I...Shoveled wood chips! There we were, fully-clad in spandex and helmet lights with shovels and rakes laying down the chips; it was a hoot! Dan took some pictures, which I will post if they turn out. We then hit the road for another hour of riding.

I was on Dan's singlespeed Cross-Check. It was a nice ride; stiff where necessary but smooth over the bumps. It had a fairly serious gear on, so I suffered. Dan and Nate are both wicked fast on the cross bike, and they were on geared DD-X frames from Slingshot. I was butt-deep in the hurt locker most of the night.

Thursday I was late for the single speed ride. I met up with the guys after they had already put in at least an hour of hard riding. We met up at the parking lot of Cannonsburg Ski Area, and proceeded to head over to ride a section of trail that is not quite open to bikes. (Note: It was not Egypt Valley...) Anyway, we took a new route to this trail. This new route went up a killer hill. Fun was had by all. I felt great, in part because I had plenty of pasta the night before and slept for a full eight hours. I still suffered some on the climbs, but all in all I felt pretty good.

Why was I late for the ride? Well, I had to visit this guy. I gave him some money, and he is going to build me one of these. Mine will have singlespeed paragon dropouts and won't be green; can you guess what color it *will* be?

"So Joe", you might be thinking, "I thought you were about to become unemployed? What's with the fancy new bike?" Well, it turns out that I accepted a job offer today. I won't go into too many details, but suffice it to say that I am very exited about my new job. And now I can get a new bike and I will complete three races before the end of the season; here, here and of course here. I wish they were endurance races, but I will settle for cross country at this point. I am very psyched to race. I am also psyched that my new bike just might be here for Iceman; I'll keep you posted.

That's it for now. I plan to race the Kiss Cross race this weekend. I'll be rideing my main singlespeed bike for this one. Chances are pretty good that I will have an actual cross bike of my own for the next cross ride. Once again, stay tuned for details...