heat

Thursday night ride tonight. 6:30ish, meet at Racys on Water, get ready to get wet.

home

I've been back from Indy for a few days now. Mostly just relaxing and going mountain biking.  I'm just kind of getting back into the swing of things and it's been kind of a stressful time, so I don't have much to say.  Keep an eye out for an upcoming EC Velo short sleeve jersey pre-order. In the meantime, it's beautiful out so get outside.


Rapha Rides the Victorian Alps from RAPHA on Vimeo.

carbon heavy commuting

I'm flying out early tomorrow for work training stuff in Indianapolis, but before then I wanted to re-cap the past few days.  Saturday Alex, Derek, and I rode out to Menomonie to catch the NVGP.  Despite threats of rain it was a really fast easy dry ride out, and the humidity held off until we got into town.

We watched the crits and hung around the grounds for a while then headed over to The Waterfront for lunch and afterwards we picked up a few refreshments.

Overall it was a really good time, a really good excuse to put on 50 miles. We easily had the loudest cheering section of any of the crowd, and for most of it people were left gawking at how vocal we were.  The good folks at Simple Sports also kindly hooked us up with a few cold beers and good company for part of the day.

After the pro men came in we hit the road and while Derek and Alex felt fine I limped back into town and we stopped in at Elk Lake for another drink before beating the storm into town. You can catch more Nature Valley Grand Prix highlights here.

Sunday was fathers day. My sisters and I went out to my dads house lit fireworks, shot bb guns, drank beers, ate snacks, grilled, rolled dice, and a bunch of other fun summer stuff.

I love my dad.

Well that about sums it up. See you in a few. 

fsm2

Last night we rode around a bit and ended up having a fire. I'm not sure how it started but within half an hour we were trying to build a teeter-totter over the fire then just start airing over it. The rest is history.  I threw this together this morning because it just needed to be shared.


Fire Safety Meeting from David Smuhl on Vimeo.

Music by St. Vincent and The Sonics

fsm

More to come soon...

get real

Wow... Just wow...
I don't know about you, but I've never rode my bike like this in my life.

monday

Yesterday I set off to Menomonie to kind of scope out the lay of the land for the Nature Valley Grand Prix.  Within a few minutes of getting into town and filling up water bottles I got a text from Trevor who had apparently seen me ride in. We ended up meeting up and going for a little ride on some of the Nature Valley course and turning into Downsville for some deep fried lunch and a few beers before hopping onto the Red Ceder Trail back into Menomonie.  It was really the first time I ever spent much time riding in that area and it was a ton of fun, lots of big hills and winding turns, and the Red Ceder is hands down one of the prettiest, most fun trails I've ever ridden. You can't beat hard packed gravel winding along a river fully shielded from sun and wind by trees with big rock cutouts and plenty of rest stops along the way.

Once back in Menomonie I refilled again and headed out another 25 miles back into town. After the first 17 or so of nasty headwinds the road started to straighten out and the wind started to die a little bit allowing a nice, albeit worn out, ride in to town. It's days like this that I kick myself for not having my camera with me.  It was just a gorgeous day of bike riding seeing some new stuff and hanging out with friends.

 Which is just the sort of thing I like taking photos of.  I am by no means a photographer and a lot of modern ideas about photography bother me. I can see the merit in a perfectly composed photograph or hours of setting up a shot followed by hours in a dark room, but more than that I like the idea of photography as a reflex that's main purpose is to document something the photographer finds relevant, not an exercise in ego massage and geek speak.

But I digress, back to what I was saying before, it was an awesome day of riding and when it was all said and done after getting home hitting the shower, a giant salad, homemade bread, and ice cream I slept like a rock last night.  I did take one picture from the ride home with my phone.  I really like all of these fields out on Hwy. E that are farmers market farms with dozens of people growing vegetables working the fields by hand and you kind of forget where you are for a couple minutes. Then you see some Natural Ice cans laying on the roadside where some redneck threw them and instantly remember.

NVGP

For the second year now the Nature Valley Grand Prix is coming to Menomonie next weekend. Missed it last year, but I think a group of us are planning on riding out from EC to check out the festivities this year which I'm stoked about because it looks like a ton of fun. It's awesome to see big races happen around here and kind of validate the terrain of west-central Wisconsin and the northern midwest in general as truely unique and difficult to ride.


Anyway, should be awesome, hope lots of people make it out. Read more here

for all

 Since it cooled down it's been a kind of hectic week.  Hectic by unemployed and supine standards at least. Really just a bunch of cliff jumping, bike riding, quiche making, and sadly saying good bye to some friends moving away but also fortunately saying hi to some who returned.

Which is what my night entailed last night until the wee-morning hours. Consequently my day to now has been largely spent listening to albums and sifting through photos plotting a project. I'll leave you with a little rock and roll to get your Sunday moving.

training

I need a few of these things. My normal training consisting of riding with flats through sand just hasn't been giving me enough resistance.

bridge

 It's been hot out.  In order to beat the heat I've been sitting around the house drinking iced coffee and working on bikes. Jen was saying she wanted a bit of a change on her setup so tore into her cruiser Bridgestone RB-3 and set it up as a 1x6.  Old Sachs-Huret New Success in back and old Ofmega Mistral up front.  A whole lot of other old stuff in between.

still alive

Again, been waiting for the new internet to show up so I can more regularly post all sorts of really interesting commentary and stories and stuff but while I wait I've been forced outside to see the real world...

 play croquet,

 make veggie burgers en masse,

 mountain bike,

 and  go bike camping.

It's been really rough.  In case you can't tell I'm kidding. I have been living up Wisco summer and having time away from working and I advise you do the same.  Can't wait till next Thursday.

time

It's been a little while. I've been busy taking care of moving stuff and still don't have internet up at the homestead.  It's nice out, get off the net and ride yo bike.