jams

Rock and roll forever

homies

Aaron and I went to the same school and have always been super close friends.  If there is one person in the world who I honestly don't think could care less about what anyone thinks about him and truly just lives to be happy and have fun doing stuff he loves it's him. One time when they tried to kick him out of school we stole candy bars from the teachers lounge during his expulsion hearing.  Just saw this video of his antics and wanted to share with the cyber-verse.  Stolen from Tortoised

weekend

 After a long week of work I got back Friday relaxed for about an hour and headed out the door to catch the Hold Steady show on King. The blurry photos kind of give away the energy of the show and my general state of being.  Awesome time followed up by drinks with an old friend and a no handed pizza eating ride home.

 Saturday was kind of a fluke. I slept in way too late, worked on bike stuff, headed to the Ty Segall show which after standing in line for 5 minutes I was informed had sold out, and gave up and got myself in bed by midnight.  Today I swore it would be different so I got up at a reasonable hour and headed out to Blue Mounds.  The whole afternoon was gorgeous perfect weather and great trails.  I've been hearing about the Blue Mounds trails since I got here and was happy to finally have the time to go and check them out.  I deffinetly did not expect what I got, lots of technical rocky climbing and descending.  Not a ton of flowy sections but still a ton of fun.  

 Get out and enjoy fall while you can.

Interbike

Interbike coverage is up and all over the internet.  As always I advise heading over to Urban Velo to check out the good, the bad, and the ugly.  More coverage here.

DIY Fun

As a kid growing up in the middle of nowhere WI I ended up making my own fun a lot.  I had no friends near me and no siblings interested in doing anything so I pretty much just hung out by myself most of my childhood.  One of my favorite things to do was rip around on my bike.

As an adult I still love making my own fun on a bike, riding by myself and organizing races and events.  I've been in a glut for organizing anything lately so this Almanzo video kind kicked me in the pants for wanting to get an event together.  I love the ethic that goes into events like this and it's awesome to see people doing them.

slacker

 You'll have to pardon my absence, I've been crazy busy with work lately and have had a few other projects in development that have kept me occupied, which doesn't appear to be changing any time soon.  In the meantime I've been riding as much as possible, and swung out to the CX Gran Prix Saturday to drink beer, heckle, and shake my cow bell.  The whole thing was honestly a bit tamer than I had imagined it would be but it was still good to see the pros taking pie hand ups and goofing around with the crowd.  

 Night wrapped up the way most good nights should, with beers and pizza.  Well now I've got to get out the door and get to work, short and sweet.

USGPCX

This weekend in Sun Prairie.  Should be sweet, more info here.

weekend

Spent the majority of the weekend on the bike riding around Madison real low key.  Mountain bike all day Saturday.

Caught a show Saturday night at Rev.

Road bike exploring all day on Sunday. 

Get out and ride

cross

Cross season is upon us and I need to organize something before I loose my shit.  Check out the official "people who care" Madison area cross schedule here.

on the road

Hitting the road for work until Friday.  The cat will be staying behind.

The Way I Roll

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I've spent the past hour or so watching the "Way I Roll" short film series put out by Thule.  The series focuses on 6 different riders and their lives on bikes.  It's one of the most inspirational documentary series I've seen in a while and I particularly like the sort with Chris Van Dine. Beautiful scenery, beautiful lifestyle.  Dude's living the dream.

style

One of the most interesting things about moving to Madison is the difference in the style of bikes you see down here.  In Eau Claire it felt like people would ride pretty much any damn thing they could get their hands on.  Then when you shopped new you bought the Minneapolis/QBP runoff like Salsas and Surlys.  While in Madison every man woman and child has a major hard on for the big players in the industry, namely Trek. They litter every corner of the city and people swoon over specific models and years.  Now I'm not saying this is good or bad, it's just different and a very distinct difference in the style of cycling in Madison v.s. what I'm used too.  So in an effort to appease Trek fans across WI I'm posting this little promo they came up with.  Kind of an old hat in terms of info, but fun none the less.

danny boy

Not sure what remington has to do with trials riding, but it's a Danny MacAskill video so every bike blog in the interverse is required to post it.

hyuuu hyuuu

I'm can only assume you have been sitting around all weekend in the dark twiddling your thumbs waiting around for me to get back on the internet and post some more garbage here.  For that I sincerely apologize but I've got to say the last thing on my mind all weekend was posting here.  Now that I've sufficiently recovered and sifted through dozens of blurry photos to remind myself of what exactly went down this weekend I'm back.  Thursday night we took of for Houghton in the UP to crash for the night before hitting up the local trails.  We rolled into town around 2am and headed to the closest bar to get the skinny on possible places to sleep and get a taste of the local night life.  After a mammoth order the lights came up and we headed to the shore line to find a place to sleep for the night.  We found the most precarious rooftop in all of Houghton and set up camp on top of it.

We woke up in the morning to realize just how structurally unsound our makeshift campground was and tip toed back to safety.  We went to some place for breakfast that served the most well balanced egg-to-hashbrown ratio skillet I've ever had in my life before heading over to the Michigan Tech trails to get some riding in.  The first section we hit was fun very technical rocky winding stuff with a lot of obstacles built into it.  I was pretty stoked with the technical trail section but then we went across the park to hit some of the fastest single track that I've ridden in a long time.  If I wasn't excited to ride yet, I was after that.  After dicking around at the Michigan Tech trails for a few hours we ate some lunch behind the public library and became a serious spectacle.  Met a lady who traded cans for banjos and laid in the sun for a super long time.  The day slipped by fast and we decided to head the rest of the way up to Copper Harbor before the sun got too low to go swimming in the lake.    

After arriving in CH we set up camp and headed to Lake Superior to clean up then get back and make some dinner.  That night we headed out to the beach under a full moon to have a few beers, sit around the fire, and eventually pass out.

Then wake up in the morning to this.

Sometimes life is awesome.

Saturday was just one of those perfect days. The whole Madison crew hit the trails and hit the race loop plus a few more sections.  Came back for lunch and naps, then headed out again to hit a few trails that got missed.  That's one thing you definitely don't want to do while in CH, miss trails.

Afterwards more swimming in the lake, beer drinnking, and dock jumping followed.

That night we went back to the beach for another fire and headed back before too late to rest up for the race on Sunday.  After almost missing the start I sprinted out of town to get in line with a minute to spare.  The whole race was by far the most fun I've ever had racing my bike.  When you know your finishing position from the start it alleviates a lot of the stress of trying to advance.  I rode the first half the race telling jokes with a fellow racer and getting as much air as I could.  At the bottom of the first descent I got a beer hand up and rode the rest of the thing smiling ear to ear despite the massive lung busting climbs.

After we wrapped up I grabbed some food and a beer and set to getting loose. After another beer we hit the lake to wash up and headed back for more food and festivities.

I got the chance to rip around on some guys full suspension BMC.

The sun went down.

Hood rat shenanigans went down.

Dancing went down.

And eventually my head went down.  The whole weekend was a blast and trying to recap it here is really not going to do it justice.  So check out the pictures and be jealous then show up next year.  Well I've got some real work to do so I'm getting off this thing.  Later dweebs.