Frostbike

 Saturday was Frostbike 2012 at QBP in Minneapolis and Magyar, Derek, Ryan, and myself all headed up to drool over all the new bike goodies for 2012 and get free powerbars.  I managed to pull myself out of bed and get over to Dereks at 7 for morning refreshments.  

 We got into Murderappolis threw away the empties and emptied the tank before heading in and meeting up with EC transplant and QBP I.T. man Joe for a bit and heading to scratch and dent.

On the way to scratch and dent Salsa had a S&S coupled fargo and this ridiculous full suspension fat bike on display.  Aside from these prototypes Salsa didn't have anything new on display, but the hype around a full suspension fat bike seemed to be big enough for them to not have to bring much else.  

 After a bit of shopping we started checking out displays.  This is my first Frostbike and I was more than a little excited.  It was everything I could have hoped for.  An entire day of eyecandy and a chance to actually play with the stuff you normally just get to look at on the internet. It's not every day you get to ride a Campagnolo carbon frame with Super Record EPS on it.  

 Or my personal favorite of the day, a Pugsly with Bionx electric assist.  The fastest, most fun fat bike I've ever had the pleasure of riding.

 I'm no journalist, so if you are looking for super detailed coverage of all of the displays and new goodies you are barking up the wrong tree, but suffice it to say their was some very cool stuff a lot of which involved converting everything mechanical to hydraulics...  

And there was some not so cool stuff that lets you pretend you are riding a bike when you are actually just sitting on one in your living room...  

 After a while Magyar and I grabbed some food and headed outside for lunch and some test riding.  We headed back in for round two and checked out the rest of the displays before we were rounded up by Ryan who was ready to hit the road.  We still had beer left so Magyar and I grabbed some cans and hit the single track around QBP with some borrowed Mukluks before heading in one last time to make sure we didnt miss anything and share our libations.

 More beer drinking, more stationary bike riding, and a few high fives later we hit the road.

So that was my Frostbike 2012 experience.  It was an awesome time and by the time I got home I was totally wiped out and hit the sack.  Like I said, I barely scratched the surface of the products shown considering pretty much every major vendor you can think of was there with very cool new stuff.  If you want a little more details check out the QBP Youtube channel for more info or just keep an eye on the new QBP catalog.  Big thanks to Eau Claire's top shop Bike and Sport for bringing me along to this, can't wait for next year.

thursday

Bikes, bridges, beers, and all you can eat bacon by the basket.

FGFS

If their were ever an argument against fixed gear free style I feel like this would be it.  Far more impressive than any fixed gear free style video I've ever seen and it's all on a cruiser.

 I feel like I've been a bad dad to this blog lately with the lack of posts, but to be fair the past couple weekends have been so packed that I feel like I've barely had the time to decompress from one before the other begins.  This is not a complaint mind you, just an observation.  I feel like their are very few February's that seem to go as well as this one so it is quite the relief.  Anyway Thursday ended up being one of the laziest TNR's on record.  Meaning that it ended up being 4 of us walking to Scott's house to drink beer, eat pizza, and watch Hobo with a Shotgun.  That happens sometimes I guess.  

 Saturday Magyar and I headed to Menomonie for the St. Valentines Day Hustle ice race.  This is the fourth annual running of the race on Lake Menomin and it was a really fun time. It was a cold windy day but we were pleasantly surprised to see a good pack of racers on all sorts of bikes had made it out with smiles on their faces.

 Despite being aware of this race and intending to go over a month in advance I still only managed to get one tire studded, and failed to get it on the bike by launch time, so I was stuck riding the regular commuter.  We go going and I managed to get in the front 5 or so until the 4th checkpoint when we were told we needed to go back across the lake to grab a beer. Knowing all to well that all race organizers throughout history are bold faced liars who's goal in life is to make racers work harder than they want too I figured I could climb off the lake and find a gas station/liquor store in enough time to come back and pick up a position.  I was wrong. I ended up adding a ton of time to my race, and handed my manifest in DFL.

We went in and got warmed up when AG2 showed up fresh from the ride in from Eau Claire.  Awards happened, and I managed to snag a prize for DFL finish and we hung around for a bit longer eating some food and grabbing some coffee before hitting the road.

Overall awesome time. Glad we finally made it out for one of these.  It's not every day you get to dodge ice-fishing tip ups and snowmobiles while racing your bike. Sunday was laundry and gun shooting day out at my dads house.

Awesome weekend, can't wait for Friday.

aggressive-aggressive

Not much of a movie buff, but this seems to good to be true.  Most anticipated movie since Premium Rush.

TNR tonight!

Stupidbowl xv

Thursday night kicked off 3 days of debauching that  put me to bed by 9:30 yesterday and left me still begging for sleep and recovery today.  Thursday went about how one would expect, except for the miraculous return of Jake the Snake who live with this dog now and rode along for a quick jaunt before being scared away.  The ride was nice and toasty and ended with a few stops at some of Eau Claire's finest drinking establishments before a flat tire sent me home.    

Friday night Chris Z got into town from Madison for Stuporbowl XV weekend.  I went over to Mags place intending on spending a couple hours over there before getting some decent sleep.  Of course those ideas were much more rooted in fantasy than in reality and in no time flat a group of us emptied a case of Old Mil and set to turning Mags basement into an aquatic salon. 

 Afterwards we hit up the J and after a pitcher I hit the road knowing all to well where the night would end if I stayed out any later.  Saturday was the Stuporbowl and after a Twizzlers stop Magyar, Chris Z and myself hit the road to nurse our funovers on the highway.  We parked at Magyars brothers house where we planned on crashing and headed over to One on One.  We got there early enough to not have to deal with much of a line and plenty of time to plan the race.

 Of course we hadn't learned our lesson after 2 years of doing this race we still didn't bring a decent map and ended up choosing a final strategy of winging it.  Not long after Andy got a hold of us and said he was at One on One with a map.  We headed back over to meet up and Andy and I hung out while Magyar worked on a route.  By this point the hundreds of people who do this race flocked in an it was a site to behold.  Lots of people, lots off cool bikes, and lots of bikes that looked something like this.

 This is where things get hairy.  We rode out to the start point and I got a few more shots in and after that it was pretty much non stop riding for 3 hours.  Lots of getting turned around and lots of fun riding.  Andy was fresh from getting hit and was originally kind of reluctant to ride that hard but in the end we al hung tight rode hard and had a ton of fun.

 It was a really good experience getting a bunch of friends together that all live in other places and getting to spend the day on bikes together just having a blast.  This is probably what I look forward to most doing this race and I was not let down.  We grabbed some grub at the Triple Rock and headed back to home base to recover for a bit and get ready to check out the rest of the after race festivities at the Nomad.  I'm sure in the next week or so a lot of photos of those festivities are going to arise so in the mean time I will leave them to your imagination.

 We split from the Nomad and hit up a couple more places and ripping around town before closing down Grumpy's and rolling back to home base for the night.

 I went for a little walk to stretch my legs, reflect on the day, and recover a bit.  By the time I got back someone had got the idea to start a fire in the back yard. We found a super convenient fire pit and got to work.

Around 5am we ran finally bottomed out and hit the sack.  

Sunday I was in no shape to do much of anything other than drive home, take a shower, and go back to sleep so I did just that waking up just long enough to watch the Superbowl and return to bed.  So what I'm getting at is that this was an awesome weekend.  I got to hang out with awesome people, ride a bunch, eat a bunch, and see some people I haven't seen in a long time.  More than anything it got me more excited for this summer and a whole new year of bike adventures.  It's easy to get bogged down in the daily routine of commuting and weekends like this help remind you of why you ride your bike in the first place.  It's fun.  

Well anyway, more later, I've got a game to get to.  Adios

LeBron

Don't care about basketball, but it's good to see these mega-millionaire sports types defying stereotypes and getting out on bikes.

"Due to the Miami Marathon, traffic getting to AmericanAirlines Arena was brutal for today’s Heat-Bulls matinee. As reported by ABC during the telecast, LeBron James took the traffic into consideration and made alternate plans for his commute — specifically, he rode his bike."

Video here

Now if only they could do something about the consistently asinine smarmy commentary that these sports commentators always have.