non-bike

Andrea

Random Post

Random things that don’t all deserve their own post:

The pump track is about 1/100th of the way done: 2 rollers, 1 turn, and 1 29er-sized tabletop. I sort of finished the “tiger trap” drop, too. It’s kinda scary looking, but I plan on riding it as soon as we get some rain to harden up the dirt I packed on top of the lip for “shaping” purposes. The horses randomly wander in and walk on the berms while I’m not there…

track

table

lip

trap

In other news, I Iced Matt the other night when he was over at the house for some beer drinking shenanigans:

2

…and, last, but certainly not least, I’m absolutely fed up with trying to find jeans that fit. I was at TJMax today, and, out of curiosity, tried on a garish pair of Apple Bottom jeans. BAM. PERFECT FIT. Hey, guess what, though- they ONLY come in one of several styles- slightly ripped and/or bedazzled, and really, really ripped and/or bedazzled. Plain “denim”? Awww, Heeeeeeell no. Never.

I’m also fed up with vanity sizing. I’ve ridden many miles and lifted many weights to get an *ss like mine. You aren’t going to demean it with a size 4 label just to make overweight people feel good about themselves because they can fit into a size 10 now. Eff that noise.

doom1

Andrea

Glen Danzig Appreciation Post

Recently, I took Ryan’s old iPhone (he got a new one), and have been using it as an iPod touch. I’ve been on quite a Danzig kick lately.

I had no idea who Glen Danzig was the first time I saw the “Mother” video on MTV. It was way past my bedtime on a Saturday night- I’d stayed up late despite knowing that my parents were going to drag me off to early church in the morning, when, all of a sudden, there was this gorgeous, sweaty, shirtless man on my television singing about Hell and how he was going to help me find it. Instant crush.

I think I had recently removed a poster of Joey from NKOTB from my wall.

Fast forward many years. I discover the Misfits and all other sorts of awesome music. Danzig remains one of my favorites, though. I’ve heard that he’s even signed the wall at Graceland. I’ve always been tempted to go try to find out for myself. Still have a crush.

Andrea

Fon du Lac Day 2

Despite the rain, our second day of riding was better than expected. Just to get a change of scenery, we decided to drive to the Kettle Moraine area for our road ride. Ryan knew a loop from the Tour of America’s Dairyland race, so we parked in the town of Greenbush and headed out on the roads in Kettle Moriane State Park.

Along the way, we passed the entrance to the trails. Hmmm… it rained last night… well, no harm in just looking, right?

Turns out, the ground in that area is incredibly hard packed sandy/rocky mix. It had drained like nobodys business! We ended up riding the various loops for nearly an hour. They were awesome trails- at first you’re like, “hey, this is easy, flowy stuff…” but then you hit a patch of little wet rocks pocked across the trail, and you start sliding somewhat unpredictably. At first I was taking it kinda slow- the rocks were about golfball to softball in size, so you’d roll into a patch of them, and if you were going straight, the loss of control felt a little like riding sand (ok, really lumpy sand). After getting used to them, though, it was a blast.

We eventually left the trails and finished our loop back to the car. Back at the house, Ryan and I ate and decided to go out fishing on Lake Winnebago with his brother. We caught up a mess of Perch, and had a good fish bake/fry that night. Somehow, some of my roasted green beans found their waay in to the Fry Daddy…

Andrea

Rainy Fond du Lac

So, we’ve been in Fond du Lac since Saturday night, and both nights, it’s rained enough that we can’t (responsibly, at least) ride the Kettle Moraine trails that we were hoping to visit while we’re here. Yesterday, we headed out on the road, and along the way, we stopped by to check out a really small local system of trails. These are supposed to be multi-use, and the initial entrance to the different trails was marked with what uses are “OK” for what sections of trail, but we quickly found that if you took one trail marked for bikes, that it would dead end at another trail marked as “no bikes.” We rode in circles for about 45 minutes then got frustrated and hit the roads for another 15 miles or so.

dunno

road

windmill

After we were back and fed, we fished in the small canal behind the house. Surprisingly enough, remembering how to bait, cast, and un-fish a hook is kinda like remembering how to ride a bike…

fishin

bluegill

sadfish

We fished the rest of the day, had some dinner, and made preliminary plans to ride the trails since they “should” be dry. However, last night, another large patch of rain moved through the area and re-soaked the trail. So, if we want to ride, it’s out to the roads again. Normally, I wouldn’t mind that too much, but we only brought our mountain bikes, so it’s kinda boring. Ugh. Hopefully the rest of the trip isn’t so soggy.

Andrea

Heading back out

I feel like my blog has been unusually quiet lately. Maybe it’s just because I’m not reporting my daily adventures whilst on the road in beautiful New Mexico and Colorado. I know (hope?) you guys liked reading that, and, while it did do wonders for my daily site traffic, I have to say, it was occasionally a chore.

Want more?

I’m heading out tomorrow morning with Ryan to make our yearly summer trip to Wisconsin and Michigan to visit his family (you can see his mom’s hiking/traveling stories at http://isleroyalegirl.blogspot.com/. While I can’t promise that this trip will be anywhere remotely as interesting as my former adventure, it will include some camping, MTB racing (Ore to Shore), and maybe a trip to a cheese factory and/or a copper mine… something touristy like that.

In the meantime, if you want something intersting, check out Bad Idea Racing for some “hey, y’all, watch this” type action. Or, take a bath in cheese curls. The choice is yours.

Andrea

Gutter Bunny Ride

Back before I left for Colorado, Jason Oakley (from Outdoors, Inc.) and I started a group ride that we deemed the Gutter Bunny Ride. Every Thursday at 6(ish), we head out for a ride that will include roads, dirt, and usually some sort of hike-a bike. Rain or shine, we go out and have an awesome time.

Google Earth screenshot of the route:

route

Here are some phone photos from this Thursday’s adventure (most are foggy- it started raining… a lot)

cloud

climb

bridge

bike

Andrea

Chevy rips off SRAM

Just a few minutes ago, I was sitting around eating my morning oatmeal when a Chevrolet commercial came on the television. Attracted by the sight of auotomotive crash testing, I was sucked in to the commercial advertising some sort of new “thing” (Lauren and I couldn’t figure out exactly what it is) called “RedX”. They briefly showed a logo for it, and, much to my surprise, the logo is a ripoff of SRAM’s Red and XX logos. WTF?!?

Here’s a screen capture from the Youtube video of the commercial:

redx

I like how they’ve added in “Red X is a registered trademark…” at the bottom. Being the SRAM Fangirl that I am, I’m gonna forward this on to them. Chevy be damned.

Andrea

Uberhund

Ryan’s TT bike was in serious need of some updating/upgrading, so he picked up a set of Uberhund TT bars earlier this week. I finished up the install yesterday and polished it off with a badass wrap job. Enjoy… (click on the image for a higher res version)

uberhund

Andrea

Evolutionary Theory

When I was in training-zombie mode the other day on the Outdoors Inc. ride, I was spacing out and thinking about the absurdity of “hammerfest” group rides. We gather up socially, dress in costumes of our respective tribes, then proceed to thrash the hell out of each other on bicycles. Watching (and participating in) this ritual reminds me of territorial and mate battles between animals. Is it some sort of evolutionary thing? Am I supposed to choose a mate based on who gets to the city limits sign first? I sure as hell love watching it.