Yer a weiner

After a successfull campaign of racing the bike in the Navada State Championship series, I drove east a few days ago to Reno (that's in Nevada) to see how the general population would except their new "mountain bike racing king" while doing a little shopping.

Megan (my girlfriend) and I headed east on hwy 80 towards the state line. Upon crossing the California/Nevada state line, I noticed that the sign you see upon entering "the silver state" hadn't been changed. I was expecting something like "Gregg Stone... the fastest mountain biker in the whole state of Nevada welcomes you". But, no dice. When we got to the state line, I noticed the same sign that's been there for years with the "welcome to Nevada" slogan below the wooden cutout of a shadowed cowboy that suggests it'd best be spoken by the likes of Sam Elliot. No worries. With the economy being what it is, I guess it's probably not on Nevadas "top 10" list of things to do. We didn't drive through the downtown area, but I'm guessing that the "biggest little city in the world" sign probably hadn't been replaced by something more suggestive of my mountain bike racing prowess.

Instead, we drove into the heart of Reno and headed towards where most of the anti WalMart shoppers end up.... Target. Upon entering the store, I looked for "my cart". I was sure that the fastestest mountain biker in all of Nevada would have his own cart. I was kind of hoping for something with lightweight aluminum frame tubing, a basket made of high modules carbon fiber, ceramic bearings in the wheels and adorned with lock-on grips and bottle cages on either side. I didn't look behind the "employees only" door, but an otherwise thorough search of the premises turned up only stock carts with steel frames (non Reynolds), plastic (non carbon) baskets and wheels with anything but high performance bearings in them. Bottle cages.... forget about it. It kinda left me with a feeling like Milton must've had. Nonetheless, I made my rounds through the store, some toothpaste, band aids, misc food storage containers some toilet paper... you know the drill. Upon checking off all the items on my list, we headed towards the checkout counter. The lady behind the counter asked me if I wanted to put the total on my Target charge card. I stated that I had something much better and pulled out my USA Cycling liscense and explained that if she ran my licence number and cross referenced it with the Nevada State Championship website she would see that I was indeed the fastest mountainbiker in the state of Nevada. I was sure that we would receive a hefty discount on our selected merchandise and maybe even get a couple of our items at no charge. After quick examination of my license, I was met with the reality that they probably hadn't yet received word of my triumphant domination of being the fastest mountain biker in all of Nevada. (yes Hodi... even you) I pulled out my other card (something emblazoned w/ the VISA logo) which seemed to have better results with our ability to keep our purchases... that and being allowed to leave the building.

This trend would continue throughout the day as we went on with the rest of our stops. At Trader Joes the denial of any kind of discount, freebie or "atta boy" recognition was quickly shot down. The lady at Whole Foods was somewhat nicer and actually humored me with a closed eye look up at the ceiling as if to search her memory trying to remember if such an in-store promotion actually existed. By the time we got to the gas station my expectations of a discount for being the fastest mountian biker in all of Nevada were low. Nonetheless, I made sure I got in the row of gas pumps closest to the building thinking that since I was driving the title sponsoring van (Mighty Mobile Bike Repair) it may be enough to invoke some sort of "above and beyond" service from the folks at the AM-PM. Still... nothing. Nobody came out to pump our gas, wash the windshield, check the oil... nothing. I paid full retail for my fuel and headed for the highway in a westward direction back towards Truckee.

I had plenty of time to reflect back on my day in Nevada while on highway 80 westbound.... in the construction zone.... traffic totally stopped.... with perishable groceries in the back. Yep.... welcome to Nevada.

The Slow Season

With the days of summer ticking away things at Might Mobile are starting to slow down a little bit. This is really no surprise and no big deal. In previous years, I've taken the "slow season" in stride and is usually a time to simply...

RIDE

MY

BIKE.

It's not like I don't have stuff going on, but when the only job on the books is installing a new shifter cable one needs to find a way to occupy his time.

Yesterday morning was chock full; placing orders, driving around doing errands, paying some bills and fixing some shifting issues for my first/only job of the day. I was back at HQ right around lunch time. Now what? I reflected back to a day while skiing with Aaron and he was telling me about replacing the belts on his snowblower. "There's belts in there?" Owning a Honda snowblower, I just figured that as long as I kept gas in the thing, it would probably outlive me by at least 20 years. So, after some lunch I rolled up my sleeves (which was really odd since I was wearing a short sleeved T-shirt) and got to work on doing some snowblower maintenance.

First thing's first: After sitting under a tarp for more than 5 months I turned the key, pushed in the clutch lever and pulled the starter rope... one time. That's all it took to turn over the engine now purring like a kitten in my driveway. I'd say this is amazing, but really it's not. After a minute or so, I shut it off and started draining the oil. While this was going on, I brushed off some spiderwebs and did a visual inspection. "Hmm, it's still red and most of the bolts are still screwed in"... seems good. Now, how about those belts?

In the front of the unit, there's a red plastic cover which I assumed housed the belts. After removing 4 bolts, my assumptions were proved correct and the belts were exposed. WOW! Man I'm glad I had a look in there. They DEFINITELY need replaced.

This is where things got interesting. There are two belts inside. One that makes the thing go back and forth and another that engages the auger. The area where the belts and pulleys live is somewhat confined. There are also miscellaneous springs, belt guards, lever arms and other Honda gadgetry in there all taking up precious space. The confines of this area took me back to a time when my Dad had a 1964 Mini Cooper with a magical way of making it IMPOSSIBLE to retrieve dropped bolts in the engine compartment... but that's another story. The odd thing going on here is that it looked like removing the belts would require the removal of some of the afore mentioned pieces. It started innocently enough. I removed a part here and a part there getting closer, but still not enough to remove the belts. Before I knew it, I had something that looked like this.....

Yea. No shit! As bummed as I was/am about the depths that I'm going through to get the belts swapped out, I'm glad (glad to at least the 5th power!) that I'm not doing this in the middle of a snow storm while missing out on a ski day. I guess it's sort of a blessing. I also found a bearing in there that was sure to fail on me this winter as well that would've caused some other sort of hand freezing, wrench loosing, loud cussing sort of scene in the middle of my driveway one winter day. Good for the blog... bad for neighbor relations.

Sooo, it's off to the snowblower shop... again. Let's see what happens this time.

some dayz...

As much as working on the road in the Mighty Van has it's perks, privlidges and plusses, I do miss the shop environment from time to time. Some dayz, ya just need a laugh.

macanicframa from wolfgang on Vimeo.