vacation

Still closed.

It was actually a collaboration of ideas from my branch managers to give me a week off from spinning the wrenches. Ahh, hard work does have its rewards. Thanx guys!

meet the management

Having a desire for dust free singletrack and good pizza, I hopped on a plane and headed to the east side of the US of A. Yup, back to the motherland... Pennsylvania. Friends, family and Yuengling Lager. But first, I gotta get there.

Flying really sucks. I mean, it DOES beat driving across the country in a car by a long shot, but the typical experience during a day of air travel is horrendous. United Airlines claims to have 11,000 people per day working on its customer service to ensure you have a pleasant flight. Well, I'm here to tell ya.... they need more. I find it a bit redonculous that they rush you on a plane - close the doors - require you to power down all electronic devices and then mention that the reason you're not moving anywhere for the next half an hour is because their waiting for the fuel truck to arrive. Huh?? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for having gas in the plane but can't they get that shit handled before people get on board? Then there's all the broken promises. Like this one:

Clearly there's supposed to be a baby tickling station somewhere here, but damned if I could find it.
Although it'll probably be much later than the promised arrival time, you make it to your final destination and celebrate the small miracle that consists of your luggage having somehow actually making it to the same place as you... most of the time.

Eased into vacation today with a nice road ride with my Dad. The road riding in this part of the state is pretty good. Road surfaces are usually nice and there's a plethora of routes to choose from. Farmland dominates the landscape once you get a mile or so from town.

It wasn't too far from where this picture was taken where I had one of my worst crashes on a road bike to date. 1985. Pine Rd. I was an eager 13 year old on a 24" wheeled Gitane' road bike that my dad had built for me. (sick bike). The wind was to our backs and I was on my dads wheel like Mark Cavendish getting the lead out for a sprint finish. As we spun down the road I looked back to see if any cars were coming up from behind (there weren't) and when I looked forward again I was on a collision course with a 3ft high "ROAD WORK AHEAD" sign. Sheeeeiiite!! A split second later.... BANG!! Over the bars. Front wheel tacoed. Skin on the road. Blood on my clothes. My dad, assuming I was still on his wheel, had drifted out towards the center of the road to avoid the sign.... I did/could not. My dad probably felt like shit that day. Meh. Lesson learned... you can never look too far ahead. Some high school kids gave me a ride home. Epic.

Later on our ride I had a chuckle when I saw this.

See that power line cut in the trees going over that ridge line in the distance. I remember a late/crazy night many years ago when Jerry Shughart and I drove my first car (1969 VW beetle) up and over that power line. Scary. But that's a story for another time.

This little beauty hangs in my Dads basement for 51 weeks of an average year. Only then does it leave the comfort of its corner parking spot and get to see the light of day. That bike's ridden some of the trails in the area so many times it can damn near do them by itself.

I usually like to do a little "shakedown" ride around town to re familiarize myself with its ways before hitting up the local trails. It's also neat to ride around on the streets and alley ways that I used to terrorize as a kid on a BMX bike. I always ride up by my old high school.


Yeah. Man. Lots of memories.
I rode up along the front of the school and had to stop and scratch my head a little when I saw this:

Geesh. I didn't exactly like school all that much, but I didn't think it was THAT bad. 

We'll be closed

   Howdy folks.
   Just dropping ya'll a line to let you know that the van's getting parked this Friday (13th) and won't get fired back up again until Tuesday Sept 24th. Yup... closed for buisness for a week..... or so.
  Not to worry though. We'll recover, get things fired up and be back after it in no time. Just like this guy!

Dudes that rule

   You won't be getting much creative writing from this post, but you might just find yourself hitting the "replay" button a few times on this one.


Safe to say, I was doing a little rockin' out this morning making breakfast.

27.5 650B Enduro

Mighty Mobile here. You guys still waiting for that Downieville race report? Yeah.... me too. Been too damn buys here at the jobitty job fixing bikes and whatnot. I was really thinking that I should hire some help to fill some positions and so far, this is what I've come up with.

Ahh shit. Maybe I'll just keep on doing what I've been doing which is everything by myself. I mean, bikes are sooooo easy to work on. There are times that I need to defer to the interwebs for some sort of technical data and other moments when I'll call a manufacturer in search of needed info. And sometimes the information is right there in front of me the whole time!

 

Ok. Maybe one Downieville pic.

Ryan. Crazy bastard. Bet you'll think twice next time before making a bet while drinking.

Oh, what's the title of this post have to do with anything? NOTHING!! But my new branch manager figured that since these are the hottest topics in cycling right now, we'd run with it in an attempt at drawing some more traffic to the site.

My Downieville Report....

..... will have to wait. I'm fried. Two days of standing in the sun followed by two late nights (show in Reno last night) have me feeling beat down.

As a first year "professional spectator", I was surprised just how much work it actually is! After riding up to my position on course (on cramp hill at the junction of 2nd/3rd divide) I stood on a steep hillside for an hour which really made my legs hurt. I think I'll bring a lawn chair next year.

Once I got back in town there was obligatory beer drinking in the sun for 5 hours along with high fives, catching up with old friends, checking out vendor row and live music till late night (for me).... all in a hard days work as a "professional spectator". And that was only the first day! Damn. I either need to learn how to pace myself for "professional spectating" or go back to racing.

Day two (for me) I did a 2-1/2 hour ride in the morning (N. Yuba) then went back to the "trenches" of vendor row where I caught up with some of my suppliers for critical repair info (shout out to Ed at Chris King!), acquired pictures and info for product reviews (yeah, I might start doing that again) and tried to keep an eye on incoming results. It was at this point in time that I got sucked into the comfy leather couch at WTB schmoozing for tires. My position on said couch had me in a very relaxed position where I'm pretty certain that my camera crept out of my pocket and got buried somewhere deep in the cushions of that couch. We'll see how my ABP to WTB plays out over the next few days.

Not to worry. I have the pics from Saturday transferred to my laptop so I can still proved some reporting for a "professional spectators" point of view.

Hang in there. More late.     

Downieville Results In....

..... and it ain't pretty.

The thrill of victory....

And the agony of defeat.....

Race report to follow.

Over the Verizon

   Soooo.... we're having a little telephone communications issue here at Mighty Mobile..... again! Please text or email me for best response over the next few days. Today is Friday, Aug 2nd.
  
   Also.... we'll be closed this weekend for Downieville. Back to work on Monday the 5th.

 For some reason, my phone is intermittently losing sound on both ends of a call. This is obviously a frustrating situation for both parties of the attempted conversation. I don't know why this happens to me. I don't consider myself "hard" on phones but I've been through 8 of these damn things in the last 16 months! (5 IPhones/3 Motorola's) WTF!!  My phones status of "in warranty" is the only thing that kept it from skittering across the street a few times yesterday. I know that throwing my phone against the ground wouldn't fix the phone's ability to transmit sound, but seeing it explode into a couple of hundred tiny pieces would've surely made me feel a heck of a lot better.

  I spent some time with Verizon last night in an attempt at getting the situation resolved. This took a great deal of time, not to mention a couple of cans of Modelo Especial to get through the "process". Monique (at Verizon) was very helpful and friendly until I wouldn't give her a "yes" to the question of "have I resolved all of your issues today sir?" This lead into another ten minutes of conversation that went nowhere... except another can of Modelo.

   If only I made bicycle components instead of fixing them, I'd have the means to drive my Ferrari down to the Verizon store and simply pay retail for a new phone. Sram has announced it's releasing 1x11 in a more affordable X0 version. Remember... it's the more in "more affordable" that keeps the statement from being ridiculous.

 

Sheeeite!! Don't get me wrong, I'm all for getting rid of front shifting, but damn... that's some serious coin. I used to preach the "almost everyone can afford to ride exactly what pro racers ride" statement, but Sram's sort of getting a little out of hand here. Yes, for the low low price of $399 you too can have a cassette (just the cassette) that's NOT top of the line. Of course you'll need a crankset to go with that which will set you back $319... but you'll have to come up with some more cash for the chainring and bottom bracket.... cause their NOT included. It won't be long before the price of a nice mountain bike will surpass that of a nice dirt bike (motorcycle) and folks will start to realize that they can twist the throttle of a moto and ride more trails in a day than they could in an epic week of pedaling a $10,000 bicycle.

 

All right. Enough ranting and bitching for now. I've gotta keep something "pent up" for when I talk to Verizon again later today (while using someone else's phone).

 

See you in Downieville!

 

 

ps... Sako... I love you!!