Ride Americas 2013

This past Saturday, I along with a little over 800 other persons got a chance to ride on the Circuit of The Americas Formula 1 track just outside of Austin, Texas.

 

Pure sweetness.

 

I will say for the record here, I'm slow....very slow.   That's a result of being out of shape and not spending enough time in the saddle this year but, who cares? I never have been one about 'speed'. I move at my own pace and I like it. So with that being said, I have posted a video below showing my first lap of the morning.

 

Holland Racing put on the event and I must say, it was outstanding! Very well organized.

 

We began by staging in the paddock behind the garages and then shuffled our way through the garages (sorry, no cars to be seen. ) and onto pit lane. Waited a few minutes then took off for the 'beast'. 'Beast' being the name the first 1/4 mile of the track. From the start line to the apex of the first turn (Turn 1), it is roughly 13 stories high which translates to being around a 13% to 14% grade.  Not much fun when just starting out for the day.  The circuit is 3.4 miles in length and is so freaking smooth.
 

 Having passed through the garages, we are now waiting on pit lane to start the climb to turn 1.

 

At the top of Turn 1 looking back down towards the start line.

 

The video below was sped up, obviously....not about to subject you to 20 minutes of waiting and riding.  I tracked myself on Endomondo and I covered 3.45 miles in a little over 15 minutes with an average of 13.5mph.

 

 

Ride Americas 2013 from Biking Viking on Vimeo.

All in all, it was a great experience but next year I will be in better shape and enjoy it that much more.
If you are in the vacinity next year, you should do it.
Oh, and also, this was to kick off the Tour of Austin race. Those guys and gals are freaking fast! Some of those guys ran the circuit in under 8 minutes with speeds in the mid to upper 20's. O_o

Thanks for checking in.
The fat guy on a bike.

 

 

 

Riding the Circuit of the Americas!

Check it out!

www.rideamericasnow.com

For a small sum, one can ride the Circuit of the Americas road course!

I for one am really excited. This is basically combining my two loves. Biking and F1 racing!!

In short, one can ride as many laps as they want for three hours and get a tee-shirt as well as all the refreshments they want or ride just one lap and get nothin’.

The course is 3.4 miles and has quite the elevation change. Especially from the beginning to the first turn.

 

It is ‘sort-of’ a race….I guess…. Personally, I learned a long time ago no one likes to 'clock' someone with a calendar so, I don't do races. One lap is 3.4 miles so I figure I can squeeze in 2 and a half laps before they start getting reports of a fat guy in a helmet wandering around the infield babbling something about bananas, tic-tacs and the War of 1812.

Gonna be fun!

Reborn

My sister had this bike for years and years….it was old when she got it from a friend. Over the years, as my nieces and nephews visited my sister, she often gave them this bike to ride (or in some case learn) to ride while visiting. But as they got older and my sister got more busy with life, the bike soon found itself put away. Leaning against the side of the barn for years until I decided something needed to be done about it. Her 50th birthday was coming up and I decided that she needed (she hinted at wanting a bike for her birthday) one. She is a sentimental woman and I knew that fixing this bike up would mean more to her than buying a new one. So, here is a short video of the bike before and after. Hope you enjoy.

Melinda from Biking Viking on Vimeo.

First S24O: Berry Springs Park

About a week ago or so I went on my first Sub 24 Hour Overnight cycling “tour”.
I got home a little later than I wanted to but luckily, I had pre-packed everything save for a few little odds and ends. I changed out of work clothes and into cycling clothes and jumped on the bike and headed out from my driveway.  It was a short eight miles or so (not really sure since I don’t have a computer on the Kona as of yet.) IT was overcast and spitting rain here and there with 45% chance of thunderstorms. Not necessarily the best “first” night experience one could hope for.  I rode easy and packed with my tent in my right rear pannier along with the camp stove (Jet-Boil) and freeze-dried food stuffs. I only had rear panniers and a handle-bar bag. Didn’t need front panniers on this trip. A change of clothes and toiletries in the other along with some miscellaneous stuff. Once packed I could already tell that my sleeping bag is rather large for extended touring.  I will have to revisit my choice in the future but for now, I think it will work for short weekend trips.  I arrived at the camp sight which is a local community (city) park that was a former pecan orchard. It’s really nice.

I have to say, the Kona is supremely smooth. An incredible ride.
Like I said above, it sprinkled and spit rain here and there while I set up my tent. Across the way were two troops of boy scouts and two troops of girl scouts. I didn’t see myself getting much sleep that night. Got everything set up and then I took off for the showers. It was a nice one.  Very clean. Got back to my tent and it started to rain in earnest so in the tent I go.

As soon as I crawled in lightning struck not too far off with a vision impairing blindness and an ear drum splitting clap. I faintly heard the screams of both scout camps. In fact, upon reflection, I think that may have actually been me. Either way, I was not getting out of the tent.
I cooked my dinner in the vestibule area and enjoyed a hot meal.

Afterwards, I laid back on my Exped SynMat UL 7 and quickly thanked my lovely bride for that anniversary gift. It seriously was like sleeping on a full thickness air mattress.  I highly recommend it. I’m 6 foot and well over 250 lbs. and I slept on my back and side (inside my Coleman Sabine sleeping bag) and never felt the hard ground below.
I laid there for about an hour and fb’d and texted and few family and friends. Listened to the laughter and giggles of the scouts. Thought about doing my own version of The Blair Witch movie and scare the scouts half to death but figured I was already nice and warm and so I just stuck with snapping a few Blair–esque pictures.

I fell asleep and slept like a baby with the rolling thunder and rain patter on the tent. At some point in the night, a rockin’ thunder clap shot me out of the sleep and flashes of lightning lit up the sky like high noon but it didn’t take long to fall back to sleep.
I woke early to a beautiful sunny morning. I stepped outside and saw that half of the boy scouts had vacated as well as all of the girl scouts at some point in the night.
I packed up after some coffee and bacon and eggs courtesy of Mountain House Scrambled Eggs with Bacon. I took a long-ish way home and enjoyed every minute of it.
The weight of the bike was something I was not used too as I did not take and ‘pre’ runs or ‘shakedown’ rides.  I learned a bit for my next trip but all in all, I have to say that I really enjoyed this on several levels.
One, that I finally got off my ass and actually quit talking about it and did it.
Two, the S24O is worth it.
Three, the camping. I really enjoy it.  It wasn’t how I normally spend my Friday nights and that itself is worth it. To break out of the norm.
I liked it.
You should try it.

PANNIERS…..and stuff!

 

My first set of panniers came in the other day.  I went with Louis Garneau Beta 42s. I was looking at using these for the rear and purchasing the Louis Garneau F-30s for the front. BTW, the number indicate the liter capacity. I bought 2 rear panniers for $135. The front ones were going to have to wait until next month when I would pay $111. Well that was the plan at least.

I got home the other night and there it was. A trashed out beat up shaggy excuse for a cardboard box as any I have ever seen. I’ve seen more tape used to hold up a photo on a fridge than what was on this box.  Needless to say, my heart fell instantly from the heights of joy to the depths of less than grand expectations. The box literally fell apart on me as I lifted it to the table.

I saw two plastic bags barely wrapped in “pillow” wrap. I grabbed one and opened it up expecting it to be ripped or torn or at the very least, dirty and scuffed but it wasn’t. I flipped the pannier around and it fell apart. At least I thought it did at first but what fell off was the other pannier. They were attached to each other, back to back.

Wait, what?

I ordered two….I hold up both panniers and look back inside the box to see yet another plastic bag!

FOUR!  I HAVE FOUR PANNIERS!!!

I brought up the website and there it is.  Sure enough it says sold in pairs.  I had completely missed that part.

SU-WEET!!

There’s $111 I just accidentally saved myself!

I ran to the garage to see if the panniers would fit the rack that is on my new Kona Sutra and YES!  perfectly!!  Placed one on the front low-rider and YES! perfectly!  I now have all four panniers for my bike and a few weeks ago, I bought and received the H-8.5 bag from Louis Garneau.

Now I’m really committed to touring!!  No more excuses especially since my in-laws bought me my Coleman Sabine sleeping bag that I wanted for touring

and my wife bought me the Jetboil Flash to use as a stove!

 

Totally stoked!!

 

Now, where should I go?

Lance

It was wrong but I can’t blame him.  Honestly, I can’t. Yes, it’s wrong on many levels, ethically, morally, legally…it’s all wrong. But I can’t blame him really, and here’s why.

I’m no better than he is. Just puttin’ it out there in extreme honesty.

When put in that same situation, can you blame him? Sure some of you will take the moral high-ground but honestly, put yourself in his shoes. Would you be able to withstand the temptation? Knowing full well that you are, at this point in your career, the best you will EVER be and it’s not good enough to get you where you want to be. Could you resist the temptation to cheat? Especially if you knew you could get away with it?

Think about it like this.

You bust your butt for years studying in college. Spend all kinds of money making yourself better, stronger, smarter; to be the best that you can be in your chosen career field, to be better than the guy in the cubicle or office next to you. You climb that corporate ladder, you want to be on top! You get noticed here and there by the bosses but nothing really that is going to get you that promotion or raise.

Then it hits you. From out of nowhere, you’re sick, really sick. Like,you’re going to die and leave your family with what(?), sick. You fight like hell to win this battle for your life and to be honest, it scares the hell out of you but you do survive.

You’ve studied so hard, put in too many hours to walk away from it now. This is how you support your family and make a living. This is all you know. You’ve struggled hard to move ahead in this game. You’ve spent years working long hours each day and on weekends, reaching for your goal but you know in your heart, you’ll never make it. Why?  Cause you know that the overwhelming majority of your colleagues are fudging the numbers on their weekly reports, rigging the quarterly matrix to make themselves look better to the boss and better than you. No one says anything but it’s happening. There is no way you will ever make it to that next level when they are cheating.

 

To this, I say to the majority of you reading, no. You would be hard pressed to resist. I, like all of you have the luxury of being on this side of it and we find it easy to judge and say, “I would never cheat.” But the reality is, given the right circumstances, most of us would.

The reality of it is that Lance is no better than the rest of us. We are no better than Lance when put in the same scenario.

So think about this before you judge him too harshly.

I am not advocating that if everybody is doing then it’s ok. Not at all. Wrong is wrong. There is no gray area in this matter.

I think why so many people are mad at him and hate him is that we believed in him. We want so desperately to have a champion to cheer for to lift high on our shoulders and say to the world, “I’m with him!”. We have these expectations of our heroes that are so ‘pie in the sky’ big, that the reality is that no one could live up to them. Seriously, the Tour de France is a race where we expect the bicyclist to race between 80 to 130 miles in A DAY and do this for 21 days in a row with maybe a day or two of rest in there somewhere. Seriously? Most of us would get saddle sores DRIVING that much much less pedaling our butts up and down mountains. 

Expectations ruin us all. Maybe that's why the Dutch are the happiest people in the world, cause they admittedly have no expectations of life.

He doped, he won, he got caught, he got banned for life, he admitted it.

Get over it.

What’s left for Lance is to make restitution to those who are legally owed. Morally is another question that only he can answer.

What’s left for us as fans is to view this through the appropriate lens. What you consider that to be is entirely up to you.

Kona Sutra

Well, with all the talk and dreaming of the Salsa Vaya one would have thought that’s what I would have bought but no.

Short version. I wanted something different than what everyone else has like the infamous Long Haul Trucker by Surly which is followed closely by the Trek 520 in the world of loaded touring. Hence my keen interest in the Salsa Vaya.  I love the Vaya but it was just a touch out of my price range. I looked on C-list and found a 2013 Bianchi Volpe for $850 with racks.  Very interesting but I wanted to ride one before committing to buying it. I sought out the local dealer and checked it out. Nice bike, very nice but it didn’t really fit me as I am short in leg and long in torso which when it comes to road bikes it means that I either ride a 55 or 56cm so it fits my legs or I ride a 57 or 58cm which fits my torso. I usually opt for the fit in the legs and put a longer stem on it but this can be problematic as my hands are so far forward that the handling becomes twitchy at best. So the Volpe was out even though the price appealed to my cheap a** ways. I was mulling things around when I saw a bike with racks on it in the corner. It was the Kona Sutra (2012 model).

I immediately pulled it out and threw a leg over it and it felt good, it was a smidge snug in the stand-over but nothing ‘pressing’ to deter from investigating further. I took it out for a spin and fell in love. The comfort of this bike is unsurpassed. The bar end shifter were a little odd as I have never owned a bike with them. The BB7 disc brakes are incredible. When I got back from the ride I looked intently at the bike for flaws of any kind and that’s when I noticed the bike was not a 55 or 56cm. Neither was it a 57 or 58cm.  It was a 59cm!  What???  How can that be?  Well, obviously the top tube (as you have undoubtedly noticed in the picture above) is sloped taking on a more mountain bike frame look and feel that a standard straight bar road bike does not. Also, the head tube is really tall, like really tall. Add to that the spacers on the steering tube and the length of the top tube and well, you have a perfect bike for my short legs and long torso.  Now I know why it was (is) so comfortable for me.  It fits great in the legs and the long top tube allows for me to be really stretched out making it very comfortable for me. Everything about this bike I like, well almost.  The cranks are 50-39-30 which is a bit too high for my liking.  I’m not a speed demon so having large cranks is not that important to me. Getting up the hill is important to me. So more than likely I will at some point in the future, change them to a 48-36-26 crank set. At the very least I will swap out the 30 with a  26t or even a 24t.  We’ll see.

As for other changes, the only immediate change I will make is putting a Brooks B-17 aged saddle on it.

 

Future changes will be obviously what was mentioned above, the cranks. I am also looking at increasing the tires from the OME 32c to 35 or even 40s if I decide to take off the fenders but not sure if I will do that. Tires would change from the Continental Contacts to the Schwalbe Marathon Supreme HS.

I am also looking at changing out the handle bar to the Ragley Luxy bar. Think of the Salsa Fargo’s Woodchipper 2 handle bar only slightly wider and with more flare on the drops.

And if I’m going to do that, then I will seriously look at changing the shifters/brake levers to  the Retroshift CVX levers.

So the bar and levers would look something like this…(only these are the Woodchipper 2 bars)

 

 

These are basically ‘thumbies’ attached to the lever.  These are becoming very popular with the CX crowd.

BTW, these pics were downloaded from a really cool bike blog site called, www.g-tedproductions.blogspot.com . Check it out.

Just hit me that I have not posted a picture of my bike!  Yikes!!

Actual bike at my house…

So there it is.  My touring rig with a list of changes to be made.

I look forward to a three state park loop tour in March.  Until then, it’s training rides around the hood!