seven-one-nine

Spanish!

I wish I would have paid attention in Spanish class instead of doing... whatever it was I did in high school. Probably would have been good to take a few college classes, since I actually attended my college classes.

Either way. I can order food, I can ask for the bathroom and I can swear like a Spanish dockworker, so I think I'm ready. Headed to Barcelona for a UCI sprint tournament at the end of september. "But wait" you might be saying. "Isn't the US National Champs at the beginning of October?" why yes. Yes it is. So I'll spend (by priceline's estimate) about 23.8 hours in planes and airports, rebuild my track bike and hop right back on the thing for Nationals. Bitchin. I'm in. Sounds great. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Actually I am a little bummed that I won't be going to LA in the freak-mobile RV that we took to Portland, but hey. Whaddyagonnado.

building dangerous things

So the AVC and all its triumph and bits of disappointment are behind me, and we’re rolling strong back into the routine of training. Disappointment, you say? Que? Yeah, well. The keirin was a bummer, but more so I wish I had some more time to hang out with family who came to see me race, friends I never saw, and friends I didn’t see enough of. But bills call louder than loud and I had to get back to work. Being a non-pro cyclist doesn’t pay much.

Speaking of which…

Do you love Land Rovers? Because I do. But not because I have that much money or am a closet off-road enthusiast. I love Land Rover because they’re the main sponsor of the new Land Rover-Orbea Professional Cycling Team. Yeah. Remember Rubicon? No more Rubicon. Now Norrene and Dave are the proud, very stressed parents of the newest UCI Continental pro team. I was perusing the UCI rules to see if a track sprinter could even be on a road team, and found that it can be so. The only catch is the rider must be ranked in the top 150 in the world by UCI points. Drag, I said. Mostly to myself. Then out of curiosity I checked the UCI rankings and sure enough, there I was, number 133. Bitchin. So looks like Dave and Norrene are stuck with a track racer who is building a death-metal track bike. So bummer for them, but I’m psyched.

Speaking of the new bike, it's brutal. It’s so brutal I’ve decided to name it Murderface Murderface. Or Snizzysnazz Bullets. One of those.


This is a pile of metal. Heavy metal. Biggest legal aero downtube available. Another downtube for a toptube. Seat-tube, chainstay and seatstays intended for a tandem. Big chunks of metal for secret tricks and pieces. And a local beer for good luck.


Handmade from the GroundUp.


Making dangerous things in dangerous ways.


Jigged up.


Speaking of dangerous… That top tube doesn’t come like that. That top tube was placed in a vice between 2 steel chainstays and deformed by hand. Comment of the moment from Eric was “Man I hope this thing doesn’t hit me in the face like last time…”


Does your seat tube pierce your top tube? Cause mine does.


Heavy metal moustache.


Nothing caps a good day of building like some DizzyDrome construction. Hmmm... what could make this thing a little sketchier? Wall ride!


Dallas hitting it, fur flying.


Dallas misjudged that one and had to resort to his emergency landing-gear apparatus (most people call it a collarbone).

ill write a new post tommorow, i promise

But for now I'm at work, so you get this.

Stolen from the Bummer Life.

AVCQUICKPOST

Since I'm at "work," the two second update commences:



The team sprint was ugly, but ended with us on the top step...


The Keirin was going swimmingly until I lost by this much to a unicorn in pink panties...


The sprints went well, I tried not to blow a top seed and ended up riding Geo in the final...


Which went well.

More later.
DT

this man wants your wheel

Lock up your daughters and booze. Kakaka is on his way. But maybe someone could get him a band-aid? He's starting to smell like blood.
DT

bumps in the road, chumps on the road

Anybody seen our downhiller? Seriously, anyone? Our 5th driver for the trip, Erick has vanished in a trail of blood and confusion. Last we heard he was somewhere in a bar in Snowmass losing blood from a beer bottle vs. bar vs. hand collision. Since the cut is allegedly 2 inches long and just as deep, the race was a no-go, but further angry drinking was a go. Only contact from him in the last 24 hrs was a single word text-message: Arrested.

So, anyone know where our downhiller is?

DT

the final hour aproacheth

T minus 6 days and 22 hours until five track racers, one downhiller and a mad scientist bike builder cram into an RV with nothing but barely enough gas money and seven mostly broken ipods for a cannonball run to the promised land. Portland, the laser sights are right between your eyes. Laser sights is a bad analogy. More like a bottle-rocket with the fins broken off careening in your general direction. I'm sure Abers would prefer more of a "running of the bulls with us being the big dumb animals and the rest of the people at the avc just getting in the way" type of a thing, but I'm sticking with the uncontrollable bottle rocket.

Oh and side not to all Dirty Couvers. Doesn't that look like the world famous Pete O'Conner getting the gnar thrown on him by that bull?
DT

gnar

kids bikes for killers.
DT

Dave might just earn a gut point on this one. "Hey I have an idea: Solo Six Day! Word!"
Granted he did use miniMark Duff as his attack dog slash willing partner on the opening day TT but if he A: survives and B: finishes that bastard by himself he will earn one (maybe two) gut point(s) and come out the other side with a good 8 pounds less midsection and some killer fitness. The Big Rig Scotty would be proud.

Totally unrelated newspaper quote:
From the NYTimes: 'Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Senator John McCain, was quoted in a magazine interview saying that another terrorist attack in the United States would “be a big advantage” for Mr. McCain in the upcoming election.'

Our heartless politicians will be the end of us all.

Heard Nader on the radio yesterday. Seems like you can't control the guy or even talk to him in an interview, you can only pick a subject and stand back. I wish he was a little more of a legitimate candidate... he'd get my vote.

DT

9 minutes left

on my library internet session... bills take too much time, too much time. This calls for a bullet list.

-I'm pissed that I can't afford to go race in San Jose. Or Seattle. Whatever. Training here's pretty good, so it's hard to complain when all my track time and gym time go into consideration.

-Did my first race of 2008 last thursday (not counting the Burnie carnival on Jan.1). I was fast but stupid. I made 8 dollars.

- We saw Ira Glass do a one-man show. Full run down later, but for now a 15 word synopsis: Public radio is gooder than network news. Tell good stories in these five easy steps.

-Tuckerman and his wife Cassy are getting a kitten. Of the names in consideration, I'm pulling for Pabst.

-Blatchy slayed all at the Olympic trials and secured his spot at the games. Now it's for real.

-Megan spent a week in the Springs and left sunburned, sore and kinda hung over.

-Official soundtrack to my life in the Springs so far has been two albums: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club "Baby 81" and the Jack Trades self titled. With some Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros thrown in for flaaavor.

Times up, gottamoveon.
DT

here's to consistency

Looks like Aaron isn't intimidated by the whole "pro" thing. He's still pulling his signature move: The Tuck and Roll.
DT

pictures that have nothing to do with china

Or training or any kind of responsible behavior.
Most of these are from the Tuesday Pixie Downhill Series (otherwise known as the Tuesday Awesome Mountain Pixie Outdoor Night Series. any acronyms are purely coincidence)I mentioned a few weeks back.

Litespeed eat your heart out. GroundUp's new Ti finish. One part lathe, one part chisel, add titanium tubing and lots of time.


The Dizzydrome. Kid's bikes only. Record lap time: 3.71 seconds. My PR is 4 flat, but next week it's on... Note the extremely sketchy lighting tower in the center of the track, dug out of the junkyard mere days ago. That thing's about 20 feet tall and only buried about 3 feet into the ground. Turns out a full grown man can climb all the way to the top without knocking it over. Who knew.


My downhiller/dirt velodrome-er. The pink chain means business. It's business time.


This is the entry to the dark junkyard of death on the downhill course.


Another view. Riders come boosting off the double jump in the lower right, take a nice big sweeper to avoid the Caddy, and down into the yard.


Sing it: Fat guy on a little biiiike.


The Dizzydrome, the high tech lighting tower and the GroundUp workshop/Crow Flies Tuesday night concert/practice venue.


The new harbinger of doom somewhere on Cheyenne Mountain.


The view from my driveway.


My commute to work's not so bad, either.

DT

stop protesting me!

So a group has been protesting the US Olympic Committee for a few days about our involvement in the Olympic Games in Beijing. Maybe 4 or 5 people. I think the peak was 10 a few days ago. They stand outside the training center with some signs and they yell at tourists. Good stuff. Very effective. So they've attracted the attention of a big group of hippies in Denver, and are now determined to free Tibet by keeping me from working out. So today or tommorow (no one's too sure) there are 4 busloads of stinky hippies headed down from Denver to engage in "Political Action" against the USOC. The offshoot of this is that security at the center has gone into critical lockdown mode, and non-residents are stopped at the gate and turned around. That means me. That means even Des (the national team coach) couldn't get in today.

First off, I agree that China has a habit of doing some pretty nasty shit to innocent people. This sucks. So in order to fix things, a bunch of yuppies come down to the Springs to try and shut down a proccess that's already 2 years past the administrative point of no return. They protest the athletes that aren't even going to Beijing from working towards a goal. Why protest those of us that are trying to do something with our lives? Wouldn't a better target be the massive Wal-Mart/K-Mart/Target style corporations that fuel the Chinese economy and essentially fund the atrocities that these people are protesting? Nah. That probably wouldn't get them on the news...

As athletes, we're meant to be apolitical in competition. The Olympics have never been about making a statement. It has always been about putting political, religious, idealogical and all our other differences on the back burner for a week to engage in the highest level of sport and competition. It's unfortunate for the athletes that the Olympics are becoming a political tool, but in this world I suppose it's unavoidable.

Are these same people protesting soccer games in response to US run military torture prisons in Egypt and Cuba? Did they boycott football games when we sold weapons to Iran to fund terrorist activities in Nicaragua, or supported genocidal maniacs like Augusto Pinochet? It doesn't make sense.

DT

photodump

Posts are few and far between now that training is neverending and work is the only other thing I seem to do. Still no internet at home, so you'll just have to deal with the giant post on occasion.

So here we go.


Cliff diving is tough at Helen Hunt falls (did not make that name up).


Ping Pong had been working on his moustache for a couple of years, and brought it to Colorado to share it with the world.


I'm a competetive person, so I couldn't let an Asian with distinctly Aryan facial hair beat me in the stache-off.


I like this picture, because you can actually see the rays of hate that my cat is trying to shoot though Kacala's head.


Behold the new go-rocket.


This picture is all that could be recorded of what turned out to be a bit of a chaotic evening in the pursuit of "avoiding the bummer life." Eric from Ground Up cycles built a mini dirt velodrome on his front yard. It's 15 meters long, 14 inches tall and has a banking of almost 40 degrees. An average person on a 16 inch kids bike can do a lap in about 4 seconds. This track has become the centerpiece in a weekly barbeque/minidrome-cycleslaughterama. Never satisfied, Eric and co. has nearly completed a downhill course in his backyard which features some nasty switchbacks, a decent dropoff, a junkyard, a woodpile and a cactus field. Wheels bigger than 16 inches need not apply. Same goes for sissies. No sissies allowed.


On the ride home from the miniraces, we decided that finally, we really like it here.


Sharks with frickin laser beams on thier heads... Note the sweet Meshke bars. Still in the original poo brown.

And this is where I'll leave again for another stretch. Headed back to the track this afternoon to get chased down on a half lap start by the best starter in the country. I get a 10m gap, but we'll see how long that lasts.

DT

the pong is gone

So Eric spent last weekend sniffling and sneezing on my couch. Either he got some kind of asian bird flu in St. Louis, or just had a mean case of allergies and refused to admit it. Overall it was a good weekend. We ate (lots), we drank (lots), and we watch some really bad movies. The highlight was probably sitting on a rock at Garden of the Gods, watching rock climbers, heckling them amongst ourselves, wondering if they can hear us all the way up there and if they can, is it ruining their concentration and hurting their self-esteem. Some questions will never be answered.

Training-wise, I've run myself into the ground, and now I'm trying to get back up. I've slept somewhere between 12 and 15 hours a day in the last 3 days, and workouts got to the point where I was performing so poorly I was told to go home and not come back until I'd had a few days rest. Luckily this was the day before the Pong showed up, so I didn't spend his whole visit at the gym and track.

Nacho update: Jose Muldoon's nachos are on par with the Laurelwood's. Huge, chickeney, cheesey and not a soggy chip on the whole plate. A triumph in modern nacho-ing. If the salsa was any better, we'd be way ahead.

Project Leadville has hit a little stumbling block. So far we have a $10,800 4-inch travel full suspension race bike that weighs in at 20.7 pounds with pedals. The deal was "under 20 pounds no matter the cost." This guy will bring his own scale and weigh it before he picks it up. We've resorted to filing down the extra material off the custom titanium bolts we swapped out for all the steel ones, removing every decal and sticker in sight, cutting the post down to the absolute minimum length for his seat height, custom Stans ZTR Olympic wheels (each of which with tires and skewers weighs less than one of my training tires), a custom carbon shock, everything. Only options left are super-flimsy aluminum brake rotors and grinding off extra material from the seat. On the flipside, despite all the stress this causes, it beats selling hybrids for a living...

DT

plyos are bad for you

So about 3 weeks ago I'm doing box jumps with Blatchford. From the ground up to a platform 64 inches off the ground. Kinda like jumping onto someone's head. Even if your vertical leap is pretty high, it still takes a lot of effort, some luck and a smallish brain to jump that high repeatedly for a workout. So anyway, long story short on my third jump I drove my hand into the box with all my might and probably broke my thumb. At the time I was hoping it was a sprain (despite the grapefruit-size swelling and black and blue coloring), but 3 weeks on and I still can't do power cleans or anything that requires controlling a bar with weight on it. Riding's no problem, it's just a limiter in the gym. So more frustrating than anything. Fortunately my strength coach Mike figured out all the lifts I can do (like squats) and is punishing me for my lack of durability.

Ping Pong makes his grand entrance in T-minus 5 days. The couch is ready, I've got a couple days off and some mountain bike rides figured out.

Did some work on the truck the other day. Think it's coming along nicely.

on one hand; i'm progressing faster than ever, getting bigger than ever and loving the mountain biking and general outdoorsiness...

on the other handl; i miss good restaurants, good art, all my friends, happy hour at the laurelwood, cheap movies at the mission, culture, music, good espresso, and portland people...

DT

hey so anyway

What I was doing on:
Tuesday 6:00pm: Sitting on a patio in shorts and a t-shirt, enjoying the 70degree sunshine.

Wednesday 6:00pm: Trudging through 4 inches of fresh snow

Thursday 11:00am: Walking around in a t-shirt, enjoying the sun, wondering where all the snow went.

Current project at work: Create a sub 20 lb mountain bike with 4 inches of travel front and rear that's capable of surviving the Leadville 100mile XC race. Starting with a Cannondale Scalpel at 22 lbs, stripping her down, ordering a bunch of parts from Stans and some unpronouncable German companies and hoping the guy has a pretty high credit limit. His actual words were "if you can do it, I'll buy it no matter what it costs," so I doubt we'll have many problems with payment.

Headed out to the SRAM R&D building shortly to pick up a bike for a friend and get a sweet tour of thier suspension design department from an engineer dude I met out here. Should be cool in a super-geek kinda way.

Ping Pong called last night with travel plans for my neck of the woods. Bring it on.

DT

visualize me

This is what I feel like today

snow ridin

The weather took a turn for the cold yesterday and hasn't let up. Snow yesterday, snow today. Nothing sticking, just cold and windy. No, wait. Now the sun is out. Snow is gone. Consistency is not the name of the game.

Dave's been taunting me with this.

Yeah, it's cool. I'll just keep riding the aluminum one though. I know I'm not as fast as Dave, so he should naturally get the cool bike right?

Whatever. Went into the gym for the first time Wednesday with Blatchford. Haven't been to the gym for a good three weeks, so everything stayed pretty light. It's a strange feeling having tourists stare at you through plate glass when you know you're not working that hard (in my head: It's not always like this, I promise! Come back next week, really). Even so, today I'm feeling the seize. I'm walking like an oversized and not so cool G.I. Joe. Plastic joints, plastic muscle.

Track should be dry in 20 minutes or so, and I've got some motorpacing to do. Kilo efforts are the stuff dreams are made of.