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.

fotoblahggin

Garden of the Gods. And Dave, Jenny says your hat is very comfortable.


Rocks


Tammy the Travelling Unicorn and Matt Hofman, taking in the sights.


Weather changes quickly around here.


This is our extremely photogenic back door. Classy.


Jenny likes snow. 24 hours after this picture was taken it was 65 and sunny. Wouldn't want to be a weatherguy in these parts.


This is what the entirety of my commute to work looks like. All bike path, all the way. I cross one street in 6 miles. Glorious.

Speaking of work, I'm now slinging wheels at Criterium Bicycles. Sweet shop. Reminds me alot of the Hollywood BG. Same size, good people, but one location instead of 6. I'm starting on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Jenny's working at a cool chick-stuff shop called Terra Verde in downtown CSprings. Her commute is a whopping 8 blocks, so naturally we're in the market for a new Hummer.

Workouts have begun, Blatchy's stupid fast, Kacala's stupid big and Des's hair is reaching new fro-tastic heights. I'm finally back into the gym at the Center tommorow, and not looking forward to the aftermath.

I'm trying to put together an all-star all-Springs sprinter group to bring with me to the AVC. Just need some gas money and a couple more host houses and we're there.

We're all out of Stumptown. I'm scared.

DT

nice people creep me out...

Altitude is one thing. Sun is one thing. New cities are one thing. However, random people being nice is something a longtime portlander has a bit of trouble getting used to. Couple of days ago, we're walking down the street, minding our own business, and this guy sees my chrome bag and says "hey, you going to critical mass?" uhm, wasn't planning on it. "oh man, you should because bla bla bla my name's aj, bla bla bla welcome to Colorado, bla bla bla yea portland's pretty cool, bla bla bla bla bla." Jenny and I are a little taken aback, so we seek shelter in that great homebase of all anti-socials: the bar. Granted this is a wine bar, but still, a bar. We fend off the nice waiter and get our drinks. and not 5 minutes later another random is going "bla bla bla, yeah welcome to colorado, bla bla bla, i love bikes, bla bla bla isn't wine just the greatest? bla bla bla bla bla bla."

Can't seem to get away from it. The baristas are nice, the waiters are nice, the shop clerks are nice, and everyone just wants to say hi and check on how your day is going. Like a bunch of happy white folks with great tans skipping around like idiots. What. The. Hell.

I guess sun deprivation really does make portlanders a little more surly than everyone else. Although LA boasts just as many self-important weiners as PDX and they get plenty of sun... So maybe it's the air? Maybe there's something in the water? Maybe we're just really, really good looking? Idunno.

DT

we're here, and yes, they have whiskey on tap

So we made it to sunny Colorado Springs, cat in tow. Still trying to unpack our lives from the boxes covering our apartment floor, so we've been avoiding it almost entirely by "getting to know the area." Turns out we're 3 blocks from a sweet coffee shop 4 blocks from a great bar, and 5 blocks from everything else you could possibly need. Our back yard is the CSprings version of the Springwater corridor. Exept ours is 42 miles long, goes through the center and way out of town from north to south, and you never have to cross a street. I know. Sweet. Still looking for jobs, still trying to figure everything out. Fortunately everyone from the OTC is at Track Worlds, so I've got a bit of time before the big hurt starts.

Altitude sucks. I feel old and fat.

DT

pre-drive panic

So we're headed off to CSprings on Saturday and it seems like nothing is done. Mostly because we don't have much stuff, aside from clothes and bikes, so seems like we've been packing alot less than we should. Safe to say that moving sucks the big one. Hate, hate, hate.

Jenny and I are both sick. The sucky thing about having great friends is every night another group wants to take you out and celebrate one last time late into the night.

Anyone seen my iPod? I haven't. I'm this close to tears. THIS close.

one for my homies...

Found this little nugget of history on FGG.

From behind the iron curtain, an original Takhion:

Apparently found its way to an apartment in Boston.


Konstantin Khrabtsov, Champion of USSR on the freakmobile.

I had heard that a couple of these hack jobs still existed, but this is the first one I've ever seen. Bars welded to the top of the fork crown. Only kilo riders and team pursuiters could ever be dumb enough to ride something like this. Totally mental. Super ergo.

linkgasm

enjoy

BIKERFOX!

Malkovich, malkovich, malkovich!

Anyone want to mess with Svein Tuft?

I don't. He looks like a certain actor's meaner big brother...

Looks like the best glasses on this great green planet earth are no longer made by Nike. Now they are made by Oakley. Initially I was bummed when Nike announced the Vision department was getting dumped in the scrap heap, but now not so much. I've been hounding Norrene for years to get Oakleys for the team and I finally get my wish. They're stepping up in a big way to help us out, and I'm psyched. Why? Because I can finally get Asian Fit glasses. I think this makes me more charming and better at math, right ping pong? Or maybe I just like nachos more? I don't know. Stay tuned.

Speaking of Oakley...

This is David Zabriskie's mustache from last week times five. This turns it up to eleven. First person who gets me a pair of these is my new best friend. I know that's not really very inticing, but seriously. DO it.

Been a bit of a long week(s). Beers anyone?

DT

context is for suckers

This pile rolled into the shop yesterday, falling apart the day after it was purchased.

And yes, it says "god save the queen" on the chainstay.

Are the white belt and ironic t-shirts included, or do you have to get that separate?

And hey, if London's not your bag, that's cool cause you can also get the New York track-bike freestyler-esque Dart-mobile.


In the words of BSNYC, take a last drag and swing your leg over the fashion express! DT