It was nice taking the camera back out and playing around. It’s been a LONG time since I’ve taken photos and I hope I’m going to get back into it.

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The car is just awesome. It’s a go kart for the street. Loud, rough, and insta-responding to inputs. Just what I wanted. It has even given me an ever so slight itch to try autox again, just because it’s so much fun to drive. Maybe if I have a totally free weekend and there happens to be an event. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’ll take those slight detours so I can take that fun cloverleaf or that fun turn. Maybe even take it up to the mountains to play.

Robb and Joe and myself went out around Atlanta yesterday to take some pics of the cars (Robb also got himself a new ride, a 2011 WRX) We got kicked out of every spot we went to, which was funny, and had a great time. It was really cool to see a “real” photographer work. Joe has such an eye for this stuff, that it’s uncanny. Super cool.

We started at the rail yard, and made our way down to the tracks. Then we hit up the SCAD parking deck as there is a great view of downtown during the sunset. Finally we hit a bridge over downtown, but not having a tripod I didn’t get any good night shots. I know Robb and Joe did.

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I met Donnie and Alan at the trails and we preceded to do a little pre-ride. MAN the trails are fun. Burns galore and the dirt was in perfect shape. We were worried it was going to be wet, but no such junk. Perfect tackiness and I rocked out a quick 8 mile pre-ride and got a feel for the trails. Donnie was gracious enough to let us use his mountain cabin and we hung out there Fri night, got the bikes ready and talked some junk.

We woke up Saturday to snow! It snowed up in Blowing Rock but rained in Wilkesboro. Nevertheless, we packed up and hit the trails. Found the perfect last pit spot on the course and got our stuff ready for the race. With the rain, figured the course would be sloppy, but I wasn’t prepared for how bad it was going to be! Having learned my lesson on the start, I lined up on the side of the 2nd row, right behind Eddie O’dea. The whistle blew and we were off. I pushed really hard the first lap and kept a good position with all the expert riders around me. I got passed a good bit on the first lap, but didn’t have to stop or slow down because of anyone else. I did have a couple of slow speed “offs” as it was so muddy I slipped off the trail a couple of times and didn’t even have traction when I put a foot down. Came back DIRTY.

I settled in on the 2nd lap with the course in much better conditions. No idea how it went from racing in a mud bog to perfectly tacky, but it sure did. About halfway into the lap though, BAM sidewall cut. It was pretty bad and took me almost 15 minutes to do the repair, as I had to do it twice, and ended up ductaping the sidewall so it would hold the tube in. Took a mental toll on me as I was doing really well until that point. I was happy though as I pushed through and rocked out laps 2 and 3 at a nice settled in pace.

As I started my 4th lap, I realized that I won’t make the cutoff to start a 5th, and started to slack off too much. I slowed down, and you can see on my heart rate data, how I fall off. Then I got passed by a couple of riders including some girls which gave me inspiration to pick it back up and finish strong. Missed the cutoff by 5 minutes, dang. I could have physically done a 5th lap, just needed the mental oomph, and I didn’t have it after the flat.

Ended up 18th out of 99 riders in my class after the flat, so I’m pretty happy! This was “Men’s Open” so included the Pro guys like Eddie. No Beginner class here If I didn’t have that flat and rode out one more lap, I could have contested for a Top 10, which would have been awesome. Next time!!

I posted the data to Garmin. Really cool seeing my heart rate data jive with what I felt my body did, including the sprint at the start, flat, pit stops, and the drop off and strong finish. (Also 9000ft of climbing. Woah!) Data is so cool! http://connect.garmin.com/activity/77472825

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Bike: 29ers are awesome. Way awesome. This was a rough, fairly technical and up and down course without many switchbacks. I rode this course a month ago on my Fuel, so I remember some of the efforts, and remember the feeling over the roots. All of that is nullified on this 29er. It feels like a rocket ship over these roots, and especially up hills that come after a downhill. Once I get that momentum rocking downhill, it’s so easy for me to carry that up the next hill. LOVE it. The bike is very much a racing rocketship. It’s not that comfy. After setting up the suspension to the right numbers, I got no noticeable pedal bob and barely and suspension travel. Basically, I used up 20% of my rear travel with the sag, and then another 25% during the 6 hour race, leaving me with 50% of unused travel. I guess that stuff comes in handy when I do jumps, which I didn’t do any during the race. I had it on PP the whole time, and did some standing and mashing. This is exactly what I wanted. Enough suspension in the back to take the edge off (1″) but not enough to where it soaks up power or bumps very well. Perfect for a race bike.

I will still use my Fuel on fun rides and anything that requires comfort, as it’s way more comfortable then the SuperFly (as it should be). On that heritage ride a few weeks ago, I pretty much used up all the rear travel. I also could feel a different in front end feel between 100mm and 120mm, so I’m excited to throw that 140mm on the Fuel now.

2) Nutrition. I think I nailed it calorie wise. I ended up with a GU halfway through each lap, and then ~ 1/3 of a gatorade bottle and a Clif Bar after each lap. I then doubled up on the Gu and skipped the pit stop before my last lap. I felt great the entire day. No up and downs, no bonking. The right amount of calories + protein + water.

Now what I need to fix is the pit stop thing. I’m thinking about giving Infinit nutrition a shot as I got a coupon in the sag bag. That way I can line up bottles of “nutrition” for myself instead of the gu/clif setup and just hot-switch out the bottle each lap. Then drink water from the camel back to fill myself up with enough water. I lost about 5 minutes with pit stops and lost out on a podium by 2 minutes.

I got a bit of a cold over the rest of the weekend. Maybe coupled with the amount of exertion during the race or something. Going to take a few days to recover. A little night ride tomorrow, group ride Saturday, and then hit training again next week.

PS: did I mention how much I love that SuperFly 100 yet?

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Recently though, I’ve been working on “mobilizing” a website, and man is it more of a pain then I thought it would be. The HTML and CSS is super easy, as you’d think. CSS3 and HTML5 is wonderful, and the site is devoid of image drop shadows, image rounded corners, etc etc.

The JS on the other hand, is fragmented. Especially dealing with things like slideshows, transitions, animations, and etc. It seems that even though multiple platform are using “WebKit”, that means something totally different for an iPhone then is does for an Android phone, or even Palm.

Then we get into QA. Oof. Not only does a Droid X with Android 2.2 act differently with touch events then an iPhone, but it’s different then an HTC Incredible or a MyTouch 3G running Android 2.1. What a pain. No wonder sites like mobile yahoo have moved to progressive enhancement of sites and provide a “mobile friendly kind of” site on Android, but give you the full fancy swipey site on the iPhone.

I’ll put a couple of posts out on the slideshow and swiping code that I ended up using, as it ended up being pretty clean and works well across multiple platforms, including degrading for non-touch browsers.

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Spent some time in Fort Collins after that. During the “work day” I did a bunch of awesome mountain biking around that area. Hit up Hall Ranch in Lyons, CO, which was pretty much the best bike trail I’ve ever done. Also did some local trails around Lory State Park. At night, we hung out around Fort Collins. Went to my first “bike in” at New Belgium brewery.

We then headed out to Crested Butte and Gunnison National Forest. Did some camping the first night and then settled in at Cristina’s Guesthaus in Crested Butte. Had a great hike to Maroon Pass, halfway to Aspen and saw some amazing views. Also did some epic mountain biking around Crested Butte including 401 Trail and Deer Creek. I can’t wait to go back

Spend the rest of the vacation around Fort Collins. Broke my bike just a few days before I was leaving, so filled the rest of the time with a cool trail run and some great times around the town.

I took a ton of pictures and rather then my usual “pick out the best 10 or so” I figured I would post all of them.

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The Garmin was an absolute awesome tool. I didn’t have to worry about getting lost in any way and any time I hit a fork in the trail, I just looked down at the map and went the right way. Awesome purchase, and I would highly recommend one to anyone doing any “unfamiliar” riding.

The ride that I ended up picking out was also awesome. Started off with some fire roads and rode next to some waterfalls. Then after some single and doubletrack climbing, had a long climb up to hard rock trail. This is Moab style riding on just rock. The uphill was difficult as it was hard singletrack, but the downhill was AMAZING. There was a bunch more awesome singletrack with super rocky descents and some of the most technical downhill stuff I’ve done including a challenging section that had a couple of trees down in the middle of rocks that I tried to go “under” and got my camback snagged on a tree. The ride ended with some very flowy downhill and jumps straight into the parking lot.

If you are in this area, I would very much recommend this ride! Here is the link to Garmin Connect http://connect.garmin.com/activity/31413904

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Having said that, there are a few things getting upgraded for this year. After much much much deliberation I decided to go with the final drive. I think the $$ outlay will be worth it. Definitely at tracks like Mid Ohio, CMP, VIR and Barber, and also hopefully Road Atlanta. If/when I go back to Daytona I’ll have to run a 225/50/15 on the front to not run out of gear, and I might be a tad worse off at Roebling, but I’ll take that trade off. I also got a new ASR rear swaybar. The 1″ solid bar I have now isn’t cutting it anymore, so putting a 1.25″ NASCAR style bar on the car. The softest setting on this bar is stiffer then the stiffest setting on my old bar, so I’m just going to slap it on the car and hold on. Also doing some things for power such as a crank scraper, thermal intake gasket, and also getting my header collector reworked. You can see in the pictures my “exhaust leak” and how bad it was. I bet that was mucking with things in the exhaust flow. Lastly, after watching a Porsche 944 on fire at Daytona last year, a fire system is ready to go in as well.

Along with those upgrades, I also did some off season maintenance. Wheel bearings, ball joints, fresh calipers, and a rebuild of my leaky power steering pump. I also noticed today that my front brake pad seperated from the backing plate, so that’s also on the list to swap out before my first race at VIR on May 9th/10th.

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I don’t know exactly what type of junk is in this little magical package, but its gotta be something that isn’t on the label. Maybe its all mental, maybe its all something else, but I totally feel like superman after taking one of these things.

We’ll see how they work again this weekend. Got time trial #2 at the snake. First official TT was 3hrs 1 minute. I’m going for a real goal of 2:45 and a stretch of 2:30. Not sure if I’ll be capable of doing that, but I’m gonna GU up every 45 minutes like the box says, so with my month of “training” and a ton of energy crack, we’ll see what happens.

I’m still riding the heck out of bikes. Rode the Snake Creek Gap again, and will be heading back for Time Trial #2 in a couple of weekends. Was actually harder the 2nd time around. I went with a friend and we pushed harder for the 1st half. I also didn’t take any Gu gel with me. Took a wrong turn about 75% of the way in and added an extra mile. That totally took all my energy and desire away and I ended up “bonking” finishing 20 minutes over what I did 3 weeks ago. Just hit a wall with 2 miles to go. Took a couple of falls too and scraped up my rear derailleur pretty good. Almost seems like these $$$$ mtb parts are almost expandable when one is going on rock gardens every 2 weeks. I’ll make sure to have plenty of that super gel and more desire and training when I visit again in 2 weeks.

I’ve also re-started working on the house again. Got inspired to worry about fixing what still needs work rather then looking at things such as hardwood floor upgrades. Got some new art for the walls and got some great photos of mine framed. Sure wakes up the downstairs. I’ll be working on finishing the crown molding this week, and then tackle that damn bathroom eventually.

Lastly, started work on the race car too. Kind of scared me when I realized just how much crap there is to be done in the off-season. I did decide to make this year a bit light and only hit the big and important events. Going to Road Atlanta twice, the SARRC/MARRS at VIR, one of the Daytona doubles (or Barber race) and then the ARRC. Going to skip the ITFest as thats just too much of a haul and $$ expenditure at this point.

On second though, scratch that whole “more relaxed on my time off” thing off the list. Going to be a crazy busy and fun spring!

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/22177607

The day started out way cold. 24 degree temperature with wind chill at 12. Brrr. The trail started with a fairly easy but long climb all the way to the top of the mountain. I didn’t push hard as I was unsure of myself over the distance, so I did a bunch of granny gear spinning, and I felt really good as we got to the top. Shitty news was that the GoPro screwed up again, so no video. Sending that thing back next week. There was some absolutely rocking downhill after this. Everything from a few switchbacks to rocks hidden under leaves. Wish I had the camera. After the downhill, climbed a rough fire road to the 1/2 way point and had some water and fig newtons.

From here, the trail got way hard. Rocks here, rocks there, rocks everywhere. Uphill on rocks, downhill on rocks, man lots of rocks I cleared a lot of the climbs and all of the downhills. Only had 1 fall and it was pretty much at no speed as I didn’t carry enough speed and the front tire got caught on a boulder. Again, did a lot of granny gear spinning instead of trying to push a lower gear, which was a great idea considering my current level of fitness. There was also a decent bit of hike a bike, including a big uphill section that was straight damn uphill. I got passed by a couple of the “money class” riders and even they walked it.

Got to the top of that climb, to the cell towers, and the rest of the way was downhill. Some gravel, some singletrack, and then the last mile was pavement. I pushed on these, and ended up with a 31.5mph top speed on the road.

My original goal was “to finish”. I finished in right under 3 hours, which isn’t bad at all. I’ll be back for the February time trial, and I’ll be able to push more on all the climbs. New Goal? 2:30, which would put me into the Top 3 in my class. We’ll see what happens!

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I got inspiration and the clamp design from Jake Khuon and his DIY repair stand but decided to change the stand part of it, as I have a welder and have been itching to use it. Instead of using a mounting flange and a big piece of wood, I used 2 45 degree bends and a T to make the feet for my stand. Ends up functioning just like the expensive store bought stands. Since everything is screwed together, I needed to make sure the T fitting didn’t rotate with the 45 degree fittings, as that is the main base of my stand. Here is where the welder came in. If you don’t have access to a welder, I bet that gooping JB weld onto the threads and all over that fitting would do the trick as well. I used some old radiator hose I had laying around to make the cushion for the seat post (instead of inner tube like Jake), as well as on the bottom of the stand to cushion it off the floor for stability. All I have left is to spray some flat black paint all over it, but I’ll do that when its sunny and nice outside one weekend.

Edit: I ended up using a piece of pipe and a rubber hose to make the clamp instead of the wood in the pictures. The wood was just ghetto, and the welded on piece of pipe functions perfectly, and I really like it. After using it for a while, I like my stand better then even the $150 stands, as it’s super stable. As stable as the bigass bike shop permanent stands.

I practiced some welds on pieces of scrap metal and then got to work on my pipe fittings. The welds came out pretty good. I haven’t bought the gas setup yet, so I was using Flux wire, which usually makes pretty ugly welds, but I was able to get some decent beads layed down. I’m looking forward to getting the gas setup and using the regular wire to get cleaner welds. Then it will be on to project #2 and #3, the fire system install in the race car, and a tire rack for my trailer.

The bike in the pics below is my old one, the new Trek is all packed up in the car ready for its night ride tomorrow, so I didn’t feel like busting it out just to get pics. I didn’t want to have my new $2k bike hanging on the bike rack in the work parking lot, so I took the wheels off and put it in the hatch. I’ll take some later once I get it dirty

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