While visiting and hangout out with our friends was pretty awesome, the rest of Dallas was a huge meh. People aren’t lying when they say “everything is bigger in Texas”. Everything from the distances between cities, the huge excess in terms of city/urban sprawl, to the amount of back fat on display. Wowie!

We went out around town, hit up some bars/restaurants around Deep Ellum, and visited the Arboretum. The Arboretum was pretty damn cool and we did find some super good food (Celebration, Angry Dog) around town. Otherwise, I doubt we’ll ever be back. Certainly wouldn’t want to live there!

The views, the scenery, the trail, and the falls at the end were incredible. We were already going to be picking up some backpacking gear for early next year, but after seeing the camping area at Panther Creek falls, that decision was set in stone. We are coming back to spend the night. It was amazing. The plan to come back early was scrapped and we ended up spending almost 6 hours hiking, hanging out, looking at views, etc. We came back to the car right before sunset, and promptly finished off the cupcakes. (with some help from a family we met)

I took a whole mess ton of pictures, to the point where Cathy was “over it.” I just couldn’t help myself with how great everything looked.

Since I’ve posted last I’ve

• Gotten engaged and married!
• Gotten completely out of racing cars and fully switched to mountain bikes
• Got hurt, unhurt, hurt, and now finally unhurt enough to race bikes
• Moved out from suburbia hell to in-town

Whew!

I’ll post a bunch of pics in the next few posts from a few recent trips, our engagement photos and also wedding photos. Then this and next year I plan on using this blog to document a bunch of my bike racing and training. Can’t get a lot of those into 140 characters. Lastly, I did a “Photo A Day” project in 2012, which was semi success, as it’s turned into a “A Photo every few days” as the year went on. It really got me back into liking photos though, so I’ll be posting galleries as I take them. As much of a nerd as I am, I can’t really bring myself to blog about work and code anymore. I’ve been starting to leave it at the office instead of doing that stuff for a hobby, and I have to say, that’s awesome.

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.

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.

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!!

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?

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.