Back in the Saddle

My Dad used to fly off aircraft carriers in the Navy and he said that when ever anyone crashed or had an accident the standard procedure was to get them back in the air as soon as possible. I subscribe 100% to this philosophy. Yesterday I got back in the saddle and rode Walker Ranch with Doug and Ramine. I pushed hard on both the downhills and the climbs. My face may be cut and my body bruised, but my confidence his super high.

A dip in the frigid waters of South Boulder Creek was good for my bruises, but my face hurts - Bad! On top of that, I had to shave today. If you heard a faint scream of pain in the distance at about 6:30am Mountain time this morning, that was me!

Ouch my Face!!

When I built up the Superlight to race Super D one thing I didn't replace was my sticking pedals. Slowly it's become harder and harder to unclip my feet and today it bit me in the ass - or should I say face. I've been training for Super D by focusing on increasing my speed and improving my tech skills. This means picking more aggressive lines, carrying more speed into sections that I would previously brake on, and hucking when ever possible. Today I saw a line that ended in a sweet huck (about a 4 foot drop). There was a small bush on the lip that I would have to ride over to make it work. What I didn't see was the rock hiding in the bush that caught my front tire and ejected me face first off the jump. Usually when I find myself in that situation, i.e. hurdling towards the earth, I jettison the bike (as it's of no use to me anymore) in favor of running out the landing and staying upright. My sticking pedals would have none of this today and me and the bike went down together. I landed on my 4 front teeth! Ouch!! The gritty sensation of dirt against my teeth is something I haven't felt in a while, but luckily the blood helped flush it out quickly. After checking that my jaw worked fine and my teeth were are all in place. I finished the ride with scratches on my face (can't wait to shave for work), bleeding gums, a bruised knee and shoulder, chain ring punctures above my ankle, and a SMILE!!

Two Z8's in One Hour

Last week I needed to run some errands for the M Coupe's first oil change (more on this in a future post). First I needed to go to BMW for some oil and then I headed off to the hardware store for a 6mm Hex Socket. In my hour of travels I saw two BMW Z8's. "Alex is really running low on blog material" your thinking. That may be true, but I found this a notable coincidence. The Z8 is at least as rare as an M Coupe and about 2.5 times as expensive. It was designed from the start as a collector car.

The first one was a black one at the Dealer. The Z8 is a rare car, but if you were going to see one the BMW dealer would be the place, right... He pulled right up to the back of the M Coupe as I tried not to stare too blatantly. The exhaust note was music to my ears as he pulled away. I was trying to play it cool, so I didn't get any pics.

Then on the way to the hardware store I saw a silver one in a Walmart parking lot of all places!! I pulled up and parked a few spots away as to not crowd him. Here are a couple cell phone pics.

I apologize for the picture quality, the cell phone was the only photographic tool I had at the time. Here are some stock images from the official BMWZ8.US website.

And the two colors I saw last week.

The Z8 was designed in the form of the classic European cars that my Dad used to romance about when I was a kid. It holds true to the curved form, minimalistic interior, and elegant styling of the best of the European classics.

It was specifically designed as a tribute to the BMW 507 produced from 1956-59, but it invokes strong memories of my Dad's E type Jaguar. Here are some side by side pics I found off of BMWZ8.US. His Jag was identical, wire wheels and all.

To read more about the Z8, click here.

The M Coupe is the car for me. It's raw performance, aggressive styling, and hooligan nature bring me smiles every time I walk in the garage. Rusty admires the M Coupe too!

Lightning Out the Bedroom Window

I woke up to an awesome thunderstorm last night at 1am. I had thoughts of jumping in the truck and driving up to the wind power farm on top of the Mesa for some lightning strike shots, but I could only motivate to the bedroom window. Seeing the results this morning, I wish I did because these aren't the best lightning shots of my career...

Daytime at 1AM

Water and Concrete

I took these back in June in San Diego. I really liked the contrast between balcony and the Pacific Ocean. There is no real subject, but sometimes less is more...

Furniture Building, Cat Deck

I've spent most of the summer getting settled in with Jo in our new place (which used to be her place). I say our new place instead of Jo's place because she has made a huge effort in selflessly giving up her house to make me feel welcome and like it's both of ours. I can only hope I would be that selfless if the roles were reversed. Thank you Jo...

Part of getting settled in was the need to find a home for things. As a result my compulsive desire to organize things has shown its head on more than one occasion. This usually results in a comedy of errors, because the more I try to organize, the more complicated I make it, and the less organized I seem to be in the end. In my quest I converted the spare bedroom into an office / cat room. Here the cats can get away from the dogs, have some peace and quiet and a place to hide. Space was at a premium so I decided to combine office items and cat items. Here's what I came up with:

Book shelves on the top and hidden litter boxes on the bottom. Ingenious right! I built it eco-friendly from scratch using a recycled kitchen cabinet from Resource 2000 and pine 1x12's. Matching the stain on the cabinet doors was a killer, but I eventually got a good match.

Rusty and Jasper were never outdoor cats, but they do like to bask in the sun in the afternoon as long as they can escape to the indoors if the need should present itself. Here's a shot of rusty in action in my old front yard.

Being on the 2nd floor presented a bit of an access challenge to the outdoors so I solved the problem by building a miniature cat deck!

Pressure treated 2x4's make up the frame which is trimmed and railed with redwood pickets. A little astro-turf is as good as grass for the old boys.

The last thing I needed in the office was a place for the cat food that the dogs couldn't reach. I built this today, but it's not stained yet. It's well out of reach of the dogs and easy to access for the cats, although Jasper is a bit portly in his old age.

Overall Jo and I are settled in nicely and the boys are sleeping next to me as I finish up this post. Now I look forward to getting back to more daring adventures than building furniture with the neighbor kid in the driveway. Snooze...

Plan B = Super D

For the past 718.5 days (yes I count the days) I've been plagued by overuse injuries in my left knee. The good news is that after tons of physical therapy, 3 dimensional bike fits, hours of IT band rolling, cortisone shots, and even surgery I've found something that has very, very slowly yielded an improvement in my knee pain and ability to ride. My latest approach has been through applied kinesiology and it's given me positive results. That's not to say the Durango 100, 24 Hour Duo Pro or Solo races are in my near future, but I can ride a couple times a week with minimal pain.

I'm super grateful to be in the saddle period, but I my competitive side just isn't satisfied with schooling the "gapers" (that's Alex slang for slow riders) on the bike path. Cross country (XC) racing is still a bit much for me, but a relatively new type of racing called Super D might be right up my alley. I've never been a natural climber, but consider myself a natural descender. All the BMX riding I did as a kid translated well into mountain biking and over the years I have honed my tech skills. That complimented with an aggressive nature and suppression of fear equals more speed on the downhills. Super D could be considered a cross between XC and downhill racing. They are relatively short races and don't feature a lot of climbing which should help keep my swelling down. I plan on using my old race bike outfitted with a higher travel fork and more stout wheels. Here's before and after pics and the new shock and wheels.

















I also added a new drivetrain for smoother shifting and reliability, a bigger front brake disc for improved stopping power, and new tires.











It took many days, trips to the store, some tuning from Doug, and understanding from Jo for hours spent in the garage to get the new rig built up, but it's finally done. I'm not sure when my first race will be (I've never even seen a Super D race before) and don't plan on having stellar results, but I do plan on having fun, which is the most important thing in mountain bike racing!

2 Rattlesnakes, 4 Inches, and Alex

Ramine and I went for a mountain bike ride at White Ranch yesterday. White Ranch is a network of trails in the foot hills north of Golden, Colorado. It used to be one of my favorite training rides because of it's steep technical riding. We took a newer trail that is about as steep as my still-recovering knee could handle. I suffered through the climb up to a more technical, but rolling trail. I moved out in front on this segment and set a faster pace. Ramine had fallen back a little as I crossed a small gully and headed up a slight climb. I was in my groove, feeling the trail more than actively looking at it. I had my head down and was pretty much riding on autopilot as my mind drifted through random thoughts.

Then I looked up to glance at the trail ahead and my blood turned cold! Less than 6 feet in front of my were two rattle snakes. They were entangled and standing about 2 feet tall with their bodies upright on the left side of the trail. I screamed and swerved violently to the right, my tire missing them by about 12 inches. I looked down at them as they went under my left brake lever. The snakes tangled heads passed about a shoes-width, maybe 4 inches, from my left calf. I stopped about 10 feet on the other side shaking uncontrollably with adrenaline. It happened so quick I didn't have time to process the situation, much less my options. I just watched it all in slow motion from above. The image of two snake heads, flicking their tongues out, breezing by my leg is seared into my memory.



I yelled in a panic at Ramine to slowdown, which he did with plenty of room, and we watched the bizarre ritual the snakes were partaking in. It was amazing, the snakes were poised so that about one third of their bodies were standing straight up, about 2 feet off the ground. They would tangle up into a swirl and eventually fall down. The only noise was that of their scales sliding past each other and their rattles hitting the ground, they never once rattled intentionally. It looked exactly like this photo of two black snakes from the Oz Report that I use to scare Jo and my Mom.





A little research revealed they were Prairie Rattlesnakes (Crotalus viridis viridis). Here are some stock photos off the web.











I'm not sure if they were mating or fighting, but it was amazing. Maybe a South African biologist with years of Western American experience can shed some light on their behavior. I'm not scared of snakes, in fact I've always thought snakes were extraordinary animals, but the sudden encounter did freak me out. The situation could have had a much different ending. I could have easily been bitten twice in the same area, with a high heart rate, far away from people, roads, or help. The snakes were so preoccupied with their activity that they completely ignored my leg even though it was inches from their heads, which re-inforces the notion that snakes have got a bad rap over the years. They want less to do with us humans and we do with them!