Dear Diary

Life back at the bike shop is good. I'm staying busy and having a lot of fun, even more fun than last summer.

The ol' bike camping trip is rapidly approaching. Since school has been out I've been at the bike shop nearly every day. I am getting a little tired but the three days of booze consumption, sunshine, fires, and bike riding should be good for recharging my batteries. I bought this collapsible cooler from REI and I hope it works out. The plan is to go to the campsite, dump our gear, then head back to town and pick up booze and "food", though that would be a lot of riding for one day. We'll see what happens though, nothing is set in stone, which is the best part. I picked up some trail mix and food stuffs for the journey, as well as peanut butter and honey fixings. The last time we went we had no back up food and by morning I was starving and it was about 10 miles of rolling hills to get to the nearest food source. I vowed to not let that happen again.

In other news, I have figured out what bike I am going to get this year. First I decided I was going to get a road bike. In my current situation, being so far from everything, a road bike just makes more sense, plus I really just want to get some more miles under my belt. Once that decision was made I had to make a choice on which road bike I want. My first thought was to go with the CAAD 10 with SRAM Rival. I have Rival on the Cross Check and it works well, but if I am going to have a road bike I want to have a nicer group set, so I figured the cost of buying the bike and upgrading to SRAM Red, and the cost came out to about as much as it would cost me to buy a Supersix Evo with SRAM Red already on it. I have always thought that I would probably not own a carbon fiber bike, but after test riding a handful of really nice plastic bikes, my mind was changed. The Cannondale guys were out last week and I rode the bike I wanted and holy smokes it was nice. I acquired the money to buy said bike and when I went to check availability on them, they are out and there is no ETA on when they will be in stock. Well poop!

Then my new boss was talking to me about the new Ultegra di2 electronic shifting. I tried out a Madone we had with it, wow that is nice. Okay so I looked at the Cannondale with di2 on it, meh, the specs on it are not very impressive really. It comes with their Cannondale "hollowgram" crank set, which I am not really impressed with, not to mention everything I read said you want to use an Ultegra crank set for ultimate performance from your di2, so why would I want to spend more to have to upgrade the crank set any way? Well, in short, I don't. That is about the time I just happened too look at the 2013 Trek 5.9 Madone. Shit yes. It is still very light, even better riding than the Cannondale, better wheel set than the Ultegra tubeless, and the full Ultegra package and I can get it for less. That is a no brainer. So, my bike for this year is going to be a 5.9 Madone. My goal is to get my commute from home to work down to less than an hour. Even if it is 59 minutes I will be happy. Plus I would like to be able to ride 40 miles without feeling like I am about to die, not from being out of shape, but because my Cross Check is just so damn heavy.

The last thing I have had on my mind is my knee problems. I know that whenever the hell my new shoes come in, that will take care of some of the issues. I got re-fit yesterday and we made some adjustments that felt pretty good, but the boss was also telling me that I should stretch my feet. I have never actually heard of this but it sounds like a very legit idea, plus the man has been in the industry 10 years more than me so I shall take his advice. One other thing that I have been toying with the idea of is cadence. I know for a fact I do not generally pedal at a very efficient cadence and I am willing to bet that if I were to start doing so that it would help alleviate some of my knee pain. I am a pedal masher, I've always been, but I think it might be catching up with me. I need to start riding correctly. Funny story, cadence also influenced my decision to get the Madone. Trek put that "duotrap" in the chain stay on their bikes and it just makes the sensors so much more clean, instead of having that stupid thing zip tied to the chain stay. At any rate, I am hoping to start working on that stuff when I get the new bike, which should be early next month.

My riding recently has been sparse and very random. Just a lot of short-ish 15 - 20 mile rides around Maple Grove. I really have not been taking a lot of photos. I will be taking plenty on the camping trip next week so look out for those.

Be good out there.