Happy New Year

Well it is now 2013 and I hope you all made it here safely. I am looking forward to see what this year has in store for me. I hope you all have a good year as well.

Looks like someone has got a case of the lazies.

With finals and the holidays surrounding all my free time, I didn't get much done in the way of biking. However, now that Christmas is over I hope to get back at it. I look forward to regailing you with more tails of my adventures and some fresh photos very soon.

I hope you all had a good holiday season.

Winter bike expo and other goodies.

It has been a couple weeks since my last post as I have been very busy spending last week working on homework and setting up the Freewheel Winter Bike Expo!

I took the Lake boots on their first longer ride and they did pretty good for a while. About an hour into the ride however my feet started getting cold. I could tell right away it was due to the heat sink problem from the cleat. I could tell because the cold didn't start in my toes where it normally would, it started on the bottom of my foot. I have been hearing a lot of good things about the Aerogel insoles from 45Nrth, but I think I am going to buy the rabbit fur and the Aerogel insoles and see which are better. I am always interested to see if synthetic stuff can stack up against natural things. Much like tech materials versus wool, wool kills it every time. I think it will make a good gear review too.

On other news, we spent quite a few hours setting up the winter bike expo. It was a hoot! I got to see a lot of Freewheel employees I hadn't seen in some time and meet some new friends too. Lots of product transferring and cleaning and moving things and finally Friday night we had a bike expo ready for the next day.

When I had started working on the expo with everyone else they had already knocked out a wall and most of what we were doing was clean up. On Wednesday I drove the van from Eden Prairie to Midtown with the few obstacles we had out there. Then Thad and I took some trash to West Bank and picked up the mugs and Project One display. When we got back to Midtown we did a few other things but then I had to take off for class.

Thursday was spent bringing in fixtures for merchandise as well as bringing in the bikes for the demo rides. I also was introduced to a place called "the molding room", let me tell you that is an appropriate name. Another name that comes to mind that would be equally as accurate is the diarrhea hole, it smelt awful.

Friday was merchandise and beautification day. We turned a messy back room into a store front. It was pretty rewarding. The only part I didn't particularly enjoy was moving the obstacles around trying to get the flow of the course right. I payed for it the next day.

When I woke up Saturday morning I was so sore from moving so much stuff on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday that I could hardly even move. I spent some time waking up and then stretched out for about an hour and felt much better, so I headed down.I am glad I did. I missed all the cool seminars on different fun things, which was a bummer, I really wanted to catch the one about doing the Arrowhead 135, but I missed it. There is always next year. I met a bunch of cool people like Trevor from Surly (bikes), Gomez from fat-bike.com, David Gabrys from 45Nrth, John Gaddo from Salsa, and a few other names that are not coming to me at the moment. I also just met a lot of cool random people that I didn't know before and that was a lot of fun. The fat bike race was a lot of fun to watch and there was plenty of beer and burgers to go around. I also got to see Pete from Fat Tire MN again.

In case you are not from around here or did not hear about this let me break it down for you. Minnesotans love to bike. We don't let things like a little cold or snow get in the way either. So it only makes sense that as winter biking becomes more popular that more winter events for bikes would come about. Luckily I work for the best bike shop in the nation so we really have created something that is a bit of a staple for winter biking in the Midwest. People did come in from all over.

So what is at a winter bike expo? Well, we have fat tire bike demos, we have bikes set up with studded tires so you can see how they handle on the ice, we have clothing out the wazoo. This was not just about retail though, we also had a bunch of seminars ranging on  topics from winter bike commuting to ultra endurance marathon training. Something for everyone really. Not to mention the owner of Freewheel unveiled his new carbon fiber fat bike made by his own bike company, Minneapolis Bike Company, which is also new! This was all followed up by a very fun to watch fat bike race with beers and food. Fun was had by all in attendance, you would be hard pressed to find a sad face after listening to Mario on the microphone calling the race. Everyone who was working to set this thing up put in a lot of work and it showed. That is what I love about Freewheel, we, as an entire company, pulled this off as a team. It was pretty great.

Boo for me I had to leave early. I got a text from my friend Thad the next morning that read: I woke up with a hangover and a black eye... best winter bike expo ever! I am already excited for next year...

Waiting for the fat bike crit to start!

The Yeti!

The Fat Bike Racers

Hanging around the keg

There was even a pirate!

This guy had some serious unicycle skills.

Spotted a sweet Jeff Jones bike, wowza!

Natalia getting rad.

Heavy on events, light on action.

Lots of developments, not a lot of riding. Fail.

I did end up commuting to school at least once last week. It would have been more if I didn't have to spend so much time writing up lab reports for my physics class. I put a solid 36 hours into 2 of them that were due last Wednesday, yuck.

The weekend was super busy as well. Ann and I are finally getting settled into this place and we got our storage locker emptied. One step at a time.

It snowed on Thanksgiving, not a whole bunch, but most of it is still around because the temps have been stuck in the low and mid twenties. I am excited for the arrival of winter. I also got a call from my boss the other day and he wanted to know if I was interested in helping set up the Freewheel Winter Bike Expo, my response was "Hell yeah!". I have been looking forward to this years winter bike expo since I found out there was one and I missed it a couple days after it happened last year. I really hope the snow pulls through and makes it a fun day. I've got the itch to put on my studded fat bike tires. I think as soon as I can put them on they will stay on until the snow is gone and I think I will be picking up some Larry's around that time, the Nate's are just far too aggressive.

I'm also going to be on the look out for a part time job through the holidays to pull in a little extra cash for presents for my loved ones and also a few bike parts I really want to score before all my races come up.

In other news about training I am going to start P90x again today, I will be following the lean schedule. I really need the endurance that this program brought to me the last time I did it. This combined with some hill training I have planned should do me well for getting race ready. I have no misconceptions that I am not going to win anything, but I just want to do the stuff and not look like a fool out there. I mostly just want to do these races just to do them, I don't really care much for competition.

I wish I had time to ride this weekend but I didn't. I also didn't take any new pictures. I have not posted any for a few weeks so I will just post some older ones that I like.

This is from spring of 2012.

Walker Sculpture Garden

Feb 2011

Boom Island Park lamp post

Awaiting the white stuff.

I know normal people don't usually get excited about snow and cold... but who ever said I was normal?

It snowed this week finally, even though it was only a little bit and it is already gone. It is a good reminder to start getting prepared for winter. I am doing exactly that. I had posted my Nokkian Gazza Extreme 240's online for sale and sold them the next day which was nice because that put a good chunk of change in my pocket. I was going to use the money from those tires to buy the new Xerxes tire from 45Nrth but I didn't get around to it. I attended the Freewheel Fat Bike Friday which is a ride out of the Freewheel at Midtown and they spend a couple hours riding the river bottoms.The ride kicked my ass big time, not just physically (48 miles at a 15 mph pace) but it also served to show me, once again, that I am not equipped for winter.

So I went to Freewheel later that day and picked up a pair of Lake MXZ 303's which we had in a wide and it fit my foot perfectly. I also have room to wear thick wool socks with them. I took them out for a spin in about 30 degree weather and my feet were toasty the entire time. I know that at some point I will have to do something about the insole and I think the answer will be rabbit fur insoles. I heard a lot of buzz about them and Sunrise Cyclery carries them for like $10. Even with my employee discount the new 45Nrth Aerogel inserts would cost me more than that. So I feel like it is worth a shot. Besides that if it gets really cold they may not work as well but I did find out that I can fit my neoprene booties over the boots. This would create a pretty nice stagnant layer of air that might help on particularly cold or windy days.

I am still going to pick up those studded tires for the Cross Check, but other than that I think I am ready for winter finally. Those boots will be a wondrous boon. I may have to experiment with gloves as it gets colder but so far a good base layer glove and the Pearl Izumi gloves that have wind blocking properties seems like it is working well.

In other news Global Fat Bike Day is going down on December 1. It is open to anyone who wants to come and I encourage you to come. We are aiming to beat out both Wisconsin and England. If you are interested then you can click here for details. It is a link for Facebook, you don't need an account to view the details. It is going to be just a ton of people so it is not going to be a super intense ride or anything. Come out with your fat bike and have some fun!

I did another ride earlier this week as well. Went out for some really good Chinese food with some people from the internet. All in all I rode about 35 miles in the cold and it was super fun. I always have a good time when I get on my Cross Check. Starting this Monday I am going to start commuting to school every day. The first week might only be 2 of the days but then I will do it every day. I am sick of making excuses about how far of a ride it is. I just don't care anymore, it makes me happy and I am going to do it.

That is all I got for this week. Get out there and ride.