Lame sauce.

The new semester has started, with it any free time I may have had is gone. Between the classes and the -17 degree temps I have not really done much riding. Once I get these classes roped in a little tighter I will try  to get back in the saddle more.

What blog?

I've been absent from my bikes for some time. Not that I didn't have them, I just didn't ride them. I got really busy and really lazy over my break from school. I got a couple short rides in and all they did was discourage me about my Lake MXZ 302 boots. My feet got cold every single time. I have not lost all hope, but I certainly got discouraged. I even tried flat pedals again but I was just so slow and awkward, I hated it. I am going to do some hard core modifications to them, I was watching a video with Jay Petervary and his Lake boots are like super Frankenstein style. He says he rides in them down to -50. So if he can get his like that I am sure I can get them so they can handle Minnesota.

Today was awesome however, I got a really nice ride in. I am out in Chanhassen this week and I hit the trails in Chaska around McKnight Lake. Wowee it was fun. The trail was mostly hard packed snow, the Dillingers performed really well, I was pretty pleased. I rode around and over a couple frozen bodies of water, I was crunched for time so I had to cut it short but plan on heading back out tomorrow for a bit of a longer ride.

I also have some other gear on my radar that I will be picking up around the end of the month. Poagies. I see the advantage of them now. Last winter was my first winter biking and it never really got cold enough to notice. I never had to wear super gnarly gloves. This year I have been struggling to find the right glove combination and I am really not a fan of the loss of dexterity when layering gloves or even just wearing one thicker pair of gloves. So I figure if I am going to get them I might as well go all out and get the Dogwood Designs poagies, they are supposed to be good below 0 so that should be fine. I seem to have pretty good circulating in my hands because they don't get cold very easy. It is not until they get wet with sweat that they get cold.

I also have my eyes set on a Visacha. I have been carrying extra layers in a camel back back pack without the bladder. I hate wearing a back pack on a long ride and it also makes my back sweaty and then eventually cold. A Visacha would be more than enough room to carry what I have in my pack. Though at some point I would like to pick up one of those heavy duty frame packs too.

The last thing on my list is a better pair of pants. Right now I am using some heavy wind blocker pants that I use for cross country skiing. I would like something a little less flowy and a little more insulated as well. My poor little legs get cold. I figure if I get a really nice warm set I can just switch out the thickness of the base layer to adjust for temperatures. I still don't have a brand in mind but looking online a lot of people point to the Craft winter tights. However, I cannot find them anywhere to try them on so I couldn't say one way or another. If any of you readers have any good suggestions, I would love to hear them!

Here is a few pics from this winter so far.

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.