Bike Ridin' Weather

Now THAT is some fine bike-ridin' weather.


Spring has finally sprung, and the 22936ish has not one but two races to offer you this weekend, plus a couple of demo trucks chock full of more bearings and adjustment knobs than you can possibly turn on your own.

Bonus full moon on Saturday eve, under perfect clear skies.  Chance of shredding?  Nigh 100%.

Because if you can't have fun on a demo bike, you might as well be already dead.

Pivot, conveniently, is happy to let you know upfront, via the magical interwebs, exactly what kind of heat they are packing in that rad demo van.  His 69er disdain notwithstanding, my Chris Cocalis bro-crush remains in full effect.

Trek, on the other hand, does not appear to do have a list of what's in their truck, presumably because it's so big they don't actually know what's in there.  Their demo trailer is about 385 feet long, so I think it's more a question of what's NOT in there than what actually is.

I've ridden a bunch of Treks and Pivots.  When asked by close friends to confide which I actually prefer, I tell them the truth - "Yes."

Though I can tell you that if I lived at the bottom of Torry ridge - like RIGHT at the very bottom - I'd have two of these:


TWO, not one, because it's easy to assume one of them would be the broken down subject of a crash replacement at all times.

And I'd be in the hospital.
So lucky for me, and lucky for Trek, I don't live there.

But for one weekend only, I plan on riding like I do.

Sign up, show up, giddyup up up.

Beaver Spring Fever - Sunday, April 29th

THE BEAVER HAS GROWN.

9 and 1/4 miles per lap,  dedicated to chewing on your legs.  Sunday, April 29th.

Before we get to the nitty gritty, I will here deposit all of the bizarro Beaver attack news that you people have sent me over the last year.  I don't know what it says about me, or you, or the world at large that this blog is now the de facto authority on Beaver aggression.  But here you are:

http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/canadian-trapper-survives-brutal-sexual-assault-by-200-pound-beaver/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2307572/Beaver-attack-Fisherman-killed-BEAVER-tried-photo-lake-Belarus.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/04/11/newser-beaver-kills-man/2074145/

https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2016/07/11/possibly-rabid-beaver-attacks-paddle-boarder-beaver-lake/86942648/

I think the course is a lot longer than it was last year.  Much of the new stuff is also way, way better, having been successfully beaten into submission by the army of junior racers we have around these parts.

You can sign up here.

Orrrr...you can wait, watch the weather, and then sign up on race day, thus ruining Marky Mark's entire weekend.

Of note, there will be not one, but TWO demo trucks on site that day, dishing out the toys in exchange for a temporary glance at your personal credit card.  The Pivot Demo truck, in fact, I can see parked from where I am typing this right at this very moment.  But those new Trek's with the Re-Active bizarro valve, the ones from outer space, won't show up until the weekend.

Someone dropped me a note, mentioned how old I have gotten, then asked a great question:
"Can I just race a demo bike?"

Good thinking.  No sense riding the Beaver and taking a beating on your own bike when you can just ride a demo bike and blame it for your lack of talent and winter lethargy.  The answer: I don't know.  Maybe the powers that be at Trek and Pivot will chime in here with their thoughts on allowing you to semi-puke on their demonstration carbon bits.

It would be useful, after all, to get a sense of how well the vomit flows down the top tube at high speed.  Hashtag, aerovomit.  You read it hear first.

Those CAMBC burgers: Easily digestible.  For a good cause.  But do they adhere to carbon if pre-chewed?

One way to find out.

Sign up, Show up, get up up up.

JGST Video

Short, awesome video put together by Ryan Little with the JGST highlights.
I'm not sure if I'm more inspired by the people who come together to make an event like this happen, or just simply by Ryan's abilities as a filmmaker.  The whole "we knew that kid when..." concept seems insufficient.

Regardless, it feels pretty great to live and operate in a community like this.
Will keep you, the public, apprised of the semi-ginormous check that we all played a part in creating, to be sent out to Colorado soon.



Until next time, rubber down, heads up up up.

James Gist - MTB Race Pioneer

This past fall at the final race of the VAHS series at Woodberry Forest up in Madison, something like 300 kids showed up to race mountain bikes.  It was a jaw-dropping volume of shredding, bigger than almost every other MTB race in Virginia in 2017, all except for the SM100.  

Even 10 years ago, the idea that 300 high schoolers (and middle schoolers, actually) would show up to a mountain bike race would have been pretty far-fetched...unless you were James Gist.  

A little of the history of youth mountain bike racing here in Virginia can be found below, and the big man on the Northern Fringe, Nolan himself, sent me an explanation of how James' work back in 2007 has evolved into the thriving race scene we have today.

From Nolan:

James was pretty instrumental in helping Tony and I get the blue ridge triple threat off the ground.  As far as I know (and I am sure someone will correct me) it was the first high school race series in virginia.   Started in 2008 ran for two or three years.  In my humble opinion it paved the way for the current junior MTB scene.  If memory serves me correctly James was the CAMBC president at the time, and he and Fenton showed Tony and me how to do stuff.  The series was BRS, O-Hill and Walnut.  

2007, Blue Ridge School

Social Progress.  The aging of the human body.  The passage of time.  Every lesson in history like this tends to give me pause. 

This one gives me hope too. For every school shooting out there, which there seems to be an awful lot of right now, there's a guy like Nolan, or James, or Fenton working to bring bikes into kids' lives in a way that might help them learn to peacefully navigate this bizarre, dangerous new world.      

Which is the only world we have to offer them.  

Shred on, kids.  

Rubber down.  Heads up, up, up.  

The JGST IS Saturday. Sign up, up, up!

Update from our man of the week, James Gist, out in Colorado.  It's worth a watch and, more than likely, a healthy dose of perspective.



Two things that I'll point out here from his video:
1)  There's an amazing amount of technology and assistance out there for someone battling ALS.  I am deeply and profoundly grateful for that, as well as James' courage to share his story as he navigates it all.
2)  It all costs money.

And that's where we come in.  If you know James, you probably have already chipped in via the PayPal fund that was set up to do just that.  If not, it's time to step up.

Even if you don't know James, you can still donate that way.

Or.  Orrrrr...if you don't know James, but you just plain like racin' bikes, which there is no shame in, you can sign up for the JGST, which is a 1 hour short track happening on Saturday.  It's going to be amazing, under 62 degree bluebird skies, with CAMBC grilled burgers and Green Beer to cap it all off.  And your racing cash will go straight to Gist Family that way too.

Sign up for the JGST here.

I'm going to do my best not to sob and grovel at you this week, but there are no guarantees in life, which is kind of the original point of all of this anyway.

To try to keep it upbeat, I'll now give you the following:
1)  Here's the lap.  This thing will be taped, raked, and ready for you to stomp all over your big ring around by Thursday.  You can tell I'm old because I use phrases like "Big Ring."  But you know what I mean.   I think the lap has the right balance of singletrack and flow but still enough room for Richard Serton to pass you and blow your doors off when he needs to.   Which will be often.  So I hope you'll like it.
2)  I promise you, if we can get him out here this week in some sunshine, I'll put together some helmet cam video of the fastest, raddest leprechaun you have ever seen hucking his green vessel around this course like Nino McSchurter.  So you'll have a sense of how rad it is, even before you show up on Saturday.  I'll post the video up here soon.



That right there, along with the effort to support James as a whole - is the very power of the internet.

Use it the right way.

Step it up, up, up.

Let's Rally, O'Malley.

Sign up!  

The JGST is in less than 2 weeks - that's Saturday March 17th.

At one point, I lobbied the powers that be to name this event the STJG (Short Track James Gist) because I thought it would make it sound Euro.
The Grand Prix Miguel Indurain
The Criterion Du Dauphine
Etc.  Where the race category precedes the namesake.

But then I was reminded that this race also coincides with St Patricks Day, and for $20 you can both race and fill your belly with green beer, and that any notion of European Class should be quashed right from the very start.

And We Like It That Way.

So then, let's rally, O'Malley.

After all, it's a fundraiser.  And our cause, The Gist Family, once famously won the costume contest at the Paranormal when they came dressed as Obama vs. Hillary Clinton.  Johanna also famously killed it a different year with a deadpan impersonation of Richard Pence, hair and all.  Point being that real class also sometimes dresses it up a little, and that is what we intend to do in this case.

Course preview?  Coming soon.  Will it be helmet-cam footage of McCardell, dressed as a leprechaun, throwing huge tail whips through fresh cut loam?  

Sign up - as I may have said before, and then tune back in to find out.  

And up and up and up.  

#GravelBikesSaveLives

Gravel
Bikes
Save
Lives

You heard it here first.
How, exactly, they save lives varies immensely.  But they do.

The marginally kept semi-secret Trek Checkpoints are now in stock, both up here in the Northside where gravel actually exists and Downtown where...Shaine works.  



You can check out the full review over on CyclingTips.  First person to ride that 34 X 34 gearing up Brokenback without putting a foot down wins a prize, that prize being temporary penile numbness.

Just in case the horses in the stable were getting lonely; N plus 1.  That's French for "Federal tax return."

Giddyup, up, up.