Sauna's Here!!!!

One of the biggest days in the Absarokee Johnson family history a few days ago.
WE GOT OUR SAUNA IN!!!!!!!
If you know us, you know we love hot springs and sweat lodges. LOVE THEM. Our favorite family vacay is still White Sulphur Springs in Montana. Just soaking for days. And one of our favorite house features was our old sweat lodge, the one I built in the backyard. It was awesome. From 2013 to 2014 we spent hours in there every week. Sometimes a few nights in a row.
Sadly, it was taken over by spiders, and had to be taken down. Since then, we've been longing for a more permanent solution.

Finally, we were able to afford buying a nice, new, real sauna. It's a barrel style four person sauna, a traditional one, not one of the new infrared ones. We can't wait.
It's requiring a pretty thorough renovation of the backyard, and the deck, to prepare for it, so it's not installed yet, but we're almost there.
Here it is arriving from VA:

CO Roadie

A few weeks ago, right after the Superbowl (yeah Broncos!) we headed down to see friends and family in Colorado. It was a great trip. We had a blast.
Colorado rocks, and our friends in the Springs are some of the best people in the world. What a great trip. I was usually too busy for pics, but I did get a few:

Humpty Dumpty CO style: with skis

Downtown CO Springs is a really cool area. It's a town that grows on you. hehe

The view from our hotel in the Cherry Creek area.
We got really luck on hotels this trip: they all rocked. Great rooms. 

One of the best bowls of ramen I've ever had came from this joint in Arvada of all places. 

It used to be a nightmare food wise going through Wyoming. Two new joints in Casper help a lot, and one of them has really cool landscaping and decorations. It was a good meal too, one of the first I've ever had in Wyoming. 

Zombie Food

For the Taste of Billings this year, Walkers Grill got the nod to provide the entrees. Chef gave me the job of wrapping up 150 pieces of top sirloin filets, with a mushroom pate mousse type of deal, wrapped up inside caul fat. It had been years since I worked with caul fat. It's a cool ingredient.
The end result, raw at least, looks a lot like zombie food porn.

Winter Diet

It has been tough to get out on the bike lately. Too busy, and when I do have time, it's muddy, windy, miserable riding weather out there.
So, I have to find ways to stay in shape for the summer that don't involve the exercise I need and I've grown to love.
One solution: my diet. I'm so much more concious than I used to be about what I eat, especially when I'm not biking. I've even got a reputation at work for the most frugal, healthy, ridiculously pared-down meals. This has become one of my winter fave meals at work:

French Orange Salad

I take about five oranges and French them. That's where you go through and remove all the connective tissues and fibers, and cut out all the individual segments of orange. It's a delightfully decadent and delicious citrus preparation. Then I top it with tons of fresh basil, and nuts candied with lots of fennel and cinnamon. So good. It's like a mouthful of Sicilian sunshine.

Beck Lake Desert Singletrack

Cody, WY: Super Underrated Biking Town

A few weeks ago, I went to Cody, Wyoming to escape the winter riding blues out here in Stillwater County. I was aiming for the Slickrock ride out East of town. I've done it before, and although it's a short little lap, it's world class slickrock ST, and I was looking forward to getting back there.
Stopped at the Absaroka Bicycle Shop. It's a nice little shop.
The dude there told me about the new trail in Cody. It was built last year. It's a flow trail, a purpose-built ST network, winding around the hills behind Beck Lake in Cody. I changed plans and headed to the lake.

When I got there, I literally couldn't open my car door because of the wind. I'm not exaggerating,  It must have been 50 mph gusts, with a sustained wind of at least 20 mph scouring the high desert. Took the sheen right off the apparently bluebird day I'd been looking at all morning.
So I took my time getting ready, but it never got better. If anything, it got worse. After about an hour, I resigned myself to my windy fate, and pedaled out into the maelstrom.

World Class Desert ST

Verdict: one of the best trail networks in the area. YOU MUST GO RIDE HERE THIS SUMMER! These loops are really well done, awesome, flowy, curvy, jump-speckled ribbons of joy.

Didn't get many good pics. It was tough to stop to take them. It was so windy, that it was actually hard to stand still in places without getting blown over. And it kept freezing my fingers.

Unfortutanely, in keeping with the overly optimistic and unfortunately disappointing nature of my day, I got a nasty flat after 7.8miles. It looked like a super sharp rock sliced through the tire. Too big of a hole for sealant to work. I didn't have my tire plugs yet (ordered them after this after years of thinking about getting some), so I had no way to fix the tire. Had to walk on out, and drive the two hour drive of shame back home.
Strava ride summary here

Since then, I've been having tubeless troubles. HED Big Deal wheels are the shit, but they are very finicky when it comes to getting them set up. More on that later. . . . . .

Overall verdict: this trail is a must visit. When paired with the slickrock playground, and some of the local climbs, it should put the Cody Wyoming area on your map as a riding destination, even for people as far away as Bozeman, Billings, Cheyenne, etc. . .
See you in Cody!

Stillwater Winters

Hard to motivate on winter rides out here sometimes. In Absarokee, the usual winter view is like this: cold, fierce, lonely, and pretty brutal. Tough on bikes, tough on riders. I'm alone too, always, except for the dog. There are great days, but, honestly, riding out here in the winters is for the insane only, and I'd almost always rather be doing something else.
Beautiful though, in its own way.

Best Mom in the World

For Rose's 9th birthday, Yokie cooked her a custom Elsa cake. It came out great. Best mom in the world? You decide:

She also made us some Denver Bronco cupcakes. Were they the key to the Broncos' victory? Well, we sure as hell know it wasn't Peyton.

Best Wife in the World

For Christmas this year, Yokie totally hooked me up. She gave me all sorts of gifts that are so perfect for biking. One of the best ones is this stand. I've been needing a stand for years. I'd been using 2x4's hung off the back of my tailgate, things like that. This stand has really made it much easier to work on Shrek.

To set it all up, we emptied out the foyer / mud room, moved all the plants into the living room, and turned it into a Shrek / bike room. For the first time in our eight years at this house, it's finally a useful and cool space for us.

You Rock Girl!!!!!!!

Heat Maps

You gotta love Strava Heatmaps. Here are two of my favorites:

Long Term Review: Orange Tubeless Sealant

There are three main sealant companies you see around here. Far and away the most popular is Stan's. The classic is the aptly named Slime. Then there is the boutique brand, if you will, Orange. Price, branding, and tech claims all place this as the best option. It's supposed to be the champagne of sealants.

It sucks.

Simply put, it doesn't seal. At all. It's never worked for me. I've used it in a 29" (x2.1), a 26"(x2.25), and two fatbike tubeless setups, 26"x3.8". In none of these applications did the Orange sealant work. Not a single one.

As part of a mix (my favorite sealant is still Stan's and Slime mixed 1:1, it is useless, dragging down the effectiveness of it's mixer mates.

I would never purchase this again. If given to me for free, I would use it as a counterweight. If paid to use it, I would add coloring to Stan's and fake it.

Price:   F
Performance: F
Overall Grade:   F

2016 Weather in a Day

A few days ago, I think it was Saturday, the 13th of February, 2016, it was 60 degrees, sunny, and calm at 9:30am in Absarokee. That's 60 degrees and sunny, in a snow-free Absarokee in February.
At 10:00 the wind started. Gusts were over 45 mph.
At 10:45 there were sustained winds of 20 mph, it was 45 degrees, and it was raining.
At 11:00 it hailed briefly. It was 40 degrees. Winds were 25 mph.
At 12:30 it snowed. It was 39 degrees. Winds were 10 mph. Gusts were 25 mph +.
When I left for work at 2:00 pm, it was 35 degrees, winds were 5 mph, and it was overcast with rain showers.

Welcome to Absarokee circa 2016.