Training in the Stillwater Spring

Winter has turned to Spring, but it still pretty much looks like this on an average training ride:

beautiful: yeah, in spades; comfortable for a nice ride: not at all

Rosebud River

On our usual riding circuit, Rose and I make a point of stopping on the bridge over the Rosebud river. having lived in Malaysia, we really appreciate water so clean you can see into it. We're lucky to live here for sure. . . . .

It's a Tough Life

I Know That Bike

Woke up this morning, reading my usual sites and drinking my coffee, and I see my bro Kenn's bike on Bikerumor Pic of the Day! I was there when the bike went for its first rides. Kenn took me to this exact panorama once. So many good Malaysian biking memories!

(Belated) Happy St. Patty's Day

Today, back to the grind. Supposed to be super busy at work for the parade downtown. On St. Patty's day proper though, a perfect day training and hanging out with my awesome family!

Margarita, Green Sour Apple Kombucha, Green Lager

Stillwater Valley Bald Eagle

Corsican Noodles

One of my Spring stand-bys:
* Lots of Lemon Zest and a bit of juice
* Olive Oil
* Thinly sliced Garlic (Lots)
* Nut (Pine in this photo)
* Sea Salt
* 3 Minced Sardines
* Fresh Parmesean
* Lots of Basil

* Wide noodles like an Egg or a Fett

MMMMMMmmmmmmm

Gear Idea

DIY Tubeless Sealant Injector

Probably not the only one to think of this, but finally figured out an easy way to inject sealant.
I had a couple of old Avid Bleed injectors. I took off the rubber tubing. The nipple left behind is a perfect fit to the valve stem with the core removed.

I'm using Stan's Racing now, with great results so far.
If you can't find that, I found a 50:50 mix of these two was not only economic,
it performs better than pure Stan's as well. 

Coming Soon . . . . .

Teaser:

I'm not saying anything. . . . . .
I'm just saying. . . . . . . .

One of our Best Days Ever

2016 is off to a hell of a start. It's been great so far. And it just got a whole lot better.

We love hot springs and saunas. It's always been our #1 vacation or way to relax together. After an awesome sweatlodge in our back yard whetted our appetites, we saved up for a real sauna. We got one of those kits, with a real sauna heater and cedar wood planks. It came a few weeks ago. 

Then life took over, trouble at work and what not. I had to wait for a bit. Plus it was insanely windy, and tough to set it up. And we had to reinforce our deck to support the weight, and fix the tiles and railing that got taken out by that mega hail storm a few years ago.
After adding two support beams below the deck, removing 21 square feet of decking and leveling it all out, we covered it with outdoor carpet, got the railing frame put up, and got to work.

This went up in a matter of hours. You can kind of tell because of the sun. I couldn't have done it without Rose. She held up the barrel ends in the whipping wind while I secured everything. Twice. User error on the first go round.

Huge thanks to Tom, one of Yokie's colleagues, for the super well done wiring. It looks great.

So far, we've done two sessions. One was me and Yokie. Epic. We christened it on the 6th of March, 2016. The first day of the rest of our lives. It was perfect. Hot. Great. Then, yesterday, I took a quick one with Rose. She did great.

One for the Birds

We had a bird stuck in our wood stove the other day.

I had noticed for about a day Kip was acting weird around our fireplace. He's a much better mouser than Softball, who is more of a catnip and dogtail hunter than a mouser. I also heard scuttling, and I knew something was around, but I though it was a mouse underneath the wood stove platform.
Finally, it got really noisy, and, on a lark (sorry) I looked inside the stove. Here was this poor guy, probably massively dehydrated and confused.
I went to get a fitted sheet to corral him, but he flew out into our laundry room, and I opened the back door, and he tooled right off the Rosebud river, probably to go get a drink.

Race Report: Red Lodge Snobike Rodeo

So, I'm a few weeks behind on the blog, and so on this race report as well. This race was on the 21st of February. It was a 12 mile, out and back, fatbike race held on hardpacked snow on a forest road.

Flatlining

In the buildup to this race, I had a few major problems. The main one was my tires. It's been a fiasco. I broke my HED Big Deal rear wheel in Malaysia, right at the end of my trip over there. When I got back, I sent it back to HED, and had to pay for a new one. The new one has a different construction, and has proven very tricky to setup. I just can't get the tires to seat, they keep leaking. I tried a Surly Lou. No go. Surly Knard. No go. 45 North Husker Du, not at all.

Better Late then Never

As one tire after another proved unworthy of the hyper finicky HED rim, the delay stretched from a minor annoyance right into a couple of months without really riding. Each failed tire resulted in another order, another week's wait, and then another week of fumbling, mounting, and remounting the tires.
In the midst of all this, pursuant to a very, very, very frustrating call with HED, I launched a comprehensive search for tubeless ready tires in a 26 x 3.8 size. This search was so frustrating. Everybody knows that for years we've been riding these tires tubeless, but none of the manufacturers could be bothered to throw together a tubeless option until this year. That's years too late to respond to the market. Much newer tire sizes have come since the 26 x 3.8-4.2 size, and they've got tubeless options available. You can get 27.5+ tubeless, and 29+, and even 26+. This is a very disappointing oversight for these companies.
After this race, I would finally find some tubeless options, more on that later, but leading up to this race, I had zero training, and wasn't even sure the tire would hold for the race.

Goddamn Bozemanites

The morning of the race was absolutely perfect racing conditions. Bluebird, calm warm, awesome morning. Nice, small but friendly vibe at the race start. There was a very small turnout. Probably 20 racers. Some serious ones though. The Spoke Shop guys were there, the oldest and most serious of the Billings teams. There were a couple guys from Bozeman.
I took off in fourth or so. People were pushing a pretty good pace considering the low turnout and steep, punchy climbs in the last two miles of the uphill. I waited a bit, and then saw the leader pulling away. I made two passes and settled in second place. That's where I would ultimately finish.
Never saw third place after that, at least not on the way up.  I kept slowly chipping away (I thought) at the lead of the first place guy. He was a really nice guy from Bozeman, with an unusual riding style: he really weaved all over the road. I was following his tracks, and his wild line choices made me think I was catching him. As I found out later, he's just not a straight line guy, and he rides a bit wobbly, but fast. Super fast. I never could catch him. He beat me by three minutes in the end. I beat the third place guy by that much again.

Overall, considering the runup, how sick I was for a week before and after the race, and the fact that even on the day before the race I wasn't sure I could make it, I am very happy with the result. I didn't even know about the race until weeks before, was denied any training, and I still finished second place in my first winter race. Not bad.
Also, though, not good. It broke my streak of five victories in a row. This, actually, has been a good thing. A very good thing. It's shaken up my training and my confidence, and reinvigorated my riding goals for the summer. I've got some very big plans this summer, and they are coming together nicely.

Thanks to the Spoke Shop, and Pedal United for organizing this race. Thanks to Back Alley Metals in Red Lodge for my really cool second place prize.

Brother Snuggles

Stillwater Training

It's a long, lonely, cold winter doing training rides in Stillwater County Montana.