My Car's Name is Krvin

Krvin is strong enough to haul gravel, big enough to swallow an in-ground pool, and able to leap small raccoons in a single swerve. 

A long list of honey get done's has besmirched my Saturday. It started off innocently enough, a late lay in after a late night of burlesque, kinetics, and arial fabric acrobatics featuring The Amazing* Molly Graves with Pops and Kamini. We started off meeting for drinks and food and more drinks at Bosco's for a send off to our dearly deported friends Kevin "Pops" Glynn and his exuberant wine pusher and witty wife Kamini, then ended up at the Rutledge enjoying some burlesque-ness.

* - it's now a prerequisite to include "The Amazing" whenever referring to Molly.

Melanie, Kevin, T.roy, and Kamini

I'd awoken with plans to run the puppy down riding in the back then getting some more trail and dirt jumps built. T.roy had hooked me up with new nipples (gotta love a buddy like that) to fix my broken spoke from last Sunday's adventure. I'd managed to get the spoke fixed, tensioned, and the wheel trued up. I was just getting it back on and adjusting my chain tension when H. came in from the barn inquiring as to my plans. I told them to her as she let out a sad sighing "oh, I was hoping we could go into town together." Since town was on my list of errands planned for the day it was pretty easy to just swap the order of the plan and maintain marital bliss. (I'm told ignorance is bliss too, perhaps that'll be my route next time)

one broken, one brass, and 3 aluminum too

X marks the spoke and I owe myself seventeen fifty

We have a mud bog. The A/C drains out by our door amidst H.'s cannas. It's a bog. A stinky, murky mess. It's been bothering H. for a while and she's been trying to think of a way to remedy the situation, not just divert it. We were heading to Lowes to get some dryer bits and took a walk around the garden area to see our options. We'd like to capture the water to reuse it to water the plants, but a hose wouldn't really solve it and it leaks out several gallons of water over the course of the day (estimated from the 3/4 gallons collected within an hour and a half) which would quickly over fill a jug small enough to fit underneath the drain pipe.

The solution: A pond. A puppy pond to be more precise. It'll capture the water which the pups can then drink or wade in and also allow us to use it to water the plants. Items purchased the only thing left to do was dig. This is where my day went off course. The plans didn't include digging a 2.5' x 4' by 5' hole in the brick, concrete, and rock filled murk.

The pups were full of their typical helpfulness. Damn supervisors.

Hours and a second run to Lowes later, the pond is installed and filled with cold water. Being a hot and muggy day the "pond" resembled more of a redneck in-ground pool to my heat exhausted mind, so in for a dip I went. Ahh...

To the victim go the spoils!

Don't make me go medieval on your ass. 

On a side note, while I was zooming back to Lowes with the windows down I was reminded of an issue that's been haranguing me of late. Krvin has a plastic interior vs the dog hair catching velcro carpet of ye olde swamp car which is great for 99% of my needs except one. The dog beds slide around while driving with the dogs and fly around the interior when driving with the windows down without the dogs. During the introspective opportunity hours of digging afforded me, I remembered my Awesome Rumble B's from Backcountry Research. Situation resolved. That's 2 down in one day, somebody stop me!

Inside I've been working on installing the new to us washer and dryer and re-organizing the wash room. The washer and dryer are another beneficial side effect of our dearly deported friends. Also the cause of H. not partaking in adult beverages Friday night. See what started out as a quick trip over to pick up a washer and dryer quickly deteriorated into several bottles of wine, beer, and a feastly game of "what's in the fridge." Luckily we escaped just as the margaritas were being threatened. Thanks be to the slumlord for helping me unload the washer and dryer as somebody else was elsewhere. hmm...

Spaciously crampy.

Anyway, after wrestling with the loading/unloading/installing of the new and the un-installing/moving/squeezing around the still-in-the-way-but-hopefully-headed-to-the-barn old ones I've made myself a promise that if I ever have to move a washer and dryer again I'm hiring it out. Screw wrestling with this crap, isn't that what they make kids for - moving washer/driers and mowing the lawn?

One serendipitous side effect of doing the honey get dones is I've happened to catch an episode of House of Hair on the radio. I'm not a frequent listener to House of Hair as I frequently forget when it comes on and which station, but if I happen upon it I usually rock it out. Tonight is just such a night with a twist, it's the six hundred and sixty sixth episode. Yup the 666 episode of House of Hair and I heard it here first. Children of the night, are you ready to rock?

It's been 12 hours since I started working on the bike so I could ride. I've still not been back to turn a wrench and finish up the project. Looks like tomorrow morning will begin like this morning: coffee, music, and bikes. Hopefully, tomorrow afternoon will lead to actually riding a bike.

A prize for myself. Figured I'd earned it.

The Rise and Fall of SuperFowl

JD's new Kockadoodle calling SlingChicken, SuperFowl.

The 60% chance of T-Storms disguised itself as a perfectly sunny and high 80's (50% humidity!!) summer day. Perfect lake temps, not swampy muggy nor roasting heat. Work and traffic actually worked with me rather than against me for a change and we made it to the "beach" shortly after 5, plenty of daylight left to get our swim on.

Photographic evidence for OldGreggars.

H. settled into the hammock pretty quickly. We hung it over the water to up the flip over penalty. It also allowed Dish to constantly fling water all over her when he shook off on the beach. I waded in with the plan of just tossing the retriever dummy for the pup, but the water was too inviting and the line tied to the retriever dummy too awkward. It wasn't long before I was swimming with the pups.

Retriever fun, Catahoula style.

JD and me swimming our laps.

More photo evidence for OG & Freshie. The Hammock Rocks (and swings).

I have plans for a rope swing and a dock or floating swim platform. The lake drops quickly to around 10 feet near the beach entrance, but gets much much deeper as you approach the earthen damn. Plenty deep for airborne shenanigans. Maybe even a water slide with a launch at the bottom? I need to borrow one of those fishing fish finder sonar things that show the outline of the bottom and tell you the depth. Would be cool to have a map of the bottom. For now I just use the action hoe to find the bottom. Perhaps goggles and a waterproof highbeam flashlight are in order?

Hounds of Play.

It was a leech free kinda day. I've been enjoying the "beach" for a few weeks now but it was fun to be able to finally drag H. away from the barn and get a little weekday R&R in, even if it was only in the back yard. I've got the location for my yurt all planned out, just have to talk the slumlord into selling me the back for cheap. Perhaps he'll trade even up for a Yaris and babysitting throughout the playoffs?

Switching Gears...

Our friend, spouse of my old (and I do mean old) nemesis Todd, and pro racing shiftyklicker  Krista Park has recently earned selection to the USA Team for the World Championship Marathon race in St. Wendal, Germany coming up August 8th. Her hard work and baddassness paid off in securing the selection by kicking butt and nabbing 3rd place at the recent Nationals!

Pretty damn sweet and very impressive. However USA Cycling (the people who annually take our money for race licenses and entry fees) doesn't provide any assistance to the USA team (go figure). Luckily some of her sponsors and friends have put together a great $5 raffle to help with her travel expenses. Please take a moment to help a friend and fellow cyclist achieve a dream. Thanks.

 

MTBRacenews, my sponsors and friends have put together a $5 raffle to help me with travel funds for the Marathon World Championship race in Germany as part of the USA team.
 http://www.mtbracenews.com/view_article.jsp?id=115

* Grand Prize - Stan's No Tubes Wheelset (your choice of rim with ZTR hubs)
* Second Prize - Cycle Ops Fluid 2 Trainer with climbing block, mat, & Real Rides DVD series
* Third Prize - Magura Hydraulic Disk Brake Package
* Fourth Prize - 12-week coaching plan from LW Coaching
* Fifth Prize - Raxter Bike Rack
* Sixth Prize - Jagwire customization kit including Ripcord derailleur cable kit, Hyflow Quick-fit hose system or Ripcord brake cable kit; Non-crimp cable tips and disc brake pads all in the color/compound of the winner's choice.
* Seventh Prize - Chamois Butt'r package including 6 tubes of and 6 jars of Chamois Butt'r and 4 sticks of New Bod'e Arm'r stick lubricant

Additional Prizes include: 2 Incycle team kits, nutrition packages from FRS, 3 canisters of recovery drink from Fluid, 10 pairs of socks from Recovery Socks, jerseys from Cannondale, and two 6-packs of canned oxygen from Oxygen4Energy.

Planning Plans

photo from ENO

Here is someone's photo interpretation of what my post work freedom plans revolve around tonight. Add in H., some cold beverages, dogs swimming in the lake, a few million mosquitoes, and watching a marvelous sunset ("beach" faces West) and you'll have what's carrying me through the work day. Time to put OldGreg-N-Freshie's doublenest hammock to good use. I love the backyard.

Hot Action Hoeing

The face pretty much says it all.

A long list of cleaning chores have hung over my head since reclaiming my gear from the murk inside the swamp car. I'd tackled much of it during the week after work, but there was still so much to do. Being insanely scorching out and not conducive to an enjoyable road ride, I opted to tackle the scrubbing duties. The tent, sleeping pad, camp stove, tools, etc... all got assembled, disassembled, and scrubbed clean. It was a hot sweaty job but luckily the puppy had chewed up the hose to the point of being like one of those sprinkler hoses we used to run through as kids on hot days. Thanks pup.

Then I set off out back with the pups to begin adding in new sections of trail I've been wanting to get started for a few weeks now. I'd laid out much of the lake side trail and with the help of my hot action hoe I got to work clearing and sculpting the trail bed. While I sweated and toiled the pups swam. As I made my way along the lake shore their swimming areas followed suit.

Another few hours of work and the lake shore loop should be completed. I hope to get out a few nights this week after work and get it done as it'll add a bit of respite from the climbs. It also has a few whoops and a table top jump for style points. I'm guestimating it'll add between a half to 3/4 of a mile to the trail before connecting to the current perimeter loop. The inside of the loop is completely un-planned but has some great elevation changes and a sweet ravine with ledges and drops ready to be cleared.

Should be good to go with plenty of zoom zoom before the camping stage race weekend. Moo hah!

Having completed my chores Saturday, Sunday was open to adventure. Four of us loaded up in the truck for a trip back down to the magic mountain. Jeffy and Eric hadn't experienced the trail at Franklin State Forrest and Parker (having recently returned from a 2 week pup crawl in Ireland) had only gotten a small taste of it last time we were down there.

Camo short brigade. Thanks for omitting my memo guys, that could have been embarrassing.

Awesomed Up.

(rumor has it the Envy Green label versions are ending soon, so move it or lose it)

Thorns and sharp rocks abound on the mountain. I tripled up for safety. No flats or mechanicals amongst the 4 of us which was pretty surprising since the more riders you have over 3 exponentially increases the amount of mechanical issues experienced on a trail ride. Doubly so when not on a perfectly groomed local trail.

Man down. 

The only issue I can recall was minor and only caused a brief pause in the ride. One of my spokes snapped on a climb. I don't know if I caught a stick or if my heel got it, but there was a sudden stop of my wheel and a loud ping. Amazingly the wheel stayed true and strong for the remainder of the ride (it broke about 4 miles in). I say amazingly because the wheel barely goes true now due to it's extremely hard life, but it's solid and probably truer than when I started the ride. Nice work Hodge!

The trail was in decent shape and offers everything from fast flowy fun trail to rocky technical and grunty climbs, views aplenty and enough options to make for a long day. The humidity was lower than it has been but it was still stifling hot on the South side of the mountain. Which reminds me, we did have a minor equipment emergency before we started. Parker was missing a cleat bolt in one of his shoes, making for a sucky day if we couldn't remedy the situation.

Luckily he had a spare in his patch kit. Unluckily it was too short to fit his cleat and shoe combo. What to do? We tried a water bottle bolt but it was too long. Dug through our gear but came up short. I decided to pull a bolt out of my cleat to see if it was longer and it was. The bonus was the shorter one fit perfectly into my shoe. Day saved.

Then as we were nearing the final 7 miles of hot stifling trail, Parker ran out of water. I still had a full unused bottle in the waiting to which I handed over to Mr. Underprepared. Day saved again, unfortunately for Eric though, he was a few miles too late in letting us know he was out of water. Can't win them all.

Apparently there has been a rash of bridge thieves in the area as many were chained up. Either that or they have been escaping or potentially attacking riders. Not sure, but we made sure not to get too close.

Jeffy's boingy MootoX slider.

Shenani-feast.

After enjoying a refreshing dip in Lake Cheston to clean up and cool off, we headed to Shenanigans for food. This is the first ride since before Crude XC that I have enjoyed not getting sick. No issues and I was able to drink the entire time (water mostly with one bottle having Elite drips in it) and eat a single powerbar smoothie bar. Score. Hopefully this trend continues as it is awesome being able to ride without puking. 

While feasting on our late lunch I again met a new friend. 

Who quickly pulled up a chair.

Sculpture of H. and Ian on display in the art gallery.

Friday Night Bike Maintenance

Whiskey River don't run dry.

This whole work for the weekends thing is beginning to feel a bit redundant. Another week down, another weekend to cram in as much as possible to get through the upcoming week. Kinda gloomy but nothing a relaxing night of wrenches, grease, and whiskey to the iTunes provided soundtrack of life in the man cave to put to bed the lingering stresses of the work week.

My Precious'

Having my babies (cogs) back has opened the gambit for ride possibilities. Having a single single gear made my favorite trails beastly and my options for enjoyment limited. Now that the band is back together all the favorite hits are available. Options abound, the trusty 19 for the mountains, the 18 for the local trails, the 15 for gravel, the notoriously infamously illusive Misfit 16t, the TomiCog for off-road fixie action? Skies the limit. It's so nice having options again. Singlespeeding at it's finest.

Dammit!

While working on the bike I removed the rear wheel to give it a once over and dammed if I didn't find a slit in the sidewall. Miss Mary Molly had warned me about the issue as her sidewalls split up after only a few rides. I attributed it to her having the 120tpi eXCeption rubber and me the cheaper 60tpi versions, as mine had survived many a rough ride including LBL, Cohutta, DSG, CrudeXC, PMBAR, and Kanza without incident. Yep, PMBAR even despite Dicky's gaspy "THOSE aren't Pisgah approved tires!!" exclamation the night before the race.  With a back country trail all mountain-esque trail ride coming up on Sunday I almost swapped out the tire for the front one and put my Ignitor on the front, but dammit I'm going with it. I've been hoping to go all year and all races on the same tires just to do it that I'm not gonna let a little slicey dicey get in my way. If it goes this weekend it'll just give me a chance to practice my sewing with my sew up kit. Yup, living life on the edge, bi-otch.

A big FU by Peter

Thursday again offered escape by bike and recovery by beer. The 74 degree morning start to the commute in was awesome, the 111 heat index on the way home wasn't quite so lover-ly, but luckily once I hit the last 10 miles of hills the shady country lanes offered a reprieve from the oppressive heat. H. and the pups met me at the house for some evening dirt laps out back and a little swimmin' for the waterhound pups.

Sunflower by sunflowers at Sunset

It was the second or third time this year H. has gone out on a ride with me. Pretty special. Two dirt rides and a road ride, I believe. I bailed after a couple laps and played in the lake with the pups, being cooked from the hot ride home. She continued on for several more before we headed back for some dinner: garden fresh grilled tomato sandwiches and a carrot cake celebration for baby Claire's 1 month celebration.

The boy has endless energy, playing ball after a ride/run and swim.

 Ah, livin' the dream. Or at least living the dream on the way to the dream of dreamy dreams. Yep. While I’m alone and (Moots) blue as can be, Dream a little dream of me.


Edit: Why didn't any of you a-holes tell me that Danzig released a new album? Peter I'm looking North. Album purchased for Sunday's ride.

Gingham Dogs and Calico Cats

Where ever I roam, I always manage to make new friends.

Despite the "systems" still being down, I was finally, hopefully, able to close the chapter on the car saga. We'll see. I'm a little leery of what might come about the case of Yazoo beer I dumped out of the slumlords cooler in the back hatch. The beer was bad, the cooler good, so why haul off a cooler of soured beer floating in poop water when I can just dump it out in the car right?

After waiting nearly an hour for my car to be "found" at the lot and brought up to me, I was finally one step closer to resolution. The car was pretty much as I left it, window down enough to sneak an arm in and full of all my cycling and camping crap. It smelled of river dirt, old nasty river dirt. Much like the odor of the poop water I had to wade through to escape.

For the most part it was dry, though some of the compartments and the floor boards were still soaked with swamp water. The glove box was surprisingly water tight and only had a tiny bit of moisture in it. The console was a bog of nastiness. The seats hardened by a thick coating of dirt. Nothing electronic worked and there was a ton of float in garbage that had collected in the front from the open window. My car was a brita filter for the creek. No charge Nashville.

My beloved Toolie roll is back where it belongs.

Whatever lived in the front was the worst hit. Most of it unusable garbage or completely destroyed. The car must have floated ass end up during it's water logged state as the items in the rear hatch were mostly clean and completely dry; Stuff such as my tent, sleeping pad, bag, and wingnut gear from PMBAR. My tools were in a bag behind the drivers seat and were mostly salvageable albeit still in a damp sack. Also the tubes and chain I bought before leaving town were all safe inside their plastic bag. Bonus.

Everything has a varying level of dirt deposited on it. The water was filthy brown and left it's mark and stank on pretty much everything inside the car. Three months of baked in dirt and stank. MMmm.

This allen tool used to be gun metal gray. Now it's whitish with rust accents.

Amazingly my cogs (stainless steel) survived without dirt or rust. 

Some items seemed to escape damage completely. Like my PMBAR water bottle and number plate. Also a newspaper clipping about my Grandfather and Grandmother survived without damage despite being in the bog filled console. My minewt plus lights still work and one of the 2 batteries still has a charge. Hell yeah. Hopefully the batteries aren't damaged and explode when I try to charge them, but so far, so good. Not bad for 3 months of swamp life.

Oh, and Parker. I got the brake pads you needed. Told you they'd turn up. Now you can pay me.