As the end of the year approaches, it feels as though time is running faster. Like the last few grains of sand in an hour glass, hurtling ever faster to the other side. Tomorrow is Friday already and it feels like only Monday. It has been a busy week with even more on tap over the weekend and no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
Sunday was H. and the EMIL's Annual Christmas cookie cooking night. The big twist? This is the first time the event was hosted in our home. Yep, this will be our first farm Christmas and the oven was on for nearly 11 hours straight. The house smelled of tasty morsels and it was hard not to eat everything in sight. There were cookies of varying states everywhere: dough, cooking, cooling, and ready to eat. So much for trying to lose 10lbs over the holidays. My calorie budget was blown many times over before the first hour was out. At least my DT Swiss mechanics apron was finally put to some good use.
Tuesday came and offered up a short window to get outside and ride. Unfortunately it had rained pretty much Saturday through Tuesday morning, leaving a high probability for very muddy trails. To my surprise, there wasn't any mud to contend with on the home trails. In lieu of mud was water. Lots and lots of water.
I took the 26"wheeled bike out because it already had a lower gearing on it as well as fatter tires with less tread. The tires did a great job of floating over the water logged mud, rather than knifing in, and keeping clean. Nothing in the way of a true fat bike, but close enough to pretend. Besides I have had to endure phenomenal photo after photo of fat biking fun from Gnat all week. Pretending helped ease any compulsive shopping urges. Did I mention we had lots of water?
Later that afternoon we headed out to start and finish our Christmas shopping. Along the way we chopped down our very own Christmas tree. A small cedar tree that was a volunteer grower in H's parent's backyard. Kind of a Charlie Brown / Redneck Christmas 3 sided tree. It's barely strong enough to hold up the lights and ornaments, but all dressed up it is rather dashing. Not bad for a free yard weed.
The TN State CX Championships are this weekend. Pumptrack Jim seems to have somehow convinced himself that I stand a good chance at a title (I think we need to check his Christmas cookies for foreign contaminants). So much so that he bought me a set of Specialized S-Works Renegade 1.8 tires to use specifically for this race. The course is pretty balanced to cross and mtb alike, but he believes the fatter-than-CX-but-narrower-than-most-29"-tire Renegades are the ticket to victory lane. As for me, I'm just hoping this old engine fires on all cylinders.
Not wanting to waste such nice tires, I decided to seal them up to my just built wheels. This is my first set of built-by-me wheels. I cut out my old pink Chris King hubs from my mismatched 2006 era 26" wheels and laced them up to Arch EX rims with black DT Swiss competition spokes. Since they'd pretty much just hung on the wall after 2009's wet and nasty Cohutta, I overhauled the bearings as well. I'm hoping the rebirth of these hubs brings about some good change. We'll see what karma has in store for me. Nothing like untested tires on a brand new untested set of wheels heading into a State Championships race.
No comments:
Post a Comment