Art, Music, Justice

I was at the first show in the Art, Music, Justice tour tonight. It was a pretty moving experience that brought issues of global poverty, human trafficking, and other abuses to the forefront for me. I've talked about these issues with others in the past, but haven't done anything about it myself. I was reintroduced to the issues by Sara Groves, Brandon Heath, Derek Webb, Sandra McCracken, and Charlie Peacock. They discussed topics, sang songs, and showed us videos of folks that have been filmed by The International Justice Mission and Food for the Hungry. I don't know if any of the shows on this tour are coming to a town near you, but I urge you to check it out. It'll open your eyes to a lot of things that you can do to help your neighbor, whether he/or she lives across the street or across the globe.

Alaska looks pretty awesome

Awesome (def: inspiring awe) is the exact word to describe the images I saw in a MTBR thread this morning. A couple of guys took nearly three weeks to travel around the wilderness of Alaska via bikes and rafts. I'll probably never do anything like that trip. I'm really glad that the original poster in that thread decided to share his adventure with strangers on the internet.

I got home and played with the kid for a bit, then headed out to do a few loops out on the limestone again. I hear that Knoch Knolls is drying out pretty well. I'll probably get a chance to go out there sometime over the weekend. In fact, hitting dirt all weekend long seems like a fine idea.

My legs are tired

Our IPP/FRT ride last night and then a quick trip out to Silver Springs at lunch today has worn out my legs. I skipped riding in the evening and had a family night.

We went over to my brother-in-law's place for dinner. An old family friend of my wife/in-laws is in town so we all hung out at caught up on old times. Everyone reminiced about old times and caught each other up on the happening of their respective families. I just hung out.

I found this cool web comic tonight while I was catching up on email and my internet bike porn addiction this evening. It's about a couple of bike geeks who work in a shop somewhere. I read through the entire series in one sitting.

It ain't raining, but it sure ain't dry yet

The rain came, and it kept coming, and coming some more. Everything is soaking wet and flooded around here. I see no hope of riding on dirt until the end of the week at best. A lot of the Fox River Trail is under water too. I'll be riding a lot of limestone this week.

So what's a guy to do? Grab the gearie and go ride some limestone of course! I did a couple of laps at Springbrook and marveled at how nice it is to not have limestone dust all over your water bottles. The rain is good for something after all. There are a lot of rough spots where run-off from the rain took a lot of rocks with it. There's also a good sized "puddle" at the low spot where trail users who connect at Modaff come under Naperville/Plainfield Rd to the big loop at the forest preserve.

Something cool happened on Saturday. I had a chance to attend a community workshop that was put on by the Naperville Park District. They are working on a master plan for the bikeway and walking trails in Naperville. I was pleased to see that they're working with other municipalities and governmental agencies in order to connect trails in Naperville out to other trails in the region. This bodes well for my hope of finding a safe cycling route out west toward the office. I also liked that they recognize dirt trails as a legitimate type of trail in their future plans. I hope that they'll build more mtn bike friendly trails in Naperville in the future.

There will be one more meeting at The Barn in Naperville tonight at 6:30. Click here for more info. Go out and let the park district know what you are looking for in a trail. Mention that you want more natural surface trails too. :D

AIr pressure

Make sure that you check it and fill up before a ride.

I grabbed the Kona for a quick ride around Springbrook tonight and had a pretty crappy ride. About a quarter mile into the ride I noticed that I was low on air in both tires, real low. I figured that it would be fine though, so I kept going. That was a mistake. Everytime I took a corner at speed I flet like I was going to roll the tires right of the rims. On top of that, riding on almost flat tires totally saps your strength.

I did 9.5 miles in 42 minutes today and it was hard work. By contrast, I did the same mileage on the IRO last week a full five minutes less. I'm no roadie, but I do track my progress and want to get better. Improper maintenance of my bike killed my ride today.

If by some miracle the rain holds off tomorrow, I'll be abusing myself at SWK on the Monocog. I'm looking forward to it.

Mini-streak

I was able to pick the streak back up on Friday for a nice 22 mile ride at Springbrook. Half of it was solo and I was joined by a coworker who lives near me for the middle section of the ride. It was a nice warm-up for the leg thrashing that I got from YC and the boyz on the FRT the next day.

I continued the bike festivities at Palos for the Meltdown race. I volunteered all day long and got to see some folks giving it their all. I've got to hand it to the sport and expert racers. They were killing it out there, especially the winner of the expert class, Thomas Bender. He was an absolute machine. I was on on the course with CDT and we were able to see him hammer through all four laps. He was on fire.

A little more rain hit us yesterday so the streak was over. However I'm still plugging away by getting a short 10 miler out this evening.

Tonight I realized that I need to do a lot more work if I want to get better than last at a ChiCrossCup race this Fall.

Hill repeats, here I come.

Streaks don't last forever...

I've been lucky enough to ride for three days in a row, that's pretty for me lately. That short streak ended today thanks to the remnants of Gustav. I'm a little bummed, but it's not so bad really. I hung with the family and played with the kid. It was a good night.

Tomorrow? Maybe I'll get a ride in, we'll see.