NAHMBS - Here I come!

Tomorrow's going to be a good day. YC, TS1, CDT, and I are heading down to Indy for the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. We're going with cameras in hand and maybe some money too? Good times.

Another good weekend

I got a pleasant surprise Friday afternoon. Mark gave me a call and wanted to know if I was up for a couple of laps around Springbrook. I gladly obliged. I jetted home from work and rode over to the MUP on the Rob Roy. We enjoyed a nice conversation and some fun riding. I brought my lights but didn't need them until I hit some asphalt. Nice.

Saturday started with a drive up Rt. 59 into Barrington so I could hit Beverly Lake with the rest of Team Slack. We rode a mix of grass trails, singletrack, a little asphalt, and more grass. The ride was actually the hardest 10 miles I've done all year, but it was good to ride with almost all of the original DG crew at one time again. We finished the day with talks of grand dreams for DG, BBQ, a swag giveaway, and we watched RR and GHGH catching air off of a ramp. Good times. I finally ended up putting on my 18t freewheel after the Beverly Lake ride.

Sunday was good too. Cgreg, YC, and I hit Palos. My front rotor was rubbing on the caliper and I wasn't sure what was going on. I ended up riding one of the noisiest bikes in the forest preserve that day. We started up Bullwhip/ML East up to the road where we rode Cemetery Hill, Post Hole, Stonehenge and the Yellow trail back to the Out & Back. It's strange to see that giant log pile gone. Anyway, we rolled on and Chris bailed in order to get home in time. YC and I rode on to Gravity Cavity and stopped at the bridge. We decided to head back up and go grab a bite to eat. On the way back we chatted it up with Steve, Ryan, and a few others in the Staging area. It was a short drive to this little hot dog stand that I hadn't been to before. We ended up seeing Steve there again just as we were about to head our separate ways.

I worked on my bike a little after I was done. It turns out that there was nothing wrong with the bike other than a slow leak and a front wheel that was improperly placed in the fork dropouts. User error. :( It was still a good mtn biking weekend overall.

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.