Techstars Application... Done at last.

It seems like a lifetime ago that I posted about Techstars. Well, today we finally submitted the application...

We'll see how it goes. If nothing else, I'll be sure to post some of the answers to the 28 questions that were asked on the application. This will give readers an idea of the direction TrailCentral will be taking in the future ...

Love is Work

Love is work. No seriously, Love = Work.

I was speaking with my wife yesterday and I started giving her some greif about not wanting to work on a project for her because I was too tired. She quickly said,

"Sometimes love means doing something that you don't necessarily want to do for someone else"

I didn't say anything at the time, but in my head I started thinking about my defenition of work:

Work: Doing something that you don't necessarily want to do for someone else.

I slept on it and this morning I told my wife that "Love" sounds a lot like "Work." She laughed and appended "without compensation" to the end of her last statement.

ah... good point.

haha

What are the odds?

I've recently undertaken the large project of updating the headers on TrailCentral.com. The old headers were not only out dated, but I added a new blogging feature that required I update the headers.

While I was brainstorming ideas about what to do with the header I simply asked my wife...
"What do you think about this? You know how the shopping area in Caesar's Palace changes from day to night every 1/2 hour? What if I did that with my website header?"

If you have ever been to Caesar's Palace you know what I'm talking about. The shopping area in the building looks like a real outdoor street and the ceiling has a sky painted on it. In the course of 1/2 hour to 1 hour the lighting changes to make it appear as though it is daytime or night. It is a really neat effect and worth stepping away from the gaming tables to check it out.

So, I wanted to implement that on my website. For the header, I wanted a photo to display that would correspond to the time of day.

Well, apparently I wasn't the only one that thought that was a cool idea. When I logged into my work station yesterday I started reading current tech news and I saw this headline: "Google adds decorative themes to home page." It goes on to read "Sprucing up its famously plain Web site, Google Inc. is offering a new option that plants its Internet search box in panoramic settings that change with the time of day and the outside weather."

Ok, Google trumped me by adding outside weather to the idea. I wasn't thinking that detailed, but I'll be damned if I was beaten to the punch by the time of day.

Well, I'll be branded a copy cat, but I'm still going to implement the time of day photo into my header. I think it will be really cool on TrailCentral!

Lookout Mountain Hill Repeats...

I have a whole new respect for you if in your head you said "Bullshit!" I didn't do repeats. Lets forget the fact that it is a Tuesday after work ride. Lets focus on the fact that I rode it only once and that one time was more than enough for me. It wasn't my best ride. In fact it was probably one of my least "best" rides. Lets diagnose the problem, shall we?

1. Last week my road bike kicked the dust and I can't afford to get it fixed. That is the problem with having multiple bikes, one of them always needs work!
2. Since my road bike kicked it, I've spent my evenings working on the new blogging referral tool at TrailCentral, rather than putting in a couple extra hours of riding.
3. Today was the Big Ring group ride. It started two weeks ago and my team (Feedback Sports) is the team that leads the ride. Basically, this means until word gets around a bit about the ride, and more than just the Feedback team shows, the ride is going to be ridden by mostly expert riders. A great bunch of guys, but punishers on the bike.
4. Previously said point 1 left me without a road bike to ride on Lookout, which means the DEAN Ti MTB was the steed of the day for me.
5. The previously said point 2 left another 5 lbs on my ass because I was working on the computer, rather than putting time in on the bike. I'll be doing a happy dance once I get below 200 lbs again. This has been a long winter and I got super lazy and packed on some serious poundage. My first race is in June and I have until then to get back down to the 180s. We'll see if I can do it.
6. Previously said point 3 left me, the fatty, riding my fat tire ride up lookout with a group of expert riders on road bikes. It was a recipe for disaster...

Would I do it again. Yes. In fact, I plan to next Tuesday at Big Ring.

My ride is bad ass!

While riding today I started to take inventory of my ride...

Today I was riding the Surly 1x1. The bike is a bitch. I say that knowing that a bike is the only thing you can call a bitch and still expect a great ride from it, but that is for another post...

Truly, the bike has attitude. Her frame is jet black (yes, my bikes are female). Black as in outlaw. Hell, even the name, Surly, throws out attitude. On the downtube there is a sticker that reads "One Gear, More Beer." Move the eyes to the top tube and you get to see my enthusiasm for single speeding with a sticker that reads "Fuck That Shift." An awesome sticker that my bike wears like a medal of honor. On the paint is a fine layer of red dust. Dust that got picked up while riding in Moab last month. I refuse to wash my bike because I don't want it to loose the look of being ridden hard. It suits the bike and all the attitude it emits.

Now if you move the eyes to the rear triangle you'll see a clamp. On that clamp is a trailer hitch that leads to a bright yellow and blue rumble seat where my son sits . The trailer comes complete with an orange warning flag and reflectors. My son is so proud of his ride! Under his red helmet is a grin from ear to ear as we cruise along the local bike paths... me on my bad ass ride, and he in his...

Single Speeding Amasa Back Trail in Moab, Utah

Amasa Back Trail

Trail Information

Photo Gallery

GPS Map

I didn't have any idea how the trails would be in Moab when I started packing for my trip to Utah. It has been a particularly snowy winter on the Front Range so I had prepared for the worst.

The bicycle of choice was a Surly 1x1. I chose this bike because I could ride it in any weather condition.

There was one risk, however. It was too early in the season for me to be hammering some of the more difficult trails on the 1x1, which meant I wouldn't be able to choose any trail I wanted to ride. Instead, I had to limit my riding to those trails I could comfortably ride on my 1x1.

In all honestly, that didn't limit me much. I only had 5 days of riding in Moab and there is plenty of good dirt that can be ridden with a single speed. The first trail I opted to ride was Amasa Back.

Amasa Back is a short distance from main street in Moab. I stayed at the Holiday Inn just north of town and rode my bike to the trail. This gave me a nice warm-up as I rode the paved streets outside of Moab and along side the Colorado River.

I knew I was getting close when the paved street ended and dirt road began. The dirt road hugged the north side of a canyon wall and it was slick! And I don't mean slick in terms of "Slick Rock." I mean hard packed snow that had an icy sheen. This was a little unnerving.

Although a lot of Amasa Back is well exposed, there is a short canyon dip where there could have been similar conditions. I split away from the icy road and as I rode down to the canyon valley I was pleasantly surprised that there was no snow or ice on the trail. In fact, the trail was in great condition!

From the valley bottom I continued to hammer my way up the trail with my single gear. Amasa Back has a perfect combination of dirt and slickrock and is quite possibly my favorite trail to ride in Moab.

My early season form didn't slow me down at all as I churned the single speed up the hills towards the end point of the trail. Once at the end I forced myself to look over the edge of the cliff. I'm a big chicken when it comes to heights and this little challenge was a way for me to fight back a bit. I may have been nervous, but like hell I was going to let it get the best of me!

When I've ridden Amasa Back in the past I've absolutely loved the descent. However, on my rigid single speed it wasn't as enjoyable. At this point I was wishing my upper body had a couple more months of training. Single speeding on a rigid frame requires a lot of strength in the upper body. The constant jarring on my early season form made for a much slower descent than usual.

The slow descent didn't really didn't bother me. I used it as an excuse to really enjoy the perfect weather (mid 60s), the scenery, and the fact that I wasn't on the snowy Front Range!

Enjoy!

Snap, Crackle, Pop! I Visit a Chiropractor.

I've been bitching an moaning to my wife lately about feeling like a 90 year old man. The bitching doesn't fall on deaf ears. In fact, she too does her share of bitching about aches and pains and can sympathise.

We are both relatively young (No where near 90), yet we both feel like the aches and pains have really started to take a toll on our energy levels and general health.

For a while we were thinking that "maybe this is the way people our age feel." I don't think either of us bought into it, but it was the only excuse we could come up with. So lately both my wife and I have said "Bullshit, there is no way I'm going to feel like this. I'm still young!"

Today I took a baby step on the road to feeling normal and visited a local chiropractor. I've never been to a chiropractor so I honestly didn't know what to expect.

It started with a series of questions about my health. Then it time was spent evaluating my back. The Dr. seemed please and said I had a rather healthy back. However, I had some misalignment in my mid back and there seemed to be a small hip shift that she was curious about.

Apparently the hips only shift if there is a large impact. She asked if I had fallen hard enough to remember in the last couple years. I was quickly able to rattle off about a dozen different times my hips and seat bone would have had pretty hard impacts; hit by a car while riding my bike, crashing on my mountain bike about a dozen times, etc. Don't get me wrong, I think of myself as a pretty good cyclist, but as anyone who rides can tell you, the more your ride the more likely you will be to have an accident or crash on your bike.

The last ten minutes of the appointment is where the Snap, Crackle, and Pop happened. She started with my neck. A simple twist of her wrists while holding my head and I heard the loudest cracks I've ever heard, without any pain. In fact, suddenly when I got up my head felt like it was on a well greased bearing. It was wonderful.

She did some work on my mid back in hopes to realign the rotated vertebrae, but time ran out before she could adjust the lower back.

It has been about 10 hours since my visit and at first I didn't really notice a difference. However, as the day has progressed, I've really noticed small things have been a bit easier, such as being able to bend over to pick something up.

The Dr. told me that I wasn't cured, but with some minor tweaks hear and there I should really start feeling more my age. That was music to my ears!

24 of Big Bear and other 24 Hour Races

Recently, one of the community members uploaded the 24 Hours of Big Bear course to the GPS Mapping section of TrailCentral.

While taking a look at the course in Google Earth (Pictured at left), I started thinking of all the the other 24 hour races promoted by Granny Gear Productions.

Well, that started the snowball rolling and I spent some time this afternoon adding all the 24 hour races to the TrailCentral events page.

You can view details about all seven races - promoted by Granny Gear Productions - by going to the events page and searching by "24 Hour Event." Alternatively, you can go right to the source using the links below.

So if endurance racing is your bag, you better get into gear because the first race is the 24 Hours of Temecula, which is only 49 days away from the time I'm posting this... Good Luck!

Granny Gear Production Races:
24 Hours of Temecula
24 Hours of Conyers
24 Hours of Big Bear
24 Hours of Killington
24 Hours of Landahl
24 Hours of Moab

Music: The Fray - How To Save A Life

I purchased a CD for my wife a couple weeks ago call "The Fray." This is a Denver band that has finally made it onto my radar. Their sounds is pretty good and fits the musical style that my wife and I are listening to these days. As a side note - I'm stoked to say that my wife and I actually have a musical style. If you were to look at our music collection that we've collected in the last decade you would say that we are rather eclectic in our taste. Not to mention we stopped buying CDs nearly 5 years ago, so some would also say our collection is a bit dated. Say what you will, I've slowly started to purchase CDs that we enjoy and the recent purchases are certainly starting to show a musical style.

In any case, The Fray has a great sound. The thing about their music is that it oddly all sounds the same. I don't know how else to explain it. If you like one of there songs, you are most likely going to like the entire album. Same can be said if you dislike one of their songs. You'll probably not like any of them.

I wouldn't say that it is my favorite or that even second favorite album, but it does help in the quest to update the CD collection and it makes for some good listening at home, in the car, or at work!