It appears that the good people of New Belgium Brewery amongst a slew of other co-sponsors are throwing themselves a short track series on Tuesday nights starting in May. $5 bucks!! There is a God. And there is a reason I drink 1554 and Abby Ales religiously.

Note the goat heads, so don't be rolling your Dugast Rhino 45's. Also, bring your A-game cause Kerkove's gonna want to own this!

New Belgium Brewery loves cyclists and we love their beer. Maybe too much.

Check it. My boy Richard throwing down on March. His brethren are out there on the roadies getting wasted in Kermesses but Richard is showing us the man that he is in the dirt.

Mud and cowbells Richard. You go boy.

Holy Joy. The joy that only a wife can give to you. That was today. She and I, fat tires and in-the-woods communion. Sitter with the boys to give us that oh-so-needed grin session. Just like when we first met and we rolled in epic rain showers together railing trails we shouldn't have been on trying to mak e a B-line back to our car.

Laughing.

It's coming folks. I sense the change because the initial domino has been flipped. I flipped it. How can I do this? Because the one I love tells me the cage door is open. So many men have to suffer for the need to keep on keeping on for their situation. Blindly. Soullessly. My lady used her own Kung Fu power to kick the cage door open and set me...us free.

Laughing.

So Bliss. I apologize. I want you back as a reader. I'm so close to ending my crappy rants of boo-hoo-woe-is-me-isms. You are my benchmark and litmus test and I heard you as you sat in the back of BCS. It spoke to me. And I know how you, my peeps want me. How I want me.

Laughing.

So close. On top of it. Back doesn't hurt. Mind is freeing. Energy lifting. Spring coming. Kids laughing.

Big daddy's back. Big daddy is coming back, laughing.

Fat tires have drugs in them. Do you know this?

I'm going to do a more thorough posting on Nick and the boys great little biz they've opened up here in Boulder called The Pro's Closet. As an 'experiment', I am utilizing their very capable services to sell my 2004 Moots. Go ahead! Lob in a bid!

The system works! I do not know what else to say. Over the course of a year or so, the Parks and Recreation board and City Council members of Boulder have listened and reacted to the needs of cyclists...in in our case 'crossers in particular...to prioritize a facility in Boulder designed to allow for us to get our knobby tired game on. I've posted on this project in the past, but it is amazing to see this project get wings. Bobby and Pete have been using an incredibly soft-style evangelism with the City that has expressed the needs of mountain bikers, 'crossers and off road enthusiasts in a manner that wasn't condemning 'the System' and shaming it into the realization we have no facilities, but rather enrolling them with the true need and a participatory manner. It worked! The project is now top priority and being examined for implementation as early as next year. That is unbelievable considering I was prepping myself for the fact that *if* the project got approved, it likely would be something my children would benefit from when they come of 'crossing age.

The conceptual image of the park above is still in major flux but as you can see, so much is being accommodated. Awesome. Smooth trails, cross specific trails, technical single track...you name it! I love the fact that a staircase feature was injected into the plan for cross specifc needs. Imagine if you will a set of stairs with a bunch of local sponsor labels on it. Look at the image to the right and replace Duvel with New Belgium and inject RockyMounts, Boulder Cycle Sport, VeloNews and so on. Rad. A set of barriers along the cross course would also be great. Perhaps something that could be moved in terms of location.

In other news, there may be some surprises this year with respect to some yummy UCI courses here in Boulder. New courses that is. Stay tuned....

'Cross on.

No, irreversibility is not a word. It just feels like the right word. At this moment. Especially as it relates to the bubbling thoughts that have woven though my mind lately. When the brain starts firing again through paths of synapses that carry the good thoughts, not the bad ones, it is so immediately recognizable. It starts to ensure the trend towards what you want has its first domino flicked; irreversibly. What makes that happen? Some trees, some fat tires, some decent weather for sure. But an element is the group....in other words the right combination of people that were meant to be surrounding you on days when you need it. And it was a varsity team collection of good doers, non-naysayers, tail-waggers, joy-grabbers.

A crew of the kind, fit-tire appreciating folks assembled at Hall Ranch to get our 7,000 feet of frolics on. Conditions were a 6 out of 10 in terms of staying 'on trail' due to remaining high altitude snow and mud but the grins ensured mud met teeth and that is the methadone for the brain I speak of....often.

On the ride, one gear again, without fail brought smiles. It is so ridiculous how a single speed can make you feel. I don't know what to say. It's perfect. The rhythm you get into of swaying that bike and it's near silence in doing so is sort of like the perfectly thin foam on a nitrous poured beer sitting on top of the brown gold. It's what you want, and the mustache it leaves on your lip often induces a smile. It is simply not like riding a bike with gears. You have to not fight the bike but rather you join it. I'm not trying to sound all spiritually symbiotic here, but it is the truth. You make the 1 x 1 have rhythm and it helps you. Propels you. Gears make you think about suffering, and...well they just make you think. All the while I'm looking for the perfect solution to find 'Channel Zero' for my brain. Synaptic snow. And, yeah, while you need gears some times, you pick the places ad times where the 1 x 1 can bake the brain into peace.

Peace. Yes. With people who felt the same today.

Digital Celluloid....

Mmm. Trees. I am turning that corner from racing to remember that I love to just...ride. This was an extremely confusing, stressful, anxiety filled week. Sitting underneath that swirl is this void...like a deflation that I guess must be like a 'now what' sort of void. All that pent up 'get 'er done' emotion blown out in the Motherland and...now what. The re-entry into real life's atmosphere has been difficult but a Chimay and an unbelievable conversation with my wife last night sort of rattled my mental cage back into some sense of reality. I don't expect anyone reading this to understand this hollowness, 'cause I don't think I get it at the moment, but maybe...

I took a bit of the edge off today. Two wheeled methadone to treat t he shadows in the brain and reminisce with the trees to make 1 + 1 = 3. Or maybe 1 x 1 equaling 3. It was yum. Crisp air, trees, silent single track and 5 minutes from my house. I hit Heil today and communed with my 1 x 1 and grooved in and out of the trees, up and over the baby heads, through the snow packed elevation, past the fir trees all who seemed to smile and give me a whisper of whatup. I said whatup back. Out loud. No one was around so that doesn't make me crazy as far as I know.

I need more of it. A little more mental furniture rearrangement and a bit more singeltrack. Travel this week so the mind is going to get all crazy like trying to cope with the machine guns and the anxiety. I'll run my haunts and let the endorphiones anesthetize me.

I'll start to write some good stuff soon. I gotta straighten out first my friends.

I saw this posting on the Gooney Riders blog and had to re-cast it here. I am going to pick up this issue of Bike magazine and have a read for myself, but the thing that caught my eye are the dudes in the scanned pic! Those are my boys Tim, Rasta Steve and Troy!

Dudes, Bike mag made you famous...or the regularity of you 3 doing the Ned Bus ride to get your singletrack on up in the mountains merely had you once again in the right place at the right time. Ha!

I am a slacker as of late thus the lack of posts! Plus, I do not want to be a continual whiny bitch in my posts which I am unfortunately turning into a little bit these days...but I'm always trying to find the silver linings to the crappola and write about that, whilst the smelly and hay encrusted bullshit howitzer shells are being salvoed at me, over me and around me. I'm tired of writin' it, you're tired of readin' it! So, let's move on, shall we?

Looks like Co Springs was a dirt crit yesterday. Good on ya guys who got out there. Super small fields. I want to hear some reports!

While the dirt crit was going on, WB, Weber and I communed with John G, Freeride Zach Greg P and Rocco up in Nederland. Dave Hix and Rob S showed up JUST after we had left. Sorry guys!! Oh God. It was dee-lish. We got lots of the braap braap in on all the old favorites. We were trading paint, pulling epic wheelies. table-ing and snaking through monumentally gorgeous single track like little boys. No start whistles, embrocations, tension, goat heads, rolled tires. Just smiles.

Did I bring my camera? Yes. Did I leave it in the car? Yes again. Beat.

The Moots performed like a bag of bolts. I literally hung it up on the wall after the last short track over the summer and have bene riding my 1 x 1 ever since. I think I had 3 maybe 4 operative gears. Probably enough! But, was annoying as shit. On this steep rise coming out of a river gully, I stepped on it and...PING!...chain blows right off and throws my knee cap into the Thomson stem. Son of a BEEATCH! Standing right there is this older, totally mellow core MTB'er. He asks if I am OK, I grunt a somtehinsomethin and like he knows something I don't, reaches out and hands me his chain tool. I reach in to my bag and as I am doing this, realize exactly where I left it mine...on my work bench in my car hole.

Serendipity. I think it was Jesus himself intervening to me. Or maybe just a smart old hippy looking at a dumb ass Boulder-ite with limited tools.

So it was just epic with the RM Mafia up there at 9K. The snows will be coming....some day....and it was good to do the silent stuff with my homies. It was a re-set button for sure.

Re-calculate. Re-calibrate. Re-set wheels on tracks. Re-set. Re-charge.

What an inexplicable release. My dear friends, some new souls met, my single speed and deliciously epic, tight and twisty technical single track...at night...in a tunnel of light.

At work today, my head came close to exploding no less than 4 times. I literally was calculating what the anuyerysm woudl feel like when it happens. I was sort of hoping it woudl be quick and not hurt a lot. By 4:30 I am watching my watch. I'm in an executive meeting. We are announcing major changes and I all I am thinking of is that that I need to get going 'cause I am going to be late for hooking up with my boys! Joe is flying in from Spokane and Brian has a huge crew assembled including the awesome duo from Yeti, Ariel and Abby, former Boulderites now calling Santa Cruz their home and working for the Tribe.

We assembled at the Java Hut in downtown Fairfax CA....the Boulder of the West. I got there a 1/2 hour late and then Joe rips into the parking lot, family in tow, moments later, fresh out of Oakland Airport. Bri and the crew patiently waited for us for 45 minuets and Joe and I got ready and we jammed before 7PM. Team Yeti has bikes prepared for everyone, but I am going to roll the 1 x 1. I just love my own bike as tempting as those ASR's and 575's were....

We climbed and ripped Tamarancho and then traversed up and over into terrain I've never been on. Let's just say this was 'unmarked'.

My

God

Epic, cherry, technical single track. The tight and obscenely twisty stuff that you dream about....at night in a tunnel of light. An utter release after a week of mental torture. My dearest friends....my family in the Bay Area communing on the tight and twisty.

I miss you.

Bri and Ariel on the ascent.

Joe advertising

Brian selling the shit out of the Yeti experience

Abby loading the Yeti rig

ASR

Speed Buggy healing up after Achilles surgery

Ball as he is seen in his high powered biz dev role