What's the life of a cyclist worth?

Well, if you're riding LEGALLY in California, it appears that your life is worth NOTHING.

Remember the LA County Deputy that struck and killed a cyclist back in December of 2013...WHILE responding to an email on the computer in his squad car?

It seems that the LA County Sheriff's Department will NOT be filing charges against the Deputy, as fucking around with a laptop, thus driving distracted, is "within the scope of his duties...".  What the ever loving fuck?
 I guess the texts that Deputy Woods sent his wife immediately before he ran down the cyclist were official business too?!?

Another person murdered by Law Enforcement. They just got a little more creative this time.

Here's the Facebook page of the Lost Hills Division of the LASD. Their Twitter account is @LASDHQ . Light 'em up...

Want to get really pissed?  Here's the DA's "Charge Evaluation Worksheet" for the incident.
Just another example of Law Enforcement circling the wagons to protect one of their own.

I hate to be political, or sound militant, but this shit has to stop. If those who are tasked with our protection brush off the killing of a cyclist, then what chance do we have with the general population?
Look out for yourself. Protect yourself.  Ride with a camera, still or video. Get plate numbers. Call the police. Be a pain in the ass!
And most of all, KNOW THE LAW!! Put it in your phone, or print off a small copy and keep it somewhere on your person, or bicycle.

I can tell you, with some degree of certainty, that LEOs don't know the Law as it pertains to bicycles.
We had a run-in a few years ago with a Richland County Deputy who told us to ride single-file.
Well, NO! Riding two-abreast is legal. I stated this fact, and he got pissed off, and stopped his vehicle dead in the middle of Airbase Rd. Now you tell me, which of these things is more dangerous?
He demanded my ID, and began to read me the riot act.  When he was done coughing and spitting, I asked him to go to his in-car laptop, and look up SC 56-5-3430. Begrudgingly, he did so. After about 5 minutes, he returned, and threw my ID at me. Well, I missed the catch, and it fell to the ground.
I asked him to pick it up and hand it to me, as I had shown him the same courtesy when he'd initially requested the ID.  He approached me with anger, and I explained that our entire encounter was being recorded.
It was funny how his demeanor changed once he was aware that his face, voice, and behavior were now secure in my Contour HD camera.
He picked up my ID, handed it to me, and without another word, walked back to his cruiser, and drove away.
I still have the video in the bowels of my laptop. You never know...

Be safe out there people. Look out for each other. Whether you like a person in your riding group or not doesn't matter. We are all a part of the same family.

No ridey

No ridey last night, as I was tasked with child care.
The Boss was receiving yet another award from some advertising professionals group, so I hung out with the fellas, played some math flash cards, a little Jenga, and a rousing game of hide and seek in the house.
It didn't suck...

It was a nice night for a ride though...
Oh well, the end of the week is coming, and Monday is Labor Day, which means a nice 4 day stack is on the horizon...

Ah...Richard Sachs...
The man who speaks of himself in third person, and won't put bottle bosses on his CX bikes b/c the are superfluous and inelegant. Nothing says elegant like strips of innertube and some pipe clamps, eh Richie?

Ridley intro'd the new Noah SL yesterday. Lighter, stiffer, and "faster".  Don't know about all that marketing driven stuff, but it looks damn cool.  Also looks a lot like the new Pinarello Dogma F8...

Just saying....
And after seeing this...

And also seeing that it's a bit more than $2k for the frameset (as shown), I'm having a crisis...
Do I go carbon again? Do I spend 2x the $ and go stainless?
There's hand-wringing going on here people...

I'm also still have feelings for the Rose Xeon.  Which can be had for $3500 complete (at today's USD/Euro rates...) with Ultegra Di2...

Wheels are turning....

Ok...enough fluff. Get back to work. I actually have productive-type things to do today as well.  Shocking, I know...

You see, what had happened was...

So we ventured up to Clinton on Saturday morning for Flight of The Dove. Did I mention that getting up at 4:45am is GD early?
The Beast scooped up everyone, and their belongings, and we made it in plenty of time.
And as it usually happens at these things, I found myself on the wrong side of the assembly point for the start.
Out of the parking lot, we were already watching the lead group round the turn. Super.
Instead of just finding a group to ride with, I buried myself, 3 minutes into the ride, and chased for the next 20 minutes.
The bridge was made in the next little town, but the effort was too much, and I just couldn't get over the first climb with the group.
The next 40 minutes was spent riding stupidly, and entirely too hard.
Burning matches...
A nice group assembled at mile 30 or so, and rode together well until the mile 40 rest stop.
Once back on the bike, the day was over.
I might have made it another 3 miles until I went all Sonoran Desert...

And that was that...
Goodbye group...goodbye decent ride.
Survival mode kicked in, and the next hour and change was spent just keeping the pedals turning over.
I caught a guy who was doing the 50 mile route, and we limped back into town together.  Broken...
3:12:xx according to the clock on the stem. Not horrible, but a whopping 27 minutes slower than last year.
And to add insult to injury, I flatted about a mile from the finish. Not changing that one...ride it in...
Everyone finishing looked a bit smashed. Of course, it was 95 degrees...
No matter.
FotD is a great ride, and supports a great local cause. I'll be back next year for number 10.
Once back at Service Course, I drink 2.5 liters of water, another Coke, and ate two burritos.  After a lengthy nap, I ate a cupcake.  Only then did anything resembling life return...
Four of us met Sunday morning, and knocked down another 80-ish km out thru the flats. The first hour was a battle for all, but once rolling, we all started to feel a bit better, and a good ride was had by all.  It was needed...
It was a good weekend of riding, even if a bit of it was really terrible...

 Oh, isn't that nice. The folks in Colorado made a crown for the Princess.

Spain doesn't even PLAY when it comes to podium girls. Other races need to seriously up their game.

And I know it's a Trek, but Sven's new whip for this CX season is smooooth. Built for action.

And I thought my next bike would be made of metal...then this happened...

And a cool video from the Tour of Colorado USA Pro Challenge...


Railing on dirt. I know people who won't go around flat, dry, asphalt corners that hard.

Alright people, back to work...

And people wonder...

Folks wonder why the top American riders aren't well liked, nor highly respected in Europe.

After the whinging of Stage 2, Tejay looked like someone pee'd on his Corn Flakes on the podium.  

And then yesterday, Tom "I served my suspension in the off-season" Danielson went out of his way to do this to a fan...

Vaughters made him apologize on Twitter.  

Good job guys.  Way to fly the flag...

Bristol and I met at the group ride last night on our CX bikes.  Plan was to roll out 12th with the group, then ride the dirt. We did just that...sort of...

Once to the turn at Saxe Gotha, whomever has appointed themselves 'ride leader' decided the entire bunch needed to turn, and avoid the bridge construction.

I wonder how easy it was to get the 40-ish people across HWY 321?  

That way is more dangerous than the 'normal' or 'backwards' routes ever thought about being.  I don't like to cross there when there are 6-8 of us on Sunday morning, much less with 40...right after work...

That variation of the route needs to be forgotten...

The two of us had a nice ride. Easy spin around and home with a solid two hours.  It was just too hot to go out and prostrate one's self last night.  It was cool(er) down by the river...in the shade...

Had a nice run in with some Chi Psi Frat Bros on the way to the ride. They were invited to exit the vehicle, but declined...as usual. I wonder if the driver is curious how I found him this morning. Not hard to get a license plate run...even a NJ tag.  

 

Flight of The Dove is tomorrow in Clinton. If you've never done it, you should. Fast, fun, and well organized. We knocked down the metric in 2:45 last year...FWIW.  

Hope to see you there...

 

 

USA Cycling...(facepalm)

So the Tour of Colorado USA Pro Challenge is going on. It was rainy yesterday, and they had to traverse a dirt section.
I think you can all guess what happened next.



So the racers ALL covered the muddy and sloppy dirt section w/o issue, only to have the idiots from USA Cycling stop them, and neutralize the race ONCE THEY GOT BACK ON THE TARMAC! Oh, did I mention they were 8km from the finish?
The riders were understandably pissed off. And you can see Tejay vanWhingeren gesticulating and exclaiming that the race should have been neutralized earlier.

The race shouldn't have been neutralized AT ALL!  Yeah, it rained. Yeah, it got chilly. Yeah, the road was muddy.  Don't like it? Get a fucking job, and sit in a cubical all day.
Most of us would give our left (insert appendage here) to race over those roads.

USA Cycling's explanation was that the UCI and the organizers made the decision. Uh, bullshit!
That's a USA Cycling Official. You can tell by his khaki pants, and the blue cotton-poly blend dress shirt.

Thanks goodness USA Cycling doesn't run races in Europe, or one of the best stages of the Giro EVER would have been neutralized...



Moving on...

Fun ride last night. We went the regular way, as the bridge can now be crossed. Sure, every had to get off, and take two or three steps, but it's MUCH safer than running the loop backwards with such a big group.
Nothing of real interest happened. No yelling. No stupid riding. There was a fixie kid on a single speed with one brake, but he was quickly dispatched.
Once on 302, it was easy to see that the sky over Columbia was DARK, and flashes of lightning were popping in the distance.
I had a flashback to that Thursday night a few Summers ago when the weather went completely sideways on us in a few short minutes.
Riding in hail and wind sucks.
Fortunately, the skies were kind.

It was good to see Ricky out as well. I think we needed to see him as much as he needed to be there.

Eye Candy : Parlee

And if you haven't seen it, Slaying the Badger...



Basso having a WTF? moment in Colorado as he passes Lance...

It's Wednesday...you're halfway there...

Back to it....

The grind that is...
School started today. For some, it's a day of emotions and histrionics. In this house, it's a day of quiet rejoicing. After two + months of children driving me batshit, they're gone for most of the day.
Well, 2 of the 3 are gone.  And let's be honest, #3 is pretty easy to get along with as long as he has a cup of juice, and some Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.
They were complete pains in the ass yesterday though. I chalk it up to nervous energy.  They knew school was looming...

Anyway, a couple of good rides were had this weekend...
Saturday was a solo CX affair out to The PowerStation.  It's in damn fine shape right now, especially considering all of the rain that has fallen over the past few weeks. 

 Cutting thru the new part of the Timmerman Trail is worth it just for the bridges...

The woods are slowly fixing the damage done by decades of rednecks in pickup trucks. I must admit, my imagination was still in high gear on Saturday morning. My run in with the feline in Florida made every branch snap, and crushed-under-tire leaf seem like an imminent attack. Settle yourself boy...
I rode up thru campus as well. Dumb.
It was move-in day for the dorms. Talk about taking one's life in one's hands....

A nice group met Sunday for The Heathen Ride. H/T to Big John's wife for the moniker.
A deviation of the loop occurred too. A road not ridden before lead to the split point for the group. A few wanted to go hard, so they went one way. The rest wanted to go long, so we went the other. Cool with me. I just like having a good-sized bunch roll out together on Sunday morning.
The "long" group ended up in Swansea, and rolled back over the ridge into Cola. I hit Service Course with 95km, which was more than enough after a week of vacation.
And the road bike felt really odd after a solid week of riding the CX bike. Different geos and all that...

 Roxy made an appearance too...After a month at the SC Criminal Justice Academy, or as she calls it, 'Sleepaway Camp with Guns'...
Only 8 weeks to go...

And as it's clear to see, it was terrible out there yesterday...

It was also clear that lazing about on the beach, and eating pound after pound of Gulf shrimp did little for my fitness level. It's cool though, as no pro teams are watching me, and my views last week didn't exactly suck.

Gonna be hot this week. Heat indexes well into triple digits. If you must go outside to play in the afternoon, be careful. 105+ is nothing to play with...

When keepin' it real goes wrong...

Google Maps is a fucking troublemaker.  It used to be that the only dirt roads we found were ones we tripped over on road bikes.
Now, one can simply pull up a map of wherever, and see roads that look like they'd be good to ride. 
Some pan out and are brilliant. Others are shit, and are quickly forgotten.
Florida presented MANY options for dirt.  The first day's dirt was outstanding. Hard packed, sort of smooth, and it ended at the beach. Easy peasy...
On Wednesday, I found a dirt section that went from about 3 miles from where we were staying, looped 11 (yes, ELEVEN!) miles thru the woods, and popped out in the next town over.
The area had been freshly logged, so the roads were smashed down pretty well. There were a few soft spots, but all in all, it was good stuff...

until...
I hit a section that was a bit deeper in the trees...probably 4 miles into the road.

I came around a corner, and not 250 feet in front of me, a very large, not-so-housecat-like feline ran across the road. It took a moment to run through the "What the fuck was that?" thoughts, then it registered in my concussion-addled little brain.
It was a GD Florida panther.
No, not this kind...

This kind...

You'll notice that the foliage in the background closely mimics what's represented in the above photos.
I came to complete stop.
I rarely get nervous about things, don't scare easily, and rarely panic. I will admit, I got a little panicky. Fuck going forward.
I hopped off the bike, turned it around, and did a Sven Nys-esque remount.
My easy spin thru the woods became an interval that would have made Laurens Ten Dam jealous of the foam and snot produced.
Outright 8 year old little kid fear will make one ride really hard.  Really really hard!
I must have looked over my shoulder 100x in 4 miles.
Once on the main road, I relaxed a bit.  The pace, however, stayed high until I hit what resembled civilization.
No, I did NOT get a picture of the beast, but I'll gladly send you a GPS plotted map of the EXACT spot of the sighting so you can go do some research on your own.
I caught up with a Florida Wildlife Officer at the gas station later that night, and he said sightings have gone WAY up in the area. Super!
Yeah...I'm a dumbass for not even thinking about it in the first place. But why would one?

Where we went in the panhandle was superb. Great beaches. Crazy low-key. Great roads. We'll be there again next Summer.

Eye-candy :

I'm tired. Vacation takes it out of a brother. well...that and 10 hours in the car with 3 kids...

The long way 'round...

So yeah, we're about 100' from the beach/Gulf, yet yesterday, another adventure was planned. Going to the same beach over and over is a bit boring, so a plan was hatched, and another beach was chosen.
Beauty part? I could kill two birds with one stone.
The Boss agreed to give me a headstart, and we'd meet at the chosen strip of sand.
I aired up, and was gone...

 See! Bear crossing!!!

 Felt like doing some climbing...

 From the top of the climb...

 Find me a better road. I'll wait....

 How about a separated bike lane?  I had trouble wrapping my head around it.

I wanna go too!

60 kms on the CX bike, in the wind, was a good time.
Note to self: Next time, bring the road bike. 
Locked the Salsa to the rack, and the rest of the afternoon was spent getting beaten in the surf by small children. 

A quick shower followed, and another plate full of shrimp. I've eaten more shrimp in the past 3 days than I have in the past three months.  The count lies at somewhere near 6 dozen. 
A short walk around the little oyster/shrimping town nearby, and then back to the house.  It was a long-ish day.
Still beats anything remotely related to being at home...

 Anybody have a SUP?

Even rainy/cloudy sunsets are good...

I'ma go ride now...

Now I remember...

 Welcome to riding in Florida...on the coast at least...

 I did find some dirt. The "Be Aware of Bears" sign was worrysome...

 Flori-dirt...

 Had to stop for a "Break Naturel"

Yes, I'm in the middle of the road, but it's a closed road. It seems that when the new section of Hwy 30 was constructed, those in charge around here had the foresight to block the ends of the old section of road. Thus, a long stretch of bike only road was created. It runs right next to the Gulf, and is pretty GD brilliant.  I'll be on it again shortly...

And I remember why I was so strong on the bike when we lived in Florida. Yeah, it's flat, but the wind is rarely beneficial. I had a head/cross no matter where I went yesterday.  The only climbing was a bridge, but grinding in the Gulf breeze was plenty.
Plus, I brought the CX bike.  Pushing the 33c Clements around ain't exactly efficient.

The rest of the day was spent as it should be on a holiday with the family.

We went on a little 'no-plan' adventure to find a different beach.  We found it.  Yes, that IS emerald colored water...
We were the only ones within at least a km for most of the afternoon. It did not suck.
I was bright enough this time to put sunscreen on the pale flesh that's normally covered by cycling kit.

If one is a cyclist, triathlete, or water enthusiast, there are worse places in the World to be than where I'm sitting right now...

And watching this transpire last night was less than taxing...

A person could get used to this lifestyle...

On holiday...

Not saying where. A bit like when they sequestered Cheney in "an undisclosed location", only less shooty...

Gonna go ride in a few minutes.  I hazard to say my scenery will not suck today...

More pictures to follow.  I know you're waiting with baited breath...

Messing with my emotions...

Why does Competitive always pick and poke at me? Why I ask? 
Of course, I would probably pull the 7900 D/A off the Noah, and put it on a new CX frameset, thus necessitating the purchase of 11v electronic stuff. 
And I have to buy new cockpit, brakes, pedals, etc.
A $500 deal just became laying out $3k.  Cycling...

Vicious circle...

Sometimes...you just don't feel it...

Mike Tyson said it best...
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Rolled out last night just not feeling it. Wanted to ride, but didn't necessarily feel like tasting my own vomit.
Once on 302, it became quite clear that others DID want to re-visit their mid-day repast. Bye...see you guys later...
A few assembled for a chase, but after a few hard pulls, and a bit of the climb on Glenn, no joy was called, and about a half dozen of us rolled in together.  Slowly...
There are days one rolls out and gets better as the ride goes along. There are days when one rolls out and gets worse.
Last night...I just rolled out...

Nike is still making cycling shoes in the UK. Adam Blythe seems to get the cool ones...

Hey Nike! Size 46 please. Contact me for shipping info...

 Another reminder of why you don't step out to get video or pictures!

 You had me at "Hello..."

This Primarius ticks all the boxes...

Cunego crashed in Poland. Are there NO Doctors in Poland? Whoever stitched this was obviously wearing mittens, and is in need of a guide dog. Lampre needs to fly him home, get that Frankenstein-ian closure redone, and get the boy on some anti-biotics. STAT!

Thursday is likely a no-go for me, as I'm finally getting my permanent crown installed in my face. Shouldn't be any great drama, but the scissor jack used to crank one's mouth open always gives me a ripping headache.  Oh, and we're leaving for the Panhandle on Friday @ lunch.
I gots shit to do...

Updates from our little roadtrip will follow...