Sorry for the long silence. Summer can just be too damn busy. Maybe I shouldn't blame summer. It's more people's reaction to summer, getting out and being social. That's not the case for me this year. I seem to be spending my summer doing some form of work. What's worse when I have to make room for one thing by sacrificing some time at another, sometimes there is someone there to tell me I should be working harder. It's like "look at how busy and unhappy I am. You should lighten my load by making youself miserable just like me." Nah, I think in the future I will stick to my guns and make sure I have time for my real interests....and sanity. I have managed to squeeze in a few very important projects. You may have seen the early stages of my "kit" in a previous post. That is one of the resources obtained from a foray last fall into the great balance of mother nature. I went out and studied the motions of the real world so that I could take a meager portion with great thanks and put every bit I could toward my family's sustenance. The process will be improved upon in the future, but here is the finished product of the deer's hide......soft, egg-tanned, buckskin. I'm very proud of it, as this is one skill that I figured out on my own. A mentor would have made the process ALOT easier, but I did not have one. So as mentioned previously, I made all the mistakes in order to figure out the process.

 Here is one way I hope to improve upon the process. A pignut hickory self-bow. Need to find a bit of time to tiller it and make a string....or more likely screw it up and start a new one!

Here we have the new 2012 Richard Sachs team issue Northwave shoes being caressed by the soft texture of the buckskin. Seriously, I'm in love with these shoes. No modification to the fit needed. Much more true to size than in the past. The sole is carbon where it needs to be stiff, but enough flex in the toe and mid-soul to not feel like a 2x4 when you run in them. Quick and easy retention system. I'm very happy with these.

 and I'm very glad to get this project out of the way as it was a very intimidating one for me. I'm not great with electrical systems and I've been trying to bring myself up to speed so I could install our new batteries on the cabin. I had to build a whole battery box and ventilation system with voltage controlled fan. Just finished it up the other day. Really nice to have the storage capacity again.





On the training/racing front, things have been about the same. Kinda just been floating along waiting for the signal to ramp it up. My pal Justin Lindine beat up on me again at a MTB race. I thought I was going to fare better this time as I was really comfortable riding a few seconds behind him for the first 2/3 of the race. Then my upper body and core turned to jello and I rode like a pinball, losing 5min to him in the last third of the race. I think I'm in for one more MTB race before the switch. The time came to put forth the full effort for the final push to cross. I ramped up the training and hooked up with my old amateur team Bikereg.com/Cannondale for the rest of the pre-season on the road. About a week into this change I joined them for the tour of the Hilltowns. They rode very organized and put in a great effort with me as the finale. In the end I came up a bit short for fifth. I felt a little bad that I couldn't pull off better after all that work but I don't think I really have enough riding time in for 100mi road races just yet. It was just a week into training so I'm hoping to be better in the upcoming races. Last weekend I did a last minute team time trial with some Ithaca area locals. Turned out to be a good pay day and good training for the upcoming TTs.