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.

borrowed text

"I think homo sapiens lost something......some vital part of ourselves, when we gave up the hunting and gathering life for the fettered, programmed existence of agriculture, and later, industry. Consider just the moves: the lookout, the spoor, the stalk, the cross country chase, the dead-on throw were replaced by the cramped, repetitive action of stoop labor, the planting stick and shovel, and worse, the quill, keyboard, and computer idiot stick. Time, which once rolled out in loose, measureless rounds of sun and moon, was chopped up into lengths and tied in knots; space, the free earth of the paleolithic, was quartered and fenced: off limits; trespassers will be prostituted" by Rob Schultheis from Bone Games

need a good ass kicking now and then

you dont learn much when things come easy. You learn lots when you screw up. Tell you what, I'm going to know everything there is to know about primitive hide tanning once i finally come up with a finished product. It's like I tried every possible screw up to see what happens, only i never meant to.  I'm finding out there are many lifetimes worth of learning to just scratch the surface of the complex skills needed for humans to live in the real world. Oh the irony. We once posessed a cultural skill set that our lives depended on and which allowed us to circle the globe. Then we completely severed all ties to it and now a tiny niche of folks today will spend their lives trying to re-learn these very fundementals of human life. Pick any one skill, even the most basic skill.........making fire. It seems one could spend a lifetime just at that. Plenty of time could be spent on technique alone, tree identification so you can competently select the right wood, cordage which is a whole other thing, and of course these are only half the battle. these get you a little coal, which you then have to have the right materials to turn that coal into a flame, and then to turn that into a bigger flame until finally you can relax and feed the hungry beast you've created. I often ponder these things in the context that our ancestors new these thing from childhood. it passed down through generations for millenia and new more about it than any scientific study of today could ever know. Anyway, this all relates to racing in a way. You'd think i would have bike fit all worked out after all these years on them, but not so. It's constantly evolving and i continue to maken discoveries by the above mentioned method of totally screwing things up to find out what not to do and by default, what TO do. Riding a bicycle is also not natural thing for the body. It is not really obvious what will work. Many totally different things work for different people because, well, we aren't evolved as bike pedalers. Guess it's what you pick up and get used to. Well i still can't nail down what I'm used to. I'll  try everything under the sun andthink I have it nailed down till one minute detail changes and all of a sudden that way of thinking no longer works. That's sortof how i felt last weekend when i swapped over to the MTB shoes and pedals. Just didn't feel right and i therefor suffered. Also sunday was the first MTB race in a long time. I realize while i am much fitter now, i was much more skilled on the trails when i was 16. This was the williams lake classic. I remember why this used to be my favorite race. Fun technical trails that go through a cave. My old teamate Justin Lindine was there. Good to see him, even if he had to crack me on the first climb. He has been kicking ass on the MTB and took no exception with mine. I was in serious trouble out there. Damage control from that first climb. No technical skills to falll back on. My legs might have hurt cause Saturday was the Black fly challenge where Cory Burns was ripping them off. Made an agreement to ride for a course record since we were in different categories. good thing, i would have blown anyway. we did hurt and smashed the record by 6 minutes. Unfortunately my dad was busy falling on his head out there in his first race ever. Fortunately it was a minor concussion, but we did have to go all the way over to Glens Falls to get him. When we got there the hospital was on "lock down" apperently because a patient "escaped". Sounds like prison to me. Hospitals are an extreme example of corruption. Makes perfect sense being in close with insurance and law.

WHEELS and some racin

I got alot of riding to do before cross racing, so I needed some wheels. Why not go local? Stan's Notubes is down in my new stomping ground (for biking) in Big Flats, New York. Picked up a set of these Stan's ZTR Podium MMX wheels for my big brother Cannondale. Easily swapable to the RZ140. They are pretty silly light. Haven't weighed this whole thing yet but wouldn't be surprised if it was 18ish.

Also picked up a set of Stan's Apha Pros for the old amateur team Cannondale. Again, very light and the tubeless set up with Hutchinson tires has a great rode feel. I ran these tires back in 2008 with Planet Energy.









So I haven't gotten out and raced the MTB yet, but soon. June 9th down in William's lake. This race was my favorite race ever back in the 90s and it just so happens that my new teammate on Richie's team is the promoter of the revived version of the race. I remember the trails being really sweet, but I was a teenager. Quite often when I look back at things from back then I remember them being epic, but when I encounter them now they are nothing like that. I bet my skills on the MTB were better then though, so maybe it'll be even more epic. Either way, the course still goes through a cave. That's neat enough....and I'll get to meet at least one of my new teammates.

I have brought out the new Stan's equipment on the road for some racing....and the racing has been going much better since Hollenbeck's. I brought the wheels out for the Bristol Mountain Road Race. They certainly helped me defeat the negative racing there. I made things move on the first ascent up the climb and was fortunate enough to bring along some riders who wanted to race. Canadians Bruce Bird, Peter Morse, my pal Dan Staffo who's always racing a good race, and the aggressive Mt Borah rider Dylan Pudiak. We rode well together and put time into the rest all day. On the last lap Bruce split things down to him, Peter and I. He then went for it again and I couldn't follow. Guess I'm still lacking a bit. I rode in solo for third.

Then was the Tour de Syracuse. It had some hills so again, the race wasn't going to stagnate too long. I waited a little longer this time. Second lap we rode the hill at a pace that shed about half, then third lap hit it hard enough to bring it down to I think 5 or 6. We reeled in the solo Mt Borah rider which gave them two in the lead group. I always love the way Dan Staffo rides so when he put in an effort as most of the group was screaming at each other I decided it was going to be up to Mt Borah to chase. If they didn't, I'd rather see him win than risk motivating them by going after him myself. Some of the other racers I found out after were too busy yelling that they didn't even know he went away. The ones that did, refused to chase despite the numbers they had to sacrifice to keep the race win within grasp. Guess they were depending on us to do it for them. Well, as happens when you ride slow, we never caught Staffo. He won and I roasted the rest up the finishing climb to finish second. Glad to see Staffo win and my fitness seemed improved. I never went into the red all race.

The new kit is coming along nicely

The cough and Hollenbeck's

Then winter came back and I got sick....for a couple weeks. Really set me back. Had a fever and the works for a few days, but then the coughing dragged on for weeks. Real pain in the arse. I finally recovered and got back out riding in time to race the Finger Lakes Cycling Club's local race at Hollenbeck's cider mill. I dropped out of this race last time I did it. One because I was far from fit, but more because of rampant negative racing. Combine the two and I just had no fun. Well this time was no different. I was struggling to re-gain fitness after being sick and when the race got under way it was obvious that everyone was content to just sit around and wait for me to do something so they could weld the field back together and sit around again. The team present that had a good portion of the race wearing their jersey played the same game, except they employed some nice blocking tactics. I think there is a misconception about blocking. People think that's a viable tactic that pros participate in. It's not. Lower categories might do it because they don't know any better, and apparently it happens in the higher cats of local races when there are no other teams to do anything about it. Anyway, it's not a classy maneuver. It's like scratching and biting at a boxing match. Especially when you out number everyone. Man up and race. When you aren't fit enough to get rid of that type of stuff it gets annoying. So I failed to finish our little local race again. Oh well, as an old teammate used to say, maybe next year.

March and Horby Hills Kermis

So back in mid-winter I committed to be a bike racer again by September. Spring happened to come early and allow me, and everyone else, to get out early. Most of that riding for me was done commuting back and forth from work in the bike shop. That adds up to a bit when it's 25mi each way. Work ends in the evening for me, so the late hour that I get home is a bit of a hassle, but otherwise it's a nice ride and gave me extra motivation to get out and put in some miles so I would be ready for when spring really comes. That was teaser spring. Winter came back for quite a while, but I still kept somewhat motivated and had actually seen some fitness. I had visions of 2009 when it seemed like I spent the entire spring and summer trying to get ready for cross racing with Richard and not seeing any results. Seemed like it didn't come around until JUST before cross started. So I was happy to see a little fitness already in April...or March...whenever it was. I even managed to pull off a win at a local road race called Hornby Hills Kermis. This is my new home turf. See last time I was training full time I lived in town. Now I live 18mi west of town. Whole new turf. I've been out exploring all the new roads and little towns in my new training radius. That's one of those things I missed about training. You get to really get out and see a lot of the country around you. Anyway, that's a fun race. Some dirt roads with a decent climb once a lap. The race was fairly uneventful as far as racing goes. It just whittled down more and more each time we went up the climb, until there were three left. First into the last corner pretty much was going to win as the line was only a few hundred meters beyond. Nobody challenged the entry into the corner, so it was an easy sprint to the line.