BIFF!!!

Making snow angels...

Results and pics from Triple D were posted today and I have a new favorite race picture.  This might have to be turned into Christmas cards next year.  What you see is crash #2 from my previous blog post.  Full slide show can be found here.

A couple final notes on Triple D while I'm on the topic.  A little over an hour of my race was spent not moving.  25-30 minutes of this was in check points, the rest of the time was spent waiting for traffic, eating, swapping gloves or just resting.  Two things that could have knocked this down dramatically are pogies and and accessible feed bag.  Not that I'm playing shoulda-woulda-coulda.  My one goal this race was to finish so I'm very happy with how I did.  This is more of a how-can-I-improve-in-the-future thing.

Moving on...

Did my first ride outside today since the race.  I'm pretty much on the tail end of my cold so I wanted to get outdoors for a bit.  My plan was was to ride out on the snow and come back on the gravel, but it didn't quite go down that way.  In fact, it was actually kind of a crappy ride filled with little issues.  I had to readjust my seat right from the start, which could have been an omen of things to come.  Once I got going I rolled out to catch the snowmobile trails in Lisbon.  I found a good line at the start that took me deep enough into the cornfields to not turn back, then the snow turned to mush.  As I was trudging through, my front wheel suddenly seized up.  I rolled it back and forth a couple times, checked the brakes and rims and finally found the culprit.  Apparently my studs had grabbed a corn cob and wedged it between my tire and fork.  Not much to do but laugh and throw my new souvenir in my pocket.  I decided then that my new term for locking up my front wheel is "Getting Corncob'd".   Sounds just dirty enough for a fratboy high five...

So I trudged on til I hit some gravel and took off for a quick five mile loop.  I started getting cold pretty quick since I wasn't dressed for the winds that come with higher speed riding and decided to turn back and cut my ride short.  My tire pressure was pretty low so I took a minute to air it up.  This was when I found out my new mini-pump was Schroeder only.  What the hell?!?  Guess I should have paid closer attention to that when I bought it.  I'm pretty lucky I didn't flat at Triple D.  I'll have to throw an adapter in my bag for my next ride.  Lucky for me I wasn't too far from home, so I just took it easy the rest of the way.

Tomorrow will be an endurance ride.  I was hoping to do it on the snow, but it looks like I'll be stuck with gravel.  That's fine though, I've been wanting some more bonding time with the Surly.