Yes, all my friend’s blogs are doing it. I thought it would throw my hat in the ring too. The THANKSGIVING post.

Right now, I am out in Tucson, and will spend a good portion of the day on actual Thanksgiving driving east. As some of my face friends might know already, I flew out to sunny California, and will be driving back. Still unwilling to share the finer details of this excursion, but lets just say that there are many components to it that remind one to be thankful.

I’m really thankful for my friends. I have a good bunch of people around me that are practically family. I’m relying on many of these folks on my voyage, and it’s awesome to know they are there for me.

Obviously my family, as weird as things are right now. While this will be my second turkey day “in the wild”, I know that the boy will be enjoying the warmth and comfort of his grandparents in PA. While I’ll be on the road for a good long time, I will be arriving at some more of my very good friends to have dinner in Albuquerque. The insane road trip to have a huge meal is part of the whole Thanksgiving experience.

Then there are the things that I’m not going to share just yet, but I am pretty darn thankful for those things too.

And lastly, I’d like to thank all the folks that come and visit my blog from time to time, I really enjoy writing it, and boy do I have some fodder. Anyone remember my airplane story from Vegas in ’08?

 

… at the Cirlce K

woah

The last couple of days have been filled with all sorts of goings on. I can tell you that there are some big things cooking behind the scenes at B29, some rather important things. I’ll be able to talk about them soon.

I did manage to squeeze in a ride on Kermit on the record breakingly warm day we had on Monday. 71° was such a pleasant temperature to go bombing around w/ T-Vo at Saxon Hill in Essex. No arm warmers or bulky jackets necessary. I’m always amazed at how fun this network of trails is, and baffled that I only ever seem to ride them once a year – right at the end of the season. Probably because my local Stowe trails are so much easier to access.

With hunting season upon us, there are only a few areas that are “safe” to ride. Although, this is VT, I’ve seen flannel and guns on these safe areas more than once. Generally, they are just passing through, but it’s still unnerving. I tend to avoid the woods all together this time of year. Hunting season is relatively short, and since I’ve been riding my bike in the woods since March, I’m totally OK with sharing.

Sometimes, there is December dirt, but I’m prepared if there isn’t. I have the Trundleraptor ready to go…

It seems as if it were only yesterday that I was hovering over my computer, furiously trying to come up with a submission for the Green Mountain Showdown. I had run into MTBVT head honcho Ryan at Interbike, where he gently twisted my arm into participating. It wasnt that hard, as this was after 5, and I was on my way back from the tequila hour at one of the booths.

Of course, I put it off until the very last minute.

Which is sort of funny, cinsidering. Anyway, one of the hardest things about it was coming up with the right “tone”. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and I tend to be a bit overly self conscious in these situations. I had an idea, but no point of reference. I agonized for days on how I was going to execute it, what content was going to be in it, was it going to be mixed media, what music to use etc to the point where I almost went batshit. Oh, and I had to make it run in a time format that wouldn’t send people towards the door. Had I not procrastinated so hard, it might have been better.

So what we have here, is my submission. I ended up just going with a photo slideshow set to music. You’ve seen some of these images on this blog before. I wanted to come up with a little something that not only showcased  my pictures, but was also a sort of photo diary of the last 18 months of my life.

As we all know, my last 18 months have been rife with change, some of it not so good. These are images from my escape. I never stopped riding my bike, for a long time it was the only place where I felt like things were OK. It took me places I can only partially tell you about with pictures. The music I selected tells another part of the story. No one creates soundscapes like Ennio. Plus I’m a big sucker for Spaghetti Westerns. It’s a story of the big open spaces I’ve navigated through on my bike, both mentally and physically.

Unfortunately, the night the Showdown was to take place, it decided to rain cats, dogs, geese and chickens sideways. This pushed back the start of the event, and I was ultimately bumped from the line up. I was a little bit miffed, but stuff like this happens, sometimes you just have to roll with it. There were some really good submissions, and it was good to see so many people turn out in spite of the deluge. The best part about it, was that I got a little bit of validation in my efforts. My submission was different, but at least as good as some of the others.

This has me thinking about the next Showdown…

It’s amazing how little effort it takes to fuel the stoke.

I’ve spent the last couple of days in my storage unit, after spending entirely way too long trying to print out shipping labels at my kitchen table. What was I doing? Putting labels on boxes. Being busy never felt so good. Even if my efforts took 5 times as long due to an “IT” issue.

the first carload

I also made a bit more room in ye old “warehouse” by passing on a couple of items that I had built for the shop: my old workbench and my craptable. I call it a craptable, but really it’s where the bench vise, bench grinder and several hundred steerer tube ends used to live. It’s a sturdy little sucker. I was able to bequeath these items to my good buddy Joe (of Joe’s Trail), who also helped me stuff boxes. Without his help, I would still probably be there shipping orders in the snow.

hazy shade of winter

Oh, yeah, it has snowed. Several inches fell up high, and we’ve had a dusting to 1″ on the valley floors which means that winter will very soon be upon us. That didn’t stop me from getting in a ride in the Loops. While many of the locals were out hiking the snow capped mountains in search of their first ski turns of the season, Seamy and I had the woods to ourselves.

snowy singletrack

keepin it METAL

Now I don’t know if the ambient air temperature had anything to do with it (28°!) but I had a real hard time getting my bike to move. I felt weak like kitten, a far cry from the strong like bull I felt on my last ride. It probably had more to do with the fact that my last ride was well over a week ago. Or maybe I need a lighter bike…

I am touched by the overwhelming amount of support via orders I received Friday and Saturday. Until my recent slash and burn tactics, all this stuff had been sitting in storage getting dusty. I’ve been feeling a lot like a haggard survivor in the Walking Dead lately, and getting rid of this inventory has given me some more bullets so I can live to fight another day. For that, I am extremely grateful. Thanks to everyone.

staying one step ahead...

I’m gonna level with y’all. I was dead certain that I was rapidly approaching the end. I have a hard time not doing things. It makes me crazy. Unless otherwise focusing on things like spokelengths, various hub/rim combos, tire pressure, sag, blah blah blah blah blah, my mind becomes a centrifuge that will keep spinning until it accelerates to the point where it breaks and flies off into an unpredicted direction. It could put someone’s eye out.

It’s not like I haven’t been looking for work. Nothing awesome has turned up yet, but the feelers are out there. I’ve had some interviews, some rejections, and lots of no replies. And you know what? I’ve been here before. In fact, it was about 7 years ago I was in the very same predicament: jobless, broke, and no options looking good. The landscape has changed, but the game is the same. Maybe some of the parameters might be better, or worse, depending on how you look at them, but I’ve been here before. And I lived to tell the tale.

Bike29 was just a simple idea that became so much more than I knew what to do with sometimes. Occasionally it got out of hand. It’s run me into the ground more than once, that’s for sure. But every time it’s done that, I’ve been able to walk out of the smoking crater. This last time was very hard, because everything was a stake.  Guess it still is. But dammit, I feel myself getting up. Maybe not as quickly, and definitely a lot more banged up than I have ever been, I’m getting up just the same.

To be continued…

 

It has been a month since I handed the keys to the retail shop back to my landlords. Sadly, not much has happened, with the one exception of a quick trip out to my old stomping grounds in San Diego. That was a nice break.

The weather here of course made my threat of riding bikes almost impossible, and my quick trip has reduced the number of rides to a mere handful. Normally, I have Off-tober, but seeing as I wasn’t bound to occupy the shop, I thought I’d enjoy some of that freedom before the next thing presents itself. Oh well… The online store has managed to do a pretty decent business, despite me not really playing with it. And I still have a pretty decent inventory of stuff left over, and now it is time for some deals to be made.

If you head on over to the Bike29 Sale page, you will see some rather crazy deals. So take a look, tell a friend, get a bargain, so I don’t have to resort to doing something like this: