Revolutionary Sisters

While I've seen a couple of BCCers pull off a fixie-skid or two, pull a "mad wheelie", and even pedal backwards for a few feet, never have I seen something quite as impressive as these two sisters.

They Call Them Mad Skillz

This photo is definitely for the Professor.

Parts is Parts

Bikers are tech-dorks.

There, I said it.

We obsess about grams, tooth-count, alloy material, and tire psi so much that our significant others sometimes question whether or not our love for all things two-wheeled as being above and beyond more important subjects, like, ya know, humans.

Still, much as we may worry about the butting profile of our spokes and bearing quality of our headsets, there's always something to be said for just duct-taping some shit together in the woods, throwing caution to the wind, and just say screw it. Such was the result of my mountain bike ride last Saturday at the SMBA trails north of Albany in Saratoga Springs.

Luckily for me the Ferrous wasn't the victim: as hard as NY trails seem to be on bikes, I've yet to experience any serious failures. I have seen the trails eat parts, clothes, frames, skin, and one collar bone, but I've thus far avoided any real setbacks. Not so my riding partners.

The SMBA trails are akin to a cross between New Light (circa 2003) and Rocky Road, all multiplied by a factor of two: there are lots of different trails, each with its own character and charm, but all strewn with chunky rocks and nothing below 'intermediate' level. These aren't fast trails, for while there isn't much elevation change, they are tight and tech-heavy.

They also eat things. Like skin. And seats.

Brian has kindly let me tag along on a couple rides, some of which lead to disaster, and others to tomfoolery, but none of which have been boring. This last Saturday promised to be an easy two-hour ride with a couple folks, with our tour guide avoiding the rockier trails of the system for the easier ones. We may have hit those, but the difference was negligible. And two hours was more like three, but for a Brian-led expedition that's basically on time.

Most amusing was how Brian decided to rock the ride: after going over the bars maybe two minutes into the trails, scraping himself up and knocking his seat off its rails, he proceeded to finish the ride on some sort of McGrubered-up contraption that looked more like a sex toy than a bike part.

This is that Yankee ingenuity that we hear so much about. At one point I think all six of us were crowded around giving advice on how to best 'fix' his seat with zip-ties, duct-tape, and voodoo.

Needless to say my humanities-educated self stepped aside and let the engineers tackle the matter, as they seemed more competent. Taking the time to reflect quietly on my Walden-like surroundings, I decided my fluffy English-major self would set the moment to verse:

I think that I shall never see
A seat as lovely as B.P.'s:
It's long and black and fits his crack
Just like a glove, or my head its hat.
I think it's sad he's lost his saddle
For now the post his ass must battle
And as we ride this rocky trail
I'm certain it must quite bruise his tail.

The remainder of the ride involved a series of spills, dabs, and near-misses, but since I didn't have my camera to capture them it's basically like they didn't happen. (Or so I learned from the Bones Brigade.) We were all able to finish the ride, though, even Brian, despite being French-tickled all the way home.

This was only my third mountain bike ride of the year and it was good to kick around in the dirt some. I'm learning pretty quickly that lack of practice does not do the body good, that the northeast does have mosquitoes, and that age does not make me wiser or more nimble. Alas and alack. Here's hoping that my future rides are a little more mundane and less abusive.

I hope things are going well down in the Tarheel state!

Blame it on the snow (yeah! yeah!)

(All apologies to Milli Vanilli for corrupting their lyric masterpiece.)

I'd heard that it snowed in Albany, that there were such things as snow emergencies, and that there were times that you needed to budget an hour to shovel your car out of its parking spot, but until this last Friday these stories all sounded like attempt to pull one over on the silly little southerner. In fact, it seems that all of these things are painfully true.

Friday brought us somewhere around ten inches of snow in the matter of a few hours. Once we'd gotten six or so inches I figured it had to be about to stop (I mean, god doesn't have that much dandruff, does he?), so I ignored my better judgement and took to the streets, General Lee-style.

And lo there was ripping. And the ripping was good.

As it turns out, my marginal skillz are unaffected by what skiers refer to as a powder day. When you're already pretty challenged in terms of your shredability, the addition of snow makes everything a little more difficult, but also increases your margin of error. My four inches of bunnyhopability was constant and I still couldn't do a bar spin, but then again I didn't break myself, either.

I had backup along, so I was able to grab a few pics. Here I'm basically showing the very peak of my skills, the rarely seen snow-bound trackstand. Behold it's brilliance.

Since it normally is only light up here for like seven hours a day, during the snowstorm we were reduced to like four. It was already getting dark at this point in the afternoon, though it was only a little after four.

The very pinnacle of my trickery.

This was all pretty rad on Friday, and my amusement extended into Saturday. However, as it's continued to snow, and I've had to dig my car out twice, gotten stranded in the Albany airport for all of Sunday, and seen all of the world disappear under a blanket of white for the next three month, my love for the white stuff has diminished. I'm planning a New Year's Eve shredathon regardless of temperatures (and sobriety level); pics may not follow.

I hope you're all getting to ride some down south. Happy holidays from the Northcountry!

Old School and TORC Tarwheel MTB Race

Ok...here is a combo post by Pirate and Brian. Brian's text will be dark red, John's will be black.

First let me start off by saying one simple thing. Champion......PLEASE SEND OUR KITS SOON!!! We are in desperate need of our new digs. Custom clothing Durham style just isn't gonna cut it in the long run. This is quite evident by the following photos.


Pirate rockin' his red bibs and custom BCC Non-American Apparel Custom Parking Lot T-Shirt. Now for sale on craiglist for $3.00. It's also available in a non-pit-stained version, but only if you supply the non-pit-stained shirt. And don't let me wear it.


The Professor hard at work designing a signature piece for his upcoming fall collection at Urban Oufitters. And if that whole PhD at the Nicholas School thing doesn't work out, Chris has clearly shown that he has a future in the world of fashion design. Look how the 1987 Oakleys pull his whole outfit together:

Ummmm. Not sure what to say about this. To be honest, it might be best not to say anything, as the sheer intimidation that we're displaying here speaks for itself. Except to point out Brian's massive guns. Ok. I obviously did not get the memo about bringing a white t-shirt. Instead I rocked my Old Lucky Carolina jersey to honor the first mountain bike race at Carolina North Forest.


And of course the rear view. Click to enlarge and view the amazing sharpie skillz. Or don't. Really, don't. Trust me.

When I say that we were rawking it out old school, I mean old schizool: since our kits aren't in yet, Chris "the Professor" Oishi and I took matters into our own hands. More specifically, we took sharpies in hand and apply our artistic skillz to some v-necked tees to make some impromptu jerseys. Needless to say, they were rad. Here's my attempt to take a picture of the back of my shirt myself; while ineffective, I think you can get an idea as to why I have avoided the visual arts:


It's never a good sign when you have to label your drawings so that people know what they are. In the future I think I'll stick to making goofy balloon letters. We did get many compliments and/or snickers about our 'jerseys.' At least BCC is making an impression. Our sponsors may be happy to know that they were not represented anywhere on the tees, and thus their reputations are intact.

Dave was also rocking it out in style, though perhaps a little more classically than the rest of us: Dickies and a tee do this man no harm:


And yeah, he's that good: rode in a t-shirt that didn't even have any sweat on it. This guy is the quintessence of hardcore. He also seems to be winking at the camera, but I don't know what that's all about.

And you might now ask was this a fashion show or bike race? Well the TarWheel race and the Carolina North Trails (aka CHHS trails, aka those trails) was a Bull City Cycling success. Dave, Chris, and Pirate lined up in the largest field of the day -- singlespeed. And once again...for some reason I signed up for expert. Consistency is about all I can say for myself. Each of my three lap times were pretty close and I tried to pace myself through the 31 mile course. Kudos to Alex Hawkins for a stellar loop. I haven't had that much fun mt bike racing in a long time.

Dave hit every jump, root ball, rock pile, skinny and put on a skillz clinic for all non-Chapel Hillians. Pirate once again proved that we should never listen to his constant babble about not riding enough and being blah blah blah.......in other words he was rolling and if it weren't for a late late crash at the end of his final lap he would have slotted in at 4th in singlespeed. Instead he had to settle for 5th I believe. The "Fashion" Professor once again managed to annihilate every single rock, root, and bunny (do not hurt the bunniez!) in route to another 2nd place finish in singlespeed. Second only to Alex Hawkins, who marked today's trail and most likely installed excessive high gravity zones in places along the trail to which he was of course immune. I mean am I the only one that is in on the excessive "on demand" gravity thing? Ferreal. I'm going to talk to my sister at NASA and see if I can get some help on exposing this.


Brian was pretty happy to be done with the thirty-mile expert race, so much so that his smile of joy almost broke his face. (Thanks Pirate this is not a pretty picture of me.)

All-n-all: good times. Thanks to all who helped make this race a success. Oh and Happy Father's Day to the BCC Dads and their Dads out there.

May day, may day!

BCCers were a hard lot to track down yesterday afternoon: between weddings, the PMBAR, allergies, broken bikes, and general lameness, Dave and I were the only ones willing to brave the Carolina North trails on a beautiful Friday afternoon. (Or everyone else had something better and more productive to do with their time, as the case may be.)

We hit Dave's old stomping ground and wound our way through the tight and ever-evolving CHHS/Carolina North Trails. I still don't know my way around those trails at all, but we rolled around for a couple of hours of fat-tired fun. As we were on our way home Dave decided to show off his mad skillz on a pipe/skinny, with the penalty for failure being a rather unwholesome bath in a creek that smelled like nothing other than pig poo, swine offal, or sow stuff.

The obstacle:


And Dave putting on the clinic:


Not bad, methinks. Nowhere near the pain that JD is throwing down in Pisgah this weekend, but still a good Friday afternoon.

Fliers on Mountain Bike Racing

In preparation for the clinic last weekend I put together a couple of fliers for people interested in getting started in mountain bike racing. In the interest of public service (and not wanting to see my work go to waste) I'm posting them here for general consumption.

The first one gives some tips about how to prepare for your first -- or really any -- cross country mountain bike race.


The second page of that flier might be more useful, as along with a few double-super-secret racing tips it compiles a list of local XC races. Of particular interest are the new Triangle Mountain Bike Race Series events, which are bolded.


The other flier is an overview of longer endurance-type mountain bike races. It's pretty general, but might still be helpful to some.


Again, on the flip side there is a list of regional endurance events. This is actually pretty useful: when I was compiling these I was surprised at how many I came up with, particularly how many 12/24 hour races there are.


Page two also has a list of some of the local XC races, of which there are surprisingly a great number. I hope this helps out someone.

Oh, mad props and good luck to our three Cohutta warriors this weekend: go Brian, JD, and Dave!

Addendum: Before any newbie stumbles across the fliers above and gets overwhelmed by sheer number of bullet points I assembled, I wanted to give one caveat: I've never followed all of my own advice, and it's hard for me to imagine a world in which I would be able to carefully and calmly go through each step in preparation for a race. Please take this as perfect-world advice, and not any sort of prescription of must-do before your first race. Just use this advice as a friendly guide and I'm sure you'll be fine. Except the demand to have fun, which you absolutely must do.

BCC at Triangle Skillz Day

Last Saturday Brian, Dave, and I drove down to Harris Lake to take part in the Triangle Off-Road Cyclist's Skills Clinic. We were ostensibly in charge of the "Beginning Racing" clinic, during which we were supposed to help people who had no or little experience racing get a little more involved in cross-country racing. With that it mind we put together a flier and an outline, and prepared to do our best.

After a short introduction by TORC's Tim Lee and Stewart Bryan the clinic participants split into groups and it was our time to shine.

I'm not sure how the beginning racers took to what we had to offer: the crowd was split between some pretty accomplished riders who just wanted some advice on racing, and some, er, 'younger' riders who might not have need to hear about target heart rates. It was a great group, actually -- it's always cool to see young kids side-by-side with adults when learning a new skill -- but I'm hoping that our fliers could cover some of the questions that we might have missed in our presentation.


Chris and JD showed up about noon, but by that time the weather was looking pretty bad. We were slated to help Carl from Middle Ring Racing with the Advanced Racing clinic, but that was cancelled in an attempt to get the kids' races in. We rode sweep on the course: I followed the beginner kids and Brian, Chris, and Dave tailed the intermediates.

I'm not sure who won the pretty great prizes (I've never won a cycling jersey in a race before, for instance), but there were plenty of smiles, despite the steady rain that started just as the racers were finishing up.

Probably the most exciting aspect of the whole day was seeing the progress made by the kids from Triangle Trips for Kids. Dave spent most of his time working with them (along with Andrea and a number of other volunteers), and Brian and I got a chance to head out on the trail with them.

Phillip Baron and Brian snapped some pics, but mostly we just enjoyed watching these guys negotiate some of the more technical aspects of the Hog Run trail system. They moved from learning to basics of shifting and braking at the beginning of the day to hitting the big whoop-dee-doo by the end -- really great to see.

Also nice was watching Dave win an impromptu bunny-hop contest on a borrowed bike, and JD and Trisha's son Luke make repeated attempts to push his tricycle off the pavement and into the dirtiest patches he could find. I forgot to bring my camera but Brian shot quite a few pics. Oh, and Tim Lee got a few snips that you can see here -- be sure to check out the pics of the kids.

All-n-all not a bad outing for the BCC crew. Why? 'Cause we gots mad skillz.