A Piece of Our Universe

How many espresso does it take?

2012-02-08T12:15:00.002-07:00

Overall my body's not too happy with me at the moment, good thing my head is ignoring the whining. It took four of these to get on the bike this morning.

10 days until 24hrs of Old Pueblo, I'll be glad to stand on the start line.

Oh yeah, the coffee was good.

Fun with the Nikon

2012-02-07T11:24:00.002-07:00

Fun to be playing with my 'real camera' again. The Android phone's camera is convenient but not very capable. I've been without the Nikon D200's battery charger for months now as it was buried in a packing box and only recently discovered while looking for something else. Glad to have it back!

This wasn't a very good pour but I had fun bouncing the light off the espresso machine's stainless steel surface which created a translucent lighting effect across the surface of the milk.

Ride Snowboards (and me)

2012-02-06T21:11:00.002-07:00

So I'm out doing some hill intervals around town. As I ride past the boys school I see a crew of potential hooligans running a big bungie cord across the street, stretched out to the max. I wasn't sure if they were launching leftover Halloween pumpkins or launching each other. It turns out they were launching each other... on Ride Snowboards.

These guys were funny (and talented), I just saw the video they put up on their Ride's front page. They must have been hurting for footage because I made it into the segment. Start at the 3min mark and continue watching for a couple of minutes, classic stuff.

http://ridesnowboards.com/

On the hill

2012-02-06T11:54:00.001-07:00

A sunny day in the trees

2012-02-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

Life is good...

Some turns on the hill with the family.

Then I got out on the bike.

When I got back from the ride, Doreen headed out for 90mins of skate skiing over at Black Jack.

I've got a couple of pumpkin pies cooling down right now, and some Thai curry on the go. While I was cooking I got the boys working on their Thai kicks and I held the pad. Even though they were both wearing shin protectors Evan was still hurting my leg through the pad. He's got great hip rotation, all the teaching is paying off that's for sure.

More skiing tomorrow at Red and Black Jack, more riding, more sunshine and trees.

Yup, life is good.

Caffeinated

2012-02-03T11:55:00.001-07:00

This wasn't my best effort at capturing a good four ouncer. But don't let the poor quality image fool ya, it was a tasty cup. Or should I say, three tasty cups. ;-)

Now it's time to go ride a bike.

Snow and desert

2012-02-02T20:06:00.000-07:00

The Rossland Winter Carnival finished up last weekend. The town was busy with all kinds of activities, a really fun time. I course marshalled some gates for the King of the Mountain and got to watch the local rippers up-close as they descended three fast laps off the face of Red, each lap done on a different piece of gear - telemark, snowboard and downhill ski's. Impressive to watch, I've got a long way to go to hang with that crowd.

Here's some images I shot at one of the points on the course:

The next day I grabbed some quick footage of the bobsled race down one of the city streets, keeerazy! Towards the end of the video you will see a little bit of the bike leg from the John Heintz Cup. I was part of a five person team and as it turns out all of us had raced at The Sufferfest last October. We placed 2nd in our category but next year we are in for the win. ;-)

I've been out doing some riding; day time, night time, any time I can. I'm trying to get ready for the 24hrs of Old Pueblo which is about two weeks away and I've just got to say... it hasn't been easy with all this snow. What's harder than racing non-stop for 24hrs on a no-suspension singlespeed 29'er? Doing it unsupported. Doreen and the boys can't come down for this one and having done 24hrs unsupported once in the past I know how hard that is. Doreen is the pit-master and always manages to improve my results.

In order to improve the odds I'm trying to bear down in these last couple of weeks and forge the steel sword just a bit harder. I'll be glad when I can finally start racing, all this short notice cram-fitness has been hard but the rewards of racing in the desert will make it worth it.

I fly out of Spokane at 0600hrs on Friday morning, pickup my rental minivan at the Tucson airport (which then becomes my hotel and pit), head for a grocery store to grab water and food supplies, then it's off to the race course to build up my bike and have a quick look at the terrain so I can pick my gearing. Saturday morning I'll fill up 24 empty race bottles with Infinit in prep for the noon start. Sometime just after noon on Sunday I'll crack a beer, soak in the moment and then go looking for a shower and a hole in the wall local Mexican restaurant. Monday I'll be on a plane back to Spokane and will be telling the boys all about the race that evening. Except for battery changes during the night laps and managing clothing layers based on the conditions, I shouldn't have to stop very much, except to talk to all my bottles on occasion, because you know, you've got to update your pit crew... even if they are inanimate. ;-)

Here's a sunny ride from this morning, this is the trail I usually do in the middle of the night by myself. It might not look that hard, but it takes a lot of juice in the snow. Speed on the trails provided by a 50/50 blend of Brazil Bob-O-Link and Ethiopia Tchembe N2. Oh yeah! As always, best viewed via full screen in HD at 720P.

A bit of catch-up

2012-01-22T22:28:00.000-07:00

Time to do some catching up around here. I fell behind on posting up but for good reason, more on that in a minute. Rather than write a pile of supporting verbiage to get things back on track, I'm going to fall back on the timeless (and quick) pictorial method. ;-)

We have been...

Skiing:

And XC skiing:

And looking for adventures:

And dealing with the new house:

And riding:

And signing up on short notice for the 24hrs of Old Pueblo (in less than a month!):

On a rigid 29'er singlespeed hardtail:

And ramping up the training (rather quickly) means on top of winter riding I'm doing some of this:

Before I continue, just let me say the CompuTrainer (above) was first envisioned by an evil genius during the times of the Spanish Inquisition. He believed it could replace The Rack as a form of medieval torture. Sometimes I would prefer The Rack or a solid flogging, after 6yrs on the CompuTrainer you would think I could wrap my head around those first few winter sessions - it's still hard.

Now for some quick verbiage...

As you can see in the ski video (as always, adjust the viewing quality for best watched in 720P), the boys are really improving considering just a month ago they were on the magic carpet bunny runs. Keegan is all about fast and Evan is all about technique right now.

You can also see a bit of Doreen in the video, her tele has really improved and her tele style is much more graceful than my tele style. Not only is she out-stylin' me on the tele boards she's also hitting the Black Jack skate ski and XC ski terrain on a more frequent basis than I am. Juggling a (very) busy work schedule and outclassing me on the snow, isn't enough, she's also decided to head to Spokane in April with Lisa and the two of them are racing the Spokane River Run. Doreen is doing the 25km race unless Lisa convinces her to do the 50km race (just sayin'). Doreen's stepping up her game!

And in case you didn't figure it out yet, the reason the blog posts have been a wee bit infrequent... well I can only blame myself for ambushing myself with a short notice 24hr Solo race. A concentrated focus on putting in additional winter riding hours has me riding instead of blog posting. The blog has suffered. My legs have suffered. The good citizens of Rossland have suffered, having to watch me ride over pretty much every single street and trail, every day, leaving tire tracks instead of ski tracks. But it's all for a good cause, racing for 24hrs in the Tucson desert should make for an interesting time. Even more interesting I'll be flying down by myself and doing it unsupported - no pit and no pit crew. I've never raced 24hrs of Old Pueblo but it's been on my checklist of things to do for half a decade. I'm looking forward to it. With Old Pueblo added to the mix it looks like I'll get four 24hr Solo's this year, which will put me at over twenty 24hr Solo races, deeeeelicious!

I'll make an effort to squeeze in a few more posts before the mid-Feb race, until then, I'll sum this entire post up by saying... things are good.

Till next time.

Men vs. Women

2012-01-05T16:56:00.000-07:00

A riding buddy (who shall remain nameless) sent me this.

I laughed.

Then I got back to thinking about that creaking noise in my bottom bracket.

Another full day on Red Mountain

2012-01-03T12:51:00.002-07:00

Wow, the boys are improving!

This first video was quite possibly the best day I've ever spent on a hill, not because the conditions were awesome but because I got to ski with Evan and watch him 'get it' at approx 50secs into the run. From that point till the end of the video he was trying to hit everything. I just watched this video again and laughed through pretty much all of it. This was shot with my GoPro HD on a chest mount, as always it's best watched full-screen at 720p HD.

Here's another one trying to follow closely through the jumps.

And the last run of the day through Evan's jumping section, my legs were fried by this point. All the snowplowing and speed-checking is a quadriceps pressure cooker.

Last day of the year

2011-12-31T18:40:00.003-07:00

Spent the whole day up on the mountain.

See you all next year!

Back in Rossland

2011-12-30T22:17:00.000-07:00

After a few days in Red Deer visiting Doreen's family we are now back in Rossland.

I've got photos and stories from the trip but I'm too computer-burned-out to post them up. Doreen bought an Ipad 2 on Boxing Day and I just lost 1.5 days of my life to integrating an Apple device on my Windows network. Uugh!

On a cheerier note, here's some quick footage from today's fun on the hill.

First runs on Rossland's Red Mountain

2011-12-21T23:19:00.002-07:00

The last four days have been a pretty steep (pun intended) learning curve for the boys with an introduction to their first year on a big mountain ski resort. In previous years we've spent our time on cross country skis out in the backcountry rather than travelling to big resorts like Sunshine Village or Lake Louise where there are always huge lineups to ski on wind blasted hard ice conditions. With the ski hill literally on our back door step it was time to get the boys on a chair lift and heading down some steep stuff.

The first day was spent on the magic carpet bunny hill where they had a lot of fun (and a few spills).

Day 2 I took them up the chair lift and had them doing biiiiigggg s-turns and lots of snowplowing, the verdict was "This is fun! Can we go again tomorrow?", hmmmmmmmmm... annual family ski pass - check! Sure boys, that won't be a problem.

Day 3, a repeat of day 2. As an added bonus I managed to start improving my telemark skills, I've got a lot of room for improvement.

Day 4 (today) was a pretty big improvement for the boys. I got them down some green runs AND some blue runs. The blue's were a bit slow but down they went and the best part is they wanted more.

Awesome.

For an in-depth opinion of how good today was I'll turn you over to Evan and Keegan.

Hahaha, ok not exactly in-depth. Here's some footage of the boys on a mix of green and blue runs. It might not look steep on the GoPro HD but it looked steep to the boys. Evan is still a bit nervous from a big wipeout he took on his first ever run down the mountain but he's getting his mojo back and it looks like he's put it behind him.

As always, best viewed in 720 and full screen.

Last run of the day and you can already see their confidence building... and the speed increasing. Looks like I'm going to have to get to work on my telemark skills or they are going to start dropping me. ;-)

I was chatting with a local today who said this is the worst start to the ski season in 20yrs. I was thinking "Dude, there's snow on hill, it's sunny and a ton of fun" but I guess everyone around here is used to huge amounts of Kootenay powder by now. No doubt it will show up over the next month and then we too will understand and possibly be spoiled by the magical conditions everyone talks about.

Bring it!

Skate skiing, telemarking and singlespeeding - what do they have in common

2011-12-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

What do they have in common?

Rossland-Goodness.

Earlier this week I got out for some skate skiing with Vic, 90mins of full-on race pace effort and I was trashed by the end of it. My cardio wasn't the problem but the new muscle recruitment due to my inefficient technique was burning my legs. By the time I got home all I could do was collapse on the couch and shake my head while staring at the ceiling. It was good to be out on the Black Jack trails working that hard, there's nothing like maxxing out the athletic ability to make you feel alive.

Yesterday we all went to the opening day on Red Mountain. The boys have never been on downhill skis before but they did great, maybe the years of Nordic skiing has helped them out a bit. Doreen an I were on our old telemark gear, that was a lot of fun. We did the math and it's been nearly 9yrs since we went out on the tele gear. Totally fun.

Here's a hand-held vid from my Android, trying to follow Doreen and Keegan down the bunny hill.

This morning Doreen headed to the hill for some solo tele while I hung with the boys. Then Doreen and the boys headed over to Black Jack for the Jackrabbit program while I headed for the hill to gets some more time on the tele gear. Big improvements today and can't wait to get some more tele carving in.

After 2hrs of telemarking I went out for an hour of snowy trails fun on the SS. My normal route usually gets me 1200-1500' vert gain for the hour, a bit fatiguing after the tele on the hill, good character building stuff though. Along the way I bumped into Santa, apparently his sleigh was in for repairs and it appears that he also rides a singlespeed 29er when he needs to get from A to B.

Booyah Santa!

An update on the new house build... pretty much all the Gienow windows are installed and the plumbing has started as well as the electrical. The Air Source Heat Pump goes in on Dec 21/22, I'm interested to watch that unfold. All the roofing is complete as of about 2wks ago. There's always something going on at the site. Here's a shot of the boys looking through the living room just before the windows got positioned.

2hrs of riding in Nelson

2011-12-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

We headed to Nelson on Saturday to hang out with Scott and Lisa, always a good time. Doreen and the boys got a bit of shopping in and Evan got to cash in his b-day gift certificate to a Nelson book store courtesy of Scott and Lisa.

While everyone was wandering downtown Nelson, Scott and I got out on the singlespeeds and proceeded to mash out 2300' of vert gain in a couple of hours of snowy trail riding. How hard was it?

Hard.

Scott's tiny 26'er bike was barely visible in some of the deep snow, whereas my mighty 29'er could be seen through even the deepest trails.

Here's a view close to the top of our route.

We did have a few laughs...

On some of the lower portions of the mountain we actually got some dirt. With Scott taking the lead on his home terrain I got to ride a variety of trails like Atomic Speed Goat, Frog Jump, Femur, and possibly others that I forget at the moment. Chasing Scott on first time descents was loads of fun, there's some pretty steep stuff in Nelson, not for the faint of heart.

Good times.

From snow to slush

2011-11-18T03:08:00.001-07:00

My usual route into Rossland consists of...

Down some fun trails...

Today the snow beat me...

The roads were pretty good in town...

More snow tomorrow.

Some new snow and more nighttime winter riding

2011-11-17T14:43:00.001-07:00

Sorry about the background noise from my jacket zipper.

I was running into a problem on this ride that I haven't really faced before. My night lights and glasses were coating over in ice throughout the ride. The air temp and humidity was creating ice on everything. Even my jacket was a sheet of ice. I had to keep pulling over to wipe the ice off my glasses.

Some family cross country skiing

2011-11-14T11:22:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we all got out for some family snow time.

A nice clear day.

Towards the end of the day Evan and I took a harder return route on a tight trail with lots of ups and downs. He did great on a tough trail.

GoPro HD on snowy singletrack

2011-11-13T11:37:00.001-07:00

We got quite a dump over the last two days so I decided to take the GoPro HD out for a snowy ride. I was curious to see how the Schwalbe Ice Spiker Pro's would deal with even more snow and overall they did great.

Best to watch the videos in 720HD.

Hitting Moe's trail was good, though there were a couple of spots where it was a slog.

This nighttime footage is pretty fun once you get to the descending portion which is about half way through the video.

With this much snow on the trails the riding difficulty is determined by approach angles and how much of the snow has been packed down by hikers or dog walkers. I went anaerobic in quite a few spots, making for a really good training ride with an element of fun thrown in. At times I found myself riding into fresh snow just to see if I could tractor through it, most of it was doable as long as I kept turning over the pedals and shifted body weight to create traction. Lots of really low RPM out of the saddle work. Good times.

In the dark zone

2011-11-09T22:02:00.000-07:00

So.

Much.

Fun.

A bit of dark and snowy singletrack

2011-11-09T00:37:00.000-07:00

That's right Scott.

Ice Spiker Pro's.

Get some.

The benefits of spiked tires

2011-11-08T17:40:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I hit the (even more snow than yesterday) snowy singletrack on the Schwalbe Ice Spiker Pro's, after two days of riding they continue to impress. The attempt at riding these as a tubeless setup yesterday didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, by the time I finished that ride I was babying a super low PSI, I threw the digital tire pressure gauge on them when I got home and it read 8 PSI.

8 PSI. Yikes!

So last night I pumped the tires up to 40 PSI and left them overnight to see if they would heal up with the Stans sealant. This morning they were flat again. Time to throw in some tubes, which I wasn't looking forward to with the Stans Crest rims. To make things more difficult I decided to go with burly 26'er tubes so the stretching effect of 29'er rims wouldn't compromise the tubes throughout the winter. The low profile of the Crest rims and a lot of rubber made the Schwalbe install... difficult.

There was cursing.

With the tubes in and a couple of chores to complete in town I pointed by bike toward the singletrack. Lots of hard work commenced and I managed to ride dab free but I'd be lying if I didn't mention at one point I drooled on myself.

Once I got on the road at the top of town it was smooth sailing, so smooth I got pulled over by the RCMP for speeding in a school zone. Of course I had no idea I was going over 30 kph, I apologized and got let off with a warning. The RCMP officer was really quite decent about it.

I made it on time to meet the boys at their school bus pickup spot, I threw them a quick "Hi boys" and then proceeded to turn around and race back up the singletrack trying to beat the bus to the drop off point.

Today it was a tie, with the kids offloading just as I pulled up on the singlespeed. There was quite a bit of excitement for the kids as they got off the bus due to the car nose first in the ditch right at the bus stop. Luckily nobody was hurt based on the driver standing next to the car shaking her head.

Is it wrong that the first thing I thought of was 'Bet they wish they had Ice Spiker Pro's mounted'.

804 carbide tips of 29'er goodness.

Rossland Rubberhead Bike Festival images

2011-10-20T00:26:00.000-06:00

As promised, here are some photos from the Rossland Rubberhead Bike Festival. So much fun...

Singlespeed hardtail on the Super D course heading up, up, up. I'm pretty sure I was already going lactic at this point.

Some four bike fun at the Huck 'en Berries Bike Jam afternoon.

Mid-air skilllzzzzz.

Uhmmm, yeah. Wow.

All images courtesy of Vince Boothe: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinceboothe/

Looking for a few good people

2011-10-18T22:05:00.000-06:00

Doreen asked me to post the message below. She is increasing the size of her team and wants to put the word out. Drop me a line if you want to know more: staylor@attglobal.net

"The AMEC office in Trail, BC is growing and we have some great opportunities for good people. We are looking to fill roles in planning, cost control, estimating, contract management, document control, project management, mechanical engineering and piping.

If you or someone you know is interested please let me know. It has been a really good move for our family, we wish we had done it years ago. The lifestyle here is second to none."

Rossland Super D

2011-10-09T22:49:00.000-06:00

Had a blast today!

Ryan Kuhn, the boys from Revolution Cycles, a pile of volunteers and countless other sponsors put on a great grassroots event today. Definitely on the agenda for next year.

Yesterday I should have been putting in a smart pre-race protocol effort but instead I went out for a reasonably hard 2.5hrs of riding, it's not my fault, there was sun on my face and the trails felt great and I didn't want to stop riding. When I rolled out of bed this morning (as late as possible) my legs were still a bit heavy, but there's a solution for that... I hit the caffeine hard, put the earphones in, jumped on the hardtail singlespeed and started the playlist on some old school Beastie Boys, AC/DC and Van Halen. A 30min ride up the highway to the race course opened the legs up and gave the caffeine a chance to do its thing, bwhahahahaha!

By the time I got to the racer briefing I had sweat running down my face and I was raring to go. The briefing went smoothly and everyone lined up for their 2min gap release times. I was third up with lucky plate number 113 at 1006hrs. I got the word to 'Go!' and punched it, I was only 10secs into the course and clipped a root or rock with my pedal during a series of low-grade descending tight switchbacks and went off course a touch (at high-speed) and lost a few seconds fighting to ride it back on track without unclipping from my pedals, all of this in front of Doreen and the boys who just happened to be right at the spot where I almost biffed it. I didn't see them until I had cleared my error and was back on track and I only registered them peripherally. That's what I get for racing on adrenaline rather than focus, 5secs after the mental lapse I quickly rebooted my mental game and raced dab free to the finish line.

Right away I knew the course was in AWESOME shape, tacky from the previous days of rain and quite possibly some of the best dirt since we arrived in Rossland 2.5mths ago. The trail maintenance was perfect. World class dirt. Seriously.

A couple of minutes into the race and I knew my legs weren't going to give a top-notch performance but my head was in the game and so I just turned up the punish-o-meter and decided to ignore the physiological complaining. After nearly 10mins of climbing-racing and a healthy serving of anaerobic effort and lactic acid, things began to improve as the course reached its highest point and proceeded to point downwards for the rest of the course. What lay in store for every racer at that point... a beautiful ribbon of descending twisting dirt for the next 7mins.

Berms... check.

Whoop de doo's... check.

Dirt ramps... check.

Tight hairpins... check.

Rock work... check.

Thread the needle flowing... check.

Tears of joy kind of riding... check.

Anyone who was on that course this morning got treated to a magical trail.

After the race we headed home to relax a bit and I caught up on some athlete files before we headed down to Trail for some Dim Sum at 'Ace of Taste'. That's our second time there and I gotta say it has some pretty good Chinese food.

An hour later it was back to Rossland for the Huck en Berries dirt jump event, some of those guys were catching big air! Lots of 360's, backflips, and other assorted craziness. Definitely not my thing but totally impressive to watch that kind of athleticism. Rory from Revolution Cycles had the tunes blasting and was working the microphone as the riders went down the jump line, I swear he was making up names for some of the stuff those guys were doing.

Awards ceremonies time and I got to hit the podium in 1st place Masters category with a finish time of 16mins and 40-something seconds.

I was racing that course to grab the 1st place overall event placing (of course) but had no idea how my singlespeed hardtail would stack up against the guys with gears and full suspensions. Turns out the bike did ok, sadly the rider let it down today, but I am happy with the 2nd place overall finish. The young guy who beat me in the overall came up from Seattle and his time was better by approx 10secs, I talked to him after the race and he seemed like a real nice guy, congratulations to him.

What's the best thing about racing grassroots events in the Kootenays?

A beer brand I've never drank before, sausages from Star Grocery in Trail (the best) and a Rossland Rubberhead Bike Festival hat - I've been assimilated by the Kootenay borg. ;-)