Only In Iowa, But In MAY???!!!

Only in Iowa could you get a sunburn on a Tuesday ride, and tweak your back shoveling a half foot of snow on Thursday, in the same week! Enough, OK? And I hate to think what this would have done to Trans Iowa if the ride was this coming weekend, after all of this snow.

Beast Dreams

Soon, I may have a Mongoose Beast in my hot little hands, and I have a few ideas of what mods would be good for it. In no particular order, and not limited to...
1. Trim the roundish dropouts to straight, flat lines.
2.Add a brace at the seat post/top tube.
3.Drill and paint the rims. Guess what color. Black, the standard of all cool rims.
4.Add front brakes with half sleeved posts from a donor mtb fork.
5. Roll the seat post back for some cockpit room.

My neighbor has a welder and is experienced, so 2 and 4 should be easily accomplished. Payment in beer. Number 5 is going to a guy at work who races stock cars and has a tube bender. He'll do it for the heck of it. (Not as much as this picture shows, maybe 10 degrees) And since there may be some welding scars, I might as well consider a paint job. The site owner at www.ratrodbikes.com painted his with red primer and I must say, it looks awesome. Let's see, what else.....

Chewing The Fat

After lusting silently for months over different fat bikes, seeing people posting about how much fun they're having, and generally killing myself for looking at something I cannot have, I just gave up on the idea of having one. I stopped at a point where a Surly Pugsley, yellow, would have been my ideal fat bike. Utilitarian, not too flashy, and capable. Just too expensive. After all, we have $10,000 out of pocket in braces on our oldest son, cars from the 80s and 90s, and you know trouble comes in threes!

I looked at many ways to try to make my own fatty. After all, when I wanted a single speed mountain bike I just took the derailleurs off, ghetto styled the chain on the cog set, and went out riding. SS for free! Fixed bug bit me and I got a set of wheels modified at Bike World Ames (The Store That Supports The Sport) and stripped down an old road frame. Bam! Fixed Gear. Now I have about 10 frames that share that one set of wheels. That's 10 bikes for about 40 bucks in parts and labor. And I ride them all, on gravel, at all times of the day and night. Started looking at Rat Rod style bikes. Hmm, now that speaks to me. Rusty is trusty. So I started fiddling with ways to make a cruiser frame sit real low and look Gnarly. I think I succeeded there, on four frames, each with their own wheel set. Mostly free since people love to give bikes to me. I think that out of about 8 or 10 ratty bikes I may have paid $1.00 for one of them. Now a fat bike, that has some serious tripping points for a shade tree mechanic like me. Bottom bracket width, tire clearance, chainline, wide rims.....on and on. I gave up on the idea, but not without much thought. Are there really any wasted thoughts about bikes and biking? No there are not. I even left a fat bike off of my 2013 wish list! I wasted a whole year of being "nice" since Santa didn't see fit to leave me one, so what am I to do? I did get a taste of what fat biking would be like. I have some 29er tires that I ride a lot, and got to ride the river several times over the winter with these tires. They're 2.3 width and when aired down to about 35 pounds they walk over and through a lot of snow. That was fun, so I guess I can't cry too much.

So one day I went on Walmart.com to look at cheap suspension bikes. I am going to make a cargo bike using a swing arm triangle from a cheap bike, and needed  to look at styles and attachment points. Well what, to my shock, was on there but a Mongoose Beast fat bike. For $200.00!!!!! OMG! I immediately loved it and wanted a green one. Looking around the innerwebs I found forums that I had been reading had picked up on this bike immediately. Bashers were the loudest voices on most of what I read. But aren't the biggest mouths always on the worst people? Yes. Seems that some people cannot "get" a $200 bike from Wal Mart. Some others can. Ah, the very nature of a forum, right? I was looking for people who had started to tweak these bikes and found a few good looking mods. www.rideonpurpose.blogspot.com had drilled rims in the first few days. www.ratrodbikes.com site owner had his unboxed and rolling in no time. Bighit had a leather saddle, stem adapter,
and flat bar before you could say "Walgoose!" Reminds me of the USCellular commercial where the guy is fiddling with about five old cell phones, taped together, and gets the skunk eye from his wife, "I'm a man honey. You married a man." But it was the author of the thread "Pet My Beast," at www.mtbr.com forums, who really nailed it. A seriously cool bike for, well, for any amount of money. Forget me trying to explain all of the views on the forums. If you're the type who has ever read a forum on bike lust, you know. This guy got it right.

So it is within reason that I might get one of these bikes. For fun. For cheap. I have piles of parts from which to draw inspiration. Pieces to make the fit work. About a hundred paint schemes I would love to try. And miles left in my legs to ride it out. One problem, they're sold out. Waaaa waaaa....Later!

Eurotrash

Just when I thought I couldn't stand pro cyclist Peter Sagan, like at all, he may have redeemed himself.. What could I have against him, you might ask? How about the white socks, gross. How about the quirky victory salutes, putrid.The fact that he sat, all day, on second wheel, behind the yellow jersey, then swung around at 200 meters for the day's win, classic punk ass move. And the fact that he's young...shut it!!! (Actually, I find myself enjoying middle age for one distinct quality. I am young enough to be leery of old people, but old enough to distrust young people. Life is good.) So what has Sagan done to gain favor in my eyes.....? Check it

The Silence of the Pandas

A few years ago I posted that I really hated bamboo bicycles. In fact, the thing I dislike about them is the sometimes clunky look of the lug/boo junctions. Then at NAHBS there was an explosion of bamboo bicycles, and I decided, in my world, that for every bamboo bicycle built a panda bear must be ritualistically slaughtered! Well, there must have been a bloodbath when this baby was made. I guess I will go back on my own word and say that this is one bamboo bike I would like to see more of, (like between my legs!) LATER!

Wish List 2013

It started two weeks ago, all of the people who know I'm a cyclist started asking me, "Are you doing BRR?" "No"
"Negative"
"What?Oh, nope"

"Been there, done that"

You get the drift. How many ways can I say that it would be boring to go for that kind of bike ride. I have done it solo, done it with friends, done it with my brother, my wife, my kids, my kids and wife (she swore she would never ride it again after that one) and it never really felt like such a fun ride. Maybe I'm turning into an old retro grouch or something. A fun hater? well, I have made up a list of rides/events that I would like to lock on for the coming year. I started this compilation at work the other day after selling a bedroom group to a couple from Collins. We were discussing the bike trail that goes to/through their town (Heart Of Iowa Nature Trail) and I asked the husband if he had ever ridden over the Hoy Bridge. He smiled and whipped out his phone, started looking for a picture, and told me the story of how he had the chance to ride over it all right, on his tractor no less! You see, Hoy Bridge is a fantastic cement railroad bridge that is a seemingly impossible thing to find. Some people who live within a few miles of it have never even heard of it. Others, like my customer, have had all kinds of experiences on it. He told me that as kids, they used to go out and stand in the very center of the bridge, wait until they could see an approaching train, and then run to the other end of the bridge to beat the train. Now that sounds a little crazy, but I guess it might be fun once. So I got to thinking, I have ridden out on that trail six or seven times, and intended to find the bridge, only to turn back before finding the damn thing. So this year, I will find this jewel and spend some time crawling around on it! So, here is a list of the things I want to do with/on my bikes this year:

1. Find Hoy Bridge!!!

2. "Twelve hour personal solo gravel marathon." Loop after loop of R Avenue, to 100th, to Q avenue, to 180th. Repeat.

3. "Grotto Grinder" Ride to West Bend, to Grotto of the Redemption. A two dayer!

4."GTDRI" Gotta meet the guy and ride some of that sweet B road action up there. This is the year!

5. "Dirty RAGBRAI" Gravel miles just off the official route. Drop into town to nourish, then disappear into the grids.

6.Hit the 4 corners of Boone County, Iowa in a single ride. That should be an easy century day, and scenic to boot.

7. View the various meteor shower events from the comfort of a ditch, via the conveyance of a bike. Ride out without lights and get your dark adaptive on!

8. VERY IMPORTANT!!!! View Comet ISON from a bike!!!!! There will be no bad places to see this. There will be no prayers for a clear weather window. There will be no mistaking it! Comet ISON will be a once in a lifetime event in the late fall sky this year. ISON is a comet that will be building up a tail as the months of October and November approach. This tail will be 40,000 miles long, made of vaporizing dust and gasses from the time of the birth of our solar system!!!! This comet, not a here then gone meteor, will have a major presence in the sky, both day and night, for almost three months. In fact, the night brightness will be more than the full moon. Think about THAT light free night ride action! There are varied time tables for the peak of this two plus month event, but it looks like many models agree on a Thanksgiving time frame for the full burn. We live in a blessed time people, get out there and enjoy!

*And on a side note, a very good friend of mine, Mr. Kurt Phillips, is the Executive President of our Chamber of Commerce. He tapped me some months ago to get in on an exploratory committee looking into a route to connect Boone to the High Trestle Trail. It looked like an enticing combination of impossible dream and way cool possibilities. A trail along the winding valley ridge of The Des Moines River, through the hardwood stands of ages old trees. Ledges State Park, Iowa Arboretum, Iowa 4 H Camp, and Swede Point Park being among the wayside stops that could be linked into this trail. Well, through the diligence of a few (myself excluded up to this point, but have faith, I'm more the Lewis and Clark component) very hard working and intelligent persons, the fund raising is complete for the first phase of the plan. A contract will be drawn up with a consulting firm that will allow for monies needs to be quantified. Grants and applications of all kinds will follow, and hopefully a pristine ribbon of Portland Cement will flow along the bluffs and valley. I have ridden the river this winter on the ice, and I can say this, you will LOVE IT!!! Later!

Austin's Pity Limits

Poor Lance. Heavy on the poor! Losing it all is just the next step in the process of coming clean about it all. I still have no respect for him, but at least he is having to "pay" for it all. Too bad Oprah didn't really grill him on some points, but that's the reason he wanted to talk to her instead of someone who would hold his feet to the fire a little longer. A classic punk ass move if ever there was one.The following cartoons are a few that I have drawn up over the last year and published in "Toons weekly cartoon tabloid. Just for laughs. Pity the fool!