Afternoon Ride 12-12-09

It was another cold and gloomy day but I felt the need to ride. I decided to head over to Backwoods to look for some type of cold weather headgear for next weekends ride. I didn't find what I was looking for at Backwoods but I did find an acceptable cap with fold down ear protection at Target. I met up with my lovely wife at Target and we took care of some of our Christmas shopping.

Crossing the Trinity River I got a look at the progress being made on the Trinity Trail. The trail has been lowered closer to the river and a fishing platform is being constructed. I'm looking forward to seeing the final results.

This is Backwoods new, much larger location on 7th Street. They were located further west across the street from the Modern Art Museum. They have a nice selection of camping gear and clothing. They'll occasionally have some great sales on footwear.

I took some time to discuss stoves and tents with one of the sales people. I like this tent in the display. I couldn't get close enough to tell but I think it's a Sierra Designs two person tent. The old tent I have now is a bit on the heavy side for bike touring. This one is sure to be much lighter and cooler than my old tent.

I stopped for coffee at, you guessed it, Starbucks. FortWorthology reported the sighting of a new coffehouse under construction downtown on Florence Street. I'm ready for something different.

While I was out riding I had the pleasure of meeting Russell. He recognized my bike from the blog and stopped me for a chat. Russell was in the process of tweaking his position on his Specialized Roubaix. He showed me the shorter stem he had just installed (I completely forgot to take photos). I told him about BABBLE and invited him to join up. Hopefully we'll be hearing from him soon. I also met a guy when I stopped for coffee, but for the life of me I can't remember his name (I forget my own kid's names sometimes). He told me about an old Australian track bike that he's building. He was a pretty interesting guy. We talked bikes for a while. He seemed to be genuinely interested in attending our next group ride. Hopefully we'll hear from him as well.

Broken Films Cross

Fellow BABBLE member Steve A (DFW Point-To-Point) had the crazy idea to compete in the Broken Films Cross cyclocross race. Since the race was being held in Fort Worth, and there was a good possibility that I could get a photo of Steve puking or worse, I decided to go. My little girl accompanied me and really enjoyed taking photos and video of the carnage occurring in what I'm calling the mud pit. Unfortunately there are no photos of Steve losing his lunch. Steve actually did a pretty darned good job.

Here's Steve hanging tough in the mud pit. There were lots of crashes here at the beginning of the 10:30 AM race. The ground seemed to firm up as the day continued resulting in fewer falls.

This is my daughter capturing the action on video.

The mud was worse than it looks in these photos.

I was really impressed with this guy, first of all because of his cool white beard, and second, because he was the only guy on an old lugged steel framed bike. He was pretty tough.

I think 1x9 is a great setup for this type of event.

Mad Duck Cyclery. These guys are always at the major cycling events.

Cyclocross wasn't the only thing happening at the park this morning.

Racers gathering for the start of the 11:30 AM race.

Me and my daughter took turns filming the race. We didn't bother moving out of the mud pit area since that was one of the more entertaining sections of the course. Unfortunately we didn't stay for the men's 1,2,3 race.

Work & Rain

I haven't been on my bike since the BABBLE ride on the 17th. This has been due to the combination of work and heavy rain. Speaking of rain, I saw this unusual sight while I was "out on the job". It rained hard last night but I didn't realize just how hard untill I saw this church parking lot. The rain slid this fresh coating of asphalt off of the parking lot like the toppings off a pizza. Okay, I know it's not real exciting but it's all I've got right now.

On the bike side of things, I've decided to replace the drop bars on my bike with a set of Albatross bars and inverse brake levers, just like the setup I had on my Long Haul Trucker. After riding around on drop bars again I miss the comfort and multiple hand positions that the Albatross bars offered. They were perfect for my style of riding. I'm not sure if I'll stick with the downtube shifters or mount a pair of thumb shifters on the bars near the stem. I've got time to figure it out.

Now this is comfort!

BABBLE

Chris (Pondero) came up with the acronym "BABBLE" while we were brainstorming, trying to name our social ride. BABBLE-Bicycle Authors, Bloggers, Bold-face liars, and Exaggerators, is basically just a group of bloggers who regularly comment on each others blogs and decided that it would be cool to get together and ride.

I started a Google Group the other day for BABBLE as a way for current and future members to keep connected. I know there are other, cooler means of doing this, like Facebook, Twitter and the like, but some of the members are a little long in the tooth, and, bless their hearts, are intimidated by these new fangled sites. Notice that I didn't include myself in that category despite my aversion to Facebook.

What does it take to be a member of BABBLE? I think membership should be in the vein of the Association of Caffeinated Cyclists, where if you drink coffee and you ride a bike, you're a member. So if you fall into the category of Bicycle Authors, Bloggers, Bold-face liars, and Exaggerators, congratulations you are a member. Now click on this link and join.

Yes, I know, the group is listed as CycleBABBLE. That's because BABBLE was already taken.