Go Far

Out with the "old" (and in with the new). IE - FOR SALE

I'm clearing some bikes out of my house. Not because they're broken, or in poor shape, but because these bikes don't fit into the riding I'm discovering that I really enjoy. The first is being sold because it's a size too small for me. If it wasn't for that, I'd probably hang onto it. Due to the size issue, I don't enjoy riding it. The second bike is being sold because it's being replaced with something a little more off-road worthy. It's a solid bike with some nice upgrades and has been well taken care of.

If you fit either of these bikes, leave a comment and lets see if we can make a deal.


1990 Schwinn Paramount
56cm frame
Waterford hand built OS steel frame
Silver and red
Chris King Headset
Dura Ace Brakes
9 Speed Dura Ace drivetrain w Campy ergo shifters
Selle Italia Flite Saddle
American Classic seatpost
Shimano 105 SPD-SL pedals
Weight - 20 lbs
(Photo is with older set of pedals and tires)

Asking $1100. Open to a reasonable offer.


Olive Green Surly Long Haul Trucker

The LHT has been SOLD to a good home.

CIRREM 2010...a day of Devastation

The tagline for the second running of CIRREM was Hesitation is Devastation. It turned out to be quite appropriate.

I and my house guest, rochester resident Drew Wilson, headed out to the Cumming Tap around 8 AM. We signed in, snagged a plate full of breakfast and socialized before the race started. It was great to see and talk to some folks in person for the first time in almost a year. After a bit of time, I realized that I left both of my water bottles at home. Another racer offered me one of his spare bottles, so I opted to start with one instead of driving back home. The 10 AM start time was nice, if a bit unusual. Typically these events start between 6 and 8 AM. As we were standing around and talking, the little voice in the back of my mind kept saying "You're wasting time. Get out there and ride." The temps were in the mid teens at when arrived, and were slowly climbing every minute that we stood around, making it more and more likely that we were going to end up in some slop along the route.

After some pre-race announcements and thank you's, we took off around 10. I planned to use this race as an early season fitness test, so I opted to stay near the front as long as possible. I pushed it a bit harder than I should have early on, despite knowing that it takes about 8-10 miles of riding for my body to adjust and settle in. I managed to hang with the lead group for the first 5 miles until I decided that I needed to slow down if I expected to finish. I spent the next couple of hours just checking out the scenery and the roads. I had a general idea where we were riding, but I hadn't actually been on any of the roads before. Nothing too eventful, other than spotting Jed a C02 cartridge at the top of one hill. There is a lot of good scenery and roads in this part of the state. Both deserve some additional exploring later this year. After 30 miles of riding, I found my bearings as we rode by near Cedar Bridge County Park north of Winterset. Turning north, I looked at the cue sheet and knew that the toughest part of the ride was about to hit us. Despite that, I shouted out my number as I approached the half way checkpoint and kept riding on.

A mile or so beyond the checkpoint the route started to work it's way up, and my decision to not stop was haunting me. As I climbed out of the saddle, my quads cramped, forcing me back into the saddle to continue the climb. At the top of the first hill, I decided to stop and eat. I realized that I hadn't taken in any food for the first half of the race and it was catching up with me. The food that I had brought with me was either frozen solid or extremely thick. For anyone wondering, Clif Shot Bloks take 10 minutes to go from frozen to chewable once they are in your mouth. By this time a number of the riders I had passed at the checkpoint were also starting to pass me back, so I soldiered on, walking the big hills on both North River Trail and Old Portland Road to give my legs a break. I had a brief exchange with a fellow La Cruz rider that that read my DK 200 account from last year. My 15 minutes of fame I guess.

As we turned back east, the roads were quickly becoming softer and it was obvious that I needed to switch over to survival mode to finish the race. I was out of water as of mile 45 and starting to have issues with changing gears. I finally looked down and noticed the thick layer of frozen crud that had built up on my top tube and seized up my deraileur cables. Stopping briefly to chip that off, I managed to reset my odometer. This wasn't a huge deal as I was on relatively familiar roads by now. The stretch of riding from mile 45 to 54 was agonizing. I couldn't generate any power on the east/west flats to make up time and the sloppy north/south roads were sapping any power I might have had. After what seemed like hours, I finally emerged onto the familiar south half of the Booneville loop. I was finally able to cruise comfortably along this stretch. At mile 60, I saw the rider in front of me continue east. I looked at my cue sheet, and the color of the arrow painted on the snow, and opted to follow the cue sheet and turn south. This turned out to be the right choice as someone not involved with the race had painted an arrow in the snow to mess with the riders. The final 3 miles were spent just hoping the race would end. Jed and Kent did a good job of keeping the finish line in sight, but out of reach for this stretch. I finally arrived back in Cumming 5 hours and 15 minutes after the start, stumbling through the bar to record my arrival. I quickly made my way to the food table and snagged a plate full of beans, chips and a pork loin sandwich in order to fill the deep pit I had dug during the race. After a plate full of food and a couple of beers, I was feeling a lot more human.

The day's suffering was a direct result of my (lack of) nutrition and fluid intake. Had I managed those better, I likely would have felt and performed better. The positive spin was that I made those mistakes early in the race season, and in a shorter race that was closer to home. The price for making the same errors later in the year will be a lot higher.

I have to give a big shout out to Jed and Kent for organizing the event. The location and the route were great, as were the awards, food and swag. Big thank you to The Cumming Tap for everything they did to support the event as well. An extra special thank you to the volunteers at both The Tap and the checkpoint. Events like this only go off with the help of a number of people. The volunteers were top notch and extremely helpful.

On the equipment front, my Salsa La Cruz was solid for the entire event. No mechanicals, no flats and extremely comfortable. My Oakley sunglasses worked great. The new Hydrophobic lenses are everything they claim to be. Thanks, as always, to Rasmussen Bike Shop. They order in the weird stuff I request with no question and never fail to do a great job supporting me, despite the fact that I'm not entering mainstream events.

I'm headed off to Decorah for some training on the 11th - 13th of March. My next event will be TransIowa v6. I have a lot of preparations to complete between now and then if I expect to finish TI.

Final race results

Mental flush

By mileage and time on the trainer, I am sure that I have more time on the bike so far this year than I have in years past. For whatever reason, I don't feel that I'm as prepared for the upcoming race season as I should be at this point. I'm sure part of it is consistency. I'm not riding as regularly as I would like to be right now. I see a lot of people out putting in regular rides on the weekends, plus a ride or two in the middle of the week, or regular commutes. The cold certainly has something to do with it, as does my aversion to sitting on the trainer for hours on end. I know that if I spend too much time on the trainer, I'll be burned out before the race reason really gets here in late April. I'll need to be well rested and eager to be on the bike if I'm going to mentally make it through 200 and 300 mile events. I'm hoping that three days with Shockstar up in Decorah in a couple of weeks will provide a much needed boost to my drive and fitness.

On the brighter side of things, parts are on order to complete the build of my Salsa Dos Niner framset that I bought from Matt Gersib back in November. It's been a long, rough winter staring at the frame everytime I sit at my desk. The build is going to be made up of SRAM X0 with a Truvativ Noir crank for the driveline, Avid Elixr CR brakes, a Reba Race fork, and DT Swiss 240s and Stans Flows for the wheelset. I'm looking forward to getting the parts in and getting the bike built up (assuming that I can find the time to do so).

I've got some other shake ups planned for the stable this year as I find my niche in the two wheel world. More on those as they happen.

3 hour tour

Left BWW at 1:30 PM today with a ton of other guys. Blackford, Basso, Waugaman, Mason, Huerter, Wild Bill, Bach, Doughty, Ryan VH, and Osborn (think that was everyone). It was Chad's ride, but he didn't really have a solid route planned. Seemed like everyone turned to me to ask where we were going and what the pace was gonna be. We headed out of town on 60th St towards Booneville Road. It was quickly obvious that my pace was a lot slower than what most people wanted to ride today. We had some regroups to make sure that everyone was following the same route. Got about 15 miles in when Bach stopped and asked me for a multi tool to fix his loose pedal. Turns out that his pedal somehow got cross threaded and it was pulling out. We pulled it out of his crank arm, got it rethreaded as best as we could, and I sent him on the short route home. His pedal ended up coming out after a large downhill, but by that time, the fast guys had caught up to him and ended up towing and pushing him back. I ended up pulling sweeper duty, catching up to Doughty and Huerter in the process. After helping Terry with a flat, we both just cruised back in for a bit until he told me to go ahead ride without him. Stopped for some coffee with the fast guys before heading home. Got 30 or so miles rolled out in about 3 hours. In the end not a terribly satisfying ride for a number of reasons. Just one of those days I guess. At least the La Cruz is clean and I didn't spend the day inside on the rollers.

Sunday .783 Metric

I left the trailhead behind the Cumming tap this morning at 8 AM sharp. No one else showed up for the planned metric century. I wasn't too surprised as the winds were blowing at 20 MPH and no one else really needs to get outdoor miles this early due to their event schedules. I pulled the bike out of the truck and got down to business. A 1/2 mile of pavement followed by a quick mile jog north got me onto the planned route. I turned west and was blasted by the wind as I crossed the freeway. This wasn't going to be a fun day. My legs were feeling a little heavy, but I finally got into a rhythm and just kept driving west into the wind. I stopped to take a quick drink and realized that I had not heard the beep on my GPS and missed my turn south. Instead of turning back, I opted to keep heading west into the wind since the roads were in decent shape. As I passed near Earlham, I opted to go into town and grab a cup of coffee and a doughnut at Casey's. About that point I realized that I had probably didn't have the legs under me to ride a metric today. I had the hilliest part of the route ahead of me and the roads were starting to get soft under the now visible sun (BTW, it's been a while since we've seen that yellow ball around here). I put my helmet and balaclava back on and retraced the now softer roads back to Cumming. The rest of the ride was uneventful other than the ache in my legs and a couple of "oh crap" moments when my front wheel started washing out on some of the soft gravel downhills. Stopped in the Cumming tap after the ride and had a couple of pints of Fat Tire before heading home.

I would have liked to have gotten a full 62 or so in today, but it just wasn't in the cards for me after the trainer workout yesterday and the headwinds today. I still managed to get a good ride in today, so that's not all bad.

Saturday Metric report

Had a good group show up on Saturday morning. Managed to get them all inside where it was warm before all 10 of us took off around 8:45 AM for parts north and west from my house. Had four riders peel off at Granger due to time or other constraints. The rest of us took in an incredible display of atmospheric optics due to all of the ice in the air and then soldiered on to Woodward. Courtney, Billy and I were the only ones who continued to the turn around point in the middle of nowhere. After that, we nursed a now "deep in the bonk" Billy back to the Casey's in Woodward, where I had my wife pick him up. Courtney and I picked the pace up for the last 20 or so miles to finish the ride out around 3:30 PM. The thaw and head winds on the way back gave notice that I've lost a lot of fitness over the winter. I just didn't have enough power to really drive the bike through the soft, wet surface of a thawed gravel road at the speeds I would like. Time to get more miles in.

If the weather holds out, I'm planning on another one this weekend, leaving the Cumming Tap at 8:00 AM, and finishing there too. Route will either be a loop, or an out and back between Cumming and Winterset.

Photos from the ride are here.