Fin

I'm letting the domain registration lapse at the end of the month. The last time I did this, Google was nice enough to post a bunch of porn at http://www.dirtydanzing.com/.  I guess it's the "dirty" in the name? Whatever the reason, please loose this address from your bookmarks.

Thanks for reading.

  Christopher

Cake

If you're looking for something interesting to look at today, check out the cake Danielle made for Hillary:

http://bakers-cakes.blogspot.com/2010/12/piano-books-and-christmas-ornament-cake.html

It's super fancy and delicious at the same time. 

Snowy Cyclocross Ride

Sure.  Riding across that log seems like a great idea. 


Try 1:

 Try 2:

Ok, maybe it's best to just ride.

Movember

Sorry, no pics right now.  I just wanted to throw a quick post up here as some of you may have noticed that I've shaved my signature "Marty Van B's".  Why this sudden facial hair change?  Well I change my facial hair all the time, I don't know what the big deal is.  This time it's for Movember!  Yes the month formerly known as November in which men all over the world grow their mo to raise awareness and funds for men's cancer.  The goal is to start on November 1st with a clean face, then to let it grow.  Sound simple?  It's not!  Now I've got to choose a mo to grow!  David thinks I should grow a The Rent Is Too Damn High:

I'm not sure if I could make this much hair happen in a month though.  Now I've done a Fu Manchu in the past:

So that's a possibility but I had also been considering this little number modeled by Gary Fisher recently:

Thoughts?



Recap!

Photo dump and a bit of a recap.

Excuses:  I've been writing here: blog.performancebike.com and putting together things Bo says here: boisms.tumblr.com. 

Now back to your regularly scheduled photo dump.

There I am looking bored at the Bull Moon Ride.  It was actually a very fun ride.

There I am chasing some dudes at the Chapel Hill MTB race (I didn't win).

There I am chasing David (you can see my left right shoulder) at the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race (didn't win that one either).

There I am at the Open Eye Cafe after the Chapel Hill Adventure Race (CHAR) which I did win.  Basically.  There were two people out there who were faster than I was but one was Kip (that's his thumbs-up) who plotted out the course and the other was Alex who made the trophy so they let me take it.

This was taken today.  That's me riding the new rock section we finished yesterday. 

I'm done racing for the year (probably) but still riding.  I'm feeling more than a little burned out this week so that's why I'm taking the time to finish some of these trail building projects that have been on my mind for a couple of months.  Everyone has been riding at Briar Chapel because they cleared the leaves off of the course for the race two weeks ago.  We'll have the last laugh when those trails become a rutted out mess after the winter while the leaves protect our trails but for now no one can find their way around on our trails.  I'm going to try to lay down some sticks in the tricky-to-follow sections so people will stop missing turns.  Still, the season is beautiful when it comes to trail work.  The bugs are down, the temps are down but the sun is still shining and people are still riding. 

I've been contemplating the Dirty Dozen lately but the verdict is still out.  It's a ride that encompasses the 13 hardest hills in the Pittsburgh area.  I used to live on the first hill.  It was brutal.

Ok, more pictures from Pisgah:

That's all folks!

Pisgah

David and I are going back to Pisgah.  You can check out our introductory write-up here. 

You can also check out this video that Mark took over the weekend:



This is one of the sections that we get to do multiple times.  It rips.

Still here

Scrapertown from California is a place. on Vimeo.

Still here.  Scraping on my Scraper Bike.

Oscar Ride

Remember Oscar? 

Check him out now.

Video and more pictures to come later . . .

July

It's July already. 

I'm still riding quite a bit but not racing very much.  This is good and bad.  I don't feel very fast - a lot of the speed I've had in the past has come from racing.  At the same time, I have time on the weekends!  This means I can do things like finish the porch:

Also, with no real agenda on the bike, it leaves me free to do things like explore power line trails with David at lunch:

Of course, I would have done this anyways.  I'm not one to follow too rigid of a training program.  I'm sure this is one of the things holding me back but I've just never been motivated enough to follow a program.  I've never needed one to keep me riding and I don't need one to keep me in good enough shape to chase David along some power line trails.  I'm fairly certain that this is the most fun a person can have on the bike. 

On that note, I've built up two new bikes in the last week.  Neither are super light and neither have the latest parts/features.  Both are steel and both are (hopefully) going to be very fun to ride.  I'll try to get some pictures up here and elaborate more when I have a chance.  Maybe over the weekend with all of my free time . . .

Porch day 1 and the Tarwheel

The Tarwheel XC Challenge was two weekends ago.  I came in 5th place in the Sport category.  Weak.

I'm not even sure why I did so poorly.  The course was one I'm familiar with and I was riding the Access hardtail.  Oh, one thing that went wrong was riding a hardtail.  I was the first one into the woods, but the Chapel Hill trails are so technical that a full suspension bike would have been a better match I think.  Also, it was super hot (again).  Hillary was there running the reg table and also support.  She handed me a water bottle with ice cubes in it between my two laps.  It was like mana sent from heaven.  I passed two people back on that second lap no doubt because I was handling the heat better (and I wasn't handling it very well).

This past weekend involved no riding.  It instead resulted in this:

We framed in our back porch so we can screen it.  This was no small amount of work and I'm actually a bit sore, but it was good work.  I borrowed a lot of tools from Mike and John without which, this would never have happened.  Now we've got to paint it, screen it and get the doors on.  Hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll have this finished and I can start on the fence.

Burn 24 Additional Image Dump

There's David and I setting up for the big "cookout" video.

There we are enjoying birthday cake.

There's David helping Tony put his chain back on.

Here are some professional images:

http://www.backprint.com/view_user_event.asp?PID=bp%1E%7CAp&EVENTID=68414&BIB=23&S=230&PWD=

And there's Tony, Myself, David and of course, Kasey.

Thanks to Lana for these sweet pictures!

Burn 24

With David out of commission, it was all me for the Burn 24 Hour race this year.  I was more than a little nervous lining up for the start, but let me back up for a minute.  We rolled onto the starting field at about 3:00 on Friday under darkening skies.  We set the tents up quickly and got to filming our food video for the Performance Blog (the video should be done sometime this week). 

Then the rain started.

It started as a sprinkle, but quickly turned into a downpour.  As we raced about getting things under tents and into the car, I wondered about the race course and hoped my chicken didn't get cold (it didn't).  David and I soon found ourselves inside my tent eating dinner while the clouds dumped 1,000,000 gallons of water on top of us.  Suddenly I realised that the floor of my tent felt weird.  Sure enough, a lake was forming underneath us as we ate.  Fortunately, the rain let up and we were able to move the tents before any water got in.  When we moved my tent, we discovered a puddle more than 4 inches deep and probably 10'x20', right where we had set up.  Nice start.

One good thing that came out of the move was that we decided to combine tents with our neighbors, two very nice racers named Tony and Lana (and their dog Casey).  They set a great example of what to do with an extra tarp and soon we had a nice shelter erected.

That night, David had a birthday cake which we shared with our new neighbors.  I blew out candles and everything.

The morning of the race started off very well.  It was sunny and HOT.  We ate a great breakfast and I tried to relax and warm up a little.

Here I am headed to the start.  It was going to be a long race for me. I started out on my Access Carbon 29er and would actually do a good number of laps on this bike.  David was ready with bottles as I came through and I turned three good laps at the start.  Then things started going downhill (and not in a good way).  I started overheating big time mid lap and decided to not do anything about it until I got back.  By the time I made it back to the tent, I couldn't eat or drink as my core temp soared. 

David claimed the "best race supporter ever" title as he had crammed a couple of dish towels down into the bottom of our cooler where there was a load of recently thawed water.  This made for soaking towels that hovered just above the freezing point.  When applied to a severely overheating body, these were sheer bliss.  It took about 45 minutes of rotating the towels out, but I was soon able to eat and drink again.  Then I was back on the bike.  I rode (slowly) until the sun was about to set, then took a break for dinner.  After dinner and a short time for my food to settle, I strapped on my lights and headed out for a couple of night laps.

With the temps dropping, the night laps were nice.  On the other hand, my body still wasn't too happy with me for my earlier negligence regarding the overheating so my laps were slow and painful.  Also, the trails that had just dried out somehow found some moisture from the mood and spread that moisture all over the many exposed roots on the trail.  This made for a couple of rough laps and I soon called it a night.

The next day I got up early, got some breakfast and headed back out for another couple of laps.  Feeling good for the first time in the race, I started passing people and had a fun couple of rounds.  With about an hour and a half left, I took 20 minutes to re-group then headed out for my fastest lap of the race.  I came in at about 11:50 and decided I was done. 

There I am socializing with some of the other Triangle riders who made it out to the race.

And there I am with Tony, Lana and Casey. 

All in all, I had a good time.  I only did 12 laps (the same number I did last year when David also turned 12 laps).  This was far below my hopes for the race, but the trails were in good shape and the people we met out there were great as always.  This is a super-awesome event and a great one to be my first 24-solo attempt.  Would I try this again?  Probably not, but who knows.  The funny thing about events like this is that as time passes the memory of the pain seems to dissipate but the memory of the good parts remain. 

P.S.  As I find more good pictures, I'll get them up here. 

28

I'm 28 now.

18th at Burn.  5th at the Tarwheel XC Challenge.  Feeling weaker and slower than I was last year.  More on that to come.

Burn 24 Buildup

I'm officially registered to do Burn 24 solo.  The event is sold out (400 racers).  Oh, and it's going to rain.

Check out the brief write-up I did for the Performance Blog if you have a chance.  We'll have a lot more to talk about once we return, I'm sure.