A windy 100 miles.

At the last minute, Danny and I decided we would go participate in the Day of the Tread charity fundraiser century. It's a really well put together event, with rides of several different lengths, getting up to a full 100 miler (or maybe 96 miles), and a few different running walking events as well.
Benefits were for the Cary Tingley Hospital, and Casa Esperanza, so you know, it's for the kids.
It was really well organized, what seemed to be a huge turnout, the feed stations along the ride were awesomely well stocked, and there was a buffet and beer tent at the finish, free for participants. All pretty impressive.
Danny, J.F., and I decided we would do the 100 miler, and quickly worked our way to a front group of racer types, carrying a very nice tempo. I had assumed most of these guys were headed out to do the century as well, but when we reached Bernalillo, and the route went right for the 80 miler, and straight for the 100, basically everybody but us turned right.
I was a little surprised, but in hind sight, it seems as though they knew something I didn't; the century route on 550 out to San Ysidro had a gnarly head wind the whole way.
We weren't quite out of Bernalillo, when J.F. supposedly saw a few people way out in front of us. I didn't see anything, and I personally think he actually smelled them, or just sensed them with some crazy extra sensory racer skill he has. Anyhow, he decided those people must be caught, and his head went down, and I was promptly dropped (Danny managed to hang on). They waited for me at the top of a hill, I caught on, and was promptly dropped again.
So I was out alone for the long haul out to San Ysidro, hating the wind.
I eventually got swallowed up by a decent sized group, and then three of us headed off from the turn-around and finished the remainder of the ride together.
It was good times. That was pretty much an off the couch century for me, as the last ride I had done on the road bike was "Danny's Last Ride" last month. It hurt. I was totally cooked for the rest of the day. Ended up finishing the ride in just over 5 hours. Danny and J.F. eventually made contact with the mysterious riders out in the distance, who turned out to be some friends, one tandem and another guy. They grouped up and finished the ride in about 4 and a half hours.

Again, no pictures, not that I would have anything interesting had I brought a camera along. Lots of pictures of empty road.
Instead, here's a few pics that our boy Long took at tall Scott's pre-haloween kegger the other day:

Customer Love!

Our keg ran out of a couple of days ago. I think our customers could feel something was wrong among the global beer consciousness, as in the first couple of hours today we were hooked up:


Two full cases of Marble, a six pack of Full Sail, and an extra special bomber of some sort for Danny.

Yayyy Beer!

Pics from Sundays ride!

Bruised feet and big rides.

Ahh yes, it's now mid October and the temps have been hovering in the high 70's all week, if not higher. While this is most likely bad news for the polar bears and those with beach front property, cyclists in Albuquerque are loving life right now.

My weekend was nothing short of cycling awesomeness.

I got out for my first foray into the world of cyclocross on Saturday, racing in the NM Cross Series #3 This is a 7 race series, and #4 will be this Saturday, although I've heard location isn't quite finalized yet.

The racing was fun, despite a course that contained significant amounts of sand. I raced the Cat 4, and the Cat 3/4 races, faired pretty well in each, then hauled off to finish the day at the shop. Nothing like starting you work day with a little bike racing to put you in a good mood.

My feet hurt now, from all the running in my shoes with no insoles. I have nice little bruises on the bottom of each foot exactly where the cleat is. I managed to flip over the bars once, while trying to muscle my way through one of the mini sand dunes that dotted the course. I believe I stuffed the handle bar into my upper-inner-thigh region at that point, which explains the bruise. And of course there are several bruises on both thighs resulting from my far less than smooth attempts at flying re-mounts, like I've seen real cross racers do.

Good times, good times. Now I understand what all the excitement is about every fall.

Then yesterday we had another fantastic day playing in the Sandias. For those that are familiar with the area, our ride was from the 10K trail head, north to the Ellis trail, then back south to the top of King of The mountain, down King to where it intersects 10K, and down 10K to Tree Spring and ending at Doc Long, where we had wisely left a couple vehicles for shuttling purposes.

We hardly ever use cars for shuttling on our rides, but for some reason I thought of it this time, and everybody was happy I did. It's just so fun to descend around 10K, Oso, and Tree Spring, but it is so unbelievably hard to go up that stuff.

For those of you who have know idea what any of those trails are, you'll just have to take my word for it; they are some of the most technical, demanding, and fun trails that you will find anywhere.

There was a serious amount of leaves on the trail, which made for beautiful scenery and moments of terror when you had no idea what was under your tires.

Unfortunately, I have no photographic evidence for any of this, as I have been a habitual camera forgetter of late. Hopefully though, Charlie and / or Richaround will email a couple of pics from Sundays ride soon that I can post up.

As usual, it was nearly an all-Maverick ride, with 5 of the 6 of us on Mavericks (one guy was riding a Santa Cruz, and so far he refuses to even try a Maverick, probably because he's going to have to buy one once he rides one, like the rest of us). And as usual, I was absolutely in love with my bike as I repeatedly got in over my head, pushed the limits of my handling skills, and repeatedly came out alive thanks to some serious ass-saving suspension performance.

Yayyy squishy bikes!

In shop news, we're just cruising right along. I just placed our big 2010 order with Giant, and I'm pretty excited for those to start rolling in, especially the new DH bikes and the carbon Trance X Advanced that we ordered (for Charlie... in my size. Bwah ha ha ha, I can't believe I convinced him to get a large again!).

One of our big new plans for 2010 is to have some high end rentals available, particularly in the Downhill variety. So we will have a couple of Giant Glory's, a couple of Commencal Supreme's, and maybe a few others (Transition and Evil come to mind).

We are also putting in a big effort for trail-bike demo bikes, and will have small, medium, and large demos of the Maverick Durance and the Giant Trance X1. We will also have medium and large Tomac Snypers, and I believe a Commencal Meta 5.5 as well (possibly even a carbon Meta 5.5, if we're feeling sassy).

I'm excited about all this, because I think it's silly to buy a full suspension bike without really testing it first, and also because demo bikes keep me from having to try very hard to sell bikes; just put people on the bikes and let them choose for themselves. Much easier for everybody.

Okay, that's enough words, and no pictures to go with. Lame, I know, I'll try harder to get some more interactive media going for next time.

We have been very busy at the shop recently and Dan hasn't had the time to write a new post in two weeks, so I thought I would put one up.

Props to Tony and his extended crew that took top honors at the red Bull endurance downhill event in Angel Fire this last weekend. I wasn't there but I am told they won the 4man team, the Duo class, and we helped the solo winner too. Tony said that Dan did a great job as the pit mechanic, actually he said "you should have seen Lucero, he kicked ass" but I assume that meant he did a great job.

Interbike was smaller this year than before with many companies deciding to skip because a booth costs so much and times are tough. Still there were some good things at the show: The SRAM XX is cool and is now starting to trickle into stores; American classic has a new set of wheels that are tubeless compatable and available in 29" or 26" abd are very light, but thaey don't yet have them on their website; new tires from WTB (some are in the store) are cool; DT has some insane new wheels and forks- one set of wheels are tubeless and they have two new carbon mountain wheels, one set of which are very wide All-Mountain wheels that come in at 1550 grams, and they cost as much as some cars. There was more but that is the main bit.

If you haven't seen the new tires from Geax take a browse online- we have a good selection in the store and they are light, effective, and priced well.

The local trails are all in good shape. South Boundry (via Elliot Barker) last Sunday was also terrific, although windy. If you haven't done it this year, get up there and do it quickly before it snows over. I'll finish my post by adding a picture of some ride we did somewhere.

-Charlie