Roller Races are Go!

Thanks to our friend Elliot, we are up and running at the shop with the roller races. The requisite computer knowledge to make it all go was miles above our heads, so we outsourced with great results.
Saturday was pretty much derailed due to our distraction from the races.
I just spent a few minutes looking through YouTube trying to find a cool video of some roller racing, as I didn't take any pics or anything on Saturday. I have come to the conclusion that roller races are a blast to participate in, and absolutely horrible to watch on video.
You will just have to come by the shop and see how fun it is for yourself. We are using the fork mounts for the rollers, so there really isn't any skill involved, therefore nobody has an excuse to keep from playing.
After a little more time getting the whole "system" sorted with the hardware and the computer and the bikes and all, we'll start working on booking the shenanigans at a brewery or bar.

Cross bikes, mtn bikes, computers and beer...

Did another cross race last weekend, and there's plenty more to come this weekend:

http://nmcycling.org/flyers/2009/TijerasNightCyclocross20091021.pdf

The Tijeras Night Cross race is supposed to be one of the best of the year around here, according to some reliable sources.

Played hooky yesterday and did a fantastic Otero / Cedro all day Mtb. ride. It was very good times. Except for a few short muddy sections, the trails were dry and generally in fantastic shape.

I did manage to get a little too excited at one point, and thoroughly slap myself onto the ground. It appeared as though a smaller rock dislodged under my tire, resulting in the highest speed endo I can ever remember having. Fortunately I landed in-between rocky sections and on relatively soft dirt. Had the wind knocked out of me, seems that I hit my head (sunglasses came off), but only minor scratches really. I think I got lucky. Strangely, I remember thinking shortly before I wrecked "who was it that just told me about wrecking on this trail?..... wow, I'm going fast, I sure am glad Charlie had a helmet to loan me.. WHAM!". I guess I should have been thinking about where I was going.

I have no choice but to entirely blame Charlie for this crash:

Once again, I found that I completely love my Maverick ML8. It has enough travel to get you into trouble, but it also will get you out of trouble when you get in over your head (usually). Sometimes though, better judgement takes over no matter the bike you are on, and you decide just to stay on the ground:

In the end, I think we did about 25 miles, and it was fantastic. I've been hearing there might be some weather rolling in, so there's a good chance that was my last ride in the east mountains until the spring. So glad we made it out, I definitely didn't ride out there enough this year.

Every time I go ride in the Sandias or in the East Mountains, I get so happy that I live in Albuquerque. We have so many miles of unbelievable singletrack within 20 minutes of the city, it's just ridiculous (don't tell anybody, the lack of trail traffic is a blessing too).

In shop news, our Roller Sprints electronic hardware and rollers arrived today. Unfortunately, the software that accompanies the electronics we bought is proving to be a little over Danny and my heads, as far as all that is required to get the thing wired up and talking to the computer.

You see, my level of computer sophistication has me very comfortable with software that requires you to click one button to download, then a second button to install and run. On occasion there is a little box that must be checked saying you agree to something or rather, and maybe the option to choose "standard" or "custom" installs (always go with "standard", duh).

This software, however, had us downloading all sorts of different files, pieces of code, strange code editing software, and all other sorts of shenanigans from different places. I was uncomfortably remembering things I kind of learned in college 8 years ago when I took that one programming class that was required:

"hmmm, 'putty', 'Linux', thats sounds familiar. I think we're looking at the actual program code. This isn't good Danny, maybe we should wait 'til tomorrow and just call the guy."

The sparse instructions quickly left us hanging, and with the distinct impression that whoever wrote the instructions severely overestimated our level of computer-dork speak. We're gonna get on the phone tomorrow, and hopefully force somebody to walk us through it slowly and painfully one step at a time.

And if that works out, we will be up and pedaling our asses off while going nowhere by the end of the day.

If it doesn't work, I will be calling out to all our computer savvy friends and customers to come by and make it go for us. We fix bikes, you fix computers, that's the way it should be.

Once it's up and running, we plan to set about getting a schedule of venues at which to hold roller racing events. All venues will be place where alcohol is served, hopefully. There has been a lot of excitement from everybody we've talked to so far. We'll keep you posted.

Hmmm, it's 10pm. Is that too late for one more beer?

We got out for a long ride yesterday. I thought I'd share a few pictures for you. Some of you folks in the colder parts of the country might get jealous about our weather- and you should. Move here and enjoy it with us. By the way Dan wrecked in grand fashion. He said he was OK and finished the ride strong, but the next day he was a bit sore along the entire length of his right side. Be nice to him.

Paging Mr. Herman...Mr. Herman, you have a telephone call...

Gotta love it...

Almost Happy Birthday to us!

Next week, it will have been two years since we opened. Yayyy for us.
I came across these photos yesterday. I believe they were taken a day or two before our "grand" opening:



Things look a little different now. These pics help remind me of just how much work we've put into this place.

So, as a two year anniversary present to ourselves, it looks like we're going to be picking up a Roller-racing setup:

http://store.opensprints.org/

It's gonna look like this:


In case you don't know, the setup is basically stationary bike racing, on rollers, hooked up to a computer / television display, so you can keep track of time, speed, and who wins, etc.
I'm picturing these set up in the shop, at the Anodyne, at Marble Brewery, with copious amounts of drinking, lots of heckling, and maybe a little betting thrown in for the fun.
Good times.

We're also starting conversations about a 2 year anniversary party. It will most likely take place a little after the actual date, but that will just give us more time to make it that much more awesome-er. Stay tuned.

Yesterday I continued this months trend of building badass hardtails;



A titanium Cove Hummer, 140mm travel fork, hugely oversized shaped tubeset, a solid XT build kit, this bike is sweet. It was built as a special order, and has already left the shop unfortunately. But before it left, we bounced around the parking lot on it. It was one of those bikes you could immediately tell was going to ride really really nice on the trail, very light, springy and lively feeling.

And Tony continued the trend of building Evil's:



The Evil Revolt, their full on DH race rig. This is the first one we've actually built, with more coming soon (we've got two more frames in the shop, with at least a dozen guys drooling on them).
This bike has a suspension design by Dave Weigel (of DW Link fame), featuring his newest acronym, DELTA : Dave's Extra Legitimate Travel Apparatus. Rad.

Tony also wants me to let it be known that we now have Freelap Timing systems in stock:

http://www.freelap-usa.com/products.html

This is basically a watch and timing pole setup that can give you very accurate lap times, a must have for anybody trying to get faster on a bike on a given course. For example, you're not sure if it's faster to jump or manual a section on the BMX track? Dang, problem solved. Trying to figure out the hot line down one of our DH courses? Booya, it's done.

Okay, time to start pretending to fix bikes.