This is how I Commute....

I never thought I would own a skinny tire bike, but after doing a good deal of research I decided to sell my second mountain bike and buy a dedicated commuter bike. It's rugged and fast.....It should make my 11 mile daily commute a breeze...... This is how I commute!



.....And this is how I make bread!

IN RESPONSE TO GLOBAL WETTING - BIKE FOR SALE

Okay, so maybe I'm not going to sell my mountain bike. However, with all these trail riding days being ruined by rain I was wondering if MTB Goatheads should become RB Goatheads (road bike). While I do like A.B.'s suggestions of going elevated I am guessing city officials wouldn't go for it. Another suggestion I have is moving. During our fall trip to Moab we spotted Moab High School. Lumpy, J-mac, and I could teach there. J.C. every good school has an I.T. department. Johnny Law, well your name gives your job away. A.B., the Goatheads will keep you on retainer as our official bike mechanic. You can also turn the mono cog into a fixie and try to record the fastest time on Porcupine Rim for a fixed gear bike (Time pedals will help with that). Proletariat, well being the small business owner that you are I'll let you figure out your own job.
Whose coming with us?

not LOL

Is it time to go all "North Shore" and build elevated trails yet?

It's all coming together

Last week was Donut Stop....... This week it was Wing Stop at 120th & Blondo.





You know what's next........ Time to connect the dots, son.
Next week we're going Stop to Stop. Who's in?


If wings and donuts don't appeal to you, maybe you can just ride home and bake a fresh batch of bacon and chocolate chip cookies with a maple glaze. Go here to read how.

A visit to Endor

Although I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, I never rode a mtn. bike until I live in Nebraska. So on a recent visit to the homeland I checked out a local trail. There is no trail map available so I just explored for about 2 hours. Imagine taking Jewell and putting it on the side of a mountain, that is the best way I can think to describe it. If you look closely in some of the picture I think you can see an Ewok. I also have a couple of pictures that show Big Foot isn't happy we built a trail on his homeland (call PETA).

Innovation is good

I Just got home from Tranquility. I wasn't able to do a full lap because of mud. It was only about 70% ridable. The creek section was not ridable and the wooded sections were a little sketchy, but all the grassy sections were good. If rain holds off today (it probably won't) it should be nice and tacky for Sunday. Anyone else been to any other trails?

On another note, The professor is in Portland but he graciously left me his Soho S to mess around with while he's gone. Yesterday I flipped the hub around and made it a fixed gear. After tooling around my neighborhood for a while I decided to go run a few errands around town with it. I returned home in one piece (barely) and with a new respect for fixie riders. The Soho has front and rear brakes, but I tried not to use them so I could get the true fixed gear experience. I came pretty close to getting bucked off the bike about 3 or 4 times. Simple tasks like grabbing your water bottle while rolling down the street suddenly became a near death experiences. Also, trying to slow yourself down while going down a long steep hill really takes a toll on you legs after a while. By the time I got back to my neighborhood, I was starting to get the hang of it and I can see where it would be fun once you got really good, but for now I'll stick to a free wheel. I'll also continue to use my digital camera, my ipod, my laptop, my microwave and my electric razor. Innovation is good.

Killin it at Tranquillity

Friday Night Doughnut Ride

Where were you?

I know where you'll be next Friday.

Do you feel a draft?

Not really mt bike related other than I got to ride around on it in my neighborhood and take some pics. The tornado hit about 2 blocks to the east and 2 to the south from my house- we are ok, no damage or anything. Down the street to the east:

The other way to the south:

I didn't hear of anyone getting hurt so that is a good thing. We heard some loud weird noises outside around 230a.m. and turned on the TV. They said thunderstorm warning so we just thought no big deal but when sirens went off 2 or 3 minutes later we took everyone downstairs. By then I think the tornado had already passed us. Outside there are police and street crews everywhere right now, and they are doing a good job of cleaning up the neighborhood and keeping the streets cleared of people sightseeing-there was tons of traffic before they closed the roads (of course it didn't stop me and my bike and my camera).

Smithville Lake

There are a lot of MTB trails in the Kansas City are so I might buy a house, I think maybe I could afford this one that we passed on the way back.....little bit of a fixer-upper.....

My brother and I went to Smithville Lake today to ride. (its about 25 miles south of St. Joseph, MO) It was the only place around that was supposed to be dry enough to bike. It was dry enough......but it had its issues.

We rode for about an hour and a half through some really nice trails, except for the 1-to-1 peddle-stroke to cobweb ratio. Literally, our helmets were black when we started, but white from cobwebs when we finished. .........that wasn't the worst part.....

ticks......lots of these.....................................and those...........

and a gazillion of those bottom ones. Literally, my brother counted 60 ticks on himself/clothes. Only 4 got around to digging in on the two of us though. Needless to say, our stop for water ended up being the end of our riding for the day.

Office Rage

You ever feel like this on a nice day when you know you're not going to get a chance to ride?..... This dude goes berserk! Not sure what sets him off, but I'm astounded by the people just standing by watching.

3-2-1 is approaching

Don't forget to block off Saturday, August 2nd for the 2nd annual 3-2-1 Cycling Challenge. It's a 50 mile dirt and pavement group ride to raise money for the Omaha Street School. Here is a link to the info I posted last year. It's all pretty much the same this year except for a the date of course. I'll post all other important details here in the coming days. Once again you'll be able to register at 321cycling.com

Treehuggers, look away!

Certain circumstances have come together this week to make a little bit of riding possible. I took advantage of this last night. I headed over to Tranquility at 8:45. Upon arriving, I began the process of assembling my bike (it rides in the trunk). I had to deal with a patch that came off from a pinch flat at Landahl, and reinflate. Hit the trail at about 9:05. The sun quickly disappeared, so it was time to find out just what this night riding is all about. I had the bar mounted light seen in the pictures below and a small head mounted light. The bar light has 3 LED's and runs on 2 AA's. It lit up my front tire and a very small patch on either side of it. The headlight has 1 LED and runs on 1 AA. It created a circle of light about 2 feet in diameter, depending on how far ahead I was looking. With this combination, I very easily achieved what I like to think of as "light speed." This is the speed at which I was riding beyond the capabilities of the lights I was using. I managed to avoid catastrophy for the first 15 minutes or so, but then, going through the nursery, I caught my right brake lever on a small tree. As I attempted to regain control, I hit this little guy dead on.

I appologized and gave it a hug, checked myself for injuries, reattached my visor to my helmet, and carried on, a little more cautiously.

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. I had to bail on the last climb because the rear tire was getting really squirmy. The tube just would not hold air and I had to stop and reinflate it a couple times.

Overall, it was a good ride. (any time I can get out on the trail is a good ride these days) Hopefully, I will have enough foresight to organize it with a couple other Goatheads next time.

Should we stay or should we go?

..... That's what we were asking each other on Friday. The plan was to go camp and ride at Crowder in Missouri for the weekend. Then God grabbed a Super Soaker and sprayed down every trail within a 3 hour drive of Omaha. After calling the ranger station at Crowder we decided it would be a waste of time to go there. So the Goathead security council called an emergency meeting and plan B was hatched;
Plan B: Camp at and ride Indian Cave Friday night and then camp at and ride Landahl in Kansas City on Saturday night. None of us had ever been to Landahl so we really didn't know what to expect or what we would find for camping.

Plan B turned out to be an exceptional choice. Unfortunately, only 5 Goatheads made the trip, but we had a blast.

We found one three mile loop at Indian Cave that was ridable.


The rest of the trails are in desperate need of attention.


Friday night was perfect camping weather. After a night ride, we slept under a canopy of approximately 18 trillion stars (I actually lost count around 12 trillion).

When we got to Landahl we found several incredibly helpful and friendly people. The dude at the shooting range gave us ice cold water at told us where to camp. A rider on the trails pointed us in the right direction several times, and a Jackson County Ranger gave us every piece of information on Jackson County parks and recreation that he had in his brain and his Jeep Cherokee. Here's a highlight from our 20 minute conversation:
Me: Can we buy a camping permit from you?
Him: Yes, let me grab those out of my Jeep.
Me: How much is it?
Him: $8
Me: $8 a person?
Him: Yes.
(silence as we all fumble around for $40)
Him: Let's make this simple, how many tents will you be using?
Me: One.
Him: ...... All of you are sleeping in one tent? (He looks us over counting to 5 in his head)
Me: Yep, just one tent.
Him: Okay,....... (long pause) that'll be $8.

I paid him and he was on his way, but I was hoping to see him again so that I could explain that it's a really big tent.....

.... Any ways, we rode almost all of the single track at Landahl and loved it. We will definitely go back. Trails in the big O are great, but you can't beat rocks. Landahl has tons of technical rocky sections.







The only bad part of the weekend was that J-Mac's frame broke on the chainstay. It's the same spot where Professor's frame broke last year.