Monday, March 24, 2008


My weekend riding buddy Steve has been out in the Moab area hiking and camping with a bunch of CC kids the past 2 weekends. I've had to improvise the riding plan respectively.
Over the weekend of the 15th I took the Monkey clear up to the Greenland Open Space to check out the Elephant Rock location. The 6.5 hours on the Monkey was fun, cruising up the Santa Fe and back, but the Open Space was chewed by horseshoes frozen into the trail - not fun.
This last weekend the cycling option I opted for was not riding. Yeah, quite the cop-out, but nice to sleep-in all the same. Still even during the snowfall Saturday, when I was feeling quite sociopathic and wanting for nothing more than to gorge at Chipotle, I still ran into company in the form of Alan from CSCC. So we sat and chatted about snowbikes and GPS over burritos. That's kind of the situation whenever I head downtown these days, and I'm not that social, this town's just that small.

I did make it out for a short ride around Palmer Park on my now ss Monkey, Clyde (yeah I named him) and then down to McCabes to catch Cycling Sundays on Versus. Its pretty cool that McCabes has been showing the Versus Cycling Sunday coverage on the big screen. Myself, Aaron, and a random assortment of CSCC members have been in attendence to support this and I hope it continues. It beats paying for cable, and is much more sociable.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Over the past 2.5ish weeks I've had plenty of fun, ridden a bunch and got a new bike. Not bad.
Found the new ride on eBay. Its a Surly Karate Monkey and is lots of fun. I've rode it round Cheyenne Mtn. State Park, the Chutes, Palmer Park, and the ever-present commute. It handles great, and I'm more comfortable on techy stuff with the bigger wheels. Currently its strung up as a 1x9. I'm toying with the idea of running it ss, but George has a xtr derailleur I can get on the cheap that will hopefully clear up any shifting issues (looks like an old shop bike - bunch of cool old mtn components, but an Ultegra rear derailleur? - wtf?).
Aaron has been MIA for the weekend excursions as of late and I've been riding with Steve Crosby. He is a recent 29er convert also, but also rides road. Last Saturday we did what he calls a "Tour de Hills." It was Woodmen west, the Garden twice, Gold Camp, and then Cheyenne Canyon. Basically a 50 mile ass-kicker.
The Crawl continues to entertain. People are showing up despite the weather, which is good. I'd like to see some sort of Kentucky Derby theme for May, but we'll have to see about that one.