Between bouts of being snarky for fun and profit I’ve managed to slip out for a few longish rides lately, reasoning that I will need the legs to pedal everywhere once The Big Spigot runs dry in the Middle East, where all those grumpy, swarthy foreigners are busily killing each other off instead of harvesting our oil.
Yesterday I rode south along the trail to Fountain, fighting a slight headwind out but enjoying a righteous tailwind home. Today I headed north along the same trail, through the Air Force Academy to Baptist Road (yes, that’s the actual name; why do you think I call this place Bibleburg?). This time it was tailwind out, headwind home, which once again was perfect as that route is uphill on the outbound leg.
A couple deadlines remain unbeaten yet, but I have ’em by the plums with a downhill pull now. VeloNews cartoon tomorrow, Adventure Cycling bike review due Thursday, then a fun-filled weekend in the VeloNews.com barrel, peeking out through the bunghole at Dreidaagse van West-Vlaanderen, Vuelta Ciclista a la Region de Murcia, De Vlaamse Pijl, Montepaschi Strade Bianche and the start of Paris-Nice.
Jesus. And here I thought March was coming in like a lamb.
Mad Blog Media 
Methink you doth protest too much Patrick. Especially considering that one can “…slip out for a few longish rides lately…” while the rest of us man/woman the cube-farms of America. Geez why don’t you rub it in a little more you snarky sob. I swear…..
Seriously I hope that March comes in quiet and demure out here on the Leftist Coast because I am seriously D-O-N-E with winter! There is nothing I would not give to have sun, warm temps and a light breeze with nary a raindrop, snow shower or cloud in the sky.
Rumors were about that Universal Sports would show the Strade Bianche race via the interwebs, anyone know for sure? Just a year ago we were there watching Cadel Evans hand his wheel off to a teammate — how many times do you see a guy in the rainbow jersey do that? James– add us to the “rubbing it in” folks as we’re in sunny Moab trying to decide, “road or MTB today?” during the wife’s spring break from the college. Coulda gone back to Santa Barbara and sponged off the in-laws but we were just there in January and don’t want to wear out our welcome and we’ll be in Italy soon enough so Moab got the nod this time. Not as snarky as OG but in many ways more fortunate, though probably not as handsome or manly!
Larry, keep an eye on cyclingfans.com. They seem to have the 411 on that sort of thing. It might keep you from getting the DTs until you make it back to the IT.
Incidentally, my one trip to Moab I’d just as soon not repeat. There were three of us, one of whom ended up with plates and pins in one wrist, and a second who collected some hideous flesh-eating-bacteria deal thanks to getting too close to that Utah sandstone. Only I remained unscathed to tell the tale, mostly because cyclo-crossers know when to get off the bike and leg it.
One more reason I am against this supposed “mountain bike Mecca.” That and the “it’s wide open and you can see for miles.” Hell if I wanted that I’d ride to Davis and back. It is wide open and I can see for miles. And then I have to only worry about, well, not hitting a pothole.
Hey, over here in Grand Junction it’s sunny, warm temps (60 today!), the breeze is light and always a tail wind, blue sky, and any reports of raindrops or snowflakes are scandalous lies. Oh, and and since I make my own schedule, I have given myself the afternoon off (of course, with less time on the schedule comes less money in the paycheck, but sunny days are worth far more). The only downside is that I’m feeling a bit fried from all the riding I’ve done this week, including the 45 miles I did yesterday, so it’ll have to be a mellow ride today.
Oh, I’m sorry James, was that a bit much?
And Larry, if you decide to forgo the fat tire riding for the skinny tire variety, I have to tell you that the road riding 100 miles away in GJ is far, far better than Moab. Most of the road rides, save the La Sal Loop, are out-and-backs in Moab, which I personally don’t care for. Around here in GJ you can make any loop you want. And the road over the Colorado National Monument should have opened yesterday, so there’s that too.
But if you must road ride in Moab, might I suggest the Arches NP road: from Moab it’s about 50 miles out and back, with some nice climbing.
Sorry james, but it’s 66 and sunny here in the land of Billy Graham. Besides…cubefarms were made for escaping from on days like this; but then I’ve earned some comp time lately and the boss shares my philosophy that a job is simply a means toward a better end. I hope to survive 3-4 hours jousting with the dinosaur burners today. Wish me luck!
Rain,rain, rain here in eureka,ca, wind 20mph gusts up to 40mph, I’m going back to bed, not coming out till the sun comes out again.
Up here in the North, North East, we’re looking at -30 windchill, with over 5 1/2 feet of snow having fallen in the last 4 weeks, and more on the way tonight. If we’re real lucky, and get a freak warm spell, we might see bare ground by June.
I’m also on the lookout for video coverage of the Eroica. I checked on Cyclingfans.com, nothing there. Anybody hear of anything?
John, it’s the cheap condos available on a weekly basis that’s the draw to Moab for us. We’ve been here a couple of times for the Skinny Tire Festival so know the (limited) road riding quite well. I agree, out-and-backs are my least favorite kind of rides and the Colorado Monument ride near Grand Junction is spectacular – I remember riding it many years ago during the Coors Classic, the day the nutjob took hostages (including the race finish stuff which didn’t make it to Aspen the next day) in fact. We’ll wave at ya as we drive past GJ on Sunday morning on our way back to Iowa.
Velonation claimed the Strada Bianca race would be shown on Universal Sports back in February, as well as Tirreno-Adriatico and Milano-San Remo but I can’t find any further mention of ‘net video coverage. But since all this is in ITALY, it could pop up somewhere just moments before — so I’ll need to get up early on Saturday morning, make a cappuccino and poke around the interwebs I guess.
No riding for me today, alas. Urinalism reared its ugly, drippy head, and I had to drive to Mile High to fetch Herself back from a professional conference that did not include home delivery by black helicopter.
At least we enjoyed a substandard lunch at Tokyo Joe’s, an experience that made me rethink my desire for a Bibleburg location. I know from bitter experience that bike racers will eat anything, but still, damn.
Sorry, Ira. I tried helping you out by Googling “video” and “Eroica”, and got nothing but 500,000 pages of porn.
Weird. I Googled Eroica and came up with nothing but Beethoven.
hmmm….maybe I spelled it wrong. I never have been very good at spelling. I just trust whatever spell check says to use.
Well, back to the porn. Only 498,000 pages to go!
You can play Beethoven in the background while you surf the porn, I suppose.
http://www.universalsports.com/premium/index.html?systemId=aaafe019-fb67-407b-ab64-91276ca8d2ed&playerContextId=1552e279-c45c-456e-9b22-8fa285b5061f
No mention of Strade Bianche, but it seems Universal Sports WILL have Tirreno-Adriatico, all the stages for $7.99 Last year we’d hoped the route would come close to us in Viterbo but they’ve opted for a more “Tuscan” start these days so we missed it in favor of Strade Bianche, no regrets!
This whole “In like a lion & out like a lamb” nonsense is just that in the far end of the snowbelt: Nonsense!
March comes in like a fire-breathing red dragon with a bad case of *hemorrhoids*. It goes *out* like a lion. The lamb shows up around the 4th of July. Them we eat ’em…