Looks like I didn't miss much

I was pretty bummed earlier in the week that I wasn't confident enough in my hands to do Dave Harris' Trans-Utah race. Looks like I shouldn't have been too upset about it.

No finishers. Brutal.

Scratch

I did some serious nerve damage to my hands, presumably because of the broken fork. I've been pumped full of steroids the last few days... I cannot sleep more than a couple of hours and feel slightly out of it; on top of that my hands are still numb. If the steroids don't do anything, I'll have to go back to the hospital for more testing.

Anyways, my hands are my livelihood, a permanent injury is something I cannot risk, especially as I just started a new design/development business. Therefore, I don't intend on riding my bike in the foreseeable future. Thanks to Andy Buchanan and Mary Collier for offering to overnight a fork to Butte for me. I wish the circumstances of my hands would have allowed me to accept one of those offers...

Soon I'll writeup my thoughts on doing the route in August. In short, my limited experience on the route in August tells me that June is more ideal: longer days and the weather seems to be a little less erratic. I'd rather tour the route in August for sure though... there are a lot more people on the route to interact with, both fellow tourers and general people enjoying nature. ALSO, all the blowdowns were cleared (this made me so happy). It was fun.

Fork shit the bed

This probably explains the numb hands. I cannot afford to buy a new
one. No love from sram until I'm back in sf... Ideas? I'll have to
make some decisions. 2000 miles on a noodle is not my idea of fun

Sent from my iPhone

Ovando wind storm

Tour Divide ITT 2008 #11

Gabcast! Tour Divide ITT 2008 #11

Photodump while waiting for dinner

Starting in 20 Minutes...

Cold morning in Banff. It's only 40 degrees (f). As you may have guessed, I won't be checking in until I'm stateside tomorrow, as I'm cheap and don't want to buy a Canadian calling card.

ITTing the Tour Divide

The cat's out of the bag for the most part on this one, but I've decided to give the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route another go, this time as an individual time trial. On the morning of Saturday, August 23rd, I'll begin descending the North American continent with my Salsa Dos-Niner and a small bundle of supplies. After all the planning and training that went into this years failed race, I feel that I have an obligation to myself to go out and do this before I move on to another junction in my life this fall.

Despite the potential insanity that surrounds this effort, especially after how much I messed up my heal two months ago, I'm more excited for this attempt than I have been in the past. 3 weeks of truly being out there: no other racers to ride with, no mass of spectators on the web and the occasional local driving out to the route to meet the blue dots descending down a digital map, and very little pressure. The ITT is the lost-yet-not-forgotten form of divide racing that, to my knowledge, has only seen one finisher (John Stamstad '99) and only a single attempt in the new millennium (Mike Curiak, '03). I can only imagine that the divide depression will set in sooner, the rain will seem to fall harder, and the nights will feel colder without the comfort of having fellow racers nearby; but maybe that makes this more enticing.

Testing photo post from cellphone

A flood of bikes

I finally can feel like one of those dirty gear-obsessed cyclists again with the recent development of 13 bikes living in my garage now. I finally finished building up my new road bike this weekend and, frankly, I don't know where to put it. If people are interested, it's the one with nice clean red bar tape in the background.

100-miler this Saturday

I've been doing some really light riding this week and I believe I'm ready to start doing some endurance racing again. I'm doing a low-key grass routes 100 miler that starts in San Francisco and loops through Marin this Saturday. Depending how this goes, I might have to start adjusting my August schedule to make for some bigger plans...

I'll update after the race. Tragically I'm missing Tour de Fat to do it; hopefully the course is worth it.

Divide attempt 3 and the future

I mountain biked 968 Miles in 7 days. 138 miles a day. This is certainly nothing to be ashamed of, yet, after watching Alan and Dominik finish their ride today after riding with them on and off for days, I cannot help continue feeling depressed about my Tour Divide performance.

For those who don't know the backstory, I thought I tore my Achilles' Tendon riding out of Lima, MT. My right foot became so inflamed throughout the morning that by the afternoon I couldn't fit my foot in my shoes. My thrilling extraction via hitchhiking took almost all day as I was stuck in the middle of a low-traffic dirt farm-road on the Montana side of Red Rock Pass. After I finally got to a real town, the doctor assessed it as a only a really bad sprain. Apparently when you twist your ankle hiking through deep snows mile after mile, you probably shouldn't hop on the bike for a huge day doing 4 major climbs. Although I don't need surgery, I was told I'd have to take a month off the bike...

The problem with not finishing a third time is a find myself longing to go back. This, in my opinion, is a real problem. There are so manythings I still want to do, can I really dedicate another year to divide racing? In reality, if present US-section record holder John Nobile is any sort of gauge, I still have 21 years left to complete a crazy-fast ride, so I suppose I have good reason to rush back, however the trail calls.

Part of the problem that I'm starting to encounter is the "what if" game. Going back and having something potential go wrong so I don't finish again would be even more crushing. The 8 months of borderline obsessive training that I put into this year's race was not always fun. Getting up at 6:15 am to ride 35 minutes through packed San Francisco city streets in a cold fog and light rain just to get to some "decent" riding wore thin after a while. Maybe this is part of the challenge. However, right now it does not sound super-appealing to do all over again. In truth, I wish I could go back to Banff in Mid August and give it another go while I'm still strong and finally put this baby to rest. But that isn't happening.

All that said, I need a year off. So, if I show up to Banff next year, someone slap me before the start.

Up in Banff.

Ya'll know the drill.

You can follow Tour Divide using our Learderboard or our Blog, where I'll have call-ins to a 1-800 number transcribed.

New Salsa is built up and ready to go!

Finally the Salsa and all its bags from Jeff over at Carousel Design Works has been completely put together and put to an epic test. First off, this is definitely my lightest divide bike and divide setup. The bike is around 23 pounds (although I have no scale for an official weigh-in) and my gear doesn't add that much weight. Looks like I should be able to hit the 35 pound mark this year.

I took it riding over in Marin this afternoon after a morning full of gear-geeking. The frame bag Jeff made has stellar storage capabilities (the advantage of being tall and using an XL frame) and, to my surprise, handled the strong cross winds while biking over the Golden Gate Bridge extremely well. I was slightly nervous about running a frame bag because of some of the windy sections in the Basin and New Mexico, but this puts that fear to bed.




The handlebars are really crowded this year. The handlebar bag swings a little more than I'd want in this position, so I'm going to attempt to extend some of my cables again to get it in there properly against the headtube. Missing are my computer and a small emergency flasher...


Here the Salsa in its native habitat:

Accident, Recovery, Frame Bags, and the countdown begins

Just under three weeks ago, I was taken out by a blue BMW riding down Mt. Tam. I went out to Mt. Tam to do repeats up and down the mountain so I could get a lot of elevation in a relatively low-mile ride. The ride was going well, I've had been feeling stronger than ever lately and I barely blink an eye at the long Bay Area climbs anymore. However, on the last descent back into Mill Valley, a crazy driver, who had to have been going upwards of 60 mph on a dangerous road, decided to make a stupid pass on a switchback. Because the car forced me to hug the white line while I was riding fast myself, I was left with the choice was to either hit the car or bury the bike and hit the pavement. Before I could even think, my bike fell out from beneath me and I was rolling and sliding down the hill.

I managed to limp off the road with a slight sprain on my left leg and some bad road rash on my right arm, knee, and hip (as well as a few chunks of flesh missing from my right hand). Miraculously, my helmet and face didn't have a scratch on it. Basically, I did a harsh baseball slide against the pavement at 3x miles per hour. I was unable to walk normally for 5 days and the use of my right hand was somewhat limited, but that has mostly cleared up. I've only been on the bike twice... once for a 85 mile road ride and other time for a 45 mile-5 hour mountain bike ride around Mt. Tam. I also did a 6 hour hike, so I'm pretty confident I'll be able to race the Tour Divide. I had been putting off my last minute gear purchases because of the uncertainty, but I finally decided yesterday to pull the trigger and get everything. It's pretty safe to say "I'm in"

Who knows how it will affect me in the Tour Divide. I hope not very much. I've been reassessing my goals because of this accident. Anything under 20 days (especially in these weather conditions!) will be welcome. Not as grand as I once hoped, but it's more than the experience for me than anything else.

I spent some time tracking the amount of time I've put into the race this year... the training, the gear research, maintaining and developing the website, and helping generally co-organize it. It seems since December, i've averaged over 25 hours a week on this. A 1/7th of my time has been put into this... it is truly a labor of love; how could I not race it because of a car accident?

In other news:

Jeff Boatman over at Carousel Design Works just finished up my awesome new frame bag. This is going to help me run a truly "superlight" setup this year. Kudos Jeff! I cannot wait to stuff the bags this weekend and take them out for a singletrack spin!

Also, after hours of Yahoo Pipes and Google Maps API documentation, I finally have the Tour Divide / SPOT Leaderboard online! If you have checked this out, you should. It is going to make the race so much more fun to watch. The realtime satellite tracking will be a much welcomed addition over the callins.

New bike for Tour Divide!

Two weeks ago, I finally received almost all my new bike parts for my Divide Bike. The whole thing is more than $5000, so I really hope that it doesn't break down as my bike did last year. I'm running a new Salsa Dos Niner softtail with a Reba fork and a bunch of really nice King stuff. Bike + Divide gear (excluding water) is hovering around 30 pounds. This is a *superlight* setup.

Riding in Sedona / Flagstaff

Some photos from my trip to Flagstaff / Sedona

It's been a pretty good trip to the southwest so far. Finally got to ride in Sedona, AZ for the first time. The riding is, as you could imagine and see from the pictures, truly epic. Pretty nice weather in the 70's too. Unfortunately , my front derailleur snapped in half within 2 minutes on the trail. I broke it off completely and just did the entire 4 hour ride without shifting up front, which surprisingly worked out fine. I also got a flat after hitting a cactus. It clearly wasn't my day.

I've been doing some random hikes and bike rides in Flagstaff. Today I went down to the Grand Canyon w/ Paul to hike it for the first time ever only to be kicked out after 45 minutes because we had a dog! It was really irritating because we were told dogs were fine as long as we had him on a leash. The rangers were just rude, which sort of spoiled the first half of today. Went to some pool hall after dinner though and made up for it.

Remember me?

Long time since I updated this, but that doesn't mean I haven't been riding! I finally got my old superlight built up again thanks to a new front triangle from Santa Cruz. They hooked me up really good.

I've been ripping Skeggs, Sedona AZ and Flagstaff. I'm about to head down to the Grand Canyon to do my first hike down the canyon. Lots of pictures from all these rides will be going up soon...

The Brides of March

More fun in San Francisco: The Brides of March

ACA Press Release

The Adventure Cycling Association sent out a Press Release regarding the Great Divide Route and the races on the route a few day ago. Nothing really of note, although it is cool that Tour Divide is getting a little more press these days. A cool side note (that doesn't really matter too much) is that they use a picture of me from the 2006 race in their release (although you can barely notice it is me). Neat!

Tour Divide / Great Divide Route Photo Gallery

This morning I finished putting together the master Tour Divide / Great Divide Mountain Bike Route Photo Gallery. Hundreds of photo organized in order from Banff, Alberta (Canada) to Antelope Wells, NM (USA). If anyone really wants to learn about the GDMBR, this is a great way to find out about it!

Around the world in *100* days?

I'm pondering

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/02/16/frazier.record.breaking.ride.cnn

San Francisco: Ideal for base miles

The weather the past few days has been absolutely amazing. I might be able to lay down 22 hours of base this week! (Of course, this is a little bit more than I'm supposed to do, but I feel obligated to take advantage of this and enjoy it!)

Things are really looking good for this year's Tour Divide race. I've been able to put in more base miles this years than the first two years I did the Great Divide Race, so I'm hoping this will translate into a great race for me.

Snowboarding and Rally Cars?

I suspect Matt McFee will like this one: