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.