Steve McQueen, James Dean, Andrew Slater

The great transportation post. I think I have whined, postulated and soapboxed enough eluding to this that it now has to be written. I'll start it off with this statement (for all of those not privy): I am that guy who reads more into his own ride than anyone else ever will.

Problem: My vehicles are completely heinous and egregiously offensive to my perception of cool.

Solution: Motorcycle.

Problem solved, I bought myself a nice-ish Honda Shadow VLX. Faster than a C4 Vette and cheaper than my mountain bike. And damnit by all forms of justification I deserve this thing, no young 20 something who enjoys his toys this much should have to endure back to back ownership of a teal Hombre and a Grand Caravan without a little penance for my lack of cool.

James Dean meets socceer mom.

A funny thing dawned on me the day I brought this bike home though, the reason my truck went to hell is because I had NO desire to mess with it. The bike came home and the fouled spark plugs were immediately replaced, leaned out the gas and immediately started researching pipes, jet-kits and gearing. Holy crap, I understand vehicles again!

I have never owned a vehicle which I wasn't completely in love with (completely in love with, my totalled Camaro makes more appearances in my dreams than all of my pretty young exes combined) so like hell if I would ever let one of my girls suffer un-necessarily. And while I un-selfishly wasted many a teenage hour underneath my Camaro, big Jeep, little Jeep trio, the Hombre was left to wheeze, puff and suffer through her existence unless it was absolutely necessary that I get underneath her. If something broke I couldn't care less and she probably sufferered un-necessarily because of this. Lesson learned: never buy something I don't actually want, I will refuse to even acknowledge that I might be capable of fixing it and let it sit out of spite.

No self respecting man can go from these to a teal Hombre without a little hatred towards life in his heart.

Oh well, live and let live. I am now the owner of a broken down little truck, a kid/race team hauler and a quarter life crisis bike. But dangit I feel like I finally own some transportation that I can be proud to call mine again.

A final note: I know the majority of this made me sound incredibly shallow and ride centered, but it really isn't one of those things. If I was handed a Buick LeSabre tomorrow that handled like a Corvette and had 500hp or a Honda Ruckus that could rockcrawl and fling mud 30 feet in the air I would be ecstatic. But those things never will do that and part of life for me is keeping the adrenaline pumping, the corners pinned and the holeshot in the crosshairs. Alright so maybe there is a little shallowness to go along with this but damnit I'm still young and really do believe I enjoy/get more out of my toys more than most other people.

So here's to motorcycles, lost loves (think engines not ovaries) and the minivan/truck that caused this over-dramatic quarter life crisis of mine.

Bad to the Mothereffin' Goat

The pain train pulled into Topeka today and somebody had painted the lumbering diesel engine black with a mean lookin' goat on the side.

The founding father's of BGR.

BGR's take for the weekend:
1,2,3, in Expert U29 by Waller, Stamper and Patterson
1 in Sport U29 by yours truly
Check out the badgoatblog for more race digs.

Now the Sunflower Games are pretty notorious for having a less than stacked field (and in my case it would be considered even less than whatever less than stacked is) but regardless I will take a win any way I come across it.

I can't hate too hard on the race though because my body acted exactly how I wanted it to during this race. I don't know if it was the weather or the trails or if I actually am coming into a bit of form but straight out of the holeshot I pretty much laid claim to the entire sport category (ok there were 2 U39guys who had better overall times but whatever) and never let up.

Style points.

And damn it felt good to be able to look at the holeshot, take it, settle my heartrate and continue railing the turns for an entire race. I can definitely feel the extra 15lbs on my frame from the last time I was competitive but the hills were short and steep enough that the extra weight (while noticeable) probably helped more than hurt with that extra power.

Mind you this wasn't Bad Goat's first event of the weekend either. Three of the four founding father's participated in the Hawk's Tour De Franzia on Friday night. Owen Patterson grabbed an honorary BGR spot for the race and away we went. A little disapppointing as we were promised an obstacle course at the end and were instead given a drag race on a 12" bike (wouldn't have mattered as I would have crashed it either way). But the booze was cheap, the women were still underaged and blonde and BGR was representing in some of the other facet's of things we do well.

Glass #3, things got progressively worse after this.

BGR's total weekend take: 24 glasses of wine (in the race alone), 4 commemorative wine glasses, at least 3 mysterious injuries, 4 podium spots and all of the style points any team hoped to have this weekend.

Raise it up Pattersnap

So here's to the Bad Goats, the Hawk, Franzia, finally finding my form and some darn fit friends.

But you will still read it...

One more from the bowels of my brain... I don't mean to bore y'all with my inconsistent ramblings but darnit all, I've been working late shifts all week which does not lend itself to my lifestyle well. Meaning that by the time I get off work I have little left to do besides eat and sleep instead of my normal fish/ride/adventure agenda. Hopefully this gets resolved next week because I hate taking my restlessness out on the internet and a short-ish run in the evenings.

#1: Has anyone else watched every episode of Scrubs put up on Hulu at least twice already? I'm pretty sure the last five episodes are going on three days of internet time now and I honestly could watch the series finale over and over. I'm sorry but I have to wax poetically about this thing, I have to say that the writing behind this show has been mind-blowing. Not necessarily for the final season (as a whole it sucked) but that finale man... wrapped it up in a perfect box with one of those ribbons you curl by running the scissors between your thumb and the blade and handed it to you with a smile and a piece of raspberry filled cheesecake. Good lord, there has been some immense writing out of this show but I have never seen a finale leave me wanting more that bad.

That rant was aimed primarily towards a certain Californian who I heard was refusing to watch the last season until it came out on DVD, embrace your computer and pirate that shiz sir.

#2: Goals. My goal for this week is not to pay for a meal. So far I am 4 days in without it, the whole coffee shop job thing makes it pretty sickly easy. The fact that my entire job profile 4 days a week is to talk to other college students who more than likely have at least one job in the food service industry makes it that much easier. Tomorrow will be the test, spinning the wrenches at the CC leaves a man hungry and the Price Chopper next door has a pretty well done up salad bar. I'm hoping I can live on the leftovers from work today but I'm sure it will be uber-tempting.... honestly I'm probably gonna have to pay for at least one meal this week.

#3: Motorcycle. Ever feel like you are being conspired against by life? That's how the motorcycle gods are treating me. So far I've missed out on three bikes that I wanted desperately. These have been the last two weeks debacles.
A) Was .5-1 hr late as it got snagged out from underneath me as I was driving frantically into JoCo after getting stuck at work.
B) Some do-gooder honored his commitment to the first caller who couldn't pick the bike up for fiive days after I offered him full value (if I approved) on the same day he posted it.
C) Ran into a kid who felt his bike was worth wayyyyy more than market value. Maybe 20 years old and thought he owned the coolest thing ever (can't blame him, I've done the same when I sold my Jeeps). I offered him market value over the phone and he laughed and never called back. Meaning he either got the ridiculous asking price or came to his senses with someone else.
D) This dude's wife decided to pop out a kid the day I was supposed to check out the bike. I still have hope for this one as the entire reason he was selling it was because of the impending doom that is child rearing. We'll see though, I have high hopes but the anti-motorcycle gods are loving making this difficult on me.

On the up side I drive a mini-van now (lame failure...wah, wah, wah cartoon music follows this statement). The Hombre was replaced by this monstrosity, I would go on further but I have a whole nother outlook on transportation that has been coagulating in my brain the last few days regarding transportation.

So here's to Zach Braff, free grub and being frustrated at having obstacles blocking my path of attempting to be James Dean.

Ponderings of el cuarenta de Julio (July 14th in Spanish...right?)

I want my stuff back. About a month ago I started a list of garments I once owned but no longer can find, it's staggeringly large. I have three reasons why I think this list is so large...

1. Girls are inevitable hoodie thieves: I don't wear hoodies by nature, it just has never been my thing. I much prefer the collar to an awkward hood. But damnit I have owned a few in my day and for some reason I am down to one at the current moment. I don't care if I have 5 beers in me and you are complaining about being cold, give me my damn hoodie back when you are done with it. Those things are like $40 a pop, is it a trophy for you to own a piece of clothing once owned by a man who rode for the KU cycling team or played on the Olathe lacrosse team or just shopped at Hollister when he was 16?... didn't think so. Give it back.

2. I lose/misplace things that have little importance to me: If I'm at a pool/river/lake/work and my t-shirt gets trashed, chances are I would rather live without attempting to get 4 pounds of mud off of it than trying to clean it out. The catch about this is I rarely remember leaving said garment behind and have come to just blame the opposite sex or friends who stay at my house on stealing or borrowing it permanently.

3. Here's my conspiracy theory... the mother: I'm like 90% sure that she throws out things that are too haggard for normal people to wear but that I still insist on keeping. Not that she does my laundry regularly, as I'm reminded every time I go home to procure a washing machine for a day and wash my jeans/bike shorts/dress shirts together. But I have a theory that on the rare holiday weekend she gets a hold of my clothing she tosses at least a handful of stuff out (I know she reads this and will disagree but like all of the JFK fanatics out there I hold steadfast to this theory).

Bicycle Racing

Here's the stuff that I don't understand...

By some grace of something that I don't understand I was gifted enough to race cyclocross well, don't believe me? Look further back into my USAC results before I discovered the finer things in life. Yet I refuse to enter a race that translates into cyclocross skills. If it isn't under 6 hrs I rarely enter it, and this season has been even worse because I'm refusing to enter pretty much anything that would normally interest me. I justify it by telling myself that it will be "good base miles for cross." What this actually has translated to in the past few years has been more along the lines of "well you forgot to train for cross again...have fun."

Regardless, I've become pretty resolved to finish the Rapture in Misery solo 6 well this year. Why? No idea. I have never, ever, really never excelled in a temperature above 60 degrees and this race is notorious for 100 degree heat indexes during the day. But for some reason I want to do it and I want to do it well.

My last and only decent placing in a 6 hr event went like this (mind you this was almost 3 years ago)

Lap 1: 40 degrees, hold back and watch the teams ride away.
Lap 2 and 3: throttle, throttle, throttle
End of Lap 3: Stans blowout, eat 2 turkey creamsheese bagels while sitting on truckbed, look at bike with disdain, down half a can of Cope, fix bike.
Lap 4-7: Ride like a 19 year old whose testosterone level can crush his rationale.

This netted me an 8th place (I think) but for some reason I think I can do that again, with a body that has proven itself time and time again to be less resilent and more prone to fickleness than it was at only a few years younger age. I'm almost positive turkey, cream cheese bagels would make me vomit uncontrollably mid-race, add in tobacco and I might as well just put a sleeping bag in the back ot the van and wait for the rest of the team to get done. Oh well, still gonna enter the race and hope for the best.

Here's the one and only rationale I can figure out on why I want to do 6+ hour events well, my friends. I know this crew reads this thing and I don't know whether to thank you for pushing my physical limits or hate you for making me want to do things I shouldn't be doing, but y'all deserve some flattery anyways. Between watching Stamper pace himself like a man who knows more about his body than I think he cares to admit, Pattersnap for railing singletrack on a rigid SS so hard that one lap would make a normal man cry, or Waller just serving up pure un-adultered brute big-ring force for more hours on end than any XTR chaingring should endure.

I had one more important thing on my mind that had been badgering me to write about this week but I can't recall what it was at the current moment, so much for the mindmap skills we were all taught in the 4th grade. Wing it and something will be lost along the way.

So I guess here's to lost clothes and doing things we weren't meant to do. Cheers to the kids that push me, my own irrational thoughts and lost Hurley t-shirts.

Livin' the (12 Year Old's) Dream

Epiphany time:

I am living the dream of what I thought "adulthood" should be as a kid. I could end this posting with just that and I think most of y'all would understand what I mean but I have gotten endless amusement out of this revelation today so for those not in the loop here's specifically what I mean.

- I wrench at a shop. This was the ultimate of ultimate adult jobs in my mind when I was 12. I am now one of the guys who holds the magic key to fixing cool things and assembling carbon-riffic road bikes. We wear our Fox hats backwards, understand the insides of your bottom brackets and have the tools to fix them.

- I can bunny-hop really, really high. This was one of those things that I always thought I should be able to do as a kid but as the time passed I never really progressed my park skills. Turns out a few years throwing around a 29er imparts a skill/prowess that makes bmx bikes the most throwable things in the world... pretty rad.

Like this guy but wayyy cooler (I work at a shop, you think I would wear crewneck sweatshirts and ride a double crown...psshhhh)

- I own a crap-ton of bikes and have a sweet apartment with a room specifically for them, shop included. This was pretty much the most important part of how I envisioned adult living arrangements when I was 12 (next to an indoor bmx track).

- I eat pizza and otter pops constantly. Two things that I ditched for a while but have reverted back to pretty hard in the last year. Enough with the cooking non-sense, I can get a large pizza for five bucks and have a freezer full of banana flavored sugar-ice.

- Mario Kart 64 is my bitch. That's right I ponied up the big barista/bike shop bucks and invested in a copy of this iconic recreational television game. It's about 1000 times less hard/entertaining as I remember it but that hasn't kept me from wasting a good 2 hours with it every day for the last few months.

I'm 99% positive that every item on that list does absolutely nothing to further my actual adult life. Wrenching at a shop isn't a super smart long term career (albeit one of the most enjoyable ever), offering to bunny-hop over 2 or 3 people if they will lay down shoulder to shoulder fails to impress people of my own age, Mario Kart ownage is not applicable on resumes. Actually... pizza and otter pops seem like a reasonable life choice for now, no qualms there.


So cheers 12 year old self, you became everything you ever wanted. And yes beer does taste that good and it's rad not having to tell mom and dad where you are all the time.

Saturday Ruminations

So it's raining-ish, the suns out enough to go for a bike ride but not out enough to lay by a pool... I'm only good at one of those things anymore and it's not the one that this day is best suited for so y'all get to deal with my ramblings.

I've been m.i.a. for the last 20 or so days because I have been working a lot. Which has led to an incredible lack of adventuring but also an incredible amount of satisfaction. For those not in the loop I've been working a couple days a week at the CC and spending the rest slinging lattes on campus. So while I say I've been "working", I've actually just been getting paid for participating in enjoyable activities for 8 hours at a time.

Things I have been thinking about for the last month:

I get incredible joy out of truing wheels: My mechanical skill has always been rather inept in my own mind but once being thrown into a shop I've done a pretty decent job of realizing that between wrenching on my own bikes and watching Pattersnap and Mr. Joe Fox fix things that there isn't much I can't do regarding bike-cycles (not that there isn't a metric schnoz-ton for me to learn but I feel have a pretty firm grasp on the basics.) Back to wheel-truing, something about the scrape of metal on metal sitting in a Park stand until it is tensioned well enough to not have any visible/audible impurities warms my cockles.

I read good books slowly: If it's good and it gets my brain firing than I leave it be after I've read whatever it is that made me think. Which has led to a complete lack of book conquering this summer. I've been trying to rock out The Afterlife but after one or two paragraphs I seem to have enough of my own brain-fodder to marinate in for a good few hours. Not a whole lot more to say about that.

The Big News: The Hombre has done up and shot itself in the foot. After a long-ish battle of what I thought was a wacky electrical system and then a flooding of coolant and then even more guages I have decided to give up on her. After driving a few other little trucks I have decided that it must be a compression problem and since I figure my brain works jsut as well as the OBD1 and my hood latch is broken I am just going to figure there is something seriously wrong with her and let her sit.

But that also means I visited the bank yesterday and am sitting on a smallish chunk of cash which to buy new transportation with. So while I've incurred even more debt I am wicked excited about what is in my rather immediate future.

Fo' real...? Indeed.

The Word Fishin'

Problem: summer’s here, I have absolutely no desire to even look at a bicycle and I completely detest being indoors.

Solution: FISHING!

Suburban fishin' hole

Fishing, as a word, has a near and dear place in my heart. Not necessarily the sport of fishing itself but just the word. You see fishing was my “get out of jail free card” as a young and adventurous boy in high school. Everyone had one of these even if they don’t realize it. A “get out of jail free card” is something that you tell your parents you are doing even though they know (and you know) that you aren't but they respect that you at least have the good sense to lie to them about it.

A normal summer evening conversation with my parent’s would look like this:

Parents: Where are you going to?
Me: Fishin’. BYE! (run out door as fast as possible)

After I ran out the door I usually suspected my parents of just rolling their eyes and going back to what they were doing in an attempt to ignore whatever lude and lascivious behavior their offspring was actually sprinting out the door to accomplish.

But a funny thing happened with my “get out of jail free card”, my friends started using it and we ended up with a small gaggle of trucks and Jeeps with fishing gear in the back (because the lie has to at least be plausible). And eventually we discovered that in an absence of ruckus sparking events we actually enjoyed sitting, watching bobbers and drinking beer.

I brought my fishin' face and my "get kicked out of airports" beard.

That is the essence of why I like fishing. In all reality I have ended up with a fair amount of fishing knowledge and nice gear (the knowledge leans more to the gear side than the fish side… go figure). So on to today's adventure...

I thought these guys might come swooping down on me to steal my fishies, Hitchcock style.

I started today at the Clinton Dam Spillway, but it was way more work than I wanted to do. There was a huge crowd of people standing around and I had hit my first fish within 15 minutes (along with everyone else out there so don’t assume I knew what I was doing). So I decided to be done dealing with lines that move with the current and the excessive sportsmen and head down to the pond by the ball fields. I sat there for three or so hours and never caught another thing. I napped, I thought about the word fishing and I watched the clouds roll by, but I never caught another thing. I know there were fish in there since on the few occasions I did reel in my line the bait was gone, but I was far more content to continue dozing in the sun than to watch my bobber that intently.

So here’s to not riding bikes, watching the clouds roll by in the summer sky and the word fishin'