3rd is a winner for us!

Last weekend Kera and I along with our friends Matthias & Christian 'raced' in a 12 hour race in Külsheim. A tiny town not too far from Würzberg. It's beautiful country with rolling hills, fields and small towns. Plopped right in the middle is former tank training base. Believe it or not, it makes for a damn good area to ride mountain bikes!



We headed up on Friday along with Matthias. I'll have you know, the man knows how to fit a lot of stuff in a car. We managed to fit all of our stuff (3 bikes, camping equipment, etc.) in to his Passat. It kind of seemed a bit like loading up a clown car. Looking at all the bikes and stuff on the ground, I would have said it would never fit. In fact, I think I did say it.

We arrived around 9:30/10:00 p.m. to a mostly full parking lot and camping area. After looking a around for a bit, we said hi to a number of people that we know, accepted delivery of some stateside things from a buddy and then found a place to plop our stuff for the weekend. Thanks to the promoters, they'd put up military style tents that sleep 10 or about 6-8 comfortably (with equipment). We then had a couple of beers and headed to bed. Well... three of us did. I think Matthias & Christian stayed up till 2:00 a.m. or something.

The next morning, we awoke, wandered down to breakfast and COFFEE! Then I knew that I needed to get back and get ready for an 8:30 meeting and a 9:00 start.

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One thing I need to mention. Something that I hope will always amaze me is the amount of love, blood, sweat & tears that local communities here put in to events like this. I'm sure most people in town ride a bike at least to/from work or to the store. However, I'm guessing 75% or more of Külsheim came out to help, donate food or time and then just hang out and support us.

This has happened in every race that I've taken part in here. It didn't matter whether it was in Italy, France, Austria or Germany. It also didn't matter whether it was summer or winter, people love to be a part of it. I think that I understand why I'm so fascinated by it all. It's because in my 10+ years of race promotion I had a handful of people that were always there. It didn't matter what you wanted or asked them to do, they came to help.

Then, there were the others. The were the people that would say "I'll volunteer if..." or you'd have to say "I'll give you or pay you...." Last time I checked volunteer had a little different meaning.

Main Entry: 1vol·un·teer
Pronunciation: "vä-l&n-'tir
Function: noun
Etymology: obsolete French voluntaire (now volontaire), from voluntaire, adjective, voluntary, from Old French, from Latin voluntarius
1 : a person who voluntarily undertakes or expresses a willingness to undertake a service: as a : one who enters into military service voluntarily b (1) : one who renders a service or takes part in a transaction while having no legal concern or interest (2) : one who receives a conveyance or transfer of property without giving valuable consideration

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Back to my story.

I got ready, went to the meeting and then lined up for the start. We did a loop around the small base 'town' and then back through the start/finish area. Oh.. we were following the mayor/burgermeister wearing a Top Hat on the back of a tandem mountain bike whilst doing this. After the start/finish, they peeled off and we were off.

I say that we were off... In reality, I should probably use a slightly different term as the ground wasn't really wet, just really soft. It felt a bit like riding continually through water. Having the constant resistance will wear your ass out. Trust me on this one!



My, should I say, everyone else's plan for me was to do 3 laps or 3 hours right off the bat. I did two (I could have done more) and had Kera go. She did her couple and the course started to dry out as the wind kicked up a bit and the heat soared. By the middle of the after noon, we were racking up laps and we sat +/- the middle of the overall placings. We never paid much attention to our actual places though.





Later in the afternoon, I went out again, did 3 laps (2 of my fastest) and then Kera (who the heat really bothered), Matthias & then Christian. About 7:45 p.m. they announced that anyone coming in after 8:00 p.m./20:00 would not have that lap counted. So, we were anxiously awaiting Christians arrival to see if I could do another lap. Stupid me, I'd never checked what my lap times really were. It was all just ideas of time in my head.



Christian arrived about 8:10 and I deemed it a bit to late for me to attempt another lap. I knew if I did one and it didn't count, I'd be pissed! As it turned out, I could probably pretty easily have completed a lap as my slowest lap was about 43:06 and my fastest was 37:02.



Anyway, we were just having fun and had no clue that we were even in the running for a place on the podium. We ate some awesome dinner provided by Anna & Christian, had a couple of beers and a lot of water and then wandered down to the award ceremony. The started working their way through the awards and then started reading off the names of teams in our class. They named a few, then 1/2 dozen or so with the same laps as us and then said (in Deutsche) that we'd gotten 3rd. What the....?!! Woohoo!





Up we all went. The mayor gave us our cool trophy, a cool book from Specialized celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Stumpjumper and we each got a bottle of local wine. Not bad for a 35 Euro entry fee. Guess we'll have to go back next year to defend the crown.

A bunch of pics posted here and here

I just wanted to say two more things. Thanks to Kera, Anna, Christian & Matthias as well as everyone that helped or was with the Külsheim race. A definite good time. I forgot to mention that 3 of the 4 of us were on singlespeeds for the race too. :-)

Next up... SiS. PHATY...we're coming to see you bubba!

Life's pretty good....

If you look under my profile photo on the right, you'll see a new feature. It's an email sign-up that you can use. It'll shoot you an automatic email each time that I update. If you do that, can you shoot me a message letting me know so that I can take you off the other email that I send out. That way you don't get two messages. O.K.? Thanks!

Next.. we did a beautiful ride last weekend out by Garmisch. F-in beautiful I might add! Here are a couple of pics and a link to the rest of them (mine and our friend Matthias').









Other news: I'm back in school doing an Integration class. Last time we went to get me a work permit, they told me that I needed to do this to get long-term residency and work permits. Also, we're doing the apartment search thing. I'll let you know more as things pan out.

Hope that everyone is well. Ciao!

Looking in to the future

This post has been hanging around for a bit. Figured that I might as well post it as the first thing is happening this weekend.

I think most people know that I don't usually spend a whole lot of time or effort looking in to the future or the past. Mostly, I tend to live day-by-day. Granted, this might be great if you're a practicing Buddhist monk or alcoholic but I need to live in the 'real' world once in awhile.

Therefore, I need to make a schedule of sorts for the upcoming weeks and maybe even months. On our plate currently are these events...

4th Külsheim 12 hour race
Schlaflos im Sattel night race
Singlespeed World's in Scotland with a little vacation

The 12 hour profile -


The SiS info. -



I would like to have done the 24 hour race in München again this year but the people that run it won't answer email and definitely have one of the worst websites ever produced for a promotional group this large. Hence, the reason that we're doing the Kühlsheim race. Well, that and the fact that a lot of the people from SSEC in France will be there too.

Funny...after I wrote the above comment, I was actually asked to participate as part of our gym's 24 hour 4 man team. If I hadn't already signed up for Külsheim, I'd have probably done it. However, it's more cool that Kera gets to be a part of it too.

We've also booked our trip to Vietnam in late Dec. through early Jan. '08. More on that later.

The possible move thing seems to be coming along as well. I'll let you know about that as it gets finalized.

Lastly, my Deutsche course is coming along. It's a lot of work, but definitely worth it.

I made in a National Mountain Bike Magazine...in France!

Kera just got a few pics of pages out of a French mountain bike magazine sent to her by our buddy JB. Velo VERT is a French mountain bike magazine that not only helped sponsor SSEC but also did a fair amount of coverage and the guy might have even raced. Can't tell you for sure. However, it's cool that a Euro mag. was there to cover such a cool event.

Not only that, I got my photo in the article. It's in the series of pics on the 3rd page. Kera and I are in one of the two pages of the group. It's hard to find us unless you know where we are though.





A zillion other photos from SSEC07 here - on Flickr

Kera and I raced in the Tegernsee marathon yesterday. We both did the "B" loop after much contemplation. I did it on the Black Sheep as a singlespeed and she on her Retrotec.

I finished 132nd out of 258 of male riders and Kera did much better at 24th out of 44. That's the total number of riders that did that loop. It's not broken down by class. I'll have to see about that too. Now, looking at the final results, I finished 35th in my class (under 50) of 87 racers (considering I was the only singlespeed I saw all day, I'm not complaining) and Kera placed 18th out of 34 in women under 40. Not too bad of a day for either of us.

The Tegernsee race is our favorite race course around here. It's just about right. You're not totally spent at the end, but you definitely know that you've done something hard the previous day when you wake up the next morning. The scenery is cool, you get a lot for the 40 Euros (i.e. an Adidas Clima Fabric shirt, a bunch of energy bars/gels, a water bottle, vouchers for a beer and a meal and more). Not a bad deal at all. Considering that the shirt is at least that much in itself.

Once again, I did my best to pass on the SS whilst climbing. Unfortunately, the other riders don't care and/or understand that I need to move along at a slightly faster pace to get up the mountain without walking any more than normal. So, due to this problem and my lack of overall aggressiveness, I end up walking more than I'd like. The funny part though, I end up passing people even walking. Guess that's not all bad eh?

Two...Two posts in one. Kinda like Certs!

Got my old Curtlo back a few days ago. Since then, I've spent a large amount of time screwing around with it getting it ready to ride. You know what? Rigid fork singlespeeds are so much easier to deal with!

My Curtlo is running a large portion of SRAM corporate goodies. Noir 3.3 crankset, SRAM 9.0 shifters & ders., a Rock Shox Reba fork and more. Those items alone are a royal pain-in-the-ass to install and set up. The Avid disk brakes would be easy too if I didn't have to shorten the fluid lines too. I probably should have just stuck with the old BB-7's and made it easy on myself.

Anyway, the bike is pretty much done. I've now talked to WTB on the phone and ordered a new freewheel kit (just hope it's the right one) so I'll have a set of wheels for both bikes...eventually. Here's a pic of the Curtlo.



Also a pic of the jersey that I'm wearing in the SSEC pics as well. I love this jersey. I've coveted one since I saw them last year at SS World's. I now have one. Well, I've had it since SSEC. I've also got a French one too that I need to take pics of for you as well.



..

I finished one class today and I start a new one at a different school tonight. It also appears that I'm going to teach a real estate oriented class for a friend too. Cool! A bit more money and it'll keep me out of trouble.

(This is previous to the other post)....CONFUSED YET?

A race in Tegernsee this weekend. Haven't decided which one I'm doing, yet. There are 4 different races. I can't remember the first one, but it's fairly short, B is 57 km with something like 1100 vertical meters, C is 58 km's with 1900 vertical meters and I think D is 85 km with something like 2500 vertical meters. It'll be B or C for me. Probably B so that I don't leave the parents hanging for the whole day. I'll let you know what I decide.

As usual... more pics here. Flickr

By the way... the book I'm reading is really good! JPod - Douglas Coupland. He also wrote Generation X and other good ones as well.

Once again, it's been awhile. A long while.

Last weekend saw us heading southwest toward the Provence region of France for the SingleSpeed European Championship '07. It was a trip that we'd both been looking forward to as we were going to get to see some of our favorite Frenchmen (David and his brother JB). Both are incredibly nice and talented guys that we met about a year ago at the Swiss SingleSpeed Championships.

I also knew that there were going to be a number of people from around Europe and the U.S. that I'd known through the web, via MySpace, Flickr & various blogs. I was also looking forward to meeting them as well. As it turned out we got to meet a number of very fun & interesting folks (i.e. Peter from Surly, Chuck from Salsa, Phaty, Erik, J.J. & more)

It took us almost 10 hours to drive there from München, but it was definitely worth it. I'd kind overlooked bringing some of the important info. with us; say like the name of the campground, directions and a few other things. After a couple of panic & angst ridden calls to RottenMac we were on our way A few short minutes later, we were in the camping area surrounded by a group of about 100 singlespeeders from around the globe. Ahhh... home!!

David & JB ran over to give us hugs and Euro-kisses! Then over came Phaty & Erik to introduce themselves and invite us to sleep in their cabin. From there, we paid for the weekend and put our stuff away or the weekend. Out came the bikes and a few minutes later we were off to dinner in town with the group. Night #1 saw us eating mussles grilled on a pit fire along with FRENCH FRIES...duh! and about all the French wine that we could down.




After dinner was the Derby. If you don't know Derbying you might be better off. It's basically a free-for-all where the last man/woman riding wins. It often ends in a drunken heap. After that we headed off to the campground for a few beers and more introductions.




The next day we skipped the downhill run on Mt. Ventoux (yes, the famous one from the Tour de France). Instead, we headed off with Erik, Phaty & Stephan for a tour of lower France. The Reader's Digest version is what you'll get. We started out at a winery in the small lower Alps (wine wasn't so good, but the olive pate was awesome), we stopped and looked around an Abbey that looked like a castle, crossed the street for one of the best meals I've had in ages, then off to Arels (where Van Gogh was), the Mediterranean Sea and then Agine Morte & last stop was in Avignon were we had dinner and saw the outside of the old Popes Palace before heading back toward the campground were we arrived about 12:30 a.m.

Saturday saw us off to have a group photo taken in an old Roman amphitheater in Orange, then a group lunch in Piolenc and off to the secret location of the race course. It was really warm, maybe 85-90F, and wearing a kilt made the temps go even higher. It also didn't help that I was severely dehydrated from a few days of drinking alcohol & coffee rather than water.



We stood around and cooled off while drinking some water and as race time approached we were told to go down the hill and around the corner for the beginning of the LeMans start. While waiting, our bikes were all moved from where we'd laid them. Off we went on the run. As we hit the top of the hill we realized what had happened. Some bikes were off down the road, others, like mine were pretty easy to find.



The race had begun. I went in to the woods about 5th. I stayed there for awhile until the long hill where the heat & dehydration started to mess with me. I continued on doing the best I could and drinking most of my two bottles before the finish of the first lap. There was some water and food to be had at the start/finish and I took advantage of it.



Off I went in to the 2nd lap. By this time, I'd passed a number of the people again and for most of the 2nd lap it was another guy on a cyclocross bike, the eventual womans winner and myself trading places constantly. At one point, the woman took off and managed to stay just out of reach of me for the rest of the race. I only saw one other person, a woman (who, as it turns out, was the wife of the guy on the cyclocross bike) right before the finish.

The course had a bit of everything. Some really nice singletrack, some technical stuff, some climbing and other things. I really had a good time riding it and would love to again if they manage to pull the Worlds race in a year or two. That'd be very cool! Anyway, the new bike performed well. After installing the setback seatpost, the seat was in the right position as was the handlebar, etc. I only had one problem, as I crested the last little hill, I heard a pop from my rear hub and then nothing. I crossed the finish line about 50 meters away as though I had no chain.



Thanks to Kera, Chuck & Peter I was pushed and pulled all the way back to Piolenc. We hit the showers and then went back to Piolenc where the local bike club put on a fantastic dinner for us along with a Mariachi band and dancers. About midnight was the awards. Kera & I won Salsa water bottles and the bag that Kera had donated was given away to the 2nd place guy. The 1st & 3rd place guys were disqualified from the drawing for various reasons.

Sunday morning, we ate breakfast, said our goodbyes and headed back toward München. Traffic flowed well till we hit Germany where there's a lot of road construction as they're trying to make it AutoBahn from München to Lake Constance. We got home safely about 6:30 and I set about downloading pics. No sooner than I got 'em downloaded and Kera was playing on the Mac and it just shutdown. The next day I took it to be looked at and the guy just rebooted the internal power supply.

Photos are all uploaded to Flicker now. You can see them here - Flickr pics

For the wrap-up. I ended up as first Deutsche across the line for the day. Kera and I seemed to have been at least in part, adopted by the Deutsche group, the overall "French" are much better than we make them out to be and lastly, France and it's food are fantastic! I can hardly wait to go back.

In the last news, I'm probaby signing up for an integrations course so that I can pass the German language test and get closer to getting the German version of a Green Card. I'll probably have to work evenings and ride early morning to make it happen, but it's important enough that I need to do it. Kera and I have been trying to get out a few mornings a week and get some riding in so it shouldn't be that much of a hardship.

This weekend I have the Garmisch marathon and I've made my bike a 9 speed for the event. It's only about 65 km's but it's also something like 1800 vertical meters. Ugh! The old Curtlo is probably back in Heidelburg, but the guy accepting it is out of town this week. I should probably have it by the end of next week. Then I'll have one geared bike and one dedicated singlespeed.

Telling stories with photos

First... bike saga might, FINALLY, be coming to an end. Seems that everything about this bike has just led from one problem to another. I hope it's a great as everyone clamims Black Sheep to be. In any case, I now have a non-functioning tracking number and I have a ship date. Add to that the guy that it's shipping to now seems to be on vacation. Ugh! At this point, my guess is that it's now in Germany sitting safely at it's next-to-end location and I can't get to it.


These are updated posts from my My(Wasted)Space page. Thought that I'd share them here for you guys to update you on our recent goings on......

Bits & pieces of stuff going on last week and this.

Here's a link to my Flickr page where I've uploaded a few new pics. I'll post a few of my favs here. Wunnspeed on Flickr

A good one of Kera -


Kera being serious as usual -

RottenMac loaned me his Karate Monkey to help me retain sanity. Here it is with a few of my parts on it -


Kera's Retrotec - rolling art! -


Hohenschwangau & Neuschwanstein in the same photo from the South end of Alpsee -


Slippery frogs? A sign that's south of town we saw on our ride last weekend -


So...

I finished Berlitz training this past Tuesday. Yes, I learned a lot. Yes, it was necessary. No, I'm not cut out to be trapped in a stuffy room for 9 hours a day with little freedom to go outside. No, I don't live in the 'real' world anymore. I've adapted all too well to the life of a 'trailing spouse' & freelance English teacher. Most of my days consist of going to a class in the morning, teaching, going home for lunch and then rinse repeat of the morning. Throw in some grocery shopping, a ride here and there, cleaning house, making sock monsters, playing on the computer and a little more and you get the idea of how my days play out.

Thanks to Rottenmac for loaning me the Karate Monkey. It's been great being on a singlespeed again. Not only that, it again makes me wonder why anyone wouldn't like 29'ers. Damn, these things roll and do everything better, in my opinion, than a 'baby-wheeler'. My buddy Cotter loaned me his singlespeed one time way back when for a trip to Arizona. I'll never forget it. One of my favorite trips ever. Thanks guys!

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THE SECOND MESSAGE....

Berlin... a way cool city that, in a lot of ways, reminded me of Kansas City and a lot of New York. In any case, a super flat city that's incredibly spread out compared to Munich. It's also a city that has a lot of open space and it's amazingly flat. The art scenes, music scenes and fixie culture seem to be very alive and well there.

Oh the hotel we stayed in was really cool (Propeller Island). The rooms as I'd pointed out before were all different. Strangely enough, no one running around in black leather. Just us 'normal' folks roaming about at breakfast and such. I've got a few pics that I need to upload so you can see more of our room. I'll tell you more when I post those. O.K.

See the bottom of this post for a few of our pics from Berlin. Also, check my Flickr page



What else? We ate some awesome Mexican food at Dolores after having done the Fat Tire Bike Tour and then cruising around town a bit. We also hit the Keirin Shop where I picked up a Brooklyn cycling hat. Check out the one on the top of the pic. Just like the one that I bought.



Saw the above truck and lusted after it as it's the perfect trail building vehicle. Also, it'd be fun to pull up next to a Hummer and say whatcha driven there wannabe?

A cool pic of the Kera...



A good bit of Graf. art



Me out riding the 'Evil' 26" wheeled thing a week or so ago.



Found out that my Curtlo has been powdercoated but the paint guys didn't like the coating and had to reorder new powder. That's partly why it's taken 6 months for that repair as well. It's still not done. Wish I had it for this weekends (Garda marathon). As it is, it looks as though I'll be riding Kera's Retrotec. Not that riding it is a sacrifice, for me... it's a beautiful bike. Just wish I had my own. It's a teddy bear security blanket sort of thing I guess.

Bag Crazy

Since Mike usually takes care of typing up our blog posts I figured that I should make a report to all of our friends about what has been taking up big chunks of my spare time lately. For those of you out there who have seen me in Obsessed Mode before you can probably imagine how things have been around here. I've been a tad bit focused on messenger bags..... to put it mildly.

The good news is that I've come a long way already. I made a couple of "prototype" bags and then made one for a friend. Here's a picture of Sabine's bag.

And a picture of the bag I made for myself with the same idea for an angled accent on the flap.

I learn something new on each one and they are getting better all of the time. I just finished a bag for Mikey yesterday that is the latest and greatest. He picked out the size, colors, pockets, straps, flap design, etc. Well..... I actually kind of told him what his decision was going to be on the flap design-- but I suppose that he officially had veto power on that too.



The pictures above are all messenger type bags, but I've done a couple of purse sized bags too. Those actually worked out pretty well.

Have done all of the sewing on my little Pfaff Hobbymatic. It is a surprisingly strong little guy. There are times when all of those layers really push it past its maximum capacity though. The great news is that I just picked up an industrial machine on Friday. It is on indefinite loan from Andrea, and I'm excited to try to figure out how to use it. It will hopefully go through layers a whole lot more easily.

So... the idea is that I would like to start making custom bags for whoever would like to order them. I have been working with my friend Sara, and we have a name for our little enterprise: SpoK Bags. Sara has designed a logo for us and we're trying to get labels made. It's just a matter of figuring out which place has the best prices, quality, etc. After that we will be in business.

I won't pester everyone with the weekly update on the bag project-- I understand that others don't find the details of bag straps as fascinating as I do. If you are interested in watching the developments here is the link to my flickr site. I post most of the new stuff there as it comes along. If you are interested in ordering a bag just shoot me an e-mail and we can work out the details.

Hope that this message finds everyone well. Happy Easter.

Take care,
Kera

Bad Brother!

Yes, first off... I'm a bad brother. I forgot (kind of) to tell my sister Happy Birthday last month. Her birthday is St. Patricks day. Kera and I actually went to an Irish bar the night before and I mentioned that I needed to send her an email or an ecard before we left the next morning on our vacation in Mallorca.

So... just so that she knows I thought about it and then forgot. Also, so that I don't forget my brothers birthday that falls on April 13th, I'll cover the bases now.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHELLE!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRET!

O.K., what next?




Next... we didn't take a single pic while on vacation in Mallorca. Luckily, Hattem did. Something like 192 to be exact. Check 'em out if you like. I posted a couple here to save some of you the trouble. For the gluttons... Here you go.




By the way, we remedied the lack of a small camera problem and have since purchased a Canon IXUS 850. It's a great little thing. We've already taken a bunch of pics with it. See below or check out our Flickr Page




Still no bike or bikes. Might be looking in to buying or building Kera a new commuter bike for her soon to be lengthened trip to work. The thought is that they'll be moving her office out to the 'campus' that SwissRE has a bit further from our place. Then, we might look in to cyclocross bikes which would seem to be the perfect bicycle for use in this part of the world.

Next weekend we're off to Berlin. We're staying in a really curious hotel called the Propeller Island. The link is to the room that we're staying in. It's called Grandma's. Looks kinda cool. Check out the rest of the place. The story is kind of intersting. A hotel all designed by one artist.