Monumentally Afflicted

I've had bad knees for years. In the past year, they've seemed way more fragile. Soccer games can take a few days to recover from and in the past month, my right knee has really flared up. So, I told my chiropractor, who checked it out and said that it seemed like maybe an MCL tear, but more likely a medial meniscus tear. So, on his referral, I got an MRI done on Thursday. Results: obvious horizontal tear of the medial meniscus. Almost for sure getting scoped in the near future. The scary thing is that my other knee feels worse most of the time, it just doesn't have the short periods of sharp pain... It is just more consistently annoying. Gotta stay off the real technical stuff and no running. I figure I should keep the knee strong, though, and not sit on the couch, so I hit the Preserve today. Did about and hour of riding. At the trailhead, I was amazed to see zero cars. I thought that was weird. About 10 minutes later, I figured out why. The clouds rolled th...

Now, that's fat! 3.7" Endomorph on a Surley Pugsley fork (100mm model). Rolls nicely over rocks at 6psi. Makes the 3.0 inch rear tire look puny. Not to mention, dwarfing a regular race tire.

Got out for another short night ride last night. Funny, how new equipment can make me do irrational things (like night riding on the nearly longest day of the year). Anyway, used the DX P7 bike light and the MTE M3-2 MCE flashlight on my helmet. Sick amounts of light. Definitely way huge lighting action going on. As I'm finishing my ride, my neighbor sees me coming up the dirt road... Neighbor: "Hey, aren't you afraid of the coyotes?" Me: "No, but I definitely think about the mountain lions." Neighbor: "Yeah, well right before you left, the coyotes were howling up a storm!" Great...just one more think to worry about...

For $80, I couldn't resist picking up this DealExtreme P7 bike light. An advertised 900 lumens and 3 hours of runtime. I'm sure it is more in the 600 lumen range, but this is still an incredible example of the progression of bike lighting. I've bought a bunch of lights from DX, so I know that I may need to resolder a connection here or there. The products are more bleeding-edge than top-notch. If this light is fairly decent, I'll have to pick up another and run it helmet mount with a Lupine config.

No tread, fast, in the dirt... Bonehead biker will get hurt. Went out for a short ride in the Preserve w/ Cari and Jason. At the end of the ride, I did a little bike surfing, sliding down the dirt road on top of the laid down bike, with my hands out front and my knee dragging along on the dirt. Thankfully, I was wearing gloves or my hands would have been shredded. Did the cyclo commute into work, as I'll be taking Cari and Jason to the airport in a couple hours. This way, they can use the car to shop and then come by with the vehicle for us to all go to the airport. A nice cool 19 mile ride into work this morning. Wish I had more time to do the commute.

Lianne has been jonesing to do an adventure race for quite a while.   The Rock Climbing Center and Front Range Climbing Company put on a race over the weekend that was affordable, close to home, and looked like it would be fun, so we decided to give it a shot.  The race consisted of mountain biking, orienteering, a tyrolean traverse, hiking/running, blackjack, and kayaking. It was actually a lot of fun and, to my surprise, we actually won the entire race.  There were about 70-100 people, all team entries except one soloist (who we leapfrogged back and forth with for much of the race). The start didn't go so well.  Lianne and I were messing around with last minute details.  I got impatient and rolled over to the start to see what was going on and right then everyone took off!  Lianne was about 100 yards away at the truck.  So, we essentially started in last place.  We hit the Sante Fe Trail and Lianne started to pick up the pace.  Eventually we passed everyone and were first to ch...