The first Snake Creek Gap time trail of the year was yesterday. On the ride out to the start the temp was 19*. Normally that's not so bad but about 1.5 miles in we had to cross a small river

I thought I got too wet crossing until I found this picture of Kevin. After going through the water I thought the 3 mile climb would warm my hands and feet up to acceptable warmth. Nope. Close to the top I stopped for about 10 minutes to put toe warmers in my shoes. That helped until I got them wet again towards the end of the first half.

At the midway rest stop I took about 20 minutes to warm my toes and change into dry socks. It didn't help. My feet felt like two blocks of ice for the rest of the race.

My 5:04 time was one of the slowest times I've ever had at the Snake. All I could think of for the last half of the race was getting back to my car and warming my feet with the heater. Around the 20 mile mark my body was screaming "Hey you dumbass! You havn't done more than a 2 hour ride in months. What are you doing?"

NWGA SORBA always puts on a great event, even under tough conditions. Even though I was pretty miserable for most of the race, I'm looking forward to Feb. already.

New TVB kits

The new TVB kits look so good we even wear them to pump gas in. Doesn't Jaques look fine?

Busy Fall

Here is a little taste.


I love Big South Fork. The Grand Gap/John Muir trails are as good as it gets.



Walden Ridge




School kept me busy for much of the fall. Good news is 3 courses and 3 A's. I learned how to make maps with ARCGIS software. It is a very powerful software and kind of reminds me of Windows in that it does so much I can't imagine anyone knowing all of it. As you might expect, all my projects involved mapping trails for MTB. !st project was Hastie trails. Anyway, I'm having fun with it and hope to develop map making into an occupation.

Some Dirty South trail work and some snow on Rich Mtn.

It has been a busy fall.

Really...it's been 6 weeks since I put stuff on here?

Micah, Russ and I went to DoPont yesterday. We rode about 25 miles and left feeling satisfied. Ridgeline may be the funnest trail around.

Drum Roll Please....

This past weekend I raced at Bike Butler in Carrolton, KY. It was the 16 th(?) annual International Clydesdale Championship. I managed to get a win on a hilly, curvy, tight and technical course. It was fitting that I rode at Concord last week. The Bike Butler course reminded me a lot of Concord. The hills are a little bigger and the course is not quite as tight as Concord but Concord was definately good race prep.


This is me with Troy Hearn. Troy won last year and finished 2nd this year. Troy has a nice shop in Frankfort, Ky, Capitol City Cycles.

The win was worth $.50 per pound. That netted me $110.00 for the win. If you look at the bottom of the top picture you can spot the scales and no I didn't ride that bike next to me.

Last night Ginger and I rode up to upper Campbell Co. to Hatfield Knob. It was our first trip to the elk viewing tower. There are 2 or 3 large information boards telling about the elk release program and about other local fauna.









There were two very large bulls but they never got close enough to get a really good shot of.







It's a pretty cool place. I think it ended up being about 40 miles from the house. The last 7 or 8 miles are gravel and a little rough although the Element did just fine.
clipper

Does TBRA care about MTB?

This picture is from 2 1/2 weeks ago. The Raccoon Mtn. race results are still not up. SERC who promoted the race posted their results the day after the race. Just for kicks, I checked the road race held Sunday. The results are up already. That just tells me TBRA really doesn't care about MTB racing.

Another example is that all state champions are listed on the club sites. However, only road race champions are listed, no MTB state champions are mentioned. Maybe it's time to consider something other than TBRA for MTB races...

On another subject, still no work. I have several resumes out there but everyone seems to be waiting to do any hiring. If you have had the opportunity to deal with unemployment you know what a fiasco that is. You can't get a person on the phone. When you get a recording it might tell you to call another recording. I understand there are a lot of people out of work but hell...I made the mistake of mis-entering my pin # to report in for benefits. Now I can't get it reset. Run around city.

I have done a lot of riding since I have not been working. I calculated that I rode 160 miles all off froad in a 2 week span. Rides include Big South Fork (twice), Raccoon Mtn. (twice) Dupont, Dirty South, Haw Ridge...