Rob from Ultrarob’s Adventures left a comment on my previous post mentioning that any proceeds he generates from his cycling and outdoor gear search site will be donated to Susan’s WIN Fund. Susan’s WIN fund has been set up to help support the Fat Cyclist’s family and their battle against cancer.

If you haven’t seen it, Rob’s cycling and outdoor gear search site is pretty cool. It’s kind of like a pricegrabber.com site for outdoor and cycling gear.
Check it out: http://www.ultrarob.com/shop/

Last night was the first time riding since February 26th.  I don’t know what the heck it was that I caught but it had me down and out!  An almost constant annoying dry cough, an itch in my throat, and a rattle as I tried to breathe.  It was miserable!  Yesterday I felt good all day at work my bike sat in the truck waiting to be ridden… the plan was change in to the cycling gear at work, leave promptly at 4:30, drive to Fat Frogs to meet some folks by 5:15, and then go on a wonderful ride.  A call from the City of Virginia Beach Fire Department changed that a bit.  As typically will happen when you have personal plans you are excited about that nasty thing called work rears it’s ugly head and makes you “tweak” your personal plans. 
Yesterday the Allied Technologies building, which happens to be connected to the Old FX / Bill’s Flea Market building, caught fire around 11AM.   According to news reports, a light fixture sparked and ignited a pile of boxes undernearth of it in the Allied Technologies warehouse.  The fire was going throughout the day and the fire department was expecting a long night so they needed some additional site lighting to work through the night.  That’s where I come in, we got the call at 4:25PM to provide two sets of lights for them.  That meant a stop on Independence Blvd. before heading out on my ride. 
I have never seen anything quite like what was going on out there nor have I ever seen so many fire trucks in one places.  There were huge water lines were running all over the place and more fireman than I knew the City of Va Beach had moving all around.  It was quite the scene and I some major respect for everyone out there on the site.  They had what could have been complete and utter chaos under control and working well.  I was impressed with the whole operation! 
Anyways after the stop over there I managed to get down to the shop at about 5:50PM and get geared up to ride.  And what a ride it was Dan Craft and Fred Parker rolled out with me into a beautiful headwind of 8-10 mph.  I felt good especially considering that I hadn’t ridden in so long.  We were doing really well I had a nice hard pull on one section, did a nice stand up in my Big-11 through Trail of Tears.  I was feeling great, my lungs were burning, me legs were aching, but I was not hacking up a lung!!!  We turned to head back and got a nice tail wind so we worked some big gears pushing our way back.  When we got through the “S” curves we heard a loud noise from Fred’s bike.  He popped a spoke in his back wheel.  We all had tubes, CO2, pumps, and a bunch of other stuff but no extra wheels.   So it was a nice easy ride back to the shop to finish out the ride.   Belgium Knee Warmers was right when he said “The real moment of glory comes in that first post-flu ride. The smells
can be alternately fresh and mechanical. The sounds are varied as the
horns and buzzes of a Spike Jones routine. You can see for miles and
all the colors are Kodachrome. Whether you feel fit or not, there is no
surer sign that all is right with the world than when you are back on
your bike.”
Tonight is another ride and even Amber is going on this one!!  Hopefully it’s at least half as enjoyable as the ride last night!

Today was the second Snowball Criterium at the wonderful Va Beach Criterium Course. It was cold, it was windy, it was a “wonderful” day for a race! At least it wasnt raining!
Due to the fact that I have been sick and off the bike for over a week I chose not to race. I didn’t think that
hacking up a lung on a field of riders was the right thing to do. Instead I chose to take spend some time behind the camera. I also played official and worked the cameras for a couple of races as well. It was a fun day and it looks like VACA is going to enter the 20th Century and buy a mac for the officials kit!

Here’s the link to the pictures that I took at the Snowball Criterium #2 race…. the order of the pictures got a little mixed up as they were imported into the gallery program, but if you were there you’ll know which race the pictures are from……
The pictures!

It’s all GamJams fault!  I read his bike profile article on Jared Nieter’s bike and found that Jared had a problem similar to one that I have.  That is being short and trying to ride with components designed for a taller person.  I find my drops too deep to be comfortable so I spend less time riding there.  The reach to the hoods is also a bit long.  He solved the problem by adding some Bontrager Fit VR bars to his ride.  They were originally designed with a woman rider in mind but look to be a great way for us smaller riders to get things to fit better.  There are even some male pros riding these similar bars, check out this pic of Tom Zirbel.   I did some research online and found that FSA has also introduced a compact option on several of their bars.   I opted to try the FSA Wing Pro instead of the Bontrager.
As can be seen by the specifications below the bars are very similar and the FSA is much easier to find online than the Bontrager bars.
                               Width     Drop    Reach   Weight
Compact Bars…
FSA Wing Pro           42cm   125mm   80mm    264g
Bontrager Fit VR       42cm   120mm   70mm    260g

Traditional Bars...
FSA Wing Pro          42cm   125mm   80mm    264g 
Easton EC70            42cm   145mm   85mm    225g
They should be here next week, I cant wait!

http://www.gamjams.net/2008/02/gamjams-tech-ja.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WisJFwwlT4s&feature=related

I FINALLY got around to getting these pictures off of the card and uploaded to the gallery.  Not much as for editing and cleaning up, but they are there.  It was a great time and I look forward to possibly joining in on the next one. 
Here’s the link to the gallery:
The Gallery

This is kind of an funny… a week or so ago I came across the Mission Cycles site and Flickr gallery by way of
one of the cycling blogs I read, probably bikesnobNY
Mission Cycles custom builds sweet bikes in very limited “batches”. The buyer can customize all of the components and the colors. My next fixie is going to have to be one of these!. Anyways, one of the bikes I was drooling over at that time was the one in the picture below. At the time the name meant nothing to me until today. I was looking around for a solution to easily make full posts from my Centro and
one article I read contained a link to Joi Ito’s site. Lo and behold in all of it’s glory was the very same bike that I had been drooling over. It’s amazing how small that internet really can be!


The link to Joi’s post

Gilbert found a link to a funny “Roadie Slang” dictionary here.  Check it out it’s funny.
http://keirinracer.blogspot.com/2007/12/roadie-dictionary.html

A cool race and great people!  This “scavenger hunt” was a lot of fun and had such an underground feel to it and I didnt even ride it!   It was interesting seeing a bunch of cyclists semi-late in the evening on a Friday night to ride city streets.  Even more interesting was the lack of spandex riding and winter gear and helmets!!  I think I might have to do this one the next time!! I am wearing a helmet though!!!  Cyclochris has a recap on his site too. Wes has some video of the race that he took from his run through downtown Norfolk.

*** My pictures should be up in the next day or so. ***

See track bikes are cool… even the worthless sack of crap aka Kanye West acquired one!!!

I came across the image here: http://razorapple.com/2007/12/13/kanye-west-track-bike/