Here it is. The post you have been waiting with bated breath for. The cheesy, cliche, you-don’t-really-care-that-much-anyways post.

2008 in review.

For your convenience, I have decided to divide this post into some logical headers. I won’t say that I necessarily have any rhyme or reason to the order, so we’ll just dive right in.

Riding

As much as I may try to convince you otherwise during the winter, I like to think that this blog is about biking first and foremost, and it was an incredible year for riding.

The biggest addition to the fleet and the lifestyle for 2008 was, without a doubt, the Big Dummy. What a toy. I think I’ve said it before here, but that is one bike that has absolutely exceeded any expectations I had for it. I thought it would be fun, but in the end, I really feel like it changed the way I approached my daily life. Not even considering taking my car when I was going somewhere is a pretty big life change. I’ve carried everything from groceries, to kegs, to EZ-ups, to passengers, to (most recently) skis.

If that isn’t awesome, I don’t know what is.

I also feel like I really started to figure out the road bike in 2008. I made it out to several wednesday night crits, and although we only actually raced a couple times, the times we did, I made it around without getting dropped, which is incredible considering who was riding them. I also finally made it all the way back with the “A” group on the saturday morning world championships.

Really, that was one of the biggest accomplishments in my book last year. I felt so exhausted and accomplished at the same time on that one. If you had asked me in 2007 if I ever though I would make that happen, I would have told you with complete confidence that I didn’t. A hard winter on the rollers, and a weekly wednesday night ritual of getting beat up by the boys in blue on my bike will work wonders.

Racing
It’s a tough decision. Was the bigger news that I ended up doing the most races I ever had, or the fact that I organized my first race? I’m not too sure.

Either way, I got a good start to the year by doing not one, but two races in january. Dead of winter, and I did over 100 miles of racing in two consecutive weekends with the Swizzle and the APC. The inevitable follow-up of Old Pueblo in february went pretty well until my knee blew up and sent me to the sidelines at about 10am. Not bad, but certainly not my best 24 hour performance.

Over the course of the year I took full advantage of both the NMES and AZES. I did two of each when all was said and done, along with the whiskey off-road in may and Pines to the Mines in the fall. I bailed out on the Kaibab Monstercross after a wrong turn, and ended up with a 120 mile DNF on a race.

It’s not often that you can say that 120 miles resulted in a DNF, that’s for sure.

Oh yeah, and there was even a couple sub-30 mile races in there with Bryce’s first HAT trick race and SSWC08. The hat trick ended up only having one race, so it wasn’t really a hat trick, but we’ll forgive him this time.

And singlespeed worlds? Well, there’s not much I can say about that which isn’t summed up by this picture.

3868

I have to say, too, that I didn’t do half bad in the races I did. Cut a half-hour off my time in the whiskey, and had 3 second-place finishes in endurance series races (APC, Sedona BFL, and the NMES Double Boundary).

And then there was the Crazy 88. What can I say about that? My first race-organizing effort, with a solid 26 person starting roster, and an incredibly cheesy win on my part (who wins their own race?!). That was my first ever overall race win, and a pretty epic one weather-wise as well. It also taught me a ton about race organizing, and I can’t wait to make this year’s bigger and better.

Skiing
I also can’t talk about last year without the fact that I did all that bike racing with a 30+ day year on the skis. The backcountry was ridiculous, and every day I wasn’t on the bike (and some that I was) I was on the skis. Either hiking snowbowl, hitting the backcountry with tRoy and/or j-money, or performing one of my epic assault-style weekend road-trips.

Oh yeah, and getting snowed in at Silverton was pretty sweet as well.

I think this season is off to a good start since I hit double digit days already, and I’m tapping this out on my way to Silverton for a couple more epic days.
edit: I wrote this on my way to silverton, but due to the lack of wi-fi at our hotel, I’m posting it in flag.

Brewing
Can somebody have too many hobbies? I would argue no.

This year brewing production has not only maintained, but increased with the launch of my 10-gallon brewery setup. Two batches already off it, both of which were a hit, and the process is getting totally dialed in.

I also upgraded to kegging this year, and technically got the taps installed on the fridge in the bike room before new years, so we can chalk the kegerator conversion up to 2008 as well.

It is yet to be seen as to whether the taps will be a help or a hindrence to 2009′s riding season.

HandlebarSandwich
How else could I sum up this post than with the success of HandlebarSandwich this past year. I got stickers printed, printed my own t-shirts, and kicked off some custom kits for the site.

I started twittering and met some fun people there, and I even launched an alternative site in the midst of a drunken stupor one night.

And most importantly, I made a lot of good friends. I met people from all over the country who read the blog, and I caught up with some old friends (including one who got me a gig of a couple guest posts on the Mountain Hardwear blog!) because of my incessant rambling. I had my first 3000 visit month, with some help drunkcyclist and MHW, and had my first 100+ visit day without their help as well.

Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the ride in 2008. I promise, 2009 has many more surprises in store.

You keep reading, and I’ll keep rambling.