On the one hand, the first part of this week kinda sucked, because I had a 2-day business meeting in phoenix, which is not exactly my favorite place in the world. On the other hand, the meeting was done around 3pm on wednesday, and the eastern terminus of trail 100 was a short 2 miles away on the road.

That trail is a good time.

It pretty much sums up what I would think of as ‘desert riding’. Fast through some sections, and then you hit a mountain and it goes straight up and straight back down. I rode it all the way to the other end and back, which I think is about 21 miles, plus there and back on the road. I made most of the climbs, but there were a couple where my legs flat out said ‘don’t even think about it’. Then I did, and they showed my why I shouldn’t have.

I finally got my act together and put a chris king headset on my bike. Ben hooked me up with a mixed color headset, and so I’ve got a red and black anodized king headset on the gunnar now. That should add at least 2 mph of visual speed to my bike.

I believe the quote from ben after I put it all back together was that if I had sprung for one red and one black hub as well, it would look like my bike ‘was trying to hunt down and brutally murder all other bikes in it’s path’.

That guy has a way with words.

I also re-laced the MA3 rim from my fixie onto a surly fixed-fixed hub last night. I decided to use black spokes with a 4 cross pattern (first one of those I’ve done), and with the shiny new hub and the silver rim, it’s a gorgeous wheel.

Sorry I don’t have pictures of either of those sights, but it appears that my camera didn’t fare belize so well. The lens is in some sort of limbo ‘half-in half out’ state which makes it impossible to take pictures. I’ve abused that thing for 4 years, so I’m not terribly surprised, but until I get a replacement, no pictures.

I’m headed out to brush the snow and scrape the ice off my car for work. Yeah, it snowed here. I was counting the minutes until the forest closes, so hopefully this will help at least a week or two. We’ll see.