Just another recovery monday. My legs are feelin good and worked from the weekend. Finally hitting the pedals hard again, and it’s a beautiful thing.

The weekend started off with an arrival for the new Voodoo that made it one step closer to complete. In fact, it was close enough to complete, that I decided to yank the wheels from the gunnar and make it happen. So, after a lazy morning, I threw everything on the back of the big dummy and headed down to the shop for the build.

Got it built up, and headed out saturday afternoon for a shred. So gorgeous.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I tightened one of the chainring bolts enough, and a fully rigid descent down upper brookbank shook it loose. A hard crank on the pedal on the first little uphill, and I was out of commision real quick-like.

Luckily I was at the start of Heaven, which is all downhill, so I rolled down that and bailed to Schultz pass road where, through a combination of coasting and skitching on a friend’s jeep who I caught up with, I made it back unscathed.

I swapped the ring out (yes, I had a spare at home) showered, and took off downtown on the fixie for the Mountainaire Mayhem goldsprints

I rolled into town on the fixie and met up with the absolute crew at PNT for some beers.

The ride down was fairly uneventful, as I did it by myself after some food at Flag Brew, and the event broke loose around 10:00. 16 started, and in the end, only Kyle and the Hipster remained. I’ll be honest, it was a close match, and I am still a little fuzzy on who won, but I do know that those boys can spin like no other. I, unfortunately, was out in the semifinals by the Hipster, his tiny shorts, and his legs of fury. I still walked away with a good buzz, a Drunkcyclist Beer Coozie, and $25 to absolute, so I can’t complain.

I didn’t take any pics or videos or anything, and I think ray summed it up nicely with his post-event tweet.

Saturday morning came too soon after the evening of riding and debauchery, but I jumped on the new bike (with a new and improved front chainring) and met J-money for a little ride around the peaks. We checked out the ‘new and improved’ first loop of the crazy 88 and got the GPS track to go with it. I’m definitely substituting in the AZT instead of 151, and I think I’m gonna put the aid station at the turnoff to the AZT off 418 so nobody blows by the turn. It’s obvious if you’re looking for it, but it’s on a nice long downhill so it’s easy to blow by. Good times will be had by all.

The other note about that ride is it was my first real ride on a fully rigid mountain bike. My wrists are not happy with me today, but it was a fun time. After a bit of futzing with the stem height to jack it up a bit, I really didn’t do too bad. No over the bars, only 1 flat (and it was the rear anyways) and didn’t really feel too ‘off’ in the technical stuff. Even cleaned pick-up-sticks on it. I don’t know how long it’ll stay on that bike, as I’m planning on swapping the magura over, but it was a good time on this ride, that’s for sure.

Oh yeah, and hauling a 20.5 lb bike up and over logs is a dream. Damn, that thing is light.

I’ve decided to re-brew the kolsch that I most recently did for the crazy 88 homebrew this year. It was one of my favorite beers and fits the bill of ‘something light and tasty’ for after the race. Mmmmm……

I’ll leave you with this tidbit that I got from an old college friend. Simply amazing.