Spring!!!!!

 Well Spring is finally here.  It was officially around 50 degrees today and I was able to hit up the gravels for over 4 hours today.  Hopefully this is the start of many happy days ahead.  The ride destroyed me physically (due to forgetting my food at home) but mentally it completely cleared my head and made me one happy person.  You can see that the photos above are actually a tail of two different days.  First photo was a week earlier when I was relegated to a single speed after everything froze up due to crappy gravel conditions and freezing temps.  Not so much in the second pic.  Team Noah was rolling the hills of NE Iowa today. Short and sweet, that is it!!

Snow, Snow, Go Away!!

Well it has been a good start to the greatest month of the year, MARCH!  Ok the month is only the greatest because the coolest of the cool are born in March.  Other than it being a great birth month, this year has been stellar and then crappy, then stellar and crappy again.

First off, stellar! My birthday for some reason came early this year, when I opened up the front door to let Bailey do her business and found a box with some Team Noah goodies.  So happy, I stripped down with the front door still open to try on the great new kit that I get to ride in this year.  It is going to be a great year sporting this kit and all that it stands for!

After the stellar point is the crappy. There has been a crap load of snow here in Decorah for the month of March.  We got around 10 inches or more of snow on March 5th.  Also there have been many days of ice after the snow.  The latest round of crap fell on us and the rest of the state of Iowa last night dumping only about 2 inches of snow around here.  The bad part was that we got around 1-2 inches of nice rain yesterday and then got the snow, so lots of sloshing and and wet heavy snow to shovel off the driveway.  I am about ready to break a shovel over my leg if we get any more this year!!  Because of all of this snow, I don't know if I am going to ever get my Spring Driver's Ed. class done as we have now missed the last 2 mondays and also I don't know when I am going to be starting my 1st summer session as Howard-Winn is going to school until June 4th now.  Should be interesting this summer!!

Enough ranting about the snow.  Ok maybe not! The snow that we had before the 10 inches was absolutely amazing.  Since the PWC 3, I have been quite busy hitting the trainer when the trails were crappy or riding the heck out of the snowy goodness as much as I can.  Logged my first 3 hr. trail ride of the year on the White Steed in the snow and preceded it by a 2 hr. ride on the same white goodness.  


After ending February and starting March with a 7 day hard "training block" the 10 inches fell and oh was it a fun ride out on the trails that day.  3 miles in 1 hour made for a unhappy, happy me.  I did have fun coming down Randy's and creating the prototype Deep V Pugsley Rims in the process.  If Surly wants to contact me I may be albe to sell the patent on these!

Since the trails were crap I took the next three days out on the ski's on what was suppose to be great trail conditions.  I failed to account for the dumbass, college snowmobiler who lives a couple blocks over from me ruining the best ski conditions that we have seen all year by taking his snowmobile down the classic ski tracks, destroying them. If I meet this guy, he will be getting a swift kick to the marbles and then a ski pole stuck up his backside.  Don't know how dumb and arrogant you could be to ruin a whole user groups conditions because he felt he had the right to the ski trails. Snowmobilers can be quite the crappy group.

After the ski days it was back to the dreaded trainer to pound out some more intervals and steady states and then today out into the mushy snow to try my hand at the trails.  I don't know what it is about the trails that will put a smile on my face no matter how crappy the conditions are or how many times I am unable to clip into my pedals (Much swearing out on the trails because of this). The ride today was fairly slow due to 4-5 inches of water every once in a while hiding under the 2 inches of wet, heavy snow but it was quite fun to go outside rather than sitting on the gopher wheel spinning and getting nowhere.

Well that is about all for the update.  Three weeks till the actual season opener at Feel the Burn 6 hour. Later.