st. joe state park

Went over to St. Joe State Park yesterday for some riding action while Mason fished. No good map and no help from the rangers left me exploring. Ended up riding singletrack, double track, gravel road, fire road, atv trail, hare scramble trail, tailings dunes, and paved trail. Stupid steep climbs, and pucker factor downhills with some ripping stuff along the ridges. All in all it was fun. I rode for 3+ hours and never even got close to riding probably 25% of what is packed in that 8500 acres. The old mine areas are pretty cool too.

Here are some more "abstract water color paintings" for you to enjoy. Maybe someday I'll have a real camera, or at least a cell phone that takes ok pics.






peace and riding!!!

new stuff...

ordering up gears and a new fork for the plastic bike. hopefully it'll make me faster in long races/allow me to survive longer. xo twister shift, x9 derailluer, pg-970 11-34 cassette, new rear stan's wheel, and it's looking like a fox rlc 29r fork...mmmmmmmm.

thanks to bk for the hook-up through countless e-mails. he's the best shop sponsor a team can have. stupid good team deals and great communication. he's a nice dude too.

time to get to work so i can pay for all this shit...

peace and riding!!

meeting celebrities

...of cycling blogs. That's right folks, I Brett Shoffner, met Casey F. Ryback of Team Segal fame this evening and enjoyed a wonderful authentic Mexican meal in his presence. I was so awe struck by his wit that I barely said anything, plus we showed up a few minutes late, I had weed-eated all day, and was filling my face full of chips and wonderful steak chile verde cause I was starving.

and dude knows his movie quotes. This I am 100% serious about. Knew a Top Gun reference on the spot. Amazing.

be jealous.

The Manimal, Jesse G, and Nick V of Epic Cycling fame were also here. They all rode middlefork today and crashed at the OTA house last night. It was good to see some KC locals. The forest gets pretty lonely.

peace and riding!!!

one of the few times in my life...

...I wish I had a road bike. Although I did hit some nasty gravel in a few spots. 95% was pavement though, not the smoothest, but 2.2 mtb tires at 45 psi don't roll very fast.





Did this in about 2-2.5 hours with a gas station stop a little over halfway through for a $0.69 bottle of grape vess and a king sized peanut butter twix (aka saturday bunch). not bad for a SS mtb geared 34-20 with aforementioned tires and PSI. Road bike would kick ass around here though, I'm not gonna lie. Here's some more craptastic cell phone pics for you to enjoy...saw some pretty cool shit today, including 4-5 mine tailings lakes...one was damn near glowing green...weird!


potosi correctional center...this is where the state of missouri used to kill people...literally.


mineral point, mo...population 384.


this road was paved...but about as smooth as gravel.


downtown potosi.


potosi prison entrance, probably can't see the 4 foot of razor wire on top of the fences.


yep, sickness.

peace and riding!!!

off road season...

Looks like I might actually start racing before too long...only real thing I've done this year is Dirty Kanza and local gravel grinders. Hopefully the $$$ works out and I can do most of these. Most def hitting Spoke Pony, Cruise the Blues, RIM, Burning at the Bluff, Berryman, Boss CX series, 360/Boulevard Cups, DeStad Cups, and the Halcyon Holiday. I would really like to hit either jingle cross to chicago cross too, we'll see how broke I am by then.

July 9 Castlewood 3 hour
July 17 Brommelseik Challenge 3 hour
July 23 Courtois Challenge
August 13 Spoke Pony Showdown 6 hour
August 20 Earthriders Spiderfest @ Smithville Lake
August 27 Cruise the Blues 5 hour
September 3 Slaughter Pen Jam
September 10 Sac River 12 hour
September 17 Hermann CX
September 18 Hermann CX
September 21 Gateway Cross Cup
September 24 Rapture in Misery 12 hour
October 1 Boss CX 1
October 2 Boss CX 2
October 8 Burning at the Bluff 12 hour
October 15 ROANOKE PARK BIG WORK DAY
October 16 Lawrence CX
October 22 Berryman Epic
October 30 Boss CX 3
November 5 360 Cup
November 6 Boulevard Cup
November 12 Louisville USGP CX
November 13 Louisville USGP CX
November 19 DeStad Cup
November 20 DeStad Cup
November 25 Jingle Cross
November 26 Jingle Cross
November 27 Jingle Cross
December 3 Boss CX 4
December 10 Capitol Cup
December 11 Capitol Cup
December 17 Halcyon Holiday Gravel Grinder
December 31 Chicago CX
January 1 Chicago CX
January 6-8 USAC Nationals-Wisconsin

peace and riding!!!

around potosi...

check this out: http://mtbkc.blogspot.com/2011/06/courtois-challenge.html

only crappy cell phone pics today from some fire road/gravel grinding around potosi. Glad I have a 34-20 on for those brutal ass climbs! I bet one yesterday I accessed to do work was at least 2 miles up at 15-25% the whole time.








peace and riding!!!

trail berries...

found these blackberries in full glory today...



tons of them down here...blueberries too!!! Nothing like extremely natural berries for a quick pick me up while trimming the bush.

since there's no right click on this mouse I had to print screen and crop this pic, probably horrendous quality. I might end up doing it with the few other potosi shots I have just to get them up and out of my inbox.

and it's looking like I'll be here all summer. Don't know what is up with the grant I got this summer, still hasn't paid out and it's 3 weeks late...Hopefully I can come home for the fourth at least and watch some Tour of Lawrence, aka birth place of colavita lovin!

peace and riding!!!

middlefork!

Everything you've ever heard about middlefork, it's true. Definitely one of the most badass places I've ever ridden.

Most of our camp/ride weekend ended up being a wash-out :/

Thursday night we had a little shower move through, nothing too bad, just a few sprinkles. We arose at 6:30 am Friday morning, ughhh, and chilled around and made some breakfast for a couple hours. By 9:00 am we were off to ride from the Council Bluffs campground to Barton's Fen along the Middlefork section of the Ozark Trail.

The small section of the Council Bluffs trail we did get to ride was sweet! Single speeds only on this badboy, its ripping contour trail the whole time. unfortunately, the entire lake loop was never completed due to stormage, and the lake loop was also pretty overgrown...tons of ticks and chiggers this weekend :/

So we took the part of the Lake trail to the Ozark connection, then hopped on trace creek going south, until the middlefork split. Went straight for the gold and middleforked it for another 1/2 mile or so, then the climbing began. Ridge, then descent. Then climb, ridge, then descent. Climb, ridge, descent, repeat about 10-12 times, literally. We got to the HWY 49 before Andy Mac started feeling it pretty good, so we took some gravel/pavement back a bit to DD thinking it would be less climbing, wrong. Same climbing, now just no switchbacks. Thankfully from DD back to the Lake there is only 1 climb, then it is basically flat/downhill the whole way along the creek bottoms. We ended up riding about 26-27 miles total, over 5 hours, with two long snack breaks, and lunch thrown in as well. Definitely not the fastest/hardest ride I've ever done, but it was for Andy Mac, he was toast when we got back to camp. I think he passed out around 8:30 and stayed asleep the whole night until 7 am the next day, when the huge storm rolled in. Oh, got a couple pics too but am waiting on an e-mail so I can get them up...good stuff!

Saturday morning had me waking up to rain drops coming through the tent, I scrambled blind and half dressed to get the rain fly back on and thankfully did just was it opened up hard. About 2 inches of rain over 2-3 hours...lame. We decided to say f it cause everything we had was soaked and we knew the overgrowth on the lake loop would not be fun all wet. plus no dry wood = no campfire = no breakfast. Kind of hard to ride without fuel. Came back to Potosi and made some eggs and B&g's...absolutely amazing shit when you've been out for a couple days, went through a couple rains and stink beyond civilized acceptability. Hot showers are really awesome too.

After that we "ruraled" around Potosi. There are actually some pretty sweet ass drops, skinnies, walls, etc to hit in this broken down lead town. plus every other road is gravel, so that's not bad :) Andy Mac headed out and I was again alone here in the OTA house. Boring to say the least when there is only a computer and you have $0 left. Of course it rained another inch last night, really don't feel like weedeating through moist shit all day...

Nature Valley is on live though in about 2 hours...thankfully something halfway fun to watch...too bad it's not mtb racing.

peace and riding!!!

council bluffs lake

going to cbl tomorrow (later today I guess, shit I need to go sleep) after trimming some coutois section of the ozark trail. Gonna do the lake shore loop, trace creek, and john roth/middle fork.

hopefully andy mac brings a camera. I'm fucking psyched to ride and take a good couple days off after 48.5 hours the past 5 days and probably another 6-8 trimming tomorrow. good news is the bench cutting muscles are back up to par :)

peace and riding!!!

ozark trail

So, everything came together extremely last minute last Friday and I have been and will be in/around Potosi, Missouri for the rest of this month. Anyone who knows the area knows that Potosi is home to the Ozark Trail Association and the Berryman National Recreation Trail. I am down here doing work--sustainable re-routing and yearly trimming. 17 more days left :/

I have my bike so that's not terrible, although I've only been out on "urban" rides (as urban as Potosi gets) and one pavement/gravel ride that was interesting, to say the least. Got some crappy cell phone pics, but they'll have to wait b/c this computer's mouse has no right click function (extremely annoying). Andy Mac is coming in from the Lou this weekend too so we can rip it...haven't totally decided on Council Bluffs Lake or the Berryman Loop..I wanna do CBL, I've heard it's badass, plus it connects into the Ozark Trail-John Roth/Middlefork and Trace Creek sections. We'll see.

So like SC, I am on a bit of a "hiatus"...not really, but I probably won't post much for the rest of the month...especially since I can't get pics uploaded. No TV here, but thankfully there is a computer so I can halfway kill my brain after working 10 hours/day. Watching the Tulsa Tough live feeds was pretty sweet Friday and Saturday nights. Too bad MTB racing isn't broadcast as often as I'd like.

If you wanna tour some Ozark Trail or come mine some lead, hit me up, I'll be around.

Peace and riding!!!