Another Quick Entry

Work's been nuts and winter's been cold but I've been getting out whenever possible.

On my most recent "stand-out" ride, I rolled out of my driveway and right down to the frozen shore of Lake Huron not 15 seconds away. It was like my own private frozen wasteland coming across only one other person on all of my outings along the lake.

It was refreshing as hell and incredibly satisfying to have this almost literally right at my front door. All new, all untouched and all mine. I experimented with the route a little this year and found I could get way further out and away than I had previously thought. Next year, I'll be ready and waiting for similar conditions and will press further. I also need to recruit a few fat bikers to come along and make a day out of it perhaps. 

Gear up right though!!! I managed to still stay warm with a windchill of more than -28C!! Hahaha Yeah baby. 

The ice still isn't as far out or as stable as when I was a kid but still quite good and safe closer to shore: which is where I was able to stay (if not right on shore) and still get to where I wanted to go. It really felt EPIC.

Great fun.

Day two.........not so blue. That's open water in the upper middle portion of the frame. When I was younger, it was always ice as far as you could see.

Another sad sight that I was surprised to see at this time of year were zebra mussels: IMO a sign of just how bad it's really getting.

The mussels are not native to our great lakes and were accidentally introduced via ballast water from ocean going vessels back in the 80's. Since then, the mussel problem has grown exponentially. The mussels are very intrusive and are changing our lakes in a BIG way. It's a tough battle; an impossible one in fact. I think they are here to stay. If I ever see an asian carp on the shore though..............oh boy.

Anyway. Mild weather returned for a time so my shore outings are all but over. Soon it will be onto the muddy trails and gravel roads again. It's the time of year where I can't get enough cross bike action so...

REALLY looking forward to some singletrack days though. I'm committed to getting out on the MTB as much as possible (despite a HUGE work year that is coming). I'll try to spend some quality time updating the blog and make it worth reading as opposed to typing these little 2 minute spout offs (like this entry was). Totally un-planned and not really thought out at all. My apologies for that.

Thank you very much for checking in and reading.

I appreciate it.

Don't forget to leave messages or comments. Always stoked to know someone's out there.

Cheers!

Ride on.

Steve

Where Has The Time Gone??

Incredible how much time has passed since my last entry. I do apologize for that. I've been incredibly busy doing a laundry list of things ranging from, keeping the kids busy, to working on the house, to riding, to a bit of racing (and I stress "a bit" of racing) and I even got to working on an old motorcycle. It's been crazy!

I haven't forgotten about the blog and actually had typed up a few entries but never got around to finishing them enough to post. They were lengthy and, once I was able to return to them to finish, I had lost interest in the content upon re-read. I decided not to bore anyone else with what I had to say and just left them. Hahahaha

Anyway, things are picking up in my cycling world nowadays again and I'll have loads to talk about in the next bit so I figured I'd best kick the blog up again.

For now, I'll just drop a quick one. I headed out on a solo hit today and snapped a pic while I was out.


You'll notice, during said blog hiatus, I've acquired some Large Marge Lites for the Pugs. I love the damn things. Just as stiff as the previous Marge rims I had but 30 times more rad!

Hey. There's nothing wrong with buying stuff strictly for the sake of looks, is there? Because that's exactly what I did! Hahahaha Sure, you can argue that there is some weight savings to be had but, let's be serious here: this is a Pugs. It's no featherweight no matter how you cut it. The bit of weight saved through the cutouts in the rims is a drop in a bucket.

I won't lie to you: it was a decision based strictly on "what I wanted". I don't typically pull that kind of thing but, hey, the opportunity was there and I went for it.

And I'm glad I did.