update

almost a week since i broke my clavicle so i thought i'd post a little update for anyone that's interested. i'm still in a sling/split to keep my arm & shoulder imobilized most of the time. when i've got it off the range of pain free motion in my shoulder is improving, but after it's off for a while it'll start to ache, so i'll probably be stuck with this thing for a while.

obviously, i won't be going to fruita next week, as i'd been planning. i guess i could go and just hang out, but i think it would be worse to be there and not riding than to just not go at all.

spent last weekend convalescing up in philly. we managed to pull off a great easter meal for her family who came into the city on sunday. i wasn't able to help as much as i'd hoped, at times i was a liabilty, trying to do more than i could handle, but managed to bake some foccacia (filled with fresh mozzarella & basil) and dinner rolls. this was the first time heather's managed to get the family let her do a holiday meal and it all went off without a hitch (in fact i think they were impressed).

i'll still probably make a showing at the city bikes demo day at schaeffer on saturday, but i probably won't be leading any rides...

a few more details

going to keep this short since i'm without the use of my right hand and that makes typing a bit slower than usual...

riding at schaeffer on wednesday i clipped a tree with my right shoulder. i stopped suddenly but didn't hit the ground. lots of pain in my shoulder so i bushwacked out to the road and rode back to the trailhead, then called and got a ride to the er. many hours later i'm diagnosed with a fractured clavicle and put in a sling to imobilize my arm & shoulder.

saw an orthopedist thursday who confirmed the diagnosis and wanted a ct scan to check on a possible bone chip. no surgery so far (if there is a chip it may need to be pinned) but i'm in this sling for at least a week, off any kind bike for several more, and mountain biking for 2-3 months.

right now i just want to be able to use my right arm...

thanks for all the comments, i'll be back soon and i'm going to try to ride trans wales this august

do the math...

joe + bike + tree = fractured clavicle

all your road are belong to us...

almost a week and no blog entry... i've been putting almost all of my spare time into riding and working on the new dcmtb website (which should be up soon). going to head to schaeffer this afternoon to get some singlespeed singletrack miles in.

friday afternoon braindump...

tom seitsema of the post has a review of Birreria Paradiso coming out this weekend... i went there a couple of weeks ago with the swill ride guys and have to say that the pizza is really good and beer selection is impressive.

speaking of the post, keep an eye out for a contribution from mike miller (mountain biker/MORE accotink liason/all around nice guy) about dremo's (article about dive bars, go to page 3 of the article online) in the sunday source. in the online version there's a shot of mike riding IN the bar, hope that makes the print edition.

tommorow's looking rainy, so sunday might be a good day to do a pre-ride of the fitness concepts AMBC course at greenbrier. not the most exciting riding, but the 99% of the place drains like a sieve. get in touch if you're interested, i'll probably head up there early sunday morning.

almost time to head home... this is a recovery day, so maybe i'll take an easy ride down to hains point.

burning the candle at both ends?

this has been a busy week... training is in full swing with Lodi a little over less than a month away and i've been trying to sort out technical issues for the new bloggy website for the city bikes mountain bike team. add some brewing, a team meeting, a MORE newsletter, and the general stresses of life just added up to a bit too much this week and i'm really looking forward to this weekend.

rode wakefield last night... well actually i rode 2 laps at accotink, the first at ricky-speed* then as we were coming back we ran across tommy/mike/bunky/marcus and i switched groups and rode another lap with them. food & beer & bike talk at kilroy's after the ride. nice to get 2 hours after works without lights.

* - it doesn't matter who you are, riding with ricky is always at ricky-speed, which is just a bit faster than you're comfortable with. ricky-speed feels even more pronounced when you're on a bit squishy full suspension bike and try to follow his we're-on-singlespeeds-so-lets-accelerate-up-the hill climbing style. riding a ricky-speed is highly recommended if you're training.

beer notes...

i had a chance to try troegs nugget nectar (limited release so get it fast) this weekend and it's a beer to look for if you're into hoppy beers... it's not excessively bitter but overflowing with fresh hop flavor and aroma.

taking a break from some of the more eclectic varieties of beer that i've got brewing now (tripel, biere de garde) we're going to work on an english pale ale tonight. the biere de garde will be going into a secondary tonight and the tripel will be heading for bottles this weekend.

rain/sun

up in philly again this weekend and so i hit the saturday road ride from the art museam. turned out to be a longer ride than i expected. as we were leaving, the group took a right and started heading out along west river drive on the other side of the river instead of up the way the ride had started for the last few weeks. it looked like a few people were going the 'normal' way, but i followed the people i remembered.

the ride ended up being around 60 miles at a more casual pace than i was expecting, so i was out for an hour longer than usual. it was a good ride... mostly crusing along, but there were a couple of sprints that i decided to go out for, and a little competition coming over the hill into manayunk near the end of the ride. the extra time didn't make much of a difference untill the last half hour as we were heading back into the city and the heavens opened and we ended up riding in some of the heaviest rain i've ever been out in on a bike.

as the rain tapered off and i rolled down south street, completely soaked, i got a call from heather to check that everything was ok. when i got back to the house a few minutes later i was greeted with dry towels and at that moment nothing could have been better. in spite of the rain, it was sunny enough to make my arms pretty red by the evening. i always seem to need that first time out to remind me that now it's time to put sunblock on for every ride.

mussels, steak frites, and a couple of belgian ales (1, 2, 3), at eulogy might be the perfect post ride meal...

sunday i made another try at wissahickon, this time with pat (formerly of city bikes, now living in philly) and one of his friends. we had a great ride, did a couple of loops on both sides of the creek, but according to pat we only scratched the surface of the park. lots of short rocky climbs that were difficult but rideable. the weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky and we finished the day with a little grilling in the back yard with a few of heather's friends and pat and his fiance.

holy ugly bike parts batman!

so it looks like shimano is trying to co-opt the SRAM "machined" look for 2007 xtr and they're com up with the some of the ugliest designs i've seen on anything. ever.

http://www.singletrackworld.com/article.php?sid=1925

i'll stick with the little S for shifty bits

(the alternate title for this entry was a simpsons reference, a play on comic book guy's worst episode ever line... ugliest components ever! would you have gotten that?)

too hard to choose just one...

gaz posted over on the MORE website asking everyone to people their favorite ride(s). here's what i posted...

can i pick a whole year instead of just one ride? last year was a breakout year for me...

i rode a lot and rode better, faster, stronger than ever before. there was the spring douthat trip, riding the southern traverse memorial day weekend, a great day at gambrill (the DCAMB OC ride) early in the season where i realized how much difference the road riding over the winter had made to my fitness, DNFing at schwenkville, cramping up as i crossed the line at the fairhill classic, the massive tour de 'burg stage that i followed by riding the EF/Woodstock Tower loop the next day, wednesday night singlespeed sprints to the line at wakefield, a summer trip down to harrisonburg to show some sm100 newbies the course, but the capstone to the whole year was...

the 2005 Shenandoah Mountain 100... I can't argue with race (ride) that gives you great support and lets you to ride a 1/2 dozen of the greatest downhills i know in one day. just managing to finish in 2004 was great, but the feeling of hitting the last checkpoint at 10 hrs in and racing the last 10 miles up Hankey Mtn to try to finish in under 11 hours (and doing it) is a feeling that i'll never forget.

this year is just beginning; i wonder what it holds... a trip to fruita is just a couple of weeks away and the memorial day camping trip is going down to stokesville again, and in august i'll be doing Trans Wales...

counting down the hours...

started the week on a down note as i had a bit of a cold spring up sunday evening and into monday. it was gone by tuesday morning, but it was a good excuse to take a day off the bike on monday to make sure that i was fully recovered.

did a quick recovery spin on the trainer tuesday night since i ended up at work later than i expected and then did a hard standing starts workout (4 x 5min very hard efforts on a hill) on the road yesterday evening. it was probably a little too cold to be wearing just a short sleeve jersey last night, but i survived.

beautiful outside today and i'm counting down the time until i head for the door and over to wakefield. might not even need the lights tonight as i'll have to stop riding a little earlier that usual so that i can get over to the MORE board meeting.

ted leo/patapsco/schaeffer

ted leo at the black cat friday night... the show was a bit up & down. the tracks i recognized were great, but there were some slow moments where the show lost it's flow, and a couple of songs just devolved into noise. overall though i'd say it was a great show and well worth the time and money.

saturday i met up by matt and did a couple hours at patapsco, rode all of the normal highlights and did a little exploring. both of us knew parts of the park and between us we were able to put together a really good ride. tried to hit the hilton downhill that we did on the ned ride, since it had a bit more flow than the other one i know, but we ended up on the other one.

sunday i went out to schaeffer and rode for a couple of hours by myself, well mostly by myself. since it's schaeffer i kept running into people i knew and riding with them for a bit. first it was a MORE group ride that jason was leading, with a lot of people in tow... punga, dave, rob, dan hudson, some people i see all the time, lots of folks i don't see that often... took a nice digger right at the start of the ride. later in my ride i came across a guy in one of the city bikes shop jerseys. he recognized me from the ned ride a couple of weeks ago and he tagged along for a bit as he didn't know where he was going. the weather was good and the trails were dry, so i've got no complaints...

beer

rob (recently returned from the frozen wastelands of the north) came over wednesday and we brewed a batch of beer - a bierre de garde from a northern brewer kit. the brew looked like it went well, but a check of the original gravity at the end of the boil came up with 1.132 which was well above the predicted OG of 1.063. if this is correct and we get complete fermentation then this beer will have an alcohol content around 16%, serious knock-out beer. come to think of it, i found my old hydrometer a while ago, so maybe i should double check the reading. either way, fermentation has started up and the rate of bubbling through the airlock is increasing, i'll give it a couple of weeks before i move it over to a secondary and give it a quick taste test.

while we were at it, we moved the tripel that i brewed with heather back in january over to a secondary, where it'll sit for a couple of weeks untill it's time to bottle. i was a little worried that it'd been in the primary for too long and might have picked up some off-flavors from the spent yeast and trub, but a sample revealed a very nice beer, tasted just like a tripel should. checked the gravity and it was down to 1.01, so it looks like we got a good complete fermentation.

while we were brewing we popped open a couple of bottles from the honey wheat that we brewed last year. i've been holding on to them since it's such a good summer beer, but i figured we've got drink a couple of homebrews while we're brewing. the flavor is doing well and the carbonation is decent at first, but it goes flat quickly. up next? some bottling (the tripel) and an english pale ale in the next couple of weeks, then some gardening. we're going to be growing some hops. i've ordered rhizomes of fuggle and golding hops to plant in the back yard. it i get a good harvest in the fall i'll have to use them to brew a good ESB.

cycling.tv

i've seen people post about this in various places online, but never tried it before. well, right now i'm watching (or mostly listening to) the closing kilometers of dwars door vlaanderen live on cycling.tv while i'm working and i've got to say that it's pretty cool...

up & down

saturday's road ride from art museam was a bit more laid back than the first couple of times that i'd done it, but still a good ride. this saturday was one of the first road races of the year in the area so that probably took some of the faster guys out of the ride and accounts for change in pace. whether or not that was true, i felt good and rode at the front for almost the entire ride. saturday night we went out to see the closing night of the lady in the van at mum and then went out for a few beers at race street.

sunday i met up with patrick to go ride the trails in wissahickon. we met up at the art museam and rode up the paved trail along the schuylkill to manayunk and then onto a paved trail into the park. neither of us knew the trails well, and this could be a recipe for disaster, but from looking at the map it seemed like most of the trails were blazed and branched on and off forbidden drive, so the plan was just to try and explore some of these trails.

unfortunately, soon after we got on the trails it was obvious that patrick's bike (a borrowed, coverted singlespeed) was having some difficulties: the spring in the singleator didn't have enough tension to stop the chain from jumping. i've had the same problem with mine and thanks to ricky's trailside field fix on mine i knew the solution, but during the adjustment disaster struck and the singleator lost all tension.

after trying all kinds of bodging to get it working again, we found the source of the problem: the hook on the end of the spring, that holds the spring in place and inside the arm had bent and wouldn't stay in the hole in the arm. patrick broke out his leatherman and we tried bending the spring back into shape, but it just wouldn't hold. eventually we gave up, patrick started walking out, and i rode back home to pick up my car and give him a ride home from the trailhead to his place in west philly...

we may not have seen much of the trails, but i'll get back there to explore them some more, since i liked what i was able to see.