Gary Fischer for a few minutes...

More beard shaving fun- this time I went for the Gary Fischer flavor savor... :) (If you don't know, GF is one of the founding fathers of mountain biking, and is usually seen with crazy sunglasses, flashy jerseys, and one long flavor savor (soul patch if you prefer))...

Life is quite random...

Yeah, so here's something random and surprising. I have been called in for an interview at Trans States Airlines to take place this Tuesday! I know, I know, I've spent a while bashing the flying industry for it's poor pay and treatment of pilots, but I'm going to give this opportunity a shot, as the shop hasn't ended up being what it sold itself as. They sent me a 26 page application, a 9-page study guide on several things, including the jet they fly, the ERJ-145. Busy time. I interview in St. Louis the day before I fly out of Minneapolis to go to Mexico for my brother in law's wedding. Nuts. For the last few months I couldn't find anything to do, and know I'm Mr. Popular. Life is quite random. Here's a couple shots of the jet I'd be flying if I got this job:

It's here....

Forecast for southern MN today...70 degrees and awesome, with chance of afternoon severe thunderstorms in the afternoon. Spring is here. Ride your bike.

Felt like old days...

This morning I got out flying again at Anoka County Airport. More like afternoon actually. The upper Midwest had some serious morning fog today, which the forecasts called for burning off by 9 am. I knew this would not happen from all my days of flight instructing. I was going with Dave, my father in law, and would be giving him free flight lesson in exchange for living in his house. (No, I don't usually charge several months rent for a lesson. It just seems to have worked out that way this time.) We were supposed to have launched at 9:30am, but got off at 1pm, after waiting for the fog to dissipate. We got home at 4pm. So, a morning flight took the whole day, and little was actually accomplished. Felt just like my old job. :) It was good to get up for the hour and a half flight though. We both had fun and plan on doing it again soon. Hopefully it won't eat up the whole Saturday though. I missed some sweet riding weather.

Random Rants from a Mechanic....

Thoughts brought on by my dear shop customers, which I cannot voice to them aloud, but spend the whole days wishing I could-

No. Huffy's (as well as Pacific's, Magna's Roadmasterss and vairous other WalMartish steeds) are not good bikes. I don't know how that idea ever entered America's head. They are sold in cheap department stores, are equipped with the lowest quality components on the market, have heavy, cheaply welded frames that bend/break easily, and when not absolutely babied constantly by someone who knows how to work on a bike, become down right dangerous to ride because of their low-quality standards. No, they are not good bikes. Don't get mad at me when I tell you how much it will cost just to make your slightly used Huffy safe to ride. Save up for a real machine.

-Phone calls from customers- I have no idea what it will cost you to fix the "thing" on your bike that doesn't work.

-Don't expect me to be able to send you home with a "standard bike tire", to fit your "standard bike".

Sorry, I know not everyone is a bike nut, but seriously....

-

Miles and Miles and Miles....

So like a real bike nerd I've kept pretty good track of the mileage I've pedaled over the years on my various steeds, and I finally got around to organizing that information tonight on a spreadsheet to see how far I've gone. With the recorded mileages I have (this doesn't count rides that weren't accurately measured with a cycling computer, or simply weren't ever recorded), I've come up with a pretty decent total for being a young cyclist. My records currently add up to 6,680.6 miles of recorded riding. Couple oil changes worth of road/trail. I think I'll try to get into the habit of posting my miles on this blog once and a while, as I've seen many other bikers do, mainly to keep myself tuned to how I'm moving along in my two wheeled ventures. So far this year, my totals on recorded outdoor rides on my current bicycles are as follows:

Road Bike: 81 miles
Touring Bike: 49 miles
Fixie: 30 miles
Mountain Bike: Fat Zero (I live in the Midwest again)

Total 2007: 160 miles
Overal Total: 6,680.6 miles (10,750 km in the rest of the cycling world!)

Weather's warming up, and the mileage ticker should too...

Cycle Touring News...

My touring bike keeps getting cooler and cooler. The latest addition is a set of long-haul racks. There are a lot of good rack companies out there, so I opted to go with a bike company whose not let me down so far- Surly Bikes. Their touring racks, of course obnoxiously named the Surly "Nice Racks", are made of chromoly (steel alloy of chromium and molybdenum), are ultra tough and capable of just about any touring load, and unlike aluminum are weld-able at just about any Joe-Welder small town repair station in the world if you should ever break down (which probably won't happen due to their studliness). So no matter where my tours end up taking me in future years, these racks should get the job done. Now those of you who I am waiting to get tour equipped need to catch up, cuz my rig's ready. You know who you are Edward and Ty. California, Utah, Coast to Coast, dig it. Let's ride, camp, and repeat.

Some non-sissy mounts that will take a beating...














Front rack rated to 70lbs, though I have no plans of burdening myself that much...














Rear rack rated to 80lbs, though once again, just a safeguard letting me know that my loads will not take out my mounting platform; I better not carry around 80lbs of crap to go camping...

Whoops...disappeared for a while...

Sorry for the delayed return to bloggin', especially after such a riveting cliffhanger. :) What I meant in my last entry was that I've gone and upgraded the drivetrain on my fixed gear commuter bicycle. I'm sure some of you don't care, but some of you do. I appreciate it. :) The "Dingle", is Surly's new track cog that is a non-freewheeling unit (fixed gear) that incorporates two gears instead of one. So now I can choose to ride a 42 (front ring) x 21 tooth fixed gear for days when I expect some resistance from the wind (which is abundant here) or hills (which there are none here), or a 42x17 for the quicker days. The chain is tensioned the normal fixie way by sliding the axle forward or backward in the frame dropout. Neat. However, the weather has gotten fantastic around here the past couple of days, so I'm actually planning on commuting on my touring bike. I'm sure there will be more foul weather for the fixie though. It was so nice yesterday that I got ambitious, having the day off, and rode my second outdoor road ride of 2007. I was so excited to be outside that I ended up riding a half-century (50 miles). I brought more food that I thought I'd need, but I thought I'd only be out for about 30 miles, so my two Clif bars and one Clif Shot did the trick just perfect. I could have eaten a bit more though, seeing as my heart rate monitor estimated a 2,800 calorie burn over the entire ride. Loosing the winter tub already. Here's a fairly non-entertaining shot along yesterday's ride. Still lots of snow in the ditches, but it sure was nice out.














But it will be sad to see all the snow go away with respect to snowshoeing. We had two blizzards since last time I blogged (MN is nutz) and Al and I only got out once in the powder to walk. Here's a couple shots:














I told Alison to pose like the silly REI catalog models, who always seem more concerned with lookin' good than actually doing anything outside. :)




















In other news, I am the newest part time flight instructor at Twin Cities Flight Training at the Anoka County Airport here in MN. Doesn't mean much, I mainly took the job to have on my resume, because I don't really think they'll have much work for me anyhow. I haven't gotten much satisfaction from what I thought would be a relaxed fun job at the shop, and I'm pondering returning to the flying world already. Didn't take much time, but the job is definitely not what is was described as in my interview. Live and learn. I'm probably going to bite the bullet and apply at a regional airline to give that a shot. Life takes you for a lot of wild rides. So I've been studying the Airline Transport Pilot written exam guide quite a bit lately, and should be ready to apply for interviews soon. As always, we'll see what happens. But anyhow, I need to go to work, so I'm off....