Monday, June 30, 2008

No caption needed


Eszter chose to do something cool instead of paying good money to suffer on Saturday. I'll let you be the judge of whether or not it was worth it.

FYI, for those who have asked, the food poisoning was either from a malt shop in Empire (unlikely, IMO) or from the pile of veggies we got from our neighbor's farmshare while they were out of town. At least it's organic e-coli, right?

Out of the frying pan...

Well, I went on my first post-sickness ride this morning and got a horrible cramp in my guts. Got home, hung out in the bathroom for a while, and barfed up a bunch of stuff that looked like stringy green seaweed. I haven't been able to keep down food (I can drink water, luckily) all day, so my diagnosis: food poisoning.

Lovely. I'm sure a lot will get accomplished. Maybe I can bring a bucket out into the shop with me so I don't make too much of a mess.

Sarah has now caught my original illness, as well. It's a lovely day at casa Walt.

Friday, June 27, 2008

From Boardman...


WW riders took the holeshot in 3 of the races on Wednesday. Here's Boardman. Yes, he later blew up. That's ok, though.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Sick!

Apologies for the lack of bloggage, loyal readers. Or possibly loyal reader. I managed to come down with some kind of awful sinus infection/head cold type of ailment which has left me groggy and irritable, and totally unable to ride my bike.

A few notes on the interesting things that have transpired since I last blogged:

-I got to watch a $50k prototype electric car catch on fire and burn at its debut. Sad, yet also a little bit funny. Especially when they had to call the fire department. Folks, if you want to build an electric car, an actual electrical engineer (rather than some crazed inventor type) might be a good bet. Fuses are also good things, so that your super-expensive Li-Ion batteries don't short out and burn. Quote of the day: "I guess we should have tested it."

-Team Waltworks/Fuentesdesign had another fine Wednesday of racing at the Boulder short track. We were missing 3 (Yuki, Chris, Sarah) due to injuries, and I was sick, so the turnout wasn't great. Eszter went out hard as usual and dragged a bunch of fast ladies around for a few laps before holding on for 5th, Fuentes duked it out with JHK until the last 2 laps and lost by 8 seconds, and Rusty completed his first short track in fine style. Miguel had the worst start in history but finished strong and caught several riders. I didn't see Taryn's race, but reports are that she did quite well.

-Solar panel system has failed the city of Boulder inspection twice now, due to what I can only assume is some kind of incompetence on the part of the installers. They keep coming and making corrections, so hopefully we'll be officially approved soon.

I'm working on a variety of projects, but not all that quickly - it's hard to work fast when you're sick. So hopefully I won't get too far behind and will be healthy for the Winter Park race on Sunday - I'm hopeful that I can make the series podium, but it's going to be hard if I miss any races.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

My new babies

I am VERY excited about both of these new apples of my eye. In fact, I'm having a hard time deciding which one to write about first.

I guess I'll start with the less-attractive picture. No, I am not wearing a shirt. Luckily for you, I have cropped the photo for safe viewing at work - and no, it's not my farmer's tan I'm proud of (though I kind of am...) Ladies: I am happily married, and my supply of dainty undergarments is more than adequate for my needs - please think before you throw and/or mail your unmentionables at/to me.

Actually, it's our new 2.5kW solar cell array - our house and the Waltworks shop are now 100% solar powered. Not a single nugget of coal or drop of oil or, um, glosh of water through a hydroelectic dam is required for me to run my milling machine, lathe, welding stuff, etc. Of course, I do still drive a car to transport your frame to the powdercoater, and DHL probably burns a few gallons of fuel along the way as well, but I'm still pretty pleased to be powered (at least in the shop) entirely by the sun. As well as good old human muscles (which in turn are powered by tamales and beer. Mostly beer.) I'm not sure that anyone will be rushing to buy a bike because it's built with solar power, but as a long-term investment, I like it.

Also, it tells you how much power you're generating in real time (as well as how much you've generated for the day). Thus far today I have stood outside staring at it for about a total of an hour. Sarah laughs at me every time I walk outside.

Second, though also close to my heart, is my new cyclocross bike. Yes, I'm aware that CX season is about 6 months away. I'm also aware that I'm about as good at cyclocross as I am at, say, tango dancing, or playing the cello, or making up dirty limericks. Which is to say very, very bad. In the one case that I did well in a cyclocross race, I was on my singlespeed town bike, and the mud proved to be so sticky that 90% of the field quit in disgust, leaving me to ride to a (last place) 8th place finish, from a starting field of something like 60 guys. Nice. So I didn't build this bike to race on. No sir. I built it to toodle around the roads (and dirt roads) of Boulder whenever the urge strikes me.

Now here are the geeky details:
-Custom steel frame/fork, of course. I did use a funky (now discontinued) super thin seat tube and reinforced it with a custom-made lug/sleeve. Came out pretty nice, I think. Frame/fork weigh something like 5 pounds total.
-Old road wheels of Sarah's. The hubs make horrible noises and the rims are full of dings and gouges, but I really can't justify buying new wheels for myself when we just bought the solar panels (ouch!) MC, I'm sure I'll be getting those wheels from you someday.
-SRAM Rival drivetrain and shifters, 105 compact crankset. FWIW, I've not had a bike with dropbars, or a bike with gears, in at least 5 years. So my ability to analyze how well any of this stuff works is pretty limited. Seems to shift nice, pedals nice, etc. The SRAM hoods seem kinda small and uncomfortable to me, but maybe I'll get used to them.
-Old bonty saddle and thomson post. Grabbed these from my travel bike. I'll have to get a post that's <410mm at some point, there's so much seatpost in the frame it's ridiculous.
-EC70 handlebar and WCS stem. I thought these were a good deal, and the bar seems pretty comfy. I like the flat part on top - that hadn't been invented whence I last threw a leg over a road bike.
-Paul touring cantilevers. These are the best canti brakes on earth. I can't believe I ever used those craptacular Avid shorties - the Paul brakes kick the living snot out of them, and best of all, I don't see any way they can fall apart like the Avids do every season or so. Then again, they cost 3x as much. Thanks to Nick for the snazzy cable hangers.

The whole bike weighs like 18 pounds (and I wasn't even trying to make it that light!) and it feels (after years of riding singlespeeds with 2.5" tires) like, as the bike snob would say, a bicycle particle inside a particle accelerator, which is ITSELF just a particle inside an even bigger particle accelerator. It's probably dirt slow as road/cross bikes go, but I wouldn't know. My Flagstaff record is going to be dropping considerably, methinks.

Stand by for tomorrow's snide restaurant review: The Kitchen (aka Shoney's)

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Short track week 3

Briefly, Fuentes won, Nick was third, Yuki and Miguel were somewhere in the teens, and Eszter was 5th (I think). The bad news is that Sarah had back spasms and had to drop out, I went home with her and didn't race, and Jung (see the picture of his nice tire) crashed and broke his wrist. He'll be off the bike for 4-8 weeks. Doh!

Still, a good evening with nice weather and good racing.



Tuesday, June 17, 2008

We're famous!

Ok, so they got my name wrong... but still. Eszter and I are in Velonews!

I should tell my dad. He'll be psyched.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Fox!


So, this is exciting to me, anyway. I finally jumped through all the hoops (this took me 6 months) to get a Fox Racing Shox OEM account. Which totally rules, because they also just started selling the 29" fork to folks whose names aren't Gary Fisher.

Long story short, you have to buy a COMPLETE BIKE (that means all the parts) to get a Fox fork (their rules, not mine), but the prices are pretty stellar. Check out the pricing page for details (scroll way down to the forks).

Shocks available too - the WW/Ventana custom full suspension bikes now include an RP23 for a very fair $50 upcharge.

And yes, 26" forks are available too.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Race report!


The first semi-legit (meaning, not shortrack) race of the year went off at Winter Park yesterday - the opening hillclimb. Shortest, but most painful race of the year. And best of all the singletrack is all still snowed in, so when you get done flogging yourself up 2000 feet, you get to ride right back down the dirt road.

The picture has nothing to do with the race, but I thought it was cool, a stream-vaulting action shot.

In any case, the team did great:
-Eszter chased the very quick Judy Freeman all the way up but could never quite catch her and was 2nd in the pro women's race. She also took 9 full minutes off her old best time from 3 years ago!
-Sarah suffered like a dog, but stayed strong for 3rd in expert women, and was within 2 minutes of her best-ever time.
-Taryn did quite respectably in her first sport race and finished 17th.
-Rusty did his *first race ever* and was 13th out of an unbelieveable 63 riders in Sport 40-44! Nice job Rusty!
-Miguel was a solid 19th in the big (40 riders) pro men's field.
-Jung began his season, as always, by suffering like crazy and was 36th in pro men.

We had an interesting field for the pro men's race - there was a serious racer from the past (Jimi Killen), a roadie pro (Slipstream's Jason Donald, ON A ROAD BIKE, no less), and the usual front range suspects. The race was fast from the gun, and I was off the back on the 34x20 in notime as folks bigringed it up the first bit of climbing on pure adrenaline. But pure adrenaline isn't a great way to do a 30+ minute uphill effort, so I started catching riders left and right pretty quickly. After about 10 minutes, I was in the lead group of 5 or 6 riders. Slim Shady (Mike Mathers) made a move with about 2 miles to go that I only partially followed - after my massive blowup last year, I had no interest in trying to close the 30' gap immediately, so I figured I'd save it and attack on the final steep section. No such luck, though, as Mike had enough juice (and I ran out of traction with my 'cross tires on the gravel) to hold me off by 12 seconds. Tokyo Joe's rider and all-around fast young punk Brady Kappius was right behind me for a solid 3rd.

Jeremy's course record is 31:14, and I managed a 33:24 (the 5th fastest recorded time), so I think it might be conceiveable to break the record at some point - I finished the race with gas left in the tank, and I haven't been riding or training all that much, so maybe next year...

The WW/Fuentes team currently sits in 11th in the team standings as well. Nice work everyone!

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Short track photos

Enjoy! Thanks to Redcoat for the fine camera work.



Elis's new fork


Quick shot of the fork and bike courtesy of Eli. I've been building a TON of forks lately - including quite a few for other builders and bike companies. That always makes me feel good about myself.

Boulder short track (the first of the year, not counting the biblical-level deluge-cancelled one last week) started yesterday. The team did well; Eszter and Sarah were 1st and 6th or 7th in the Women's A race, Fuentes, Nick, and yours truly were 2nd, 8th, and something like 12th in the Men's A. I had a pretty awful race, personally, and got confused by the lap count - thought we had one to go, then wondered why everyone was sitting up. C'est la vie. A good field though - the women had about 15, men must have had 35 or 40. Pictures later if Millertime sends them to me.

Monday, June 09, 2008

Weekend report





Eszter, Yuki, and Fuentes (on the podium, sort of) raced Teva on Saturday (see the pics) while Sarah and I did the Avery ride (and suffered like dogs - we averaged something like 23mph when we were actually rolling). Then the crew hopped on the 10:10 Ned bus on Sunday. Eszter amazed everyone by apparently not feeling a thing from her race the previous day, and we got to get shot at with paintballs. Joy. More and more trails in Ned are getting closed by angry rednecks, but on the plus side, I saw a moose for the first time in my life (no, I didn't get a picture, sorry).

Friday, June 06, 2008

Benefit for a fallen rider AKA All you can drink beer!

Here's the dealio (direct from the boys at Avery):

Benefit for Ryan Barnett - 11AM to 5PM - Saturday, June 14th

As those of you who have joined the brewing staff for runs and rides know, we like to play as hard as we like to party. Well, unfortunately, a Cat 1 racer friend of the brewery was involved in an accident and is in serious condition. During an early morning training ride, Ryan was run over by a truck's trailer. He fractured his skull, pelvis, vertabrae, some ribs and is currently undergoing massive amounts of surgery, still in the hospital, and facing lower body paralysis. Ryan's hospital bills are mounting up and we would like to help him out by throwing a benefit in his honor and for his wife and two little girls. There will be food and beer, but also raffle and silent auction items from incredible vendors such as Blue Competition Cycles, Spuik, Helly Hansen, Deuter, and many others. We will also be doing free bike tune ups! We are asking for a $20 donation, but we will not discourage anyone from giving more.. So please, enjoy a run or a ride in the morning and then come by the brewery for lunch and a few beers and a chance to win helmets, sunglasses, clothing and even a full carbon road bike in the size of your choice.

Not sure how to find the brewery? Just Click here for a helpful map.

You can follow Ryan's progress here.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

2 Weird Ones


First up, a very hard to see shot of Tobias' post mount setup. I tried to make it look snazzy with a bit of disc rotor. It'll look a lot nicer after the powdercoat - hopefully he'll like it. I'll try to get a picture of the frame/fork after powdercoat next week, it's a pretty interesting project.

Next up, Brett's humongous (the picture does NOT do it justice) snowbike fork. 4+" of tire clearance, dude! Plus a thru-axle. It's surprisingly not that heavy - right around 1100 grams.

Tomorrow: 650b full suspension madness!

Monday, June 02, 2008

Waltworks in the Big Apple


We're on an east coast kick the last few weeks!

Thanks to Miguel for the pic, and a big shout out to my boys Kevin and Jeff!