| This web page is about people who do cool stuff and stupid
stuff on their bikes. I was a roadie but a few years ago my
road bike went on vacation with a friend and neither came
back. I was bike-less for a number of years. I wasn't
too concerned because I was just never good at being pretentious,
deathly serious and (sin above sins) I never shaved my legs.
So I figured my bike riding days were gone forever. Then one
day after seeing a photograph of myself at 215lbs looking like a
poster child for heart disease I figured I should do something to
get back in shape. Commuting to work on a bike seemed easy
enough. I was lucky enough to be directed to Sid's Bicycles on
34th Street in NYC. I asked the salesman, Tim, to show me a
bike that could take commuting abuse but also wouldn't reduce me to
tears when it got trashed or stolen. Tim bypassed the road
bikes (thank God!) and set me up with a Gary Fisher
Marlin. The rest has been a joy, sometimes a
painful joy, but always a joy.
I'll update this page from time to time. I hope to
be fairly regular. I don't want to be one of those pages where
you go to check out the latest and wind up reading the 1998 World
Cup schedule. Since I don't know how often I will update the
page I will say that you won't find any race results here, except
maybe mine. I plan on racing downhill at Plattekill this year
(2000) and if I do I'll try to post my results or any good crash
stories I have.
Enjoy the ride,
Dave
January 2000 __________________________________________
26 May 2000  Another
Plattekill race in the bag! This time it was the Extreme
Hangtime. Wow, all these extremes in my life, not sure I can
manage. I'll try. We made it up in time for some
practice runs this event. Good thing too, the course was
sick! It rained all weekend and my skills being what they are,
I needed all the pre-rides I could get. Plattekill is definitely
not wanting anyone to challenge them for the title of sickest
downhill series in the country. If you saw East Coast Hardcore
then you might think you know what the Plattekill courses are
like. Well lemme-tell-ya-somethin'. What they showed in
the video were the easy sections of the courses. I don't see
how they built some of the stunts, it seems impossible for anyone to
be able to stand in some spots let alone walk and cut a trail.
Staying on the bike is mandatory, if you get off you get hurt.
And this is the Sport/Beginner course. The Pro stuff was a
nightmare, I know because I took a wrong turn and spent a scary
couple hundred feet on the Pro course laying on my side and sliding
down until it crossed the B/S course again. There was one spot
on our course I don't think anyone made it through. The course
switchbacked to the left and dropped a couple of feet, then there
was a lip and a drop of a few more feet, then a switchback to the
right (trail still seriously decending) with a boulder the size of
an office table in the middle of the course that you were going to
hit no matter what, then another switchback to the left and split
between two trees and a three foot drop off that you can't roll.
All of that happened in less that 150 feet of travel and all at
about a 30 degree angle. Every person I saw in this section
was in the process of or recovering from all manner of biffs.
They also had us riding down a stream, not across it, down it.
Just plain sick. But a great time was had by all. I only
saw one serious injury, a separated shoulder, lots of people tweaked
though. I managed a twelfth place out of thirteen, so I still
haven't come in dead last yet. There is one pic of me on the
course on the Dave's Pic Page. It was taken just before coming
out of the woods to the finish line. I finally got the DH
ready and raced it. This bike is great! It's much better
at the sport than I am, hopefully I'll improve to the point that it
won't be embarrassed to be seen with me.
__________________________________________
16 Apr 2000
Took a while but the pictures from the Plattekill Extreme Snowman
race are up on the Dave's Pic Page. The FSR DH is finished and
hopefully I'll have pics of it up soon (quicker than it took for the
Plattekill Pics anyway). Didn't make today's race at
Plattekill. A little bummed about that one, but we had too
much going on this week. Agnes' cousin was visiting, and we
just bought a truck (2000 Chevy Silverado extended cab - room for 4
people up front and 4 bikes in the bed, cool) so we are running a
little thin on cash for the month. But check back in May for
pictures and updates from the next race.
__________________________________________
20 Mar 2000  Race
news! Well I did it, raced my first downhill. The
Plattekill Exteme Snowman on March 19th. I'll say this right
now, I have nothing but respect for the people who did the Biker-X
at the X-Games. Racing downhill on snow is amazingly
hard. We were late arriving at the mountain so I didn't get a
chance to do a practice run, BIG MISTAKE. Plus, since I was
racing in the old man division I was able to watch all the pros race
and make it look so amazingly easy. The DH isn't ready yet so
I raced my FSR with skinny XC tires. Even with screws in the front
tire holding a line was a nightmare. I think I crashed about
five times, I lost count. But after all was said and done I
did manage to pull out a top ten finish. And yes there were
more than ten riders, there were fourteen. The highpoint was
my final crash in front of what was left of the finish line crowd (I
was the fourth from the last rider down the hill so the crowd had
pretty much thinned out). All day long people had been warning
of a rut right after a bridge. Well I got to the bridge and
decided to avoid the rut I would jump off the end of the bridge and
clear whatever was there. It worked great only the rut wasn't
there. The rut was actually after the turn onto the final
straight after the bridge. So I come around the corner
peddling my but off and whink! the front end turns hard right (I had
seen all the pros go through and hit this area just giving a little
twitch, seriously downplaining the force needed to hold a
line). I caught amazing air, that's I as in my body...
the bike was flipping and bouncing down the trail, but damn I looked
good, until I hit the ground. After both I and the bike
finished bouncing, I scurried after it and managed to cross the line
with a time of 6:12. The fastest time in my class was around
3:30 and the winning pro time was 2:32. So I figured I didn't
suck too bad, at least I wasn't the slowest person on the
hill. There was one 13+ minute time. All-in-all Agnes
and I had a great time, I would recommend racing to anyone.
The people are great and the camaraderie is more than enough reason
by itself. But you can't beat just blasting down the hill
knowing that at least there is a hug and a kiss waiting for
you. Pictures will be up as soon as we get them developed.
__________________________________________
22 Feb 2000
Video recommendation. Chain Reaction - East Coast
Hardcore. Has some great video shot at Plattekill, Seven
Spring, Mt. Snow, Central Park, etc.. Features a lot of riders
from the NYC area, including Lars Tribus and Rob from Sids.
Want a taste... Check out Rob's pics here.
__________________________________________
9 Feb 2000
Wow, talk about taking on the man (or woman). Yesterday we
cyclists were the downtrodden masses being pummeled by huge
corporations. Well we still are today, but at least the
Oprah show canned the planned bike-bashing segment, it would
appear. As pointed out by 'fallen' in alt.mountain-bike, the
web page has been moved to the killed directory of the Oprah web
site. If you missed it before you can still see it at (10
MARCH -- ouch! harshness, looks like the folks at the Oprah show
have denied access to their killed show subdirectory... darn it,
there are just getting to be too darn many competent admins out
there these days... so forget the link, it's dead) http://www.oprah.com/tows/intheworks/killed/tows_works_bike.html
just to get a gist of what the bru-ha-ha was about. Maybe we
can get them to change the Oxygen commercial to a bunch of babies
throwing training wheels out of their cribs next. Score one of
direct action! Way to go everyone who wrote in.
__________________________________________
8 Feb 2000
From Transcend Magazine www.transcendmagazine.com
Shaun Palmer is not racing mountain bikes for the 2000
season. Apparently was the buzz of Winter X. That's okay
Specialized still has Tara Llanes and Kirt Voreis. Speaking of
Winter X. Did you see Lars Tribus! SCORE! Gotta
give props to the east coast riders whenever I can. Besides
Sid's is one of his sponsors. More cool points for
Sid's. Jeez this is turning into a long one. If you
read alt.mountain-bike you may have seen a post about Oprah being
anti-bike and hopefully you went to the website listed and gave the
goddess of the couch potatoes a piece of your mind. If not
check out http://www.oprah.com/tows/intheworks/tows_works_bike.html
and then when you are good and cheesed off let her know about
it. Stupid people shouldn't be allowed to produce
television. Ya see what happens when we spend all our time out
riding our bikes and let the inactive slugs run things.
__________________________________________
2 Feb 2000 I know, updates are supposed to go on top, but the page
hasn't been up that long and this isn't going to be that long.
Just thought I would share a very, very happy consumer moment with
everyone. My FSR-DH came in today!!!! Yippee!!!! I'm the
happiest little mountain bike shopper on the planet right now.
After 4 months of waiting, I can hardly believe it. Of course
now I have to build the darn thing. It came with a Manitou X-Vert
carbon and seatpost. I already had a saddle so I guess that's
a plus. I'll try to update the "Dave Pics" page this
weekend with photos of it. I hope everyone has a chance to
have a new bike moment like I'm having. Yahoo!!!
Dave |