The new road racing bike just gets lighter and lighter. Notice how the carbon on the cranks matches the carbon on the frame?

I hate how this new program does not automatically “wrap” text around images. Sorry, I’m working on it.

Recovering from the break in at the shop is going well. It is a bummer that I have to put security bars up in the window. Oh well. It is getting so crazy busy again. Ira has been working out really, really well. There are a handfull of his frames hanging up in the shop.

Been sticking to the trainning plan and just took a look at my schedule for the year. There is a lot of racing to do this year and a lot of overlapping XC and road races. If I ever get a XC bike together I’ll default to XC races.

Take a look at these hubs that this guy from Ireland brought in. He told me that his friend from the Czech republic is making these hubs. They are pretty nice. Fancy wide alloy threads, alloy lockrings. Well machined axles. I asked him to get me in touch with his friend. I’ll be building them up in a couple days.

Finally got another 5 hour ride in yesterday. Ira Ryan and I barely did a shortened version of the Vernonia loop. I gots the knee pain in a bad way…

THIS is hott. Notch another one up for Health-Net. More airtime for local badass Ollerenshaw. I think they just keep Doug on the front non stop. You never really see photos of anyone else pulling.

The ouch is for the fiscal beating the little Veloshop took with the break-in. I am very tired of talking about it at this point. Yep, I have insurance. I may or may not end up filing a claim. It may actually cost more in the long run to use my insurance to re-coup the thousands I lost. While it is not going to put me out of business yet, it is kinda like having a bunch of money saved and then just not having it anymore. You never touch your savings and don’t need to use it on a day to day basis but, all that hard work you set aside just dissappeared and you don’t get to use it. Feels wasteful.

But now I have a killer excuse when I am out of stock on something. “Well, I usually have 19 tooth track cogs available but…”

heh heh.

Well, there is a detective on the case, we have a witness and good fingerprints.  I guess the best case scenario will be an eventual arrest and recovery of the bike stuff. Like I said, I don’t feel like talking about it anymore.
In other news:

Health-Net has the lead in the Redlands Classic road race in California.
Doug Ollerenshaw was 21st. Not bad.

I’m going to ride my mountain bike for 4 hours tomorrow, then drink a soy mocha and then true some wheels.

Yep, 2am. Again. Sweeping up glass and hanging out with the police. While the glass company is taking its sweet time getting my new window installed someone actually pulled down the board I had up over the broken window and came in and stole a bunch of stuff. I had a witness and everything! Again, my alarm company gave me a call and I sprinted down to the shop to deal with the BS.

Here is the kicker. All they stole was track racing gear. The cop is telling me the description of a person dressed in a black hoodie, black pants and riding a bike. “That sounds like me.” I laugh. Under my breath, of course, because I am pissed. Now I am waiting around for the fingerprinting cops to show up…

Yeah! They are here. I’ve learned in my experience that fingerprinting is usually pointless. I guess I am glad they are trying.

Well I know the burglar stole a few specific parts, keep your eyes peeled:

A single grey MKS track pedal.
The right side only of a black Sugino 75, 167.5 length track crankset.
A silver pair of 167.5 Dura Ace track crank arms.
A Suzue ProMax NJS silver hubset.
A Phil Wood sealed bearing bottom bracket.

I THINK that is it. Ok, I am going to board it up again and get to bed.

At least he stole enough stuff it will be worth it to pay my insurance deductable…

We are moving the blog over to a new setup.

You can still view the old version by adding “/blogger” to the end of my web address.

Sorry for the hassle, more soon. I promise.

Click HERE if you don’t feel like typing.

“What else can I say? I pull the rear derailleur off of my Vanilla road racing bike and a Scott shows up on my doorstep last Wednesday morning. What can I do? Of course, I took it in, nurtured it, built it up and am gonna start riding it this weekend.”

Or not. This has been a hectic week. I started the above post last Monday and the days that followed have been chaotic.

I got a call from a cross racer friend who is also the Mavic-Adidas-Scott sales rep. The short version of the story involves breaking my van and leaving it on the side of the road to get hauled away by the city. Then realising my Record rear derailleur is busted, getting myself personally delivered down to Sellwood to pick up a broken derailleur to use for spare parts, rebuilding it, realising it is still busted, rebuilding it again, and staying up till 3am putting the new race bike together. Have I ridden it yet? Nope. Do I need to? Yep.

Will I get to? Not anytime soon. My mechanic’s last day is today and I am staring at so much work it is ridiculous.

Boo-hoo.

What else has been going on? I built up Steven Hunter’s gucci Sellwood edition Kona XC racing bike. He finally did it right. It is so nice. And he is really happy. We screwed around a lot with his XC bikes last year. Never got it right. Tried full suspension, tried different setups. I generally advocate just, “doing it right” getting modern components (for racing), as much new stuff as you can afford and I’ve recently become a believer in FOX suspension. (but, NOT thier phone answering service: another story.) I still really like to keep stuff running and y’know, use old parts that are still good and appear to be running well. But Steven and I had such bad luck. It just seemed like every race something would crap out or mis-shift and he spent the greater part of last fall daydreaming about a XC bike that actually worked. Well Steven, here you go. By the way, Steven Hunter is Veloshop’s current Oregon state cross champ. Trouncing the B field for the last 3 races of the 2005 season after getting a late start due to a summer injury.

Like usual, I am running late and taking advantage of my final day having someone open the shop up for me. My Scott weighs just over 16 pounds with some training wheels and Cary Miller’s old Truvativ cranks on it.

I’m anticipating the backlash I’ll get for racing on a non-Vanilla bicycle for the first time in a couple years. It’ll be like I started eating meat or something.

Sellout. Carbon fibre sellout.