So.

It's been about a month since I've ridden the bike. I'm not hurt, nothing's wrong with me - I just had some thinking to do. See, for me, cycling-related activities got to the point where they were eating up 4 hours out of my day. 2 hours to shower, change, shave and get ready 3 times a day, the hour each way to work.. yeah it got to me. Leaving home at 6am and getting back at 6pm just was too much with work stress. So I took a break.

I regret it, and I don't. I needed to sort some things out, refocus - and I did. Last night I had a hard time thinking about motivation to get this stuff done, but now I have it. I needed a break to breathe after I finished a hellish couple semesters of school, and I got it.

So tonight I ride. And maybe tomorrow night or early morning too. It really irritates me that I squandered the summer, and am in NO SHAPE to ride the Gravel Worlds at this point. The first year I pushed through pain and finished the thing. The second year (last year) cramps got the best of me and I bailed out after a solid 80 mile effort. This year my longest ride has been about 60 miles, so it's almost delusional to think I'd even have a chance of even hitting checkpoint 2.

Maybe that's what it's about. Go into the thing and get some motivation from just trying.

Maybe. Part of me likes just being the big dude that has the balls to line up on a ridiculously brutal ride next to people in ridiculously good shape.

We'll see.

About the bike

I've had a couple emails and comments lately asking about what I ride, which is a pretty good question. I'm a big dude who rides hard over lots of miles - finding a bike that stands up to the abuse that a Clydesdale can shell out is a rarity. My Surly Long Haul Trucker, well, it's been my steady companion now going into it's third year of daily service. As of now, it's my only bike... and you know, I'm good with that.

It's a Long Haul Trucker "complete" with a couple minor changes. Schwalbe Marathon Cross tires, Brooks B-17 saddle, Nitto Noodle handlebar, Cinelli Gel tape, a cheap rack and some Nashbar Waterproof panniers. It's pretty simple, it works good, it's fast enough - but best of all - it's stupid comfortable. And durable. I've got over 10,000 miles on it now, and it rides as good as the day I got it.

That's really what it's about, finding what works for you. I just realized that this is my fourth year commuting by bike, and I'm good with that. Someone asked me the other day what I was training for, and I said nothing. Then someone asked me if I was commuting to save money, or to save the planet. My answer? Neither. Maybe both.

It's taken me four years to realize I ride because I ride. I'm good with that.

Just ride

Some days it doesn't matter if you're wearing work shoes and wool dress pants on a 90 degree day, you just gotta ride. I kind of dig those days where it's the end of the day and I go "I just really want to go home" so I don't change into anything cycling-specific other than a helmet, and pedal home.

Pretty hard to beat.

Father's Day

Awoke this Father's Day to a house full of cuties, and man that's just the topping for a great week (or couple weeks, even). Bashed through my 100 mile goal for 120 total miles after a really awesome Saturday morning ride with friends out to Elmwood and back. I've missed the mopac, and I've missed long rides - the average speed definitely showed that, ouch. Gotta work up in that respect but it's good to know I have 36 miles in my legs and it doesn't really even phase me.. even if it's at a turtle pace. I'll just channel my inner Mountain Turtle.

Next week I'm going to shoot for 150 miles, and more smiles. Should be pretty easy after what I did this week and a good number to go for every week. I'm not training for anything, I'm riding my bike. I'm not trying to lose lots of weight, I'm just riding my bike. I'm not commuting to save the world, I'm commuting to ride my bike. See a common theme there? Riding my bike is simple, it's pleasure, it's amazing - and it's extended into other parts of my life. Just check out my office makeover that made my favorite geeky blog, Lifehacker.com:

http://lifehacker.com/5566309/the-efficient-office-a-workflow-makeover

Riding is simple, it's amazing, it's what life should be about. Using what God gave us to live and provide for ourselves. I surrounded myself with too much "stuff", too much clutter, too little effort. Now I have one bike, two legs, and it all just comes together. Will I get another bike? Sure, and it'll probably be from Fargo. For now I'm just focusing on what I have, as Dave Ramsey would put it - "gazelle intensity".

Who knows what will happen, I got started a bit late this year due to a comedy of errors and failures, but I'm happy with where I'm at. And that, right there, is what it's all about.

Great start

I'm back to basics - platform pedals and tenny runners until I can swing another pair of Bonty RL's. Heck, I've been back to my extremely wore out North Face trail runner things just because, well, they were with me for my best "season" to date - 2008. They've got a couple centuries, a gravel century, and some metric centuries in their corner - and they have grooves in the soles where my pedals fit right into. Hah!

The trails have been absolutely gorgeous, and I've taken full advantage of it. Monday through Thursday I racked up 85 miles of commuting.. and taking the wrong way. On purpose. It's great to be free, and the bike just does that. Today I drove because my legs were a little fried after yesterday's winds, and I needed to drop an alternator off at the shop. It probably weighs 40 pounds, and I wasn't sure if that would press my luck on my el-cheapo rack. Man, though, it was hard to trade the view from the driver's seat for this usual view on my commute:
Lincoln's trails have been gorgeous, but not just the trails. Yesterday the wind was howling out of the South and I was itchin', so I headed south. Kept heading south yelling and cussing at the wind on a road south of Lincoln until my legs were howlin' more than the wind.

Called it good and got in a nice solid 26 miles yesterday. Not what I was up to in '08, but I'll take it.. for now. Tomorrow I'm going to hook up with a couple friends in the morning and head out on the Mopac, it's been far too long since I've had a good coating of limestone dust on the LHT. Eagle? Elmwood? Wabash? Don't care, my only goal is to get in a 100 mile week, and I'm easily on track for that.

Sunday? Well, I think these three are up to something...

My bike needs a new, good, awesome home

EDIT: And.. it's found a new home! Dang that was quick, and exactly the result I was hoping for. What a small, awesome world..

Above is the bike that started it all. Technically, it was my brother's old mid-90's Raleigh mountain bike that started this journey, but the Hardrock is really what got me going. Now it needs a new home.

Why? I'm not getting out of cycling - quite the opposite - it's just that I've known for the past two years, since getting the Long Haul Trucker, that the Hardrock is too small for me. Barends, extended seatposts, nothing I can do makes it comfortable to ride for me. It's the classic case of where I should have gone with my gut instead of what the sales dude told me to go with.

Here's the deal, I have a lot of memories wrapped up in this bike. It's special to me, extremely special to me, and I have kept it around for that reason. For a summer I rode it every day across town to see my then girlfriend, and now wife. It made me realize I could commute by bike to work. I had many adventures around Lancaster county on it, acquiring thousands of miles and some scratches in the process. I have a tendency to be dramatic at times, but I'm being completely serious when I say this bike changed my life. I've been given so much as a result of it, and now I want to give back.

I want this bike to go somewhere that it will continue to make a difference. First, here's what it is:

-2007 Specialized Hardrock Sport "Large" (19in)
-Three sets of tires - 26x2.1 "stock" Specialized Resoultion tires (replacement set, < 500 miles on 'em), 26x1.5 Specialized Nimbus Armadillo street tires (about a thousand miles, and thousands left), 26x1.9 Nokian W160 studded tires (just this winter, maybe 200 miles total on ice and snow)
-Two saddles - stock, and a Specialized Sonoma 155 "Body Geometry"
-New crank/BB - Shimano Alivio -Specialized Barends
-Custom built rear wheel, 36 spoke Sun Mammoth rim on the stock hub, hand built by my man Jared from Cycle Works - with a little bit of extra mojo itself
-SKS Rear fender

Asking price? $100*

What's the star for? Obviously if you know anything about bikes - this is a ridiculous steal. I could also put it on Craigslist for a couple hundred dollars more, and it could go sit in someone's garage for the next ten years gathering dust. This bike doesn't deserve that, it deserves to be ridden. It deserves to ooze some of that good mojo back at someone else, to change someone else's life.

You have to come to Lincoln, Nebraska to pick it up (or preferably already live here), and you gotta email me. bdinger at gmail dot com is the address to use. Maybe you wanna change your own life. Maybe you already did and need a little help along the way. Or maybe you wanna help someone out. Shoot me an email.

It's not about the bike

I've been pretty bummed for the past coupe of weeks, after a really good roll (literally and figuratively), I got interrupted by a double whammy. First, I broke yet another SRAM chain on the way home from a fantastic ride. Then, two days later, the dog ate my really nice cycling shoes because, apparently, she likes me. I'm not sure I fully understand dog psychology, but she's a great dog and so she's been forgiven.

In the interim I've been stuck with one bike with a busted chain and clipless pedals that I have nothing to clip into them, and another bike that's too small for me and still wearing studded Nokian tires. While waiting for economics to be favorable for another set of those shoes, there are two alternatives:

1.) Put one of the two other sets of tires on said spare bike, which also has platform pedals.

2.) Move platform pedals to the LHT and get a new chain for it.

Somewhere along the line both of those options became too difficult, so I haven't done them. I'm not sure how they're difficult, but lots of other things have been occupying my mind and time lately so - well - they have! I'm reluctant to ride the old mountain bike because, well, this winter was horrible. Riding it layered in clothing with the burdensome Nokians aired up to 25 whopping psi through snow and ice was horrible. Every memory I have in my immediate memory.. "banks".. of that bike is horrible. Which is saddening, considering that just several years ago I couldn't stop riding the thing. Before clipless pedals, before steel framed touring bikes, before myriads of handlebar changes, before Brooks saddles and even before cycling shorts - I rode and rode that bike, loving every mile.

Putting things into perspective, I visited Kent's Bike Blog today and caught up on his recent posts. If you've never visited Kent before, let me summarize it for you: he's basically my hero. He lives simply, hasn't owned a car since 1987, works where he feels like (mostly in bike shops), live in the Pacific Northwest, rides bikes, and is about to ride his bike along the Great Divide from Canada to Mexico. Only after he rides his bike from Seattle to the start in Banff, Canada. When he gets to Mexico, it sounds like he's going to be riding his bike back to Seattle. For a minute, do the calculations of that in your head. You've just ridden your bike pretty much nonstop from Canada to Mexico, and now you're going to essentially ride it the whole way back.

Kent isn't going to be riding a high-end custom mountain bike during this journey, he's riding a single speed Redline Monocog 29er - the one indulgence, it seems, is that it's the "flight" model. No high end racing clothing, or even clipless pedals and cycling specific shoes for that matter, Kent is just going to ride his bike. Across the United States. Probably twice. Probably nonstop.

With that, I'm closing my Macbook and taking the toddler outside, where he'll help me put some non-studded tires on my perfectly good heavy and slow, but operational and fun mountain bike.