Kent's Bike Blog: How Bikes Can Save Us

Kent's Bike Blog: How Bikes Can Save Us: Thanks to BikePortland.org for pointing out the wonderful infographic below. It's contains a lot of good info in an easily digested form. C...

November

Road trip to Michigan. 4 dudes one car.




Pontiac Lake.



Frankenmuth Brewery



Iceman Cometh



Bell's Beer


Potawatomi



Leaves



Revelate Tangle bag



Wookies



Quality time with the Vaya



Kent Moon Tower



More time with the Vaya



Food






Sick boy


No snow yet!!!!! Yay!

October S24O

Got out for a last minute overnighter followed by a extended ride home on Saturday.

I left the house Friday night and rode 32 miles down towards Massillon on the Ohio Erie Canal Towpath. I arrive at the campground around 8:45 and realized I should have scoped it out better because, I packed my ENO hammock, and there weren't any trees in the campground the right distance for the hammock. So after deciding not to sleep on the ground, I searched around the wooded area just off the campground and found a perfect spot.



After setting up the hammock I ate dinner, chatted with a couple of guys who had ridden up from Navarre to camp, and around 11:00 I went to sleep. Well tried to sleep. This was my first hammock camping experience, and I need to work on the set up. I would fall asleep and dream I was in a hammock. Not fun:(

I got up and moving around 8:00am. I didn't have to get home until 3:30, so I took a little tour of a few counties. I rode the Towpath until it intersected with the Sippo Valley trail and took that trail to Dalton where it ends. From there I rode around Orrville where I came across some cool sites. One was this little airfield that had a bunch of skydivers.






I also came across, which at some point my kinfolk lived.



And finally, miles of tar and chip roads, sunshine and cool old barns.









After riding around Orrville, I rode through Seville and stopped for a much needed lunch at Subway. From there I headed through Medina and visited my brother in law at work, then stopped to see a few more friends before heading back to Akron to get cleaned up and go to our friends wedding.

It's days like these that I dream of epic bicycle adventures. I dream of that one day where I have nothing in front of me but open road. I makes me dream of the Great Divide. Then I realize, I just had more adventure on my bike in 103 miles and less than 24 hours than alot of people. I was a great weekend.

The Weekend So Far

Friday night a group of us rode from Peninsula to Kent for a burrito run to Taco Tonto's. I had intened on bringing my cooler with some beverages, but in my frenzy to leave the house, I left it full of ice on the dining room table.

My second mistake of the evening was bringing the Big Dummy. I was declared the purse of the ride. Papa D's sweater(and beer), Fuzzyman's wallet, keys, and mobile communication device, and Kevlar's rain jacket. The only persons crap I didn't have carry, was the Russian's. I really didn't mind since I got to carry the beer!

It was a relaxing pace, though it seemed to get dark fast! It may be because there was a storm looming around, which we totally dodged! We got to Taco Tonto's and while we ate it rained. We followed up our burrittos with a beer at Ray's a staple bar in Kent. When we left Ray's, the rain had stopped, which left us wet roads to do some long skids on the Big Dummy. The funny part was, when I would hit a bump, the empty beer bottles, from our earlier beer stop, would clank loudly.

Once we got closer to Peninsula I realized the night was coming to an end. So, with a mile and a half to go, we all stopped and BS'ed for a few then headed back. What a great night, we ended up with about 33 miles.




Today(Saturday), I went down to Mohican State Park for a mountain bike ride. I started of okay, but the combination of 6 hrs. of sleep and the previous night fun, I fatigued early. At mile 20 I started feeling good again for the final 5.




Hopefully tomorrow the weather will cooperate so I can ride to work.

Checking in

Been spending some time with the family.



Went for some rides, but nothing epic.







Broke a seat mountain biking.




And did 1 S24O.



That's All Folks!

Perfect Saturday

Though it wasn't a high mileage, epic, or that much of an adventure ride today it was fun. The Tomster and I did a little Towpath ride from Clinton to Massillon and back for 26.25 miles on the Big Dummy. I actually was going to check out one of the campgrounds down that way that I hadn't seen before, for a S24O in a couple weeks.



The camp area is super nice and is about 30 miles from my house so, it is perfect. For an added bonus you can actually build a fire in the fire pit!



We also got to see some Canal horses on the ride, though we really wanted to see the Canal boats running, but they weren't.



Just a fabulous sunny July day! One thing we did, that I had never done before was, stop at Ernie's Bike Shop/ Ice Cream Shop/Deli for lunch. I had a Rueben with chips and shared the chips and a Orange Crush with Tommy. Now I am home relaxing in the hammock!

Salsa Vaya

40 miles on the Vaya so far, and have already changed the drivetrain. Swapped out XTR rear derailleur and 12-34 mountain cassette, for a Ultegra rear derailleur and 11-25 road cassette. The mountain bike rear with road compact up front was way to low.



Also, I've added fenders and a rear rack. Mostly out of boredom.

Happy 4th of July!

I had a great 4th of July. The wife and I went down to Pittsburgh to go to REI, lunch, and a little bike ride.

After shopping at REI, we went to Fat Head's restaurant and had some great cheese steaks. It had really fresh jalapeños, tasty beef, exceptionally fresh bread, and of course cheese and onions. I washed it down with a Founder's Centennial IPA and a Stone Arrogant Bastard. When we were ready to go ride our bikes, it started to rain, so I had a Stone Pale Ale until it stopped. Coincidently, Fat Head's has it's own beer, which I did not have, is actually brewed in Cleveland.



When it finally stopped raining we went for a short ride around the Southside of Pittsburgh.



This was my wife's first ride of the season, so we only rode 11 miles, which was fine because the humidity was high and it was close to 90 degrees.




We finally got to ride across the Hot Metal Bridge, and get a good view of the river and Pittsburgh.






Then we finished our fun off with a milkshake.

Mohican 100

On Saturday June 4th I raced the Mohican 100k MTB race. It was hot, around 8000 feet of climbing, and I did it on my Salsa El Mariachi single speed.
I didn't do as well as I had hoped, but I did beat my time from the last time I did it 2 years ago.

Memorial Day Weekend

Like most people, we had a busy and fun Memorial Day weekend. Here are a few images.




Aunt Amy was in town and we went for a bike ride on the Towpath Bike Trail.




Smashed thumb on Saturday




Went for a bike ride on Sunday Morning.





Superman ice cream and Blossom Festival.





And finally WV on Memorial Day!

Raleigh Misceo Week One

Had a few half commutes this week on the "Black Stallion" for a total of 82.24 miles. Though I will continue to commute the 24.24 miles each way, I feel the Misceo would be a better 10-15 mile each way commuter. The bike has perform flawlessly, with the exception of my fender vibrating loose, but I suppose that is a installation error.

When life gives you lemons, get a new bike

I've had a incredibly shitty month, so to make up for it in material things, I got a new bike. Like my mood it is all black. This is actually a project I've work towards for a few weeks and it just happened to happen at the end or beginning of a dark point in my life depending on how you look at it. Anyways, meet the "Black Stallion" it's a 2011 Raleigh Misceo.





Today was my first ride in on it, so far,so good. Over the next few weeks I'll go over how the bike performs.

First Race of 2011...Fail. Easter Egg Hunt...Win!

Raced at Vulture's Knob on 4.30.11 at their spring kick-off event. Though I didn't do the greatest, it was fun, and I got to race my new Salsa El Mariachi. Since it was the weekend after Easter, they had a Easter Egg hunt during the race, and since I wasn't counting on winning, I figured I would do my best at finding the eggs. On the course were 7 eggs, that would be turned in at the end of the race for prizes, and if you got the egg with the number 1 on it, you had to drink what they called "Dr. Knob's Concoction". 2 miles in on my first lap, I got a stuffed rabbit with a egg taped to it, which I had to ride with for the remaining 12 miles. On my second lap, I collected the evil egg number 1. I finished the race 6 out of 7 finishers, which helped me coin our new race team motto, " We don't always finish last, but we always try our hardest to".

At the award ceremony, I claimed my prizes. For my random egg I won a Peep basket with some Chamois Butt'r gifts.



And for Egg # 1 I had to drink a really nasty drink that I'm not allowed to tell all the ingredients, but it had Monster Energy Drink, whiskey, and 2 raw eggs. For drinking it and holding it down, I won $50.00! My first money winnings at a race! Even if I didn't keep it down, it would have been glorious, because I had just had a Chipotle burrito and 3 PBR's!



This photo was from Brandon, who left before my big moment of drinking the drink.