Another adventurous week

The week started on Sunday with the Devil's Slide MTB Race, in which I rode like a slug aboard my Salsa Dos Niner. Long after the race was over I decided to look up my results from last year and found that I rode the course 1.5 minutes per lap faster on my Gary Fisher single-speed the previous year...hmmm and I really thought about riding the SS this year again. Lessons learned I guess or maybe the lesson is being fat and sassy or the lack of training due to school or my allergies...blah, blah, blah...excuses never change things. Some of the guys that helped with the race put out a cool little video (click here to see it). I spent the remainder of the week agonizing (riding the dog out of it) over whether or not to buy a Trek Pilot from my favorite bike shop, B&L Bicycles.

The Pilot rides like no other bike I've been on...it's not a racer, but it is incredibly smooth on the roughest roads which means less fatigue - especially on long rides. In the past, after 3-4 hrs on my roadbike I was typically ready to stop and throw it in the ditch never to be ridden again. I think the ride of the Pilot will give me a few added hours of time in the saddle before I get this feeling. It comes with a 10-speed drivetrain (which I think is nothing more than a Shimano conspiracy) that I am still trying to get use to. I put a few "test" miles on the Pilot this week (like, cough...287 miles) on the worst, roughest roads I could find. The Pilot rode ever so smoothly on the worst chip-seal I knew of. I would take my Kestrel on the same roads for comparison only to find that I instantly wanted off the rough road. This comparison is what convinced me the Pilot was worth it. Yes, my fat butt likes some cush which I know will let me ride longer with less fatigue. A word of advise: Don't ever test ride a carbon Pilot unless you're ready for the sweetest ride ever and ready to pay for it! Yes, it's that good.

Yesterday I spent some time at B&L goofing around and the SeanMan made me buy a new jacket (it was on sale of course)...Thanks Sean the jacket got a good workout in the rain this morning and I'm happy to say it was nice to have it and worth every penny you said it would be.