New Project: Building a Niner Air 9

I've started a new blog. "My Niner".

Basically, I've recently refound my love for mountain biking while on a work trip to The Downieville Classic and decided that I need my own mountain bike again.

After lots of research, I've decided on a Niner Air 9. Riding in the Bay Area is perfect terrain for a 29er. 29ers take the wheel diameter up to 29" from the standard 26" mountain bike wheel. This creates a larger contact patch and a larger wheel rolls over obstacles easier than a 26".

The Niner Air 9 is made from Scandium to keep the weight down while maintaining durability and stiffness.

Enough typing here...now go check out the new blog: www.myniner.wordpress.com

I'm still around...

Just not blogging much on this blog.

I still do plan to do a bit of blogging here, so don't give up on me here.

I've been blogging on the Ritchey Blog lately. Click Ritchey Blog

Merco Grand Prix Criterium is this weekend...I'm registered for it and a maybe for the Road Race on Sunday.

That's my update for the day!

"Performance" by M.C. SpandX

I found this video quite entertaining...hope you do too. Enjoy.

Alberto Contador

No one can climb like AC. Looking spectacular out there on today's Tour de France stage.

Had to pull up this old pic from Interbike 2007.

Lunch Ride

It really doesn't get much better than this:

Today's Lunch Ride:

Lance Beat Me

Actually, he and many others crushed me. It was insane how fast the Nevada City Classic was this year. Look back at my 2007 and 2008 posts and you can see how tough this race was for me as a cat 3.

I didn't really plan on racing it this year, but when Lance, Levi and Horner announced that they were going to race it I changed my mind. Now I can say that I raced Lance. Even though it was short lived for me, I can still say it. Of ~150 starters, maybe 30-40 finished...most of which were lapped by Armstrong.

Even the neutral lap seemed to be a race to move up. Here's a shot of me and Lance hammering it out on the climb: (Click on this to enlarge it and see that it really is me - ha!)
He utilized his call up to get great position for the start...the announcer couldn't pronounce my last name and failed to call me up to the front.

I did get some fame (joke coming up courtesy of my teammate Jan):

"Look at the two guys in the background. The one guy is proud of his picture that he just took of Angelo, the other is texting his 10 friends about how Angelo is doing..."

This must be the part of the race where I was putting the hammer down on Armstrong because I'm in the big ring and climbing the steep pitch (the camera angle doesn't give it justice.)

Anyway, it was awesome out there this year. The "Lance Factor" created a HUGE crowd that was totally into it. I felt very pro climbing and descending with that many people out watching. I was even asked for my autograph by a young kid before the race started...look for it on Ebay.

1st place: Lance Armstrong
2nd place: Ben Jaques-Maynes
3rd place: Levi Leipheimer

Gestalt - Racks and Sausages Are Back!

Something strange happened to Gestalt a while back...they took out the bike racks and no longer sold sausages. I never went to see it in this biker-less state, but I hear they even took away any evidence that this was a cyclist/hipster hangout...removed bike stickers, posters...anything bike related. It was very odd and sad, as it was a great hangout for me and my buddies to bike to, have some German brews, knackwurst and German potato salad.

Well...rumor has it that the racks and sausages are back. I'll be there tonight.






In other news, this blog's been a bit slow lately. I've been focusing a bit more on our team blog and twitter. Check us out, add us to your readers and/or RSS feeds and follow us.

Blog: www.squadraovest.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/squadraovest