Coach Curly's 2008 Training Log

Moving Operations

2008-07-07T06:12:00.001-07:00

www.psbracing.com/coachcurly/

Monday (1.14.08)

2008-01-14T12:41:00.001-08:00

Monday ride EZ... trainer. Recovery

Ride Time: 45 min

Avg HR: 131

Max HR: 144

Avg Watts: 170

Avg Speed: 15.6 mph

Sunday (1.13.08)

2008-01-13T15:55:00.000-08:00

After having taken Thurs and just doing some running on the treadmill on Friday, I needed to do some kind of varied paced ride... even if it was only for an hour or so. I know the weather was nice, but it was too cold to risk trying to ride early a.m. outside.

Ride Time: 60 minutes

Avg HR: 141

Max HR: 160

I spent the first 30 minutes building up a steady effort into some tempo riding. The last 30 minutes was spent varying the pace with some mock hills and short efforts.

Saturday (1.12.08)

2008-01-12T14:44:00.000-08:00

Saturday's ride was inside... still hanging on to the cold and congestion. Still, I needed to do some intervals. After a 20 minute warmup and some intensive spinning it went like this. 3 min interval, 3 minutes rest. The first minute was spent building up to the desired pain level and the last 2 minutes were spent maintaining the proper pain until the 2 minutes was up. 3 minutes of rest in between was done while spinning low gears.

Ride Time: 70 minutes

Avg HR: 155

Max HR: 190

Avg Watts during interval: 320

Max Watts during interval: 438

Thursday Power Intervals

2008-01-10T06:33:00.000-08:00

Cold in full swing... nose stuffed... throat sore...

no workout today... rest up for tomorrow

Wednesday

2008-01-09T17:27:00.000-08:00

Trainer ride this morning. Steady, easy spinning. My damned speedsensor cut out again on the trainer bike. Anyway... it was pretty ho hum, so here's the stats...

Ride time: 45 minutes

Avg HR: 133

Max HR: 155

The kids have given me the household cold so that should be fun for the next few days. I may have to postpone the intervals for tomorrow.

Tuesday

2008-01-08T15:54:00.000-08:00

Another stellar day in Little Amsterdam (i.e. Kent, WA) No rain, chilly but not worthy of gloves and just a slight wind from the South. Today's ride is supposed to be 30-45 minutes Tempo riding but still spinning like crazy (90-100 rpm) (Zones 2 and 3) but I took a full hour.

Ride Time: 1 hour
Avg HR: 155
Max HR: 175
Avg Speed: 18 ish

I got ribbing from the Manly group about not riding with them on "Race Day" but it's not worth it to me to deviate from the plan. Tomorrow is another Easy spinning day which I may or may not do on the trainer. Thursday is Power Intervals and Friday is recovery for the weekend.

My Hammer Nutrition stuff showed up today so I'm anxious to use that this weekend.

Monday

2008-01-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

Today's workout is supposed to be 30-45 minutes spinning easy gears and keeping the cadence at 90 or more. (Zones 1 and 2).

I actually managed to get outside but stayed away from the regular ride group today as they just go balls out all the time. On my way back through the Kent Vally, I came across an old guy (older than OAD) fumbling with his back wheel. I asked if he needed help... he said "Yes"... Apparently, he forgot his eye-glasses so he couldn;t see any shards of glass nor could he see enough to use his small patch kit. I gave him my tube and changed it for him. 3 chunks of glass in the tire.

Anyway, you can see from the graph where thay happened.

Ride time: 45 minutes
Avg HR: 141
Max HR: 171

Sunday... My Birthday

2008-01-06T14:54:00.000-08:00

I managed to get outside for an hour before the rain and wind started to drive me nuts... I was able to finish off my 2 hour session on the trainer. Results for the trainer time on the left.

I've always liked trainer time better...

Trainer Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Avg HR: 147
Max HR: 175
Avg Watts: 179
Workout description: 2 hours easy on hilly terrain (zones 1 and 2) For the hilly sections, I set the Flow at 9 and stayed seated using easier gears and keeping the cadence at 70-75. Avg cadence for trainer time 89.

Testing

2008-01-05T13:56:00.000-08:00

A 3 mile test. Anything more than 8 minutes and I'm in bad shape for the next 7 weeks...

10 minute warm up

Time: 6 min, 55 seconds
Avg HR: 171bpm
Max HR: 196bpm
Avg PWR: 301 watts

40 minute spin...

Updates daily... we'll see what happens in Sequim

Site Updates

2007-11-27T07:54:00.000-08:00

Heads up... PPBRacing site will be taking on a new and more easily updated look. We're trying a blog template for race news and media stuff...

Take a look while it's being built out... and NO, it won't be blogger driven.

www.psbracing.com

Men and Women

2007-10-08T05:40:00.001-07:00

This is really the only difference between men and women...

~curly

Winter Isometric Training Video

2007-10-02T04:36:00.001-07:00

Here's an inside tip from Ol' Curly about some secret Isometric Training that you should be doing...

GO HERE AND WATCH!

Curly

ToA

2007-09-30T06:19:00.001-07:00

any thoughts on this??

I can't help but remember the Tour de Trump

Web-er-tainment

2007-09-21T05:24:00.000-07:00

MEZMERIZING! Do 2 sets of these before your weekend ride... and MEET THE TEAM!

Starbucks Comic Relief

2007-09-09T14:45:00.000-07:00

Curly has to retire folks... not enough time in the day with work, kids, some form of exercise, yardwork, a house and mortgage... but here's something to keep you busy in the meantime... A sneak peek at Monday's Green Apron story...

The Latest Craze

2007-08-29T06:16:00.000-07:00

Ol' Curly wants to let you know that you'll be seeing more of this stuff in the future. It's the latest thing in carbo-bark-loading.

Cinnamon Tablespoon from rachael and Vimeo.

ECO

2007-08-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

Ol' Curly has to smile every morning... just for fun

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/rei_launch_ecos.php

Big BuZZzzzZZZzzz

2007-08-16T06:57:00.000-07:00

Ol' Curly never thought he say something like this... as he's a die hard roadie and all. (Don't even own a mountain bike).

Curly is buying an '08 Big Buzz urban assault bicycle... with disc brakes...

I will put aero bars on it tho... and use my Renn Disc for commuting.

WTF post for the week...

2007-08-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Jeebus H bike racers! Ol' Curly has seen everything now. This is a product straight outta Martaint's dreams.

The Walmart Corsa has to be the worst friggin idea I've ever seen in my life. A full carbon frame with 105/Ultegra can be purchased at Walmart for 1900 bucks... I hope to hell I have my camera with me when I see a fella at a race with one of those... I wanna get his picture.

The could have come up with a better name for it... The PRO-FIT possibly... Or the FU SL...

I quit... I'm taking tomorrow off.

So what's the deal with Cyclocross?

2007-08-15T06:20:00.001-07:00

Mornin' Bike Racers...

Seeing this picture reminds Ol' Curly that no matter how fat he gets he can still ride a bike.

Old as Dirte will know who this is...

The guy still ties it on in the cross world... even at 50 years old and weighing in at 16 stone.

Gridlock

2007-08-14T06:40:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike commuters... Ol' Curly is laughing his ass off right now. Yesterday's less than impressive traffic spectacle was due to everyone sitting home to watch the traffic nightmare unfold... wha happen? No traffic... Duh... everyone was home...watching the traffic on TV.

So what do you think happened when those folks saw no traffic. "Well, I'll just drive in... since there's no traffic and all"

Hi traffic...

Now that's funny... stupid sheep.

Discovering... a new sponsor

2007-08-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

Well, Ol' Curly knew the train would reach the end of the tracks. Discovery Channel cycling is no more. The team has disbanded and it's players strwen about looking for new doctors and dope suppliers... I mean teams...

It'll be nice to see Hincape in a T-Mobile kit... Looks like Team Slipstream will be the next 'Merican Giant to hit the PRO scene. It'll also be nice to see "The Swede" wear the Argyle Kit of Slipstream... maybe he can start winning again.

Look for Ol' Curly to make an appearance at sometime... He has an extra 15 bucks to blow for Hotdogs at PR.

Cripes!

2007-08-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike riders! Ol Curly has been attending to other things but he still likes his bike. I know there was speculation of Curly retiring but I assure you that taint gonna happen. With the task of selling 282 individual Starbucks items on eBay and helping Pat write Green Apron Stories I just been plain busy.

So Contador looks like he's gonna come clean here pretty quickly on his doping practices... Is this ever gonna end.

Ol' Curly had a chance to ride one of them Novara carbon Squadras... OMG, my-tee-fine... I may have to buy one.

Thanks for stopping by... leave a comment or two on Contador or the Novara Squadra... just so I know folks are reading.

Your Training: The season is pretty much over... read a blog or somethin'

Exciting post

2007-08-06T06:01:00.000-07:00

Sure is quiet these days...

You can hear a pin drop in a blog practically.

Commuting

2007-08-01T08:50:00.000-07:00

Howdy Bike Racers... Ol' Curly has just about completed the honeymoon period at the new ranch so he can set a bike commuting schedule for riding to work. The route is quite simple...

To work: 6% descent for 2 miles, left turn, 1.5 mile ascent at 5%, 600 yards at 7%, right turn, 1.5 miles flatish, left turn, 1.5 miles decent at 9-10%... and then 1 mile flat.

Coming home: Reverse that math.

Ol' Curly is gonna need to put on a 26 to make it up the 9-10%'er everyday without bustin' a nut.

Since the LCs go to daycare M, W, F... looks like Curly will be able to manage this on T and Th.

I hope you enjoy today's photo of LA reading Coach Curly on his Livestrong branded laptop.

Oh... and Gaywilli... I hope you know that Redhook was started by one of the founders of Starbucks... the same one that also started the Seattle Weekly newspaper. Another founder went to Peet's coffee and the 3rd one (Zev Siegl) works as a consultant for Highline CC for new small business owners.

It all comes from Starbucks

Come on Seattle... get yer act together

2007-07-31T05:28:00.000-07:00

Howdy crankin' fools... Ol' Curly don't usually take to being an activist, but in light of recent developments with the City Cycling Plan (or CCP), I'd thought I'd resurrect this gem from Johnny Stardust for you. What the hell is wrong with this country anyway?

Woo hooo!

2007-07-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

Well Howdy Bike Racers! Ol' Culry is damned happy that the tour of france is over. Now we have about 5-6 months of the media toiling over who doped, who coulda doped who shoulda doped. That should take us to the off season where we'll finally get the results of the Flandis case.

Did y'all have fun listening to Lance commentate yesterday and Fill Liggett being genuinely giddy about sitting next to the 7-time doper...umm, er... winner?

Yep, this tour was one fer the record books.

Congrats tho on getting that yellow jersey...

Ol' Curly took his new ride out on Friday for her maiden voyage. Nice... it's always nice to have a new bike. Then Curly actually rode Sat and Sunday too... God forbid I get some fitness back.

Wooden Chalaah Toobee a Dopertoo?

2007-07-27T04:50:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers and stuff! WTF is going on with the PRO angle of this sport? Not only do we have doping going on at the tour of france and riders getting caught... but now the media has taken to interviewing the likes of Virenque on the matter.

That's why Ol' Curly is giving him the "I was a sheep" award. Now Curly only gives these out once a year...

How would you like to be the guy that wins the tour after all of your competition is caught for doping?

Congrats Contador... You'll never forget this win.

Amazing

2007-07-26T06:21:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers! Ol' Curly wants to remind you that even the best yellow jerseys can be asses at times.

I hope you all are following the antics of the tour of france. We're nearly done already.

Now Ol' Curly has come across this mesmerizing video in his search for creative crap on the web. These things always amaze me.

Click Here

Big balls

2007-07-25T04:44:00.000-07:00

Heidi ho bike racers! You'd think Ol' Curly would be pissed about Vino getting caught with too much blood in his blood. Well... I ain't.

I think he's innocent... I mean clearly it was from that crash he had. When you're all tangled up in a mass of crashed fellers... some blood could easily make it's way into your bloodstream. You might also kick some ass from that blood...

Dumbass.

Ok, you were right... Curly is pissed.

We have our winner

2007-07-24T05:02:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike riders! How bout the last few days of the Tour of france? Are you tired of seeing Contador blow precious effort trying to drop Rassy in the last 100m of a climb? I guess it's a psychological game. Curly and his buddy use to play that game as 15 year olds... Who can win to the top of the hill... who can be first to that sign... who can climb and then shift the other person's bike into a higher gear first...

I think we have our winner possibly. Of course there's the whole doping thing too... Did Rassy really order a shoe box full of the dopage? Why the hell bring that up now that he's in yella? Where was this info back when it happened? Or better yet... a couple of months ago?

Is it me or is Cadel Evans not a pretty man?

Alright... get out and ride... Curly has said enough today.

Maybe not... Dumbass VINO

Oh you Chicken Man!

2007-07-23T05:31:00.001-07:00

Howdy bike racers! Ol' Curly is smilin' like a skinny cow this mornin'. That Ol' Chicken gave a wallop over the weekend huh? Not only did he limit his losses in the TT, but he tapped all the favorites in the nugget pouch on his way up to the Plateau.

This is almost as good as an 'Merican winnin'. On the eve of one Dane saying he cheated and won, another Dane smokes the french like cheap pack of reservation cigarettes.

Now Ol' Curly hopes you understand why he's cutting these short. With another project underway and a new job at a new ranch... there just ain't time.

Oh yeah... and the kids... the LCs probbly need attention.

Out

2007-07-20T07:49:00.000-07:00

Ol' Curly is outta Jack... see ya on Monday

John Jacob Leipheimer Schmidt

2007-07-18T05:46:00.001-07:00

Well, howdy bike racers! Ol' Curly is a pretty happy camper these days. I'm hopin' it don't ruin the tone of this here blog.

Now how 'bout that Leiperheimerstein? Just when I thought he'd pull another Hampsten, he responded to the challenge. The TT will tell.

Now I know what yer thinkin'... "Curly, what the hell is a Hampsten?" OK... I'll tell ya. Hampsten was always famous for sayin' "well, I'm lay low until the mountains and giver her a try"... then he'd blow the whole damn thing cuz he didn't have the fire to win. Then he'd quit the race due to some kind of ketchup poisoning conspiracy. Loser... Ya gotta attack and take control of the race. You never saw Lemond sit back and wait... or Lance... or Indurain... or anybody that's won in the last 300 years... That always pissed Ol' Curly off about Hamptsten... you wanted him to do something, but he'd just sit there... pedaling a 39X29 and looking like a FRED on his bike. Might as well throw some panniers on and call yerself a tourist. Yeah... his position needed work too. The only exception was when he was on La Vie Claire... that was his best year. He actually looked badass.

So back to Leipheimer... It's a good thing for him that Bruyneel is his "brain"... that should push his ass onto the podium.

Now win Leipheimershcmidt! I need to spit in the face of the french at the end of July and there's no better way to do that than have yet ANOTHER American (moment of silence please) lead the podium...

YEEEEEE-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

The other white Dane

2007-07-17T05:50:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike pedalers... Ol' Curly don't have much time. With both LC's getting up at the same time, it's like tryin' to wrangle up chickens and ask them to put their heads on the block.

Speakin' of chickens. How cool is it to watch Rasmussen spank the peloton so vigorously up the climbs? Too bad he can't time trial. He'd make once damn fine tour of france champion.

Remember the time he tried to TT and crashed like 5 times? Damned painful to watch. I'm surprised he didn't pull a Riis and throw his bike in a ditch.

1/3 Done!

2007-07-16T04:59:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers! Yep... we're 1/3 done already. All of the excitement... the wrench flying... the adjustments... the hope that we'll be riding it one day...

Yeah, I'm talkin' about Curly's new bike. Oh, I guess I coulda been talkin' about that Tour of france too... Naw. I'm just talkin' about the bike. I still need to place the shifters, hook up the cables, add a chain, put some tape on and fit it, but some of the big stuff is done.

Yeah... it's a bit lighter than Curly's other one-off bike... and he didn't even have to git no carbon or special parts.

How about them riders at the Tour of france. Linus... your trainin' has gone well my friend. Good to see you following the Curly principles. Now, stay off the dope and you'll be good. The Dane is out as well... Not surprised that he gave a good ol' Danish spankin' in the first big mountain stage.

Damn figures that a drunk motorist would hit a cyclist riding the STP over the weekend... and then flee the scene. I think his punishment should be to get his ass kicked by a mob of angry STP riders and Curly. I'll ride the SKUUT over his ass like you wouldn't believe. Seriously tho, how does this crap keep happening in this day and age? Perhaps that fellas punishment should be "banned to walk for life" with a GPS monitor that calculates his moving speed and sends his location to the police should he exceed 5 mph. And every time it does, he gets a wallop from 100 angry cyclists just fresh off one of them Critical Mass rides.

ok... that's good...

2007-07-13T05:22:00.000-07:00

Mornin' bike racers! The AS-Oles have really gone and done it now... They've retaliated. They've finally responded to Ol' Curly's feedback on how crappy and unfair they are... and how they're a bunch of cowards and stuff... and their riders suck... But this is too far. Ya can't take it out on livestock... it's just wrong. Ruinin' a perfectly good succulent, juicy, t-bone, cow like that.

Perhaps CTodd can donate some of them t-shirt funds to help out Ol' Bessie here...

Well... Ol' Curly is on his way to a 7:30 breakfast send-off this morning in Seattle's Pike's Peak Market. Some eggs over EZ at the place where Curly's Granny used to work... Then it's on to the giant cup for some finishin' touches, move a few boxes out to the Curly Mobile and YEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAA! Time fer some Whisky.

Ol' Curly launches his new 1-year project on Monday... http://www.greenapronstories.com/

Kinder and Gentler

2007-07-12T05:18:00.000-07:00

Howdy "wanna be paid like a PRO" bike racers! Today will be a much kinder, gentler Curly. Ol' Curly took the fam damily to his new company's picnic yesterday. Quite a treat to see so many co-workers ride their bikes to the picnic. It looked like the July '06 catalog... Nice folks...

I guess there are some folks who get fired up about their racing and it didn't take a prize list or $100 prime to do it now did it? I knew you had the passion in ya. Just a matter of gittin' it to come out. Kinda like a saddle sore... You know it's there, you can feel it... hurtin' the the devil... then just the right amount of pressure makes it all better. Damn, I nearly puked just typing that.

Alright... I said it would be kinder today... How about having them race numbers pinned on both sides and a frame number for all USAC races? Now Ol' Curly has an opinion on that. Just do it dammit! Why is it such a pain to have a jersey with your numbers all ready to go. Why, hell... just copy your numbers onto some fabric and sew them on. Then you can wash the whole lot and no worries of rusty pins. OBRA gives out the fabric numbers still I think... Why those OBRA folks have some serious plusses don't they. Now Ol' Curly knows what yer thinkin'. "But Curly... they aren't part of the USAC and they're races aren't as good... and other whiney crap" To which I'll say... "shut yer pie hole... 2 words... Chris Horner"... He managed to become quite good ridin' around the Bend, Oregon area..." Now, just put yer numbers on... and quit yer bitchin'. It simplifies things... no Right side.... Left side crap... Of course the point is to be able to record results more accurately... BUT... now it puts the ownership on the officials... who have the job of being able to work the camera.

Hey... how bout that insurance surcharge when you buy your license and then your $2 surcharge per race...?

I told you kinder and gentler...

Here's a little funny for you... When Ol' Curly started the CurlySite way back in the day he thought it would be funny to set up a faux training programme payment option using his PayPal account that's named "Coach Curly Training Services"... Now every damned time I git an item paid for by PayPal, Lois, the mail lady gits a chuckle about delivering things to Coach Curly...

P-FU more like it

2007-07-11T05:37:00.000-07:00

Howdy le Bike Racers! Ol' Curly is pissed this morning cuz he couldn't grab the circa 1989 footage of Teenage Curly's attempt to blow the doors off at the WA State TT Championships. Stupid foreign DVD players... It's damned good too...

So is anyone else stupified at the notion that the ASO-holes and France refuse to let little Unibet play in the game but are fine with PMU tossing in some Francs and cardboard hands to put on a race? Ol' Curly took the liberty of redesigning the hand to make it more appropriate in this day and age.

Dumb AS-Oles...

Now Ol' Curly has been taking note of some of the comments from un-named bike racers who aren't totally happy that they aren't able to make ends meet with bike racing primes and prizes... I've said this before but BIKE RACING IS NOT A JOB!!! It'a an activity... a "SPORT" if you will... Name another amateur sport/activity where the participants only do it cuz they can get some money... And Bowlin' ain't a sport PruDog... Now when Ol' Curly was still under 20, he did one of them "race in Italy" programmes for 2 weeks... The races were about 3 bucks and the license was 15 or 20 bucks. Now in them races of about 50-60 jrs... they was hard... lots of pushin', going fast... no damned 46 tooth big rings... just alot of kids going fast... These went on 2-3 times per week. The rest of the days were spent just rollin' along and doing the occasional road sign sprint... wanna know what the prizes were for them races... Nothing! The adult races... nothing!... sometimes a trophy... sometimes the rider's weight in "the sponsor's product"... Get over yourselves. There are better paying professions for chrissakes! I know of no "job" where they make you spend hours a day prepping for a 2-3 hour drive so you can actually do the job in 50 minutes... and then end up bragging about a top 20 performance... Let me know if I'm wrong, I'll slap your ass silly.

So let's look at the other side... the race promoter... You can ask around, but I'm not sure if any bikerace promoters will be retiring soon... or have dreams of spending countless hours and resources so that they can cross their fingers to break even... in hopes that a million dollars will be found in the Stop/Slow paddle box... MOST do it because they want to help out the sport by making sure that there are events that people can show up at and bitch about missing out on a $100 prime... Now, Ol' Curly ain't sayin' that there's room for improvement in prizes... there is... but before we start looking at cash as the end all, perhaps we should think about what kind of value our precious sponsors might want for their investment... and don't all those fancy powerbars and gels need replacing after you've eaten a box of them...?

Alright... LC2 is having a gas attack... and I'm pissed, so I'd better go... dammit! OH... Curly got his new frame yesterday and aside from a 35mm clamped Campy derailleur, it's ready to build up... Perhaps, Rory is giving those away for 23rd place at PR this week. ok... and bike racing CAN be a job... but then it's really an advertising job and not the riding itself...

At last...

2007-07-10T05:23:00.000-07:00

Howdy cycling pardners! Ol' Curly is gonna keep it short this mornin'. Yesterday I got one damned fine espresso machine as a reward for 15 years of loyalty... Retail Value $795. I'll most likely never make a single lick of coffee in this thing... But, as a treat, I can tell you that they are handmade in Milan, Italy and they only pump out 60 machines daily. This particular version with the Starbucks logo on it is most likely number 150 of its kind... Alright... I'm off to press a single button for my coffee and watch a little Tour sugar...

Ok... not so bad

2007-07-09T05:51:00.000-07:00

How-deeee! Le Coq Sportifs... Le Curly is changin' his tune now and watching the Tour of france bike race. It seems that now that all of the big names are gone, it opens up the door for riders to show their faces. I'm sure it will be a much more exciting race now that all them damned dopeurs are gone. How bout that Cancellara? Mighty fast fella... seemed to be a notch above everyone else.

McEwe.... that sheep shucker kept the goin on, goin on and made it back to the front yesterday for a sprint finish that was more explosive than a dairy cow that ate a bale of hay, but it turned out to be Exlax instead. Good on him. I may get to like the little feller... he's like 3'11" and wears a size 4 women's shoe. That's what I hear anyways.

Funny part of the coverage was watching Paul Sherwin say "Thanks Paul"... to Phil Liggett during the opening remarks.

Well, the last 5 days of swiggin' from the Corporate Coffee Cup (3C's)... Today I'll be receivin' my 15-year service award. It'll grace the shelf where I keep my eBay stuff... Heartwarming huh? Curly gettin' all emotional on ya... I made shed a tear. Looking forward to launching GAS (green apron stories)... The site is looking pretty good, the t-shirts are of nice design and I'm working on a "Tip Jar" feature right now...

Campy... Well, Ol' Curly is finally upgrading his rain bike gruppo to 10-speed Campy from circa 1996 8-speed Campy. A nice Record crank and BB, some fine Veloce shifters, front dee and brakes... and a swell Centaur (gray finish) rear dee. Looking forward to being able to rid myself of Wheel of Boulder Campy conversion spacers and Shit-mano 8-speed cassettes. They did work really well tho... Maybe I'll sell them on eBay and offer up a free Starbucks Frappuccino t-shirt with purchase.

Mmmmm.... Danish

2007-07-06T05:11:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike rodeo clowns... Ol' Curly has pretty much written off the season of racing after the Matava debacle... Not much hope for anything other than participating and charity rides. So, Curly will be building some saddle time for the MS 1-fitty in Sept. That fine Principia frameset to the left will be about finished by then so we'll use that time as her maiden voyage... Now Coach Curly knows what yer thinkin'... "But Curly, you can't just up and start riding a new bike on a 2-day, 150 mile+ ride" To which Curly sez... BS. I can do what I want... 150 miles is the perfect time to dial stuff in. Besides, I've been ridin' long enough to know how to fit my bike... I've read the Lemond, Book of Cycling alot of times... ALOT of times. Now why on God's green pastured Earth would Curly by yet another "unknown" brand of bike to race on... Simple... He don't like having the same thing as everyone else. Ol' Curly toyed with ordering from Naked Cycles, but the Principia was too good to pass up and besides... it's Aluminum reared... No carbon BS in the rear... A cheap carbon seatpost is all Curly needs at the back.

Now the Principia is Danish... another great reason to buy it. Ol' Curly knows that the Danes, Swedes, and Norges know a thing or 2 about cycling and making things last. Besides... Most folks don't know that Curly's Great, Great Grandparents were sturdy, Danish farmers... and that Curly only showcases the Norwegian roots from his past to fit in... That may all change for next season... we'll see. Yeah... Ol' GG Granny, Kirstine Curlysdotter started it all back in the early 1900's by riding her basket bike to the market every weekend and hauling 200lbs of baking supplies home on her back... uphill... both ways... One of these days I'll tell the story of how Curly's Uncle's burned their house down when playing with matches and how the 300lbs of stockpiled sugar, and homemade dandelion wine gave off the sweetest of smells and burned the brightest blue you ever did see... yeah... I'll tell that story one day... but not now...

This is a hand truck...

2007-07-05T04:44:00.000-07:00

Howdy Bike Racers! Ol' Curly slept right through them firecrackers last night. He was darn tired... After "racing" the Masters C/D crit at Joe Matava (so damned out of shape), taking the family out for some clothes shopping, buying a new handtruck, disassembling the Judges stand, BBQ'ing some chicken and mowing the lawn... Ol' Curly was plum tuckered out.

First things first... I want to call attention to a project going on that I think is as cool as a mother pig in a shady pool of mud... 50 Dates/ 50 States. 2 ladies from "The Show" days have gone out and started their own project... lookie here. Gotta love the internet.

Now on to some crap from yesterday... I went to Eagle Hardware (yeah I know it's Lowes but I don't care) cuz I hate Home Depot... to buy me a new hand truck. Seems Ol' Curly exceeded the weight limit too many times on the last one. Anyway... I had all the good intentions of having a good experience and being nice. After about 5 minutes of looking, I caught a feller back in Garden and asked... "Where do ya keep the hand trucks feller?" He says... "Oh, we don't carry them." and keeps on walkin', like he don't have time. Now Ol' Curly has been to a few hardware stores and the one thing he does know is that THEY CARRY HAND TRUCKS! So Ol' Culry is now on a mission to prove this Muther-lovin'-Tool-Box wrong... Finally, he catches a portly gal over near plumbin' and asks her if they carry handtrucks. "Oh yeah... Home Organization. But let me take you there... if I'm wrong, I don't want you to get pissed"

So there they are... 2 Brands and 5 models of hand trucks... They even have the one I need... the 800lb'r... So Curly grabs it's and rolls it on up to customer service to bitch about that first feller and LO' and BEHOLD... the manager there is the feller that "helped" Ol' Curly with his handy "I don't give a shit 'bout making a $78 sale or not" advice... So Curly (in a really pissed off mood by now) wanks up past the 3 people in line and says "This is a hand truck. They're in Household Organization. Next time go look jackass!" and walks off to pay... As he's payin' the clerk says "I hope yer havin' a good 4th..." Ol' Curly sez... "I am now..."

Corner 3

2007-07-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers! Ol' Curly is back to "normal" I think. The body clock (and LC2's screaming) allowed him to wake up refreshed. It's been a busy week with the announcement of my coffee retirement. Ol' Curly waited most of yesterday for some kind of talk from the head SVP Rancher... but he just couldn't seem to find the time between all those important meetings and coffee breaks... so Curly sent out his announcement without doing "the talk" first... Oh, then Curly was asked to "set up some time"... NA GA DO IT... I don't have the ball anymore... someone else has it... you set up the time.

So needless to say... I'm sure someone will make the time seeing that the CEO and HS were copied on it... Ya see, no BS... Curly has hob-knobbed with the upper-ups in various fashions over the years. I think I owe them a notification that after 15 years, I'm walkin' out the door with a helluva a lot of organizational knowledge. It at least warrants a "have a good one".

Now on to corner 3... The Des Moines Criterium went off pretty much without a hitch. 10 races on the schedule. Masters State Champs, LAJORS series race... all the other cats. About 290 riders throughout the day including some PROS... Mainly, Morgan Schmidt... a local feller who went to Priority Health. He won our King of the Sprints trophy and nearly won the race... We gave out some SKUUTs, a few beer glasses, some Baron Brewing Beer, One heckuva lot of Greyhound Juice, etc... So what's with this Corner 3?

Corner 3 is run by Jim... Jim is a local. He's a carpenter that lives on Corner 3. When Ol' Curly did his duty of notifying residents that a race was coming to town, Ol' Jim was out with his buddies putting the finishing touches on his grandstands. They threw one HELL of a BBQ party on Corner 3... sorry I missed it Jim... I'll be down for some Kalbi on the 4th... and save me some beer. You can GO HERE to see some great shots of the race... and of Corner 3... they're near the middle...

New Project

2007-07-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

OK... now that I've done the 2-weeks notice gig, I can share with you that I'm starting a new gig at REI on July 16th. On that day I will launch a project that has been going on behind the scenes for about a month. Green Apron Stories... A blog that will feature some of my 15 years of stories/dirt/art/etc. One of the major initiatives will be to eBay off all of the schwag I've collected in 15 years... the final schwag item will be the 15-year service award... a chrome, LaPavoni Piston espresso machine with Starbucks logos on it. I'll be using a silhouette of the machine as part of the branding of the blog. OH... I have t-shirts as well. Once I sell enough tees to offset the value of my 2-weeks of vacation that I have to leave on the table, I start donating the proceeds to a local charity... probably NW Harvest.

Don't worry... Ol' Curly will still be around... for a while. And yes, we had a great race on Sunday. It was off the hook.

It is done...

2007-06-29T17:08:00.000-07:00

A moment of silence please... The Frappuccino that was my 15 years at Starbucks is now gone... the last slurp occurred at 2:53pm today...

Curly To Do List

2007-06-29T06:05:00.000-07:00

Howdy riders! I thought I change it up today... Here's my to do list for Friday, June 29th, 2007. Discuss.

2:00am Feed LC2 and change diaper
2:30am sleep
4:30am Feed LC2 and change diaper
5:00am Load music for Sunday on iPod
6:07am blog
6:15am Get ready for work
6:40am Get LC1 up, dressed and feed
7:00am Load bike in truck
7:15am Leave for work... drop off LC1
7:45am Arrive at work
9:00am Do some stuff, IM Martaint... do some more stuff
9:30am Meet with some folks
Lunch... Go for a ride around MI with Jamie
2:30pm Give 2 week notice and resignation letter
2:45pm Breathe sigh of relief
3:45pm Pick up Skuuts and GC for race
4:15pm Pick up KOS and QOS trophies
4:45pm Arrive at home, hug LCs and tell Mrs. Curly about 2:30pm

communication

2007-06-28T06:17:00.000-07:00

I guess Ol' Curly was the last to know that the WSBA/USAC supplied a State Champ event with medals. Asking "Is there any requirements or out of the norm things I need to worry about or comply with?" doesn't fall into the realm of "Oh yeah... we'll supply you with your State Champ medals"

Hope everyone likes medals as prizes... Ol' Curly has a few on hand now.

Timing

2007-06-27T05:13:00.000-07:00

Howdy exercise enthusiasts that happens to include riding a bike! Ol' Curly took yesterday off to look after LC2 and LC1... I think I prefer work... there's no shame in admitting that looking after kids is hard... Me likey day care... kids tired when they come home.

Ol' Curly is in the final stages of gathering stuff for this Sunday's race... I got my officials assignment yesterday thankfully... It seems that every time I put on a race that's the thing that stresses me out...

Alright... Ol' Curly is going to admit it here that it's been 4 weeks almost since touching a bike... Friday will be his first day back on the steed... A nice little jaunt around Mercer Island at lunch. Now, I know what yer sayin'... "Oh Curly... won't yer boss get mad and stuff for taking a 90-minute lunch"... Maybe... It'll make a great conversation starter though...

Alright... Curly is runnin' late... You folks have a ride or two today... on Curly

Perspective

2007-06-26T04:16:00.000-07:00

Howdy Power Crankers! Ol' Curly had a late night last night after such an inspiring day with his fellow ranchers. LC2 decided to pop up with some creative sleep patterns and feeding rituals that didn't fit into the norm. Curly will tell you this... after yesterday's "offsite", it was nice to come home and have someone all worked up to see you.

So let's talk about yesterday... It all started out like the usual corporate outing... a facilitator setting what's called "ground rules" for engagement... My contribution was that I wanted folks to not use them firggin buzz words like "alignment", "wholistic", "intergrated", "shared vision" etc... Let's use some damned English and lay things out... you all know that's how Ol' Curly rolls. Let's set that damned elephant out on the table and be "real"...

In cycling it helps to keep things in persepective... You may be out riding and then get pissed that you get a flat. Well, that flat may have prevented you from being at a the wrong place at the wrong time and getting spattered onto the pavement. You might be in a race and get popped off the back... thinking... "Oh, I just can't catch back up"... Ol Curly did that once (ok.. 3 times) at a race in the Tri-Cities... he spent 10 miles grinding up a climb and then another 20 decending some winding roads and hammering on the flats only to come back in contact with the pack at the finish... Ol' Curly's experience tells him that your current perspective is always less positive than your future perspective... if it wasn't, people wouldn't say, "Damn, if only I'd known, I would have..."

Ok... so I didn't really talk too much about the offsite yesterday... for good reason. Ol' Curly is still worn out from the experience. You may never know just what I have typed and deleted here in this space before it gets to you...

Well... needless to say, you have to keep things in perspective. You just never know when you'll catch back on.

Team Building

2007-06-24T09:24:00.001-07:00

Howdy and good morning Curly readers! Monday's post is coming to you early for good reason. Ol' Curly has to go to a mandatory "team building" offsite all day Monday... he has to be there at 7am for a mandatory breakfast, then all day for "honest dialogue" and some team building "activities", then we're going to see who is committed to something called a "vision" that's been around for year now but not really communicated, defined or explained... then mandatory "drinks" to help us bond... I suggested we do the last one first to help the process but it fell on deaf ears... Sorry family... it's mandatory.

By Friday, I promise you that this post will seem really funny... Look for a recap on Tuesday of what happened at the "Curly Teambuilding and Whiskey tasting"

Santuko - Passive Agressive

2007-06-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

Good morning corner choppers! Ol' Curly would like to post a passive aggressive post this morning...

STOP THROWING MY HENKELS IN THE SINK LIKE THEY ARE GINSU KNIVES MRS. CURLY!

Thanks folks... Have a good weekend!

9

2007-06-21T05:12:00.000-07:00

Howdy Saddle Slickers! Ol' Curly has been up since 3 this morning. We're down to two LC2 feeding per night and I'm starting to like this kid's style...

I hope you like the artwork this morning. This was the original banner from the CTS site knockoff. Some of you may remember that phase. I hope you enjoy this shot of the great white French hope... John Francis Barnyard. Damn he was hyped up. Worse than Mottet for cryin' out loud. I think he was one of the first to feature the "bike switch" in a TT. This TT pictured as a matter of fact. Up the Ventoux. TT bike for the flats, then the climbing bike for the climb. It worked... he won that TT and he wore Yella.

Cripes... it figures that a French race would put the leader in Yella... The French are experts at being Yella.

So Ol' Curly is back at work. Only 9 projects managed to make it to his desk yesterday. How does a person get 9 projects in one day... That's work until Oct... funny. Martaint... you keep quiet about why that's funny... in due time.

Remember way back when when we did the CYCA Web-Chili-cookoff and Jamboree? Well, a CYCA blog is coming... you'll get to read about what it's like to have people look at your ass at the end of a bike race. I know some of you have been there first hand... but now you can read about it.

Well... I'm gonna go have some toast and coffee... before I go start on all them "projects"... HA.. kills me.

Yer Trainin': Do a "Project"...

Punchin' the time clock again...

2007-06-20T04:16:00.000-07:00

Howdy Bike Racers! Ol' Curly is on duty right now (baby duty that is...) Hope you like today's banner... it was inspired by me having to go to work, one of my favorite views of Seattle, and the fact that I run on fumes most of the time...

Ol' Curly was as happy as a 6-legged colt at Longacres yesterday when he read the report about Hinault coming back to race again... ok, it's a cyclo tourismo, but still... the man is in his 50's for Whiskey Pete's sake... I hope he does well. Hell, I hope he wins... Hinault and Fignon are the only Frenchies that Curly likes... They was good in their day. Man, wouldn't that be cool to see the stars from 1986 come out to play again... Fignon, Lemond, Hinault, Kelly, Claude Criquielion, Hampsten, Zimmerman, Mottet... That would be some damned fine racing.

Anyone going to one of the Flandis book signin's...? I heard from an unreliable source that he was going to call it "It's not about the drugs"... but his legal team encouraged him to call it something more catchy... I gotta admit, that sub-title "The REAL story of how I won the TdF" sounds a bit like OJs book... "How I woulda killed Nicole... if I had done it" This is kind of a sad day and age for printed items.

Poor Tyler Hamilton... damn... that dude has served his time and he still can't get a break. He could always step down to P/1/2 and clean up at the local crits...

Yer Trainin':

Frosty

2007-06-19T04:26:00.000-07:00

Howdy spokey dokers! Ol' Curly goes back to work at the ranch tomorrow... The leave is over. LC2 has made it to 3 weeks old by tomorrow. One thing Ol' Curly knows fer sure is that he may or may not get to the 6 project requests in his inbox until Friday. Let a brother have some peace people... can those meeting requests wait until I git back?

So Curly's ass is frosted about a few things this morning. Issue one... you all may remember back in the day when the good ol' USA didn't exist and people organized to come to the new world so that they could build a country where folks could worship the way they wanted without being scrutinized (or killed). How the F did we make this country so damned religiously intolerant then? So what if Mitt Romney is Mormon... what's the big deal? Are we afraid he's gonna make polygamy the law? The same group of Christian fundamentalists hop on the ol' bandwagon and criticize the poor fella and we ain't even met his wives yet... And how does the CF's figure that they're being represented in the White House when the National Church is Catholic... Now Ol' Curly ain't gettin' down on all CFs, but it sure does frost his ass that the organized religion that preaches love and peace also houses the KKK. Now that's just offsides.

WTF... Ol' Curly is so tired of how Paris Hilton is portrayed as some sort of victim cuz she's claustrophobic and has OCD and has to be in a little cell... Stop breakin' the law then asshole! Jeebus H... So you did a little low-grade porn... so yer family has some money... the law applies to you too... commit the crime, pay the fine, do the time... that's Curly's motto... since he gave up favoring hangin'.

A wall?? 2 Million dollars for every mile of the 2000+ miles of Mexico/US border fence? The problem is not keepin' Illegal Immigrants out(or II's if you will) the problem is finding the right ones at Home Depot to help clear an overgrown hillside. C'mon... we can think of better ways to spend 4+ Billion dollars on something more than what Curly considers to be a useless landscaping project. Seriously tho... let's work on the process for getting II's through the system the correct way. Once someone from Mexico makes it here... the system allows them to stay pretty much illegally. Figure it out lawmakers, take some action... that's why we elected you. Let's face it tho... statistically speakin'... we won't have enough of a labor force to supply our needs in the next 10 years... we need to find some people... let's put something in place that allows that. The good ol' days of thinkin' that the Mexicans are here to steal our jobs is assinine... that mentality is soooo 1980's... The irony here is that puttin up walls is a great metaphor for GW's whole pregnancy... I mean presidency. And ultimately we could still use some money for better public transportation, some bridges and some more friggin bike trails... throw a little sugar here.

Alright... Curly is done for now... Yer Trainin': Help me clear my over grown hillside... and bring yer own shovel please.

Couple weeks to go now...

2007-06-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

Good mornin' Peda' Pushers! Ol ' Curly is up and ready to go this mornin'. He's had 4 solid hours of takin' a sleep and now it's time to get serious about race promotin'.

As you can see... the final design for this year's Des Moines crit t-shirt is off to print. The fine folks at JAMS Screenprinting in Chattanooga, TN are gonna get to printin' for us after they finish up at the Waffle House.

I thought I spend some time talking about Race Promotin' this week and the lack of REAL resources for new promoters to learn the craft.

There is a lack of resources for new promoters to learn how to put on a bike race properly... there ya go...

Anywho... Hope you had a good weekend... Remember, July 2nd I will reveal some shocking news and by July 13th I'll show you the new creative project Curly has been working on... Here's a shadow of a spoiler tho... just to keep you coming back. There will be t-shirts, new logos, new content and a shocking concept... never been done before that's for sure.

Your trainin': Get ready for the Des Moines Criterium... that finishing straight isn't flat. See if you can spot the enhancement in the address bar... a hint. It should say "www.coachcurly.com"

Happy Friday... again!

2007-06-15T05:38:00.000-07:00

Howdy crank spinners! Ol' Curly is in a good mood now... sorry about that unappreciative rant yesterday. Mrs. Curly made up for it by taking Ol' Curly down to that fine Des Moines seafood restaurant (who shall remain nameless due their lack of support for the bike race) to have some mussels, wine and dessert... without the LCs.

Speakin' of fishy... Ol' Nickels... the mayor of Seattle is havin' more issues. His kid is heading to court today for his involvement in a gambling ring. Nice... no, not graffiti.. not other childlike hijinx, but gamblin'. Nice bit of fathering Mr. Mayor... While yer off posin' for Vanity Fair, yer boy needed some guidance. Now get 1st Ave fixed will ya? Although, I'm rethinkin' my need for that...

Anyone else looking forward to watching 200 asthmatic riders travel across France in hopes of not testing positive for something and making to Paris...? Me too...

Lastly... if there is such a thing here at Curly Blog... The Des Moines Crit is shaping up to be a fine event this year. The entire finishing straight will be closed to cars of any kind. No easment road... and cones that riders with 3 whole lanes manage to hit anyway...

Yer Trainin': Use yer inhaler

Not to be a bastard...

2007-06-14T05:20:00.000-07:00

Howdy Chain Manglers! Ol' Curly is going to satisfy your need for a good ol' rant today. Now before I start sounding like a total ass-bastard, I'd like to point out that this rant comes out of love... and LC2 kept my ass up from 1:45 until now...

Now Mrs. Curly belongs to a couple of them MOPS groups... You know... Moms get together, bitch about their husbands, brag about how great their likes are compared to others and drink... OK... so Mrs. Curly picked one from a church so there ain't no sippin' whiskey there... Anywho, one benefit of the MOPS organization is that when a member has a baby, the others shign up to bring food to the newly crowned family 3 times a week. Now Ol' Curly has been patient with the "food" items that have passed the Curly house threshold (or CHT if you like). Last night was the final straw... I can no longer keep quiet and just be damned appreciative. Curly is a believer that if you decide to do something for someone.... do the damned thing right and do it to the hilt. It's just how I am.

This friggin casserole we got last night was so bad. I was going to take a picture of it but decided to respect y'alls ability to hold down yer breakfast. I am not kiddin' when I say it was made with leftovers. Gray asparagus, fatty pot roast, chopped lunchmeat ham, 4 kinds of noodles (all cooked in the same pot prolly) some bread crumbs and topped off with American Cheese. Now I'll eat the ass out of a 3-day old dead raccoon if I'm hungry enough but I just couldn't eat it.

So here goes MOPS... Let's try this from now on. Just go to Dream Dinners or Costco... flash yer card... and grab one of them Lasagnas out of the case. Curly will be much happier. You could get Curly one of them Pizzas pictures above... he likes those.

Hats off to our friend Dee... she made us some chicken with a glaze.

Yer Trainin': Hold yer food down after readin' this post.

it's on it's way

2007-06-13T08:03:00.001-07:00

hold yer damned horses... Curly is busy damnit

About time

2007-06-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

Howdy Velosexuals... Ol' Curly has it under control this morning. LC2 topped up and sleeping... LC1 still asleep due to that last dose of cough syrup. Mrs. Curly...? Hell... she'd sleep til noon if she somebody would record Regis and Kelly for her.

So Curly wants to make you aware of a new phenomenon that he really digs. USA Crits... Screw Europe... they have a bunch of dopers. It's time to boost racing in the Good Ol' USA. The best way to do that is to get some racing in front of the public. USA Crits is on their way. A Crit in every major city one day... just like the old Mayor's cup. Not sure the MLB logo copy was the way to go on their branding, but then I'm sure they were trying to tie into the popularity that baseball has. Glad to see the folks at USA Crits have been following Curly and his ideas... I would have preferred some credit tho... but then it's all for you bike racers now ain't it? You NW racers out there... Boise is yer closest chance to be part of the USA Crits phenomenon.

Short, fast, sprints... corners... crits have it all... cept' fer mud and gravel... but then OHOP and cross season have those things.

Crit season is upon us... and Kenny the Cash Register is prolly waiting in the shadows...

Your trainin': Watch CTodd climb up Mt. Washington... CLICK HERE

Just a reminder

2007-06-11T05:15:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers/riders/commuters/tandemers/etc... Ol' Curly wants to send you a few reminders...

He didn't forget about the BIG NEWS, he just can't say nothing just yet... look for it on July 13th. Those that may know, keep the secret.

Also... Yes, Martaint won a race again. We're so proud that the folks at Curly Corp made him cover boy. We should be featuring the Martaint Bike Cozies on a product review sometime soon. Just know that they were made using free materials and that they color match your wheels.

LC2 has thrown Ol' Curly a curveball... he now won't sleep between the hours of 2am and when Mrs. Curly gets up (which is around 7:55 but she acts like she's up at 6). In fact, Ol' Curly is typing this and using his foot to bounce the bouncy chair. This is the part Ol' Curly dislikes the most... It'll change tho.

Yer Trainin': You still trainin'? You should be racin'... shame on you

I like Chinese...

2007-06-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

They're cute and they're cuddly and they're ready to please... Some of you will get that. Alright... shameless plug for Curly's pal Tyler Martin. Some of you will remember him as the holder at the world-class TT known as Frostbite 2007.

He has his site up... and he's acupuncturin' and Chinese medicinin' up folks in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood. He is good... and Curly don't say that often... even if he gets things for free... and he don't... so put that in yer smoke and pipe it.

Tyler Martin (Not Chinese but still cute and cuddly)

Tell him Rob and Jennifer sent ya, cuz he hasn;t a tumbleweed's idea who Curly is.

At least you get a banner

2007-06-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

yeah... I'm tired and cranky today. Enjoy the banner.

~Coach Curly

LC2 Cast

2007-06-07T05:52:00.001-07:00

Just finished 3:30am feeding... Been a while since I've touched the bike... Ol' Curly's ass is becoming more soft. The fitness has fallen into the Diaper Champ.

Lil Curly 2 Cast from psbracing on Vimeo

SIDS (some serious talk from Curly)

2007-06-05T13:34:00.001-07:00

Another night of broken sleep. And as promised Ol' Curly is gonna give you the information he has about SIDS. It's a scray ass thing for parents. You never get a deep sleep for 2 years. No one really talks about it cuz it's too hard to deal with unexplained tragedy.

So here goes. It wasn't until the 50's that the term SIDS came about. An increase in the amount of sudden death while babies were sleeping. Dr. Jim Sprott has a pretty good case as to why he thinks this happens and how to prevent it.

CLICK HERE

Sure it may be a way to sell food grade bags to cover mattresses, but for 30 bucks... I'll suffer the embarassment of being duped. My point is... it's the best explanation they can come up with and there's some science behind it and look at how many chemicals are put into things these days. If I had my choice... I'd risk a non-fire retardant mattress for my kids health.

Now Ol' Curly is still gonna miss alot of sleep... he will until he dies... cuz that's how it works. I'll always be worried... I won't bother to tell the boys about it when the times comes... they'll figure it out. Now we have managed to get one kid through the danger zone with SIDS. For 30 bucks I'd like to make it 2 for 2.

Need sleepy

2007-06-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

Ol' Curly is surviving right now. Eyes burning... face drooping... patience disappearing... Like walking for miles through a desert in 110 degree heat and no water in sight.

Ok... So Curly is embellishing a bit. LC2 is quite the little eater. He'll eat a bidon of formula and go to sleep for 2-4 hours. Last night I only had to get up twice. Of course the feeling that something is wrong always wakes you up every 45 minutes. "Is he breathing?!! Whew!... ok... I'll try to get some sleep." Yeah... that goes on for weeks. Then you move them to their room and it gets worse. You want them to sleep through the night but that means you never trust that they're just sleeping... and your mind plays the worst tricks on you. The thought of going to get your kid and finding them blue in the their crib is a sobering thought for all you folks thinking about having kids... the parents out their know exactly what I'm talking about. I'll talk tomorrow about my interesting research on SIDS. I think you'll find it interesting.

Crap... Forget the training. LC1 is up stairs singing ABCs to get my ass up there to get him. He's doing it really loud too. I wish you could hear it.

Up all night and nothing to do...

2007-05-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

so I took the footage and made a movie... enjoy the ride.

Hudson Barnett Anderson from psbracing on Vimeo

I think we're good on kids...

2007-05-31T03:58:00.000-07:00

Howdy folks... All is well. Mrs. Curly is a champ. Her internals looked a-OK OAD... No need to post a photo... trust me...

Here's Lil' Curly 2's (or LC2) presentation shot.

Hudson Barnett Anderson entered the world with 6-7 little cries and then quickly settled down has his pops cleaned him off. He's nothing like his brother... he's quite a bit mellower and started eating right from the bottle with no instruction about 20 minutes after being born.

Oh.. 8lbs, 7oz, 19 inches long, 14 inch head... or 3/4 less than Curly BRO. He's a keeper. Mrs. Curly is great, and resting well on a steady diet of morphine, apple juice and Otter Pops.

That is all... No training today...

Need an ambulance?

2007-05-30T03:58:00.000-07:00

Howdy partners... Here's something to keep you busy. OAD... Kapfpappy... you fellers should donate one of your stash of bikes to Namibia. I think a Namibian would enjoy riding some Campy. You'll notice that the native Namibian is very careful in how he says "Basically, our government is crap and this country sucks... and people take advantage of us..." I read between the lines a bit...

Curly is out of the office

2007-05-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

Red Kite...

2007-05-29T03:48:00.000-07:00

Howdy... It's Tuesday... yeah, I took a long weekend. I hope you did too. Let's just say that I wasn't messin' around neither... It's the bell lap folks... for alot of things right now...

Oh... I may or may not post tomorrow. It depends on it I can get up before Mrs. Curly starts barking orders.

The Giro is on another rest day... I guess they deserve it.

Here... watch some coverage. I'm grasping for straws here.

SOIL... oh and 5 days left...

2007-05-25T04:52:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers, riders, commuters and dopers...

How friggin appropriate to have a photo of Ull-beeyatch and that whore Zabel riding a bike labelled "SOIL"... nuff said.

Curly is in a mood today and about to sell all his race bikes in favor of a 1-speed Free Spirit if they don't get their proverbial act toegther and close the chapter on who doped, who intended to dope, who dinnit dope, who took the blood but didn't inhale... This is crap.

I maintain my original idea of taking a different approach. Put everyone on dope... let's see just how good you can be with mega doses... screw the micro-crap. Lay it all out... Let's just see how good we can make the peloton. Let's just make everyone dope... I'm not even interested in the Tour this year... I had all sorts of plans to do some pansy-ass yellow banners and French crap every day... not doing it. I'm turning this blog into knitting blog or knick-knack blog... How about a "pastry a day" blog?

Yer trainin': I give up... do what you want. SO here you go instead... A scene from Curly's favorite movie to represent the frustration of the situation... It is 508 compliant so you can turn the sound off if you want.

Bell lap

2007-05-24T04:30:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers! It's Thursday and most of the week has flown by. Ol' Curly has been staying late at the ranch to wrap things up before leaving them in the lurch when he stays home for 3 weeks to help with LC1 and LC2. Don't worry... I won't forget about you while I'm doing that... We'll do something special every day... you can help me with the 3am feedings and the constant crying... I'l tape it and post it for ya.

Alright... the Giro is about to let us know who will be in the top 5. We have some serious climbing, but no mountain top finish. No worries... the big guns will fire off. How bout that Flandis? He may just be found innocent... problem is, no one cares any more and has washed their hands of him. I really don't care that he doped anymore... what pisses Ol' Curly off is that his stupid antics with Lemond ruined my chance of getting my jerseys signed and a photo op. Stupid ass bastard. Don't mess with Curly's idols... or Curly will put you in the Axis of Evil...

Speakin' of Asses... Maria Federici ... yeah, they released that she was at a .124 blood alcohol level at the time of the wreck. Now .08 is the legal limit... you do the math. Where were the friends that were drinking with her that night... why did they not come forward? Hold on... Curly needs to go punch a wall.... OK... better... The only good that has come from this is that they passed a law which has made an impact and is actually enforceable. Still... you F' with Karma... well, you know the rest.

Yer Trainin': I want you do try what these fellers are doing. At 4:40 into it, it's gets interesting. It's no wonder these guys accel at the track.

7 days to go...

2007-05-23T05:53:00.000-07:00

Howdy no show-ers! Where the hell were you all yesterday? Ol' Curly and Ol' OAD waited around all day long... we finally just left after a few hours... went and got some "work" done. Please call if yer not coming from here on out... it's just the right thing to do.

Alright... No fireworks yesterday as I passed the multitude of Starbucks locations on my way to tka eLil' Curly for a bike ride. No banners in the window sayin' "Hey... Thanks for stayin' so long Curly"... no ticker-tape... no f'n free drink... no call from the CEO letting me know they've decreed yesterday as some kind of "special" day... HA!... had ya goin' Ol' Curly could give a rats ass less. In fact he took the day off and asked that they hold off on any ceremony until Curly's former manager got back into town.

Lil' Curly and I had a hellva ride yesterday. That lil guy loves that trailer. SO much that he's willing to eat dirt for an hour and not say work word. Ol' Curly had a heluva time explaining how Lil' Curly looked like one of them dirty mouth commercials. Time to put a fender on.

So what's new with the Giro? Piepoli showed us what he's good at... today is a relatively flat stage into Turin and we're heading into some serious mountainage right quick.

The Coach Curly Overall Winner Prediction: It will be the year of the Russian. Evgueni Petrov

Alright... I'm tired, it's time to get Lil' Curly up and you guys may not even read this... Happy Fricken Wednesday, here's yer trainin'.

Yer Trainin': Cover your face with some kind of shroud and ride the BG trail. I want you to use the force to navigate your way from Seattle to Bothell... You E. Coast Crankys... you do the same on yer favorite trail. See if someone will video tape you doing this... I wanna watch it.

PEZ... way to take a ride on Curly's coat tail... PEZ's LATE POST ABOUT LIMONCELLO

200710

2007-05-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

Howdy partners! Ha!... Kind of a big day today. For whatever reason... morbid sense of curiosity... love of coffee... a paycheck... Ol' Curly has managed to reach the fifteen year mark. Today is the day. But before we get into that... let me handle the essentials. We head into Genova today. If yer in Italy ya gotta stop in Genova... Huge port town but some of the best pesto you ever done had. Seriously... I have never been able to duplicate it. It's not something you can just add more cheese to to get it to taste better.... and it pisses Ol' Curly off somethin' fierce. Anyway... it's also the major hub of getting to Nice and the French Riviera... if you take the train. Most of the Northern Italian mail sits at this port of a helluva long time before they finally seal up the crate and ship it off. Yeah... the Italians have shitty postal service... the worst ever. One time... I shipped some Aperol back from Venice on day 2 of my trip... it arrived (and one bottle took a blow to the cap) 2 months after I got home. The Deruta bowl I shipped on day 30 of my trip.... waiting on my doorstep.

It'll be tough to keep the groupetto together today... there's a helluva lot of bumps in the profile and a nice little riser to the finish.

15 years ago (yesterday) Ol' Curly was just Curly back then... he got a call at his hell on earth job at Boss Tweed in Bellingham, WA. They wanted Curly to interview for store #351... it was actually the 148th store built, but for some damned reason any store outside of downtown Seattle got a different number outside of the 100 level denomination. So... I told the caller that if he didn't mind that I had just cut up 40lbs of halibut into American-sized postions that I would come over immediately for an interview. He said "Shit, I was a Navy cook... I'll be fine"... Needless to say, some things are meant to be. It was different times back then folks... Almond Vanilla Hazlenut... Non-fat milk was an oddity... Whole milk was king... Breve was for the secret society that knew about it... Beans were scooped and bagged... coffee was lovingly ground, tamped and pressed into 2 shots of pure coffee goodness. There weren't any blenders... no teas other than the looseleaf ones that looked like spiders in a jar... Janette, Maggie, Paige, Stephanie, Julie, Leigh, Rachel, Carrie Lee, and Tony... Yeah... I remember all of their faces and what they taught me. Care about coffee, care about customers, care about what yer doin'. All of those folks are gone... I'm now part of the 2% of the relics that stay out of a morbid sense of curiosity. There will be 2 others that celebrate 15 years this month. One celebrated last week, one will celebrate next week. Do I miss my time in the front lines... a little... simpler times... times of clarity of purpose.

My first day on the job coulda killed me... the second opener called in sick... the asst. came in on his day off to get a till for me... They let me run a Sunday morning by myself. The customers felt so bad they pity-tipped. Like you tip the special needs fella who busses at a restaurant. Day one tips: $118... all acquired in the 3 hours I was by myself. What's next?? I'll tell you soon enough...

Yer Trainin': Go have a cup of coffee... ask what kind it is... think about what it took to get there... think about where you were on May 22, 1992... some of you watched Carson for the last time... ya see, that was also the day of his last Tonite Show. Happy World Biodiversity Day!

T-Minus... 9 days

2007-05-21T05:21:00.001-07:00

Howdy bike racers and bike racerette(s)?! Cury is in DA HOUSE!!! A good mix of weather this weekend wouldn't ya say? Saturday was a great day for dump runs if you didn't go to Enumscratch. As you can see from the photo on the left, Ol' Curly's grass is a growin'... It was kinda looking like Trump in some areas and Ed Asner in others so Curly took the mower to it to make it look even at least. After that was said and done Curly got Lil' Curly a bike trailer. Now I've had all sorts of recommendations and since this is a recreational (i.e. Inter-Bourbon Trail Only) Curly sought out the cheapest yet nicely designed trailer he could find for 67 bucks... of course he bought an Elmo-Approved helmet as well.

Mrs. Curly shook her head as Curly hooked it all up to his race bike. That is until she watched Lil' Curly's reaction to riding in it. He was happier than a undersexed Bull in a field of horny cows... Quite funny to be pullin' that damned thing and hearing a little voice from behind go "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" for an hour. Lil' Curly... you heavy buddy... let's lay off the Grammy Bears between meals pal.

How bout that finish at the Giro yesterday? Damn Bettini thought he had that... but it was a no-go as my countryman, Arveson punched it with 30 feet to go... gotta hurt. Go Norway! So... Today we're heading out from Parmasan country and out to the Tuscan Beaches... Can't tell you too much 'bout the Lido... and I've blacked out about my visit to nearby Parma... I can tell you this... We're not that far from one of Curly's favorite Italian regions... Pesto Region. Oh... Curly can taste it now... I spose this will spark all sorts of interesting conversation about the Cinque Terre... That place sucks. It's overdone and thanks to Rick Steves, Vernazza will never be the same. Ok... so Vernazza has one of the last "wallet-snatchers" in Italy at it's train station... but still, it's been ruined. Back to today's stage... should be a ho-hummer as they've put the mountains in the 1st third of the course with a flat run into the Lido... Look for another Norwegian to be in the top 2 today.

Yer Trainin': Why don't ya strap up yer $400 child trailer and then load it up with 120lbs of weight... then go do some climbing... only, wear some flip flops instead of using yer clipless pedals... Let's see how good of a spinner you are without those Speedplays.

Damn... I nearly forgot to mention this. I also worked a bit more on my online resume slash portfolio... while I was doing that, I made you all a little Flash Interaction with a rapid design tool I'm reviewing... It's in the sidebar there... right above the banner museum link, Gewilli... I made you your own button... Let's see if you can find it.

Can I git my jersey signed?

2007-05-18T03:52:00.000-07:00

Vai con disco bike racers! Ol' Curly is as happy as a 3-weiner'd toad this morning. Mrs. Curly once again put Curly's bibs in the dryer... and his base layers. Her only response was to start labelling things "dryer" or "no dryer"... I'm willing to cut some slack since we're in the final 200m of pregnancy and all, but DAMN! There are 3 things you never do with lycra... don't iron it... don't put it in the dryer... and don't put it in the dryer! Now Ol' Curly knows what yer thinkin'... "Oh Curly... you should just do your own laundry" To which Ol' Curly sez... Shut yer your glory hole... That was part of the deal! If I gots to be garbage man, poop picker upper, general thankless job ho... I'd like the rules for lycra followed.

Now, we're off to Spoleto this mornin' for the finish of today's stage. Spoleto is a cow pies throw to places like Deruta (the pottery), Perugia (those little Baci chocolates), Assisi (the fat, poor priest) and Orvieto (some damned fine white wine)... No one goes to Spoleto on purpose... but you should. It's nice and quiet there and a great homebase for hittin' all those other places. Plus... the folks in Spoleto are some damned fine hosts. Don't tell them Curly sent ya tho... He had a little accident in the city's main fountain and he never calls or writes anymore... Now there's one big ass climb right in the middle of the stage today... not big enough to shake up GC but big enough to put some hurt on the sprinters teams for keeping things together. THERE WILL BE A BREAKAWAY... it'll come back together tho. Look for my countryman, Hushovd to make a run for the white stripe.

How 'bout the Flandis Carnival huh? Part of me thinks this is all a UCI ploy to get some TV time and hence bring in sponsors through the "sensationalistic" angle... This story has it all. Any second now, Dr. Fill and Dr. Oprah will offer free council. I'm not sure what to make of this whole thing... it just seems bizarre now.

Yer Trainin: It's Friday... You prolly have Enumscratch to do and so you should only do 10X20 minutes intervals at 230% today. Sounds like Ol' Lemond will be at the Diabetes ride so I can git me jersey signed and some photos.

OK... I had to swap out the video. This is much better. I like this missing saddle spray and it's nice to see some PROs slightly drunk and trying to do an interview. At about 2:10 left, Lemond starts to talk about his diet.

DiLuca Di Happy

2007-05-17T05:51:00.000-07:00

Well well well.... I guess Di Luca can finally be happy for himself. He managed to pimp slap Cunego at the end of the day and build a bit of a lead for himself. To celebrate I sent him a bottle of vintage Vini di Curlio from our vineyards in the Lazio region... nice to see that he's wasting it on spraying the crowd... that jackass. You DRINK it...

AC Milano knockoffs, Team Lamonta got their stash of PRO bikes stolen in the Netherlands... My old buddy Hondo rode for them. Umm hi... people steal things... lock it all up. It reminds me of the feller that left his expensive TT bike outside of a coffee shop recently only to find it gone when he came out... HELLO riders... we don't live in "Fairhaven, Bellingham" times anymore... people steal things... lock it up.

That reminds Ol Curly of his rides to Tony's Coffee after getting off of work at Starbucks. Yeah Yeah... Ol' Curly used to ride down to Tony's after work for an espresso and a piece of lemon-poppyseed cake... and to visit Britt, the cute barista. The procedure was to lean the bike up outside and then shift it down 2-3 gears... why? Cuz some feller tried to grab my bike once and ride off... unbeknownst to him I was on my way to retrieve it and he had a little trouble accellerating. Needless to say I was able to ID him and get my bike back and remember how dumb he looked trying to sprint off on a bike that wasn't willing. Campus PO-lice found 18 stolen bikes and 3 others that were unidentifiable at his abode... that's how you do that!

Yeah... the old mis-shift... I miss them days... Hi Britt, my coffee ready?

Well, we're inside of 2 weeks to go until LC2 arrives. What a way to ruin yer day. Yer all nice and cozy and then WHAM! Some jackass you don't even know (really how many people do you actually know as a newborn) pulls on yer head and legs, sticks some pointy thing in yer nose, pinches and prods you... slaps yer naked ass on a cold table and then the fun starts... they start pulling things off of you. I don't blame babies for crying all the time. Depressing. It's part of the reason you don't remember any of that stuff... it was so traumatic that you've repressed it... that is until you're on yer way out... then you remember it... Go into the light...

Alright... Yer damned Trainin': I want you to do 9 sprints of 30 seconds long... on yer way to the coffee shop... then I want you to use yer nice bike as bait to catch bike thieves... use the technique I told you about.

Damn You 1st Avenue Potholes!

2007-05-16T04:25:00.000-07:00

How-deeee Bike Racers and Bike Racer-ettes! The Giro is back in action. Don't you hate rest days? No live feed to view while yer "working"... I got an e-mail from my cohorts in Salerno... they'll be at the top of the Amalfi Coast "highway" today with their caravan and vino... Now a promise has been made that when they're writing "Il Falco" on the roads, they will take the time to paint "Coach Curly" there as well... We'll see... I still have yet to see a couple of things they were "sending" home for me... Yep... Big day... First of the climbs... new leader for sure.

To the feller that e-mailed asking for the best use of Limoncello... make a vodka martini... drop a half ounce of Limoncello in the bottom and toss a lemon rind in it... you'll be much happier you drank it that way.

Updated Banner Museum... Link on the right. My only beef is that Picasa "JPEGifies" the images... stupid PNG convertering software.

Here's a little story I've been holding on to for a couple of days. On Monday's bike commute to work I took the camera to record some footage. I was in a hurry so I strapped on the camera mount to my race bike and pop in the short mount. It's a tight fit so I didn't use the set screw... It wasn't a problem until I hit that goddamned 1st Avenue... a pothole... which I saw... pop the camera and mount right out... which I saw and tried to hold the camera... too late... ahhhh.... crash... It landed on the mount first before skittering across the pavement. I saw a piece fly somewheres... Now I stopped and said "oh shit"... Then I got the camera and noticed that it has a few scratches and that the media card door was missing... I popped the whole thing together, threw it in my bag and continued on... I was so mad I hoovered the last half mile cussin' the entire way. Showered... got to my desk... put the door back on, dusted it off... Bob's yer uncle... Camera fine... the footage however, all sound and black screen. The fall must have corrupted something cus only 5 of the 16 clips were viewable.

Quote of the day: How to pick up Podium Girls Advice from Steve Cummings at Discovery...
PEZ: "Any comment on the Podium girls?"
Steve Cummings: "I've been taking advice from Whitey (Disco's Aussie stalwart, Matt White) and he says you have to go in easy, just say 'hello' then leave it a day or two before you say anything else. He reckons the Italian guys go in too hard and too quick!"

So true fella... so true... They really should be asking Hincapie this question... he's had some success I hear.

Yer Trainin': We're about 2 weeks away from some real track racin'... time to work on yer bike handlin'. I'd like you to taunt bike messengers today. Go downtown and call them names during peak traffic... now really taunt them too... you need to make sure they're motivated to chase... If yer doing it right you should feel like Kevin Bacon in Quicksilver. If yer doing' it wrong yer gonna feel like Kevin Spacey at the end of American Beauty.

Don't Forget The Giro: The LIVE video feed starts up at 6:15am PST

This kid is crazy... and it's vlogs like this that make him like him so much... Lawnmowin'

Rest Day?? WTF?

2007-05-15T04:41:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers! Ol' Curly is pretty satisfied right now... The Giro is here, Flandis had a decent day yesterday, and 2 more weeks until I take 3 weeks off. Yeeee HA! Oh... and lil' Curly2 will be here as well... can't ferget 'bout that.

Ol' Curly is a bit miffed that we barely got the tires pumped up at the Giro and they're already taking the day off. That's so Italian... Yesterday's stage into Cagliari had to be a good one for Petacchi. That boy has been dealt some serious sprinter hardships. Let's face it... when yer a sprinter and you can't seem to win... what the hell good are ya? Ya can't TT, ya can't climb... hell yer not even good in breakaways... Welcome back Peta. This reminds me of that feller Guido Bontempi... now that guy could sprint. I think he defined the 55X11 sprint finish. Go with 200 m left and plop it into the biggest gear you can find. He could TT the hell off a prologue too. What the hell happened to him... he's the DS with Cunego's team now. One helluva a sprinter that feller.

So tomorrow the Giro will leave the fine town of Salerno. Ol' Curly couldn't find it this morning but he has one fine photo of him eatin' pizza at 2am...drunk off his ass... in Salerno. Good times. Tomorrow's stage takes us up the Amalfi coast... past all the little towns like Praiano, Ravello, Positano... through Sorrento. I gots mixed feelings about Sorrento. Curly and his buddy dined and dashed there once and the Sorrentoans have never forgot it... We was outta money alright... ok... we didn't want to spend the money... Don't think less of Ol' Curly... he was in a bad spot in his life... ok... he was getting divorced and trying to spend all his stock option money before the Old Bat got any of it...

So... Salerno... they'e got some damned fine Mozzarella di Bufala there. If you ever get there eat some... it's good... and drink the Limoncello too... but not too much or I swear to you, you'll pay a price like you wouldn't believe. You'll have the throbbinest headache you ever thought of havin'.

Limoncello Factoid: The drink is only about 20 years old... it ain't ancient or some old recipe. Lemon rinds, sugar, liqour or gas... whichever you prefer... let it sit... Limoncello.

Alright... Wanna watch the Giro online... GO HERE! This fella does a good job at keepin' things real stage by stage... and he recycles RAI footage. It's in Italian, but you can see what's going on. OH... by the way... watch the last 30 seconds of the TTT stage... you can see how tickled DiLuca was...

Yer Trainin': Tonite is PR (which Curly won't be at) so do only 8 X 20 min intervals before you go.

Buon Giorno Curliosos!

2007-05-14T05:54:00.000-07:00

Buon Giorno ... aww crap... Curly ain't no Eye-Talian. Howdy bike racers! I trust you had a good weekend... it was pretty damned nice weather-wise here in Ranch-ville. This weekend was of course Mother's Day... and the Giro d'Italia kickoff. How 'bout that TTT finish. Despite what DiLuca sez... he was pissed on the coverage I saw. Real nice attitude from the team leader. Ummm DiLuca... Hows about givin' some sugar to your teammates ya penne-eatin' toad? Anyone else think that DiLuca don't even look Eye-talian? I'm surprised they don't have a test for that... Oh wait... they do... they have 2... his last name and he wears suits at all times.

Let's face it tho... he's no Cipo.

Flandis trial starts today... inquiry... whatever. I have no hopes for him... cuz I'll just be disappointed. Although that Campbell feller on the panel seems to know Curly heart and how to vote. We'll see...

Anyways... keep yer eye on that Giro. It's the only PRO racin' we got right now... even if all of the good PROs are off counting their savings.

Yer trainin': I want you to do sprints to the Gelato shop. It's Gelatiamo if yer here in Seattle. Tell Maria that Curly sent ya... she'll only charge you $3.85 for a coppa with 2 scoops. That's the Italian price. WANNA SEE THE NEGACOACH? They call him Solobreak in this vid... but it's NEGA... that famous feller from the VeloSnooz site of the day!

Friday Local Product Review

2007-05-10T23:15:00.000-07:00

Yeeeeee Haaa! Bike Racers! It's Friday, we have product reviews, video, fun, etc. Everyone is probably heading' off to that big bike race this weekend. Not Ol' Curly... It's Mother's Day this weekend... that would not go over well. A pregnant lady having to care for lil' Curly all weekend long on Mother's Day weekend... I'd be shot. Ol' Curly knows the pain he'd be in for the rest of his life.

Alright... we're reviewing something near and dear to Ol' Curly. The Alchemy Goods bags and sundries. They’re waterproof and the durable rubber exterior won’t easily stain. These are amazing, strong bags that you will be proud to own. HA!... the best thing about these bags is that they use a whole buch of crap we'd be putting in the land fills or junkyards. My bag has Cheng Shen written all over it... that's cuz the bike shop they got the tubes from uses crappy cheap tubes... My only beef would be that it would be nice to have some Vittoria tubes in my bag. Now as Ol' Martaint has prolly figured out... Curly has been deconstructing this idea in his mind and trying to figure out how to make the same thing for himself. Just like my custom Renn Disc track axle converter... that took alot of effort, but we finally got a mockup that works... 'cept Curly's machine shop relative needs to whittle the diameter of the axle down just a touch and smooth out the solid pawl teeth so they engage a bit better. Back to the bags... they're good... Made in Seattle, with inner tubes and seatbelt straps... go buy yerself one. You'll be happy you did.

Now... on to the entertainment. Good luck in yer race... nice work on shafting mom so you could go off and ride yer bikes. I won't even remind you about the labor to get you into this world...

Lunch Ride (webisode 4) from psbracing on Vimeo

When work at the ranch meets blog about bikes

2007-05-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

Alright Ol' Curly usually keep these things to only once per day, but I found this to be too interesting to hold back until tomorrow. As some of you know Ol' Curly handles new media/learning/development/training projects at the Ranch. Part of that involves researching what others do and think about these things and creating new things. It's why this blog exists and why you folks are all in on the experiment. Anyway... food for thought on how these daily stops we call BLOGS will shape the way we connect a group of folks to each other besides going to races and seeing each other on the proverbial road. For example... I didn't know OAD, StokerDiva, Gewilli, CTodd and many others until we all connected the dots. Some came here first... others came here after being told to come here... still, others made their way here after I made my way to their neighborhhoods... enjoy.

Happy Thursday!

2007-05-10T05:28:00.000-07:00

Howdee Bike Racers! It's Thursday... Remember when we used to do trivia on Thursday? Yeah... you guys just weren't into it.

Well, it's BBQ season and you know what that means... It's grillin' time. Time to get off of work at a reasonable hour to fire up the Weber and grill some meat and veggies... Curly Style! That just means you open a beer or two while yer cookin'. I think you can manage that without needin' an instructional video. Nothin' like watching the Curly watchdogs salivate for 12 minutes solid.

Oh yeah... we're gonna see some fireworks here pretty quick once all of the PROs come clean and use this phrase "I was gonna dope... I didn't... but I was gonna. All of my wins before I got caught were on the level... My conscience was bothering me about my "intending" to dope. But trust me... Yeah, I've lied for years about doping, but now I'm fer real."

Yer not hearin' too much about the testing process are you? Not until it gets down to the wire and the lawyers make arguments about how the blood was obtained, what's in the blood and how OJ was prolly involved. I have to hand it to Richard Pounder. He has kept his mouth shut pretty much. I'm sure he wants to talk. Something to note: About a year ago I was able to voice my concern to Mr. Pounder about his methods via e-mail (acquired through the UCI site)... Yeah, that e-mail address disappeared pretty quickly. 'Cept for the Contact Curly set up in his Outlook.

Yeah... we're gonna see some real fireworks. Hondo is gone, Hamilton is gone. We have about 2-3 weeks until Armstrong gets mentioned about being a possible doper (to which I don't see the point anymore) Scarponi pretty much has said he's a doping loser. We'll see an interesting Giro and Tour this year that's for sure. It's a sad friggin day when a guy like Bettini has a chance at winning the Giro.

Yer Trainin': Grill something and then do some sprints... you should be plenty rested. Try to sneak out at lunch too... Lastly, Ol' Curly is gonna leave you with some media for thought. Remember when we didn't know much about doping? I liked them days. This is fun to watch. The 1989 World Champs

Martaint does it again

2007-05-09T05:45:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers! That was one helluva PR race last night! Ol' Curly managed to hang in there which is a good sign. There were 3 bell laps in a row... by the time Ol' Curly recovered from the first one, the 2nd one rang... then it was the final lap... needless to say being in about 30th position in the strung out group, sprinting for 30th seems like such a dumbass thing to do... like risking life and limb for a ClifBar. Hats off to everyone who chopped Curly's ass in corner 3... much appreciated... That had to be the choppiest chop suey circuit race I've been in for a long time. There was more sketchin' than a composite drawing room after a bank robbery. Some serious herkin' and jerkin'. Why I ain;t seen jerkin' like that since Rush Limbaugh decided to make an ass outta himself by immitating a man with Parkinson's. Why I've seen 3-year olds hold better lines before. Still, it was a good training ride. Avg 178 bpm and a max of 194 for the final lap. Avg speed around 24.5...

Now onto Martaint. Either Ol' Curly better start a palm readin' business or Intern Martaint has been following the workouts... or both. You are the champion of the small fishbowl Martaint. A warm Curly thumbs up to your sprinting abilities.

Before heading off to PR, Curly did manage to go home early yesterday and cook his ribs,... have a little salad and a beer. Thanks to Mrs. Curly for being so kind as to let Curly test his legs last night.

Martaint... I'm making you something nice today... I'll post it tomorrow.

Your Trainin': Go for a ride today... I'm goin' to take a nap.

I'm so chipper

2007-05-08T05:24:00.000-07:00

Ol' Curly rented a chipper over the weekend as stated in the Friday post from last week. Quite an ordeal... Now there ain't much that scares Curly... 'cept for maybe Intern Martaint in a dress and heels. But this thing made Ol' Curly uneasy... that's alot of blade,engine and so forth to have your limbs around. So after starting up Ol' Gertie, Curly started to feed in some little branches... Bzzzzzzz... and then some chips. Ok... Let me put in something bigger... BZZZZzzzzzz... chips. Hmmm... I wonder if Ol' Curly would put this big branch in... BBBBBZZZZZZZzzzzzZZZZZzzz... some chips. I bet it couldn't this small tree up... BBBBBBZZZZ....ZZZZZZ...ZZZzzzzzzBBBBbbbbBbbbb... oh crap.

Hello... R&R Rentals? Let's say someone clogged up a chipper with too big of a... we'll call it a small log for now... how would they unclog the chipper? Did I purchase the insurance...? No... was I sposed to? OK... Ill try that.

BBBBRRRrzzzzbbb... chips... whew!... Honey... hand me that stump.

Alright... It's flats night... you know what that means. Ol' Curly will be at PR. I had to do some quick thinkin' too seeing that I came home from work at 7:30 last night and ruined the plans to cook us some fine ribs on the grill. Now seeing that the Winers will be there tonite, I wonder if Pruitt can repeat his fine win from last week. Will Curly be able to hang? Will Martaint pull a sneaky bastard and pull out a win? Will Breiling go with the winning riders or hang at the back like me? All questions that will be answered by 8pm tonite...

6 minutes of PR footage...

Yer Trainin': Rest up for the innertube sprints at PR tonite.

The "I DID NOT have sexual relations with that woman" comments of the week!

There's a couple of letters in the alphabet that I think fits this quite nicely... BULL SHIT!

Damn You Horner!

2007-05-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

Howdy biker fellers and fellas... It's Ol' Curly once again and he's just a bit pissed off. I want that damned Horner to win like you wouldn't believe. He has all of the know-how, the ability, the gumption... he just can't deliver the goods. I had a slight glimmer of hope in my mind that when he said that Dekker would win the TT and he would be top 5 that he was just feeding the press some garbage before spittin' in the eye of his competition... but hell no... he was tellin' the truth... Just win dangit! Ever since Ol' Horner came thundering down the streets of Seattle on his way to win the Microsoft Grand Prix... and then got off the bike at the line and did an Alexi Grewal... I knew he was destined to put on a show... Where's the show varmint? Well... at any rate... he's from Oregon and that counts for something.

Now on to the host country. This ain't no tourist board sponsored post neither. I gotta hand it to the Swiss (once again) those wishy washy, money grubbin' bastards would sell their own mothers if it meant makin' a buck to squirrell away in their already full banks. They let Unibet in their race. Now Ol' Curly likes that Unibet raced, but ain't that like the Swiss to be so "neutral" that they end up makin' a statement in the process...? A whole mess of other countries have jumped on the political issue of internet gamblin' now too... but not Ol' Switzerland. I 'spose they have a duty seein' that the UCI headquarters is in Aigle. Alright... I'll focus on the positive... Switzerland does have some damned fine cheeses, some of the finest cows, a helluva good stash of wines, fondue, watches, lakes, churches and such... and they all speak like 5 languages out of the womb.

Well I'll be a hootenhollerer... I just realized that track starts this week. Pre-Season... that is... and it's gonna be nice I hears. Actually, Ol' Curly has a crick in his neck and a sore elbow... that means it's gonna be sunny when that starts happenin'. Ol' Curly's granny had the same gift fer predicting the weather... Ahhh... Ol' Curly's granny... I'll have to tell you the story about how Curly's Uncle burned down Curly's granny's house back in the 40's... another time.

BASSO - You stupid SOB. First you weasel out of the initial investigation. Then you act like a victim when Bjarne (who doped mind you... according to T-Mobile Dr.s) canned your ass... then you take a job with Discovery (who trusted that you weren't a liar)... then you do absolutely nothing this season... then you quit... and now you admit to being a doper and involved with the biggest doping scandal since the East German (wo)men swimmers grew penises from all of the steroids and crap... Shame on you dude... shame on you. You look like a jackass and even if you do come back you'll always be a prosciutto-eatin' lying bastard.

XoXoXo,
Love, Curly

Yer Trainin': I want you to start out doing sprints and then end up doing some low intensity endurance work... this'll help you be a wishy washy bastard like the Swiss... you never know when they're hirin' and you'll need experience.

Greg Lemond and I are the same...

2007-05-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

... sized jersey. XXL... I'll be presenting him with a "Big Coffee Cup" bike jersey... in a couple weeks.

When you see the Lemond photos and accompanying video... I'd like you to think to yerself.

"Curly is my idol..."

Hum it to yerself... you'll know what it means.

That's no hub... It's a space station!

2007-05-04T03:01:00.000-07:00

Daaaaaammn Dude...

Howdy fellers and fellas... sorry you had to see that display. Like watching a train wreck... frame by frame. Ol' Curly just can't kick a man when he's down. OK... he can... That was like watching homemade bike porn for Grizzly Adams, with the lead role played by Leif Garrett and filmed by a Kung Fu movie camera man... In some unibomber-style backwoods shed. Now that's how you sound editing...

OK... Gewilli... Coach Curly welcomes you dude and extends the proverbial "hand"... No, not the hand I showed you yesterday... the good hand.

It's that time again... Time I started my prep for the Des Moines Criterium... which is not that far away. I'm pretty amped that this will be the Master's State Crit champs venue AND that Mrs. Curly can share the burden... Now that she understands registration a little better. With that in mind she'll be about 5-6 weeks off of having lil' Curly 2... Now before ya git all bent outta shape, the mockup to the left is just that... a mockup... I only threw Sundt in there cuz he waxed everyones ass last year and used his usual flair in doing it... the zipping up of the jersey with 1 to go. Damn that would have been good to get on film.

City Council meetings have started and there's more support since people saw last years. Next task... take Des Moines finest to lunch at Mike's Mandarin Kitchen (the finest Chinese-style cuisine in Des Moines mind you)... and discuss closing 7th entirely. And no Martaint... I'm not lobbying to remove the turtles... Des Moines may be waterfront, but it's still Po'.

On tap for the weekend... the traditional Sat a.m. "Dads with no time to ride except 6:00 a.m." ride, followed by a trip to R&R to pick up the Chipper... oh yes... It's time to rent the chipper. Well you saw my pile from the Dogwood tree, but you have not see the Laurel clippings... or that I told a few of my neighbors that I was renting it "so, hurry up and prune yer overgrown trees"

Now in true "green" fashion... all of the chips go in the dog-poo containment area...

Yer trainin': You have a big race this weekend with Longbranch and all... just do the 15 minutes every hour for 24 hours... that should loosen up yer legs. ok...

Here's some stunning photoshop techniques done in Photoshop... this guy is inspiring for an Illustrator/Photoshop geek like Ol' Curly.

Product Reviews - Greyhound Juice & Stoked Hat

2007-05-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike fellers! It's time for a Coach Curly product review. Now remember, Coach Curly thinks product reviews are usually crap... so it's a big deal when Ol' Curly talks good about anything that don't have the word "Campagnolo" on it. Let's start off with the Stoked Hat I received from the good folks at theStoked Hats Co. Not only did the company deliver the hat to Ol' Curly on Tuesday race night, but they custom made it in Curly's team colors. A++ for service... It's been cold enough in the great NW for Ol' Curly to have a crack at wearing it quite a bit and as you can see it's vibrant coloring has held up to tree trimming, weekend rides and Lil' Curly gettin' his greasy lil' grammy bear hands all over it... sorry Lil' Curly, but it's true... now go wash yer hands. Now having grown up in a Scandanavian family, there was always plenty of afghans and crochetted things around... this is WAY different... it's really comfy and not too hot.

2 Curly Thumbs up ... and not cuz it was free neither... I'd easily pay the price of an Axley baseball cap for one of these... not that I'll need to as this one will prolly last ferever.

Next... we move on to Greyhound Juice. As you can see... I have a pretty good selection of their products (all paid for mind you... so no damned... "I got this for free so it's good mentality")

Let's start with the Original muscle warming salve. This does the trick on any cold muscle. It's hot... I've had some good luck with it on a naggin' back muscle... loosens it right up and let's me ride without pain. DO NOT ever touch your taint with this... EVER. You'll see if you do... If you are a big idiot and yo udo get some on yer taint... do Curly a favor... go run hot water on it. Then film yerself... I wanna see yer reaction. For the price of them other products out there... this is a good value and easy to apply. It's made in good Ol' Portland, OR too... Tell 'em Curly sent ya. Oh... and don't think about using this spicy number on chips or nachos... it doesn't go well with nacho cheese.

Onto their other creams... The shammy (Anti-Friction) cream works as well as more expensive Ass-sos "empty yer wallet" cream... It works for runner's nipples too. Buy it... tell 'em Curly sent ya.

The Aftershave and Body Cream is prolly Curly's favorite... after a nice manly leg-shavin', you slap some of that on and not only does it smell good but it keeps the ashiness away so yer legs look like a newborn piglet's ass. In a good way...

OK... Gewilli... I want to thank you for your critique...

Yer Trainin': Go win yer trainin' race tonite.

It's Bike to Work Month!

2007-05-02T04:41:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers and those that have joined late! Just a reminder that it's Bike To/At Work month! The month when we can git folks who wouldn't normally get off their ass and ride the mile and a half to work to hop on their Free Spirits, don a Bell V1 PRO and tell folks that they "rode to work"! Woo Hoo! Now when's lunch and where's my free BTW water bottle... and how come there was only 6 BTW stands on my 1.5 mile epic ride to work?

Just kiddin' OAD and StokerDiva... Ol' Curly is appreciative that Seattle has such a thing... He also likes that the mayor opened his wallet to put together a 240m dollar bike plan. Maybe I can have 28 of those dollars to stop at Dunn Lumber and buy some QuickRete to fill the damned potholes on First Ave with something other than chewing gum.

You should see the bike cage at the Big Coffee Cup these days. 50-70 bikes crammed in there. I'll post some photos of it a little later today. it's quite a site. Speakin' of which I'd like to thank a couple of people from the Coffee Cage. The person who keeps putting "Your Bike Is Hot!" cards on all of the race bikes. You have good taste. And B... the jokester who crammed his circa Beijing vegetable market POS right next to Phyllis and put a scratch in her. I'm so thankful I'm gonna come to yer cube. (Phyllis is the love of my riding life for those later arrivers). This reminds Ol' Curly of last year's BTW month when another thoughtful individual did the same thing to Loretta (last year's love of my life). That resulted in some fine discussion.

Yeah, the Coffee Cage has quite a few fine ponies... My favorite is the Bianchi Track bike with a 8 inch wide flat bar and mountain bike grips on it... Old Skool. Nothing says "I can't breathe" like a narrow mtn bar.

Ol' Curly can hear it now... "But Curly... you should ride something less nice to/at work" or "Curly why not put some fine electrical tape all over yer bike like me?" To which I'll say shut yer yapper. You know Curly likes things his own way at his own time in his own place. Practice some care with yer pony in the Coffee Cage. Go lean yer BikeFriday up against that Giant Topanga with rust on it... there's plenty of room.

Yer Trainin': In anticipation for upcoming races... We're back to hard interval sessions. I want you to sprint in your 60X9 at 200 rpms until you pass out. When you wake up that signals the start of the next "work" period. Oh... and watch yer damned bike... Phyllis prefers Eye-talians.

Testa Calls... and "Organic First Take Video"

2007-05-01T03:54:00.000-07:00

Lunch Ride (webisode 3) on Vimeo

Howdy bike racers!... We also have the written word for you today. Coming at you from the Southwest is a brief interview with PRO Omer Kem. This interview brought to you by Bissell: Sporty... Stylish... That's Bissell!

Coach Curly: What was the name of your first bike race?
Kem: Coast Hills MTB Race. I won the sport class....

Coach Curly: Better coach... Joe Friel or Coach Curly?
Kem: Coach Curly, or at least Curly has a better website...

Coach Curly: Umm, I'll take that as a "Yes, Coach Curly is a better coach"

Coach Curly: Where were you when WHAM! broke up?
Kem: Damn, I don't get that one...

Coach Curly: No need to ask the next question then... Do you find Andrew Martin attractive?

Coach Curly: If Massimo "Testa calls", do you grab it?
Kem: Hell yeah, hopefully he has Dr. Ferrari conferenced in...

Coach Curly: You grab... Testa Calls... got it.

Coach Curly: Which of the two riders do you think you could beat in a sprint?... Michael Pruitt or Kenny Williams?
Kem: I don't even know if I could beat Pruitt...

Coach Curly: Way to make your sponsor's look good...

Coach Curly: Sponsorship aside... if you had to buy a vacuum... Dyson or Bissell?
Kem: Bissell's are better because Mark Bissell is a cool guy to hang out with...

Coach Curly: I bought an Oreck for the same reason... David Oreck can drink you under the table... even at age 83

Coach Curly: ok... thanks fer yer time Omer. Make sure you grab one of my books, 6 pairs of Axleys and one of them Priority Health Stoked Hats on the way out.

Yer Trainin': It's that time again. We have but a few short weeks until track racing starts and your cadence has gone to hell pushin' all them big gears... Take the chain off yer bike and ride for 2 hours. Keep the cadence up... we're working on spinning... Stranglelanderjunson... you know how it works....

Nesting Instincts for Dads

2007-04-30T06:07:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers! Another busy weekend with chores and such around the ranch. Surprisingly, yesterday's "Lunch Ride" was just the thing I needed to re-energize. Hey nice work to the HB feller that nearly beat DiLuca yesterday... another 50m and he woulda had him I think. How was your weekends? It was nice to see some weekend updates from the races... including OAD, Stoked and AwedJob who ran the Eugene Marathon and webcasted/podified his 26.2 mile journey. I hope you raised alot for homelessness.

I'm still waiting for CTodd to get hold of another camera so he can post some fine content. I spent my weekend taking care of Lil' Curly (still recovering and not wanting to sleep in his bed... and waking up every hour) and working on yard projects. I did manage to git a ride or two in as you'll see. Lots of story ideas from the weekend... you'll see them this week. We're down to 4 weeks to go until all "family" hell breaks loose and I start sharing some dad reality with you via video... yer gonna see some real tired. How about that Basso...? Leaving so fast buddy? Now if all falls into place just as it should , he'll "retire" and Graham Watson can make some cash off of the photo montage. Shame on you Asso, I mean Basso... And that was Thai Pasta I made... I found this little video over the weekend. Just a warning... it's curiously addicting. THE VIDEO

Yer Trainin': Let's do a little yardwork this week huh?... Yer grass is lookin' pretty shabby.

Lunch Ride (webisode 2) on Vimeo

WII - Farmboy Training Mode

2007-04-27T15:28:00.000-07:00

If yer a WII fanatic... you'll like this.

Click To Play

Coach Curly Training Principles - Planning

2007-04-27T05:09:00.000-07:00

Good Friday "Only 8 hours of work left in your day" racers! Ol' Curly is real sorry for yesterday's rant... It was unavoidable. The Green Valley TT is tomorrow... something to celebrate. Ol' Curly is gonna do it but knows that the fitness is not there. Gotta keep on keepin' on though.

How's yer training going? It occurred to me yesterday that there's something to using the instructional design principles I use at work and training principles for cycling. Joe Friel has been monopolizing the industry with his "scientific" approach. It's time Ol' Curly's applied good ol' ID expertise to this "old skool" sport. Ol' Curly will use the definition of "Training" to help us build our program. Training is "knowledge and skills" to be used in our current job at hand. NOT future stuff... that's called "Development" we can do that too... but you have to know the difference.

OK... so first we develop our "Learning Objectives". Now under Friel's program you set "goals"... In my program... we'll do Learning Objectives.

To go 30mph with the pack
Finish a PR (with the S-turn) with the pack
TT at 26mph average speed on a flat course

Next we'll develop our test. You always do the book ends first in training. What do you want to do and how the hell are you gonna measure success? Well... in our case we have plenty of TT's for that third one and the others you could measure at a PR weekly race.

Now we have to back fill the middle with "content" or activities that help us achieve our objectives. Things like "going 30mph by yourself" intervals, Big Gear intervals, Tempo rides, etc. You could use weekly races and training on the track to help you as well. The point is that your objective drives the activities and interactions and not the other way around. Now you can still ride slow during the winter... We can develop an objective for that too.

Now to further complicate our program, there are 6 other things that help us perform. Things like incentives and counter-incentives, setting expectations, conditions, etc. Training is only one way to get performance. Think of a rider with natural abilities... they never train but they still keep kicking your ass... They could probably use some training to get better but they already possess the "skills and knowledge" to kick our ass. For the purposes of this blog... we'll only use the "Training" piece of the performance pie. This whole thing boils down to us evaluating at season's end... our objectives... how many did we hit? Did we do any activities that didn't help us? Which ones did help us?

Your Training: Identify your Learning Objectives... and wish Strangleland a Happy Birthday. I was gonna try to make him a video... but there's just too many sick people at the Curly Ranch right now.

How are we doing?

2007-04-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

Good lightbulb Thursday racers! Ol' Curly's been up off and on since 10pm... Seems Lil' Curly is sick and when that happens he needs a little Curly attention to get back to sleep. That and Curly don't sleep well when Lil' Curly is sick and is off and on 104 degree temps. He's fine btw... and he has meds.

It's during these times of sleepless clarity that I write the stuff that I do... like yesterday's post.

Maybe today can be news day! Umm... how 'bout that vote yesterday to bring troops home by October or "no mo money"? The president said he'll quickly veto it... Rebublicans said "no money means we'lll be endangering our troops"

Huh? i think we did that when we sent them to war. I think we ensured that their families/lives/livelihood will never be the same. How do you get funding to fix that?

Think of how effective we'd be if we thought to use all those resources to take a stab at homelessness in our cities... or slowing the effects of GW (both of them)... or getting fat kids to ride bikes instead of watch TV and eat cheap sugars and fats... or improve the surface of the BG trail and 1st Ave for bike commuters... I think we have bigger fish to fry than throw more money and resources at a country that does not want us there.

"endangering the lives of our troops"... "signalling to the enemy how many American's they have to kill before we will give up"... is this a contest... HA! we showed them... we got a bunch of our own people killed for no reason... TAKE THAT! C'mon folks...

Now Ol' Curly don't need any arguments on how war boosts our economy with jobs and such... and how history has shown... blah blah... BS. History has shown us that we're a bunch of big idiots and that we have a long way to go. Case in point... 3 people have complained that the new 520 bridge plans will obstruct their view... Umm... hi 3 people... screw yer view.

Your training: Get some sleep today... it'll help you not be so cranky.

PRObot 3000... thinking differently about doping

2007-04-25T04:26:00.000-07:00

Got it figured out! This whole doping thing has gotten so outta hand. Basso is in... now he's out... now he's safe... now he's not... Yes Puerco... No Puerco... Yes Puerco... DNA testing... No testing... See ya Ullrich... Yes DNA testing.

The only true way to eliminate doping at least within the PRO cycling peloton is to use robots. That way the UCI can determine (with the help and leadership of the ASO) what the specifications for robot riders will be. The UCI can have their I.T. group develop a randomizing application to keep the races unpredictable but still have the ability to upload a French winner for the Tour of France. We'll see some real bike racing then. Only catch is that most of the microchips and software will be developed in India and China so it won't be a true "French" winner... Perhaps LOOK can git their act together and develop something new for a change.

Back to them robot riders themselves tho... No massages needed, no feed zones (unless it is needed for WCP footage of CRASH v2.0 "Greatest Robot Crashes") Interviews can just be e-mailed via Bluetooth. One I.T. follow-car needed for mechanicals. If a rider is traded the LCD monitor on their chest is just updated with a new widescreen graphic done in Photoshop CS3... which Ol' Curly has so give him a call... he does artwork ya know. No need to have Versus do crappy TV coverage as each rider can film themselves and upload it to YouTube. Campy has positioned themselves well with the electronic shifting they have... perhaps they can have MicroStrategies handle the data integration... iPod can sponsor the music.

Oh... it'll be great. No doping... all sorts of logistical challenges solved... more "green"... I think this will really enhance the sport for us spectators. No, I didn't mention that the initial investment is gonna cost a bit to stock a peloton... but who cares... look at the benefits.

The big flaw in this... that I'm hoping nobody will notice until it's too late... is that the UCI will no longer have anything to do... and neither will WADA... or the media... or VeloNews... or CycleSport. That and robots can turn on you... and they git viruses.

Who would have thought that the sport of PRO cycling would be the instigator for a 1984-esque campaign for mapping who does what to whom by using DNA. I think if you're a doper, yer only recourse is to use this technology to make a better rider in a test tube. 7 letters for ya... G-A-T-T-A-C-A!

More science for cyclists... They've discovered a new planet 20 light years away. It can support human life they say. Only thing is... the gravity would make a 150lb person feel like 240lbs... Maybe they'll discover a planet with gravity that suits me. OR... they'll hold some downhill TT's... I would kick some ass at those.

Your Training: Ride yer fricken bike with no computers, no power meters, no cadence-ometers. No cell phone... no watch.. no hrm... no iPods... Just ride. You may take supplements however...

Just riding along

2007-04-24T04:56:00.000-07:00

Good Flapjack Tuesday morning bike racers! I hope you all can understand how it is to be a pregnant bike racer now...after yesterday's workout. Now, I want to see some empathy from here on out. Oh... Swooning?? Now that yer here a readin' this Ol' Blog... we thought we'd welcome you by posting yer iPod contents in the sidebar. Thanks for your contribution even if you are a bit of a drag.

Now Ol' Curly had to glue on his track tires last night. Curly hates gluing on tires. It's messy and takes a helluva long time to git the tire just perfect. Now I know what yer sayin'... "But Curly... you can use that cool tape" or "I have a way that's better..."... and I'll say "shut yer gluehole!" Ol' Curly likes to do it the ol' fashin' way. 2-3 coats on the rim, 2 on the tire... let it git tacky... stretch it on, get glue all over your hands... pump up the tires... try like hell to git it straight. It's the way it's always been done. For road tires you use a pressure sensitive, softer glue and for track you use a harder glue... you don't mess with tried and true methods... especially on yer track bike.

Now Ol' Curly had to get him some glue over the weekend. The fine folks (really it was just Carl) at B-Dub hooked Ol' Curly up with their last tube of Mastice. While Curly was there he got to witness the bain of every bike mechanic's life... the "I was just ridin' along" customer... the 2 fellers before me both had bikes and we're talking with mechanics... both said the same thing about their issues... "I was just ridin' along". Now "Just ridin' along" seems to cause all sorts of problems... from a broken brake lever... to flat tires... bent frames... cracked helmets... even broken sunglasses. Now both mechanics used this approach to help their respective customers.

Let the customer know that you'll help them... and that you know that THEY did something to their bike...
Ask "did you hit something?"
Ask "are you sure? Cuz I noticed... INSERT OBVIOUS CUSTOMER-CAUSED ISSUE HERE
Tell "Ok... let me get it on the stand"
Ask "Are you sure you didn't hit something or drive it into a bridge on your rack?"
Fix problem

Using this approach will get the customer out the door and on his (ladies don't seem to have these issues) bike. The only step I left out is the step where you educate the customer on how to NOT ride like a jackass and hit stuff and to pump up yer tires before rides...

Your Training: I want you to practice NOT "just riding along". This is the one time I want you to be careful to NOT do something. You see... "just riding along" is too dangerous... and on those nice matching Bontrager Carbon Aero Super Comp wheels... you just can't afford the problems that "just riding along" causes. Have fun at PR folks... I'll be helping some customers figure out that the reason their review work isn't done yet is because they haven't spent time on it and NOT because it's too hard or they don't understand it. Here's something creatively brilliant for you to buy. CLICK HERE

Preparations

2007-04-23T05:11:00.000-07:00

Howdy bike racers! I trust you had a good weekend... I hope everyone took a pull, blocked, attacked, sprinted and gasped in utter exhaustion. Ol' Curly spent his weekend being consumed in one way or another by one of them there baby showers. Saturday was spent fine tunin' the yard by edging, clipping, mowing, scrubbing and manicuring. Sunday morning was much the same... then Lil' Curly and I left for 2 hours so that Mrs. Curly and the other mother hens could bitch about how damned dense and insensitive their men-folk are about being pregnant. For the record, Ol' Curly will NEVER know what it's like to be pregnant... he will not claim to know... he does not want to know... It ain' the way Ol' Mother Nature intended... for men to know such things. Otherwise he'd have been given a uterus... and women would have been given twigs and berries. Maybe Ol' Curly should get his buddies to come over so that we can drink beer, eat hotdogs and bitch about how our women-folk will never know what it's like to get kicked in the balls... or how to operate an impact drill... or the merits of galvanized products for outdoor use.

Ol' Curly was even nice enough yesterday to come home a bit early so he could start doing the dishes. Cuz the Mrs. is pregnant and all... After a day and a half of yard effort for 2 hours of shower, I certainly have some good ammo for the next time I get the earload about driving all the way to Sequim for a 2 hour race. Yeah... my time is coming... once them 2 boys are old enough to ride... a 3-point assault on the yard and then it's off to the races.

It's a good thing pregnancy only lasts 9 months... the pain in my ears is gettin' to me.

5 more weeks...

In other news... Ol' Curly's buddy, CTodd got his camera stolen at the T of G. That sucks! I had all sorts of collaborative video projects in mind... What's Ol' Curly gonna do while he's off for 3 weeks? Don't worry... he'll be here. In addition... over on The Burprag he'll being doing a few minutes of the Lil' Curly's live very morning...

Your training: Now today's training is somewhat controversial. I want you to stuff the front of your jersey with a pillow. You all need to know how riding while being pregnant feels. Why is it controversial? Cuz Mrs. Curly will probably read this and give Ol' Curly an earload about how insensitive it is... and how Ol' Curly just doesn't understand what it's like to be pregnant. Mrs. Curly... read the second half of paragraph 1 please... and then git outta my blog... it ain't fer pregnant ladies... just like showers aren't for men.