Skiing and Mtn.biking

Saturday with a fresh cover of snow we headed out to Kettle Moraine for some XC skiing. Neither of us have skied more than once so it was a learning experience for both to say the least! We left some HUGE pot holes at the bottom of most hills, about the time we hit terminal velocity. Cathy landed on her bad elbow a couple times and decided to walk the rest of the hills after that. It was a good time and looks like the snow is going to stick around so we can get out there again next weekend and maybe we can keep our skis below us the entire time!!
Sunday we had a completely unsuccessful open house so I headed out for a snow ride.I threw on my 2.4" tires in the reverse direction on the rear and set the pressure at 12psi front and 15psi rear. That was about as killer snow set up as I have every rode. I was plowing through 3"-8" of snow the entire ride, which made getting in my tempo work out pretty easy to achieve. I burned up the bike trail from Palmer to Afton and back in just shy of 3 hours...yeah I wasn't breaking any speed records! By the time I got back my drive train had pretty much disappeared into a ball of snow. These miles should count double in the frozen fools competition!!

Time to start building

The bike swap went pretty good this weekend. I got a table for two reasons, one I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to sell and the other because I wanted to get in early and get first dibs on the SWEET deals. So I got in around 8:15 and had everything set up shortly after that. Cory was supposed to be coming so I called but no answer. I tryed again around 8:45 but still nothing. Then at 9:15 he called "dude, I went out last night and am just getting out of bed". Well so much for him watching the table while I went a scored some trick parts! Oh well instead I just sold a ton of stuff and went home with a pretty fat stack of $20's.
Just got to get my brakes and some other misc. parts sold and I will have funding to get the Anthem built up. I have to decide if I want to run 80mm or 100mm this year. Last year I went to 100mm on the NRS and that worked pretty good, and with the Athem having a steeper head tube I could still get some good performance out of the extra travel - I need to decide soon. The other decision is a crank, I have been running my XT for 3 years and although it isn't pretty it still works great. I would like to try the new Truvativ crank but it is kinda pricey and isn't much lighter than the XT.

-Trail Report-
I think I officially got the last off road ride in before the snow. I went out with the lights just as it was getting dark. I headed to North East, which by the way Brian WAS is perfect condition. I rode there for about an hour and then headed home in the snow. It was great getting off rode one last time.

The snow is still falling and looks like it will stick around, hopefully we can get out to the kettles this weekend for some XC skiing.

First Post of the New year!

Wow things are really slow this time of year. I have been meaning to update this but can't think of anything to write about. The weather has been just amazing but with working in Madison and the short days still any kind of outside riding is contained to the weekends. We have been putting in some solid training though, so it will be nice to finally get out this spring and see how it has paid off. For now though the trainer stays dusted off and hardly cools off between daily rides.
This weekend is the CronoMetro Bike swap. If you are in need of any parts and I mean ANYTHING this is the place to be. Better yet get a hold of me because at this point I probably could hook you up. I am taking 2 forks, a full Deore drivetrain, brakes, wheels, you name it is going! I have never sold stuff up there so it should be fun to get in and see the mad rush early. When it settles down it is fun to catch up with everyone a bit.
Looks like snow this weekend so hopefully we will be able to get out before that happens. I hope it snows so we can get a chance to do some XC skiing before the winter is completely gone.