My big passion in life is cooking. If didn’t bike I would probably just cook and eat. Minus Indian, Thai and sushi I find myself being able to match most of the local eateries with food made at home. I wanted to learn how to make a pizza a learned to make dough at home.  Want a steak I’ll cook stake at home. Cooking is really not that difficult  find what goes together get ratio right adjust repeat. Baking on other hand is difficult,  it’s exact science where measurements, temperature and timing do mater.

Anyways we don’t go out for valentines, I cook at home. This year we got some wine and  i made steamed mussels with croutons and flourless chock late cake.  It was super easy and awesome … and MK liked it as well .

This weekend we are going to MN not for Frost bike but to hangout with the Stampers and their junior, Jasper.

Cars got off road sometimes Saturday or Suday

Warm temperatures made the Platte River valley look very neat. IN polish the word for frozen dew is shron. US 31 look great from flyiung J all the way to U.S. 50

While field club was sketchy it was also very pretty….

Also  saw sun dog this morning over downtown couldn’t find a good place to stop and take a picture though.

If you ride your bike for while you will hungry. Now supplying athletes with nutrition is big money business. You can pretty much get yourself 500$ worth of supplement to keep yourself going, and for the most part they do work pretty good. However at some point you got to wonder, how healthy is all that sugar in your body. It seems pretty silly for me for people to work so hard to eliminate carbs from their diet but having no issue popping gels like they are diabetics.
One of the goals for this year is to rely a bit less on those supplements ( minus the electrolites) thus far it has been going pretty good. If you rode with me you probably will see me eating beef jerky and drinking a soda. That’s about it.
Weekend was pretty good.
Saturday was windy but the tail wind made it for fairly nice and quick ride back. That night MK and I visited new middle eastern restaurant in midtown and saw descendents. Good food good movie.
Sunday I watched CX words and rode a MTB for about 4 hours. The new XTR 2×10 is pretty nice for sure, it really shines in place like Jewell there you can run pretty much all the gears in matter of 5 miles…

So here we are last weekend of January.  For most part is has been pretty uneventful,  I went to couple of swim meets and some team functions. Yeah teenagers are weird. I have been on a solid riding grove. Getting some good 12-15 hours  weeks or about 200 miles +/- 20. That’s the plan for February as well, then trying to get some solid 300 mile weeks in March and April before T.I.  The riding has been pretty good and we finally getting everyone back on the same page for bigger groups. Bigger groups can mean either fast moving or slug fest depending on mechanical. But it is a lot more fun than riding by yourself which  still like as it lets me listen to all the sound opinions I want…

The race registrations are getting up there with couple more to go… Looks like Wassua 24, Breck 100 and Dakota-50 will all be on the list. We will see what happens. I’m fairly sure that there might be Arkansas river basin vacation this year. It should be good time.

Looks like the Ponca ride is out for me, the race is that Saturday… Ponca State park Is my favorite race on Nebraska Mtb schedule and with the race being 4 hours it just adds 3 more laps to that sweet track…
I’m also very excited to build this little fella for my wife.

It will get all my 9 spd sram stuff as I have went to the 2×10 xtr… It will look nicely for most part. Hopefully Megan will get to “shred” some single track in 2012.  The frame size is ubber small it looked comical when i loaded the box in my back seat..

More about  equipment choices for T.I.  some winter/spring riding.

Gravel Magic Happens you just need to look hard.

BTW the SOPA is a big deal.

If there is one way to sum up my experience on a bike this year it would be rain.  Every big event I went to had some sort of precipitation. In way I felt like Forrest Gump the rain was constant. There was drizzle, summer storms, mud coldness mud bike cleaning triumph, failure, self-doubt, self-pity, anger, relaxation, exhaustion but most importantly happiness. I rode around 7500 miles this year some with old friends, some with new. I spend just as much time on road bike as I did on cross with MTB taking a back seat. There were memorable moments this year but sitting in the Kansas tool shed in middle of summer storm with TK takes the cake, that was a first.
I learned a lot from various people, MOD, RF an Shim took it to me whole year and made me a better cyclist. Thank for all  your help this year.

I did experience some new things couple of new states. I rode in first national event and watched the pros, a stark contrast to AGRC.  Guess what all those people love to bike  and for them what they do is what they think is awesome about biking.  The awesome part  about cycling there is room for everyone.

The most exciting thing  about this year is getting MK into biking, she got a little cx bike and has been riding some with some of the new found lady friends.

On non-biking front

Megan and I went to Poland, that was great. If you never taken 3-4 weeks off,  you should do so that is the way to vacation. MK was super excited about meeting the rest of the family and Poland in general.  It was awesome…

I will leave you with this. See you in 2012