Happy Birthday ... to me!

Great birthday week/weekend! Dinner out with siblings, music, drinks, and friends visiting this weekend.

But to follow up with my last post, this is my birthday present to myself! It is a KHS CX200 Cyclocross bike that I intend to race on this coming fall. Aluminum frame, carbon fork, and STI shifters. Along with that, Megan got me clip-less shoes, and T&L got the pedals to go along with it. So I will be clipped in and ready to go! Races start in late September and go to November. L. has been racing Cyclocross for years, so I will be in good company.

What is Cyclocross? Wikipedia says: "

Races take place typically in the autumn and winter, and consists of many laps of a short (2.5–3.5 km or 1.5–2 mile) course featuring pavement, wooded trails, grass, steep hills and obstacles requiring the rider to quickly dismount, carry the bike whilst navigating the obstruction and remount in one motion."

Or as the video said, "a bunch of skinny dorks riding around on road bikes in the dirt." Races are broken into skill categories and that determines how long you ride. In motor sports, my favorite Rally Racing is probably the most comparable. Street cars running really fast in the dirt, mud, snow, and on pavement, compared to road bikes going fast on grass, dirt, mud, and pavement!

A Cyclocross bike is more of a classic road bike frame, so a little larger than a modern road bike, with softer and more grippy tires, and cantilevered brakes. If you swap out the rough tires for skinny road tires, they make perfectly good road bikes too.

Not sure when it gets here, but I can't wait!

Skiiiiiis

Here is a photo of Megan and her new birthday cross country skis! I had several great photos of her on their (and her) inaugural run this afternoon but the camera mysteriously lost the formatting on the card so they were erased! Doh. Well we will get more tomorrow.

We went to the legendary Finn Sisu on University Ave by the most convoluted route I could cook up on google maps and gave her a card to open with the directions. Thoroughly turned around we drove up to the store and got the skis! We were also lucky enough to be helped by Ahvo himself. He is a hilarious guy, and was very happy that Megan was getting classic skis. He said that classic was more artistic and beautiful, while skating was all over like a conductor (he acted all this out).

He also showed us what is new in waxing, and a lot has changed in the last 6 years! We bought a tape that provides kick in lieu of traditional ski wax yet lasts all season, and this paste that you rub on and it acts as glide wax in lieu of traditional hot waxing. And wow, both work great! Lots of kick and the glide felt like normal but with much much less work and mess.

After we waxed up the skis, we went out to Como to try them out. The last time I was there was in high school and it was -10˚ with 30 mph wind, but today it was 28 and sunny. Perfect! After a few halting steps on the new skinny skis Megan was going along well and by the end of our time she was doing a good kick-glide-kick-glide and even did a hill.

We are going to head out again tomorrow and try some more. I don't work again until after Christmas, and Megan doesn't have school again until the second week in January, so this really is vacation!