We're Back!!!!

Well ladies and jerks, It has been some time now, exactly three months to be exact, since I last posted. This time I am bearing much less sinister news. No new tale of horror and carnage, no incredible injuries to report. Instead I have come bearing tales of recovery and althletic supremacy like none ever told.

Mrs. Doctor has healed nicely from her encounter with the pavement and has been doing some running in preparation for a 10k trail run. That run happened yesterday, way too early in the morning (it started @ 6:30) and Mrs. Doctor crushed it, she even got 6th in her age group. Pretty good for her first race.

Here's some pics of the last climb:

And shortly later crushing the finish:

Nice work Mrs. Doctor!!

   As for me, I have been officially released to full activity by my Doctor (sometimes doctors have doctors too) I had already been on the road bike for a few weeks before he cleared me, in fact my first couple rides back were with the amazing Lt Colonel Austin Travis, in with Mrs. Lt Colonel to see the Grand Canyon. They popped in for a few days and took in the sights, sounds, and smells of Prescott on their way through to the Canyon. Unfortunately we had to work and couldn't go with them, but it was good to see them and good to ride with a fellow Seagal, who by the way is still incredibly fast, in spite of not having ridden all winter. I think he might be a machine, like a T-2000 or something. I have been riding a lot ever since, going for a couple 3 to 4 hour mtb rides a week and then this is what I do:

That's right.

How much for the training wheels?

Good day Jerks! As anyone that reads this page knows, I broke my collar bone in a bike crash about a month ago. Everything seems to be healing up pretty well, although I still don't have a whole lot of range of motion in my left arm, and it still gets pretty sore by the end of the day. Hopefully I'll be back on the bike in another week or so.

Now to the current events, or more specifically the events of this past Tuesday. Mrs. Doctor, having the day off, had a couple cups of coffee with me before she gave me a ride to work. Her plans for the day included a bike ride up to Thumb Butte, a nice 5 mile climb into the pines that she does pretty regularly. The road is narrow and curvy, but in decent enough shape, and not too heavily travelled on an average weekday morning. Mrs Doctor crushed it up to the top of the climb, making it in about half an hour from our door step. This is when the situation began to deteriorate. She had begun the descent back into town, enjoying the fine morning northern Arizona was having. She moved toward the side of the road to make rooom for a passing car. Slightly miscalculating where the edge of the pavement was, she went off the edge into the narrow gravel shoulder. As she steered to get back on the pavement, the edge caught her front tire, sending her over the handlebars.

Around this time I was at work trying to do some catching up. Since my injury, things had gotten a little backed up. I got a worried sounding phone call from Mrs. Doctor, saying only "I think I hurt my self."  She told me she had just crashed and cut herself and couldn't tell how bad it was. I was at work, on foot. The jeep was at the house, a two and half mile walk away. I hitched a ride with a customer for about half of it, walked the rest and got in the jeep only to find the fuel light on. By the time I got gas and made it Mrs. Doctor she had been hanging out on the side of the road for about 40 minutes since she had called me.

The cut was on the back of her elbow, so she couldn't really see it . This was probably a good thing. Apparently she had put her arm in front of her face as she crashed and slid a little bit down the pebble and sand covered, cheese grater style asphalt, putting a massive gash in her elbow and then packing it full of gravel. The wound was six to seven inches long, a narrow slit at the beginning on the back of her forearm spreading to a two inch wide, chewed up gravel filled mess on the back of her elbow. I couldn't believe it. I made her show it to me three different times as I was loading her bike in the jeep. It was so massive and just filled with dirt. Wearing one of the original black and white Seagal jerseys, and showing a stunning display of superior attitudde and superior state of mind, Mrs. Doctor calmly asked "Do you think we can just put some butterflys on it?" Trying not to show my surprise at the severity of the wound, I told her she probably needed a couple of stitches and to have them clean it out.

We arrived at the emergency room a short time later. I snapped a couple of pics on my cell phone in the parking lot and we went in, making her the second person to visit the ER in a Seagal jersey in a month's time. I can't get the pics off the phone onto the computer, so this post treatment shot will have to do:

The ER staff were shocked by how bad it was, their surprise was not well hidden in their reaction. It took about two hours of scrubbing and flushing the wound out with this wicked looking suction device to get all the gravel and sand out. She ended up with 21 stitches, they had to trim the jagged edges off of the wound to have something to sew up, mostly around the elbow area where the wound was widest. Mrs Doctor , in true Team Seagal fashion, took it like a champ. There is no crying  in a Seagal jersey. There does seem to be a fair amount of crashing.

East Meets West

Good day to all you jerks out there. This past weekend has brought another awesorme turn of events for your Doctor friend. Many of you may already be familiar with our New East Coast Syndicate, which is comprised of a gentleman named C-Dubbs and several of his compatriots. Those of you intertube savvy enough to have followed our blorg in the comments section of Robort's blorg, which eventually morphed into the jenkem cycles page, will possibly feel that you already know too much about Mr. Dubbs. I am going to tell you more anyway.

Dubbs, Top Chef, and Griffin travelled all the way from New York City to come get some Sedona, and get some they did. They managed to do some cross country epic type riding, some super techy all mountain slickrock style riding, and even a little downhill. They stayed at a sweet little townhouse style resort called the Red Agave, and if you evar find yourself out this way I would suggest that you stay there. There was a trail head literally 20ft from the back door of their cabin.  On top of that the place had a pool, a bonfire pit, and they provide smores ingredients. My fragile mind was blown. Here is a pic of Top Chef and Griffin perfecting their toasted open face samoan sandwich technique.

Knowing that these jerks were going to be up to no good, Mrs. Doctor and I hopped into the Jeep and pointed it towards Sedona via Mingus Mtn and Jerome. The road up and back down Mingus is incredibly narrow, twisty, and very scenic. There is a lot of exposure, particularly when you start descending into Jerome, which is an old mining town turned tourist trap positioned precariously on the back side of mingus at about 6,000 feet. (The road over Mingus tops out at a little over 7,000 feet.) Here is a pic taken through the very dirty windsheild of the Jeep.

and here's one from above:

Once safely down the back side of Mingus, we were only about a half hour from our destination, and the formal christening of the East-West alliance. It is interesting to note that I only know Mr. Dubbs from teh intertubes, we have never met in person. Seagal soldiers NicoToscani and Gino Fellino did some riding and some drinking with Mr Dubbs at the Mohican 100 two years ago and began premliminary negotiations, in the chinese, to spread the Seagal philosophy nation, possibly even world wide. During our meeting Dubbs made the observation that we are similar to the Hell's Angels in that we now have full on chapters, or at least fellow members in several states. World domination is certainly near.

We arrived to find Mr Dubbs and Top Chef drinking some hoppy brews out on the patio of the cabin, known as Moctezuma's Castle. We sat and joined them and found them to be swell fellows. We were soon joined by Griffin and his cousin from Phoenix when they returned from the store with more IPAs and some pretty amazing steaks. Top Chef proceeded to show us how he got that name, the steaks were amazing. Watching them make dinner was pretty entertaining as well, these guys are pretty jovial and animated, real Seagal style jerks all the way. Just look at 'em:

After a Top Chef steak dinner, blueberry pie, and a few IPAs, a dialouge broke out, in the chinese of course. The dialect I was speaking was a little less consice than any of us was used to, but still got the point across. We then headed to the bonfire pit for some toasted open face samoan sandwiches. It was great to meet jerks such as these, fine examples of Superior Attitude, Superior State of Mind. Hopefully I will be able to do some riding next time they make it out to the wester-regions, And hopefully some of you other jerks make it out this way. Bitches.

Toscani is a total jerk!

Greetings Jerks. Yesterday marked the end of Nicorn Toscani's southwest vacation, and late in the afternoon he boarded a shuttle bound for the airport and ultimately St Louis. We spent many days enjoying breakfast beers, chinamen, Sedona, getting the jeep stuck in the snow on a 60 degree day, and other jerk-like behaviors. My broken collar bone slowed me down a little bit, but I feel that Toscani still got to see some good shit.

We began by going to Hugo's for some porn shack style mexican food (Much more amazing than it sounds.) followed by a visit to the most amazing liquor store evar. This netted us many green canned IPAs as well as some other fine canned hoppy brews that Dale made. Multiple trips were made to the local brew pub for some amazing food to fuel Toscani's Sedona ride. This is a secret picture of a Team Seagal race prep drill the day before the race:

If we get the jeep out, we go to Sedona tommorrow

  Once our superior attitudes had been tested and proven we were ready to proceed to the magical land of Sedona, a mere hour and a half drive on paved, snow and ice free roads. We arrived to early to a race for the first time in our racing careers. We were like an hour early. Those of you who have met us at the trail head realize what an amazing accomplishment this is, especially since we had to get up at 4:30 in the a.m. We found several like minded jerks in the parking lot, including Jeff and Nancy from Scottsdale, AZ. Jeff is the guy on the shuttle ride in Durango with the titanium huffy with the zebra striped fork. I cut my hand and had to get stitches on that ride, and then I see them at another ride and I have a broken collar bone. They must think that I am severly accident prone. Maybe I am. The start time rolled around and Toscani took off to ride some of this:

and this:

Given my current condition I opted for the 4 hour hike instead of the 8 hour bike ride. I made it up to the top of the Damfino saddle, the picture immediately above is what you descend on the Damfino trail. I got there just before the first group of racers wich can be seen here trying to find the trail to the top:

  The second group of racers to pass through stopped atop the saddle and enjoyed the view and visited with my chinese friend and I for a little bit. These gentlemen seemed to be brimming with superior attitude, and when they continued on they were definitely in a superior state of mind. They continued down the Damfino trail and were soon so far down from my position that this was the best pic I could get of their descent:

 

  If you zoom in you will see them making their way down, partially obscured by trees.  It was around this time that I recieved a telephone call from none other than Jerkward Toscani. He had gotten lost at some point and was waiting, PBR in hand, at the Bike and Bean which is where the race finished. He still managed to crush out 45 miles or so of rigid B29er slickrock Sedona riding. When he called I was still a good two hour hike from the car, so I snapped a couple more photos and made my way back down the slickrock mesa, which was treacherous enough on foot let alone a bike. Sedona has some amazing views. Here a couple more pics in parting. Hopefully they inspire some of you other jerks to come out and get some Sedona, it is really an amazing place.

S-Works testing

Greetings jerks! As mentioned in my previous post, I recently travelled to CA to visit Specialized HQ. They have an amazing facility with huge locker rooms, individual soap dispensing showers, and a huge cage full of 2010 Sworks bikes for the classes to demo. I rode an S works roubaix with DA tubless wheels (fucking sweeeeet) a Tarmac sl3 with electronic DA (awesome bike, liked it a lot better than the roubaix) and on the last day, the ride I had been waiting for all week, 2010 Sworks epic with xx brakes and crank, xo 9spd rear. This is their world cup level race bike, the same steed upon which Breslin will be going really fast this season. In spite of the tiny wheels, this bike felt like it fit me, something other high end 26 inch rides like the trek fuel ex have failed to do. The 2x9 drive train makes a lot of sense if you don't want to drop the massive coin for the xx cassette. Really a sweet riding bike. We were on a section of the Sea Otter trail right by the Laguna Seca raceway. I was in the lead group after the first major climb and we were just getting into the descent when things got hairy. The trail had a very sandy consistency to it, and they had had a lot of rain in the previous days. This led to the formation of a very large sinkhole that was not visible untill you were in it basically. Two of the specialized guys almost went down, which I did not see or I may have come out better. I came over a little riser and into the hole. It swallowed the front end of the bike and sent me flying. My roomate for the class was behind me and saw the whole thing. According to him I did two full front flips before landing on my shoulder and head. The sworks helmet I was demoing took the impact and then shot up into the air.

In true Team Seagal fashion, I stood up and dusted myself off saying " I don't have a concussion it's ok, let's keep going" I then bent to pick up my sun glasses and couldn't reach my arm to the ground. One of the other students used to be an LPN and realized immediately what I had done. He took a look inside my jersey, saw the break and sat me down and made a sling for me. I only know these things from my classmates telling me that night after I got back from the ER. I had no recollection of talking to anyone or trying to keep going or anything. The ER doctor asked if I had hit my head to which I relied "No" The specialized guy who was with me immediately chimed in " yeah you did bro" The medic at Laguna Seca had asked me what month it was and I really couldn't tell her. weird feeling.

So basically I broke my left clavicle completely, and the muscles titghtening around the shoulder displaced it fair ammount, meaning that it will likely have to be pinned back together. The good news is that Worker's comp is going to cover it all, and my boss is being pretty cool about it. This of course puts a significant damper on my upcoming race season since I will be off the bike for the next 6 to 8 weeks. Toscani is still going to do the Sedona race, which means  he will be in town tommorrow. While my injury changes things, he is still a tremendous jerk and I am sure we will still find plenty of ways to entertain ourselves. This will also render me unable to ride with C-dubbs the weekend following the Sedona race, but I am certain we will get together with our mutual chinese friend for a drink or two.

I will post pics of my xrays as soon as I can get them onto the computer, until then, stay hard!

PS. The bike was ok other than a broken xx brake and a cracked handlebar.

Multiple Upperdeckers

Greetings! Many amazing things are going to be happening to your Doctor in March, which we will get to soon, but first let's discuss something amazing that happened in February. I arrived home from work one day to discover a package on my doorstep. As I opened it, I immediately realized that is was from Team Seagal Headquarters, specifically the Team Trail Monster division. Many things were included in this package, most of them classified. One that I am at liberty to speak of: UpperDecker Shit Brown Ale. Carefully vacuum sealed inside the package were two of these:

  That's right, two bombers of delicious home made shit brown ale. These two  bottles came with instructions to let them ferment, like a fine jenkem, until mid February, which I did. When the time came to crack into one of these amazing brews, I invited my chinese friend to come sit with me and share an ale. Upon cracking the bottle a nutty alcohol tinged aroma greeted my giant flaring nostrils. Having previously experienced the TTM crafsmanship, I knew that this would be good, and it was good. The balance of malty and hoppy flavors was perfect, and the finish was nice and smooth. By the time the bottle was empty, my chinese friend and I were feeling pretty silly, unable to commit to cracking the second one until a couple of days later. We found the second bomber to be equally impressive. Nice work TSTTM!!

In other news Nicorn Toscani, pro hybrid hill climber and total jerk, will be visiting me in about a week or so. We are going to travel to Sedona midway through his stay and take part in a sort of underground 60 mile race. Very Non-Race-esque, no entry fee, no t-shirt, but it looks like an amazing loop. It will be interesting to see how I do, I recently got back from Oklahoma where my mom gave me a wicked cold. I mean debilitating, feverish, can't breathe, and more importantly can't ride my bike on top of the time off going to OK. I am starting to feel a slight bit better today, which is good because I leave this afternoon to go to San Jose for a Specialized class. It starts tomorrow morning and includes two road rides and one FS mountain ride. Hopefully I am feeling even better tomorrow. At least I get to spread disease in the meantime. That's it for now jerks.  Oh, anyone who did the death by hills ride is a total badass.

Where oh where has the Doctor gone?

Greetings Jerks! During the course of my semi regular (not quite fantastically regular) interwebbing I have realized that yet once again I have gone a month and a half without posting anything here. I have been leaving some updates at the Jenkem Cycles blog (Jenkemcycles.blogspot) even then not frequently enough. But hey, at least I am still ahead of Robort. Still no sign of him, even after his blog stopped serving as a daily duty report for Coach, C-Dubbs, myself, and a small army of guest contributors. How could he let his Doctor worry this way?

Moving on, the trails here have been and are still covered in snow. I haven't ridden my mountain bike since the Sedona trip from my last post, with the small exception of a couple of wet commutes to work. With the weather being warmer here, I figured that I would be able to more winter trail riding than I have been able to do. In STL it stays cold enough for the trails to freeze when they are wet, and you get that dry crunchy snow which is awesome to ride in. Since it is warmer here the moisture, which we have apparently had record ammounts of this winter, doesn't freeze solid enough to ride. I still have yet to see a temp below 23 for the low, and two hours later it is in the upper 40's.  This being the case I have been doing a lot of road riding, mostly the highway going out past the shop. I will take some pics one of these days, it is an awesome ride with a lot of sustained climbs. Until I get pics of that this will have to do:

At this very moment I am awaiting a very important call from the shop telling me that our QBP order has come in. This call will give me the opprotunity to spend some of my hard earned tax refund money on a few key upgrades for both bikes. I got a great deal on a 2009 SRAM force crankset for the cross bike. This will allow me to run a standard double instead of the cross gearing, and it is a slightly longer crank arm than my current 172.5 which is too short for me. Since I am off today I will have to test it out. Maybe I'll remember to take the camera. In other tax refund news, I am finally doing something that I have wanted to for some time, and building a tubeless wheelset for the MTB. Details to follow. In the meantime, here are some pics of Mrs. Doctor's new favorite place to go hiking. This is the Granite Dells area which is about 3 miles from our house. I did a lot of early winter base riding on the rails to trails/ wildlife reserve out there. The rock formations are estimated to be 1.4 billion years old.

New Years Day in Sedona

Happy New Year Jerks! Having gone almost as long as Robort without posting let me bring you up to speed.  So it didn't really workout with my work schedule to do the last two cross races, and let's face it, I just wasn't ready for them anyway. So I took a little bit of time off the bike. Lately I have started on getting in my base miles on some of the flat rails to trails type areas towards the Prescott Valley area. It has snowed twice here so far this winter in close enough succesion that the mountain bike trails have been unrideable. All of these factors combined with the shop being closed  for the holiday led Corey and I to head to Sedona for some lower elevation and drier trails. For those who aren't rabid followers of our blog in the comments section of Robort's blog, Corey is the other mechanic at the shop and an occaisional guest contributor to the cultural center of the intertubes.

Given that Corey and I are alcohol afficianados, we knew it was going to be tough to survive new years eve in any kind of condition to ride the next day. We had a few drinks early on and then tapered off as the night when on, and managed to wake up in reasonably good condition, better conditon than the guy who stabbed three people at one of the bars here in Prescott and in return was hospitalized by the bouncers of said bar. So our health intact, we were on our way. It takes just over an hour to get to Sedona from here, and it is a very scenic drive passing over Mingus mountain on the way. (Mingus is THE downhill run in the area)

Once at the trailhead  I could tell that we were in for some good riding. The soil is kind of a sandy clay, that even in the muddy spots wasn't nearly as greasy as the mud in Missouri. The dry spots were incredibly hooked up, with intermitent slickrock riding to keep you on your toes. I would have to say that of the places I've ridden so far, Sedona is probably my favorite.

   After riding for a little while we paused to speak with a chinaman a top this nice verticaly oriented slab of slickrock.

   We were just about to make our way to a fairly well known feature called submarine rock, which is pretty much what it sounds like, when a local guy named lars rolls up and asks us if we want to follow him to a locals only trail. As it turns out, we spoke to our chinese friend only feet from the start of the trail and didn't even really notice it. Lars rolled up on a full squish slopestyle bike, Corey was on his Norco freeride bike complete with dual crown 7 inch travel fork. I had the interesting fortune of being on a singlespeed 29er. My camera batteries were dying at this point so I was unable to photograph the trail he showed us, but it is probably the gnarliest ride I have ever been on. You basically traverse an exposed ridgeline around one of the giant stone mesas the area is known for. Big slabs of slick rock intertwined with flowy bits of single track, totally exposed on the edge of this thing. I managed to crash twice on this section, the second being an endo of the side of the cliff. Somehow I managed to trade places with my bike, hitting the slickrock and sort of flinging the bike over the edge. I managed to hang on to one of the grips and save myself the trouble of rock climbing in spd shoes to go get the Kona, which survived with only minor cosmetic damage to the downtube. Lars may have helmet cam footage of this one, I will post it if he does. 

    I have never seen anyone ride the way that Lars can. He took his 40lbs tricked out Bottle Rocket up some of the steepest slabs of slickrock like it was nothing, and bombed the gnarliest technical areas I have ever seen (Think Raider Ridge in Durango, only the whole thing is on the egde of a cliff.) How I survived on my bike I don't know. There where a couple of dismounts for sure, but overall I was pretty happy with what I was able to clean. I spent a great deal of time at work yesterday looking at all mountain and slopesyle bikes. The raked out geometery is absolutley necesarry for this style of riding.

    You jerks need to come visit out here and do some riding. Jerks