Team Seagal AZ

Merry Fucking CXMAS Jerks!!!!!!!

2011-12-23T07:52:00.000-08:00

Well It has been awhile, but I am sure that Mr Dubbs or Crotch will eventually swing by to leave a duty report and stumble upon my holiday post here. During all the holiday revelry I wanted to take a moment to focus on the true reason for the season, the birth of our Lord Energor. With all the racing, drinking, jenkem goggles, and naughty elves it is easy to get forget why we celebrate in the first place. As I sat atop Mt. Kohler this morn reading the ancient Chinese scrolls telling of Energor's creation,life, and eventual sacrifice I thought it would be appropriate to begin this post with an excerpt from The Gospel of Energor, New Zambian Version

I Energor, chapter 1 verse 10 "In the tenth cycle of the TC Man calendar, our universe was condensed from the jenkem ether by Energor's mighty inhalation of the sacred vapors. Our reality is the manifestation of his jenkem goggled visions. Near the end of the fifteenth cycle of the TC Man calendar the mighty Energor had grown displeased with the state of mankind and he came to our earth in the form of a nine foot tall energy can robot in order to teach us all the ways of jenkem, so that we might reach the next phase of our evolution which is set to occur at the end of the TC Man Calendar, December 21, 2012. Even though he travelled the globe trying to spread the gospel his only disciples were Zambian street children, who eventually, in a sobriety induced rage murdered the physical manifestation of our Lord Energor with thrift store golf clubs. Once they realized what they had done, his disciples reconstructed him with gorilla glue and built a shrine at TC Man, and made daily pilgrimages to participate in jenkem rituals at the feet of their Lord. Only those righteous will survive the next evolutionary phase, which can only be attained through diligent jenkem goggled meditation"

So as you celebrate this season take time to shit in a two liter bottle, cap it with a balloon, ferment it in the sun for two weeks, inhale the vapors, and reflect on the teachings of Energor. And Naughty Elves.

Fuck you Jerks,
UnaDoctor

WTF???

2011-03-09T21:31:00.000-08:00

Good day you jerk ass sonsofbitches. Well, sort of good day. It seemed like a good day, 65 degrees, 1 mile an hour wind, nice road lunch ride, double IPA waiting at the shop for dessert. About half way through my beer and a discussion with a customer about the endless benefits of tubeless, I get a distressed phone call from Mrs. Dr. She had been riding her bike to meet with the gentlemen who puts on the whiskey 50 about helping with the race, and was the victim of a hit and run. She was right around the corner from our house rolling up to the stop light in the left turn lane when a car came screaming around the corner, cut into her lane, hit her head on, and then like a real piece of shit sped away up the hill. One of the witnesses to the crash tried to follow, but ultimately lost him and couldn't get the plate number. Another guy who saw it stayed and gave a statement to the police, and drove Mrs. Doctor and her bike back to our house. The two dudes that helped also gave me and the police a good description of the car and where he had chased it to before it got away, which happened to be a pretty dead end sub division, meaning the car was probably still in there. We got Mrs Dr home, she suffered only some road rash and some bruises, and then went to comb the sub division for the car. After about an hour and a half of poking around, I think I found it. I almost knocked on the door of the house it was in front of, but decided that would probably turn out badly in the long run (translated: me facing assault charges) and took the plate number and address and called it in. Hopefully we found this piece of shit. Who hits someone and leaves them lying in the street? We'll find out more tomorrow once the police check this car out.
    On a lighter note, per Crotcheese's request, a 24 hours in the old Pooblow race report. being the dedicated procrastinator, registration filled up before I could really solidify any plans of singing up for the race, sending me to the message board to see if any other unfortunate souls needed teammates for teams that were already signed up. Found a four man team, sweet, 4 maybe 5 laps tops each. I can do that. We got a little snow, which kept me from riding as much as I wanted to get ready for the race, but I was pretty confident that I could do ok on the four man team. Then, four days before the race, I was notified that the rest of that team had backed out. Back to the message board for the race, all I could find was a spot on a Duo team. Oh shit.
    So me and two guys from my shop who were also doing a duo team left on Thursday morning on the four hour trip to the race, set up camp right by the start line, and pre rode the course. Piece of cake. Not too much climbing, pretty flowy, way too many cactus lining the trail (more on that later) Good rigid single speed riding. I knew the duo was going to be hard (probably 8 laps instead of 5) but I was pretty sure I could survive it. Rode the course again on Friday and only reinforced that I was going to make it. Woke up Saturday for the start of the race, unzipped my tent, and almost got blown away. 35 mile an hour winds had worked their way from northern AZ down to Tucson and brought with them high chances for precipitation, and much colder temperatures. And DUST. Holy fucking shit the DUST. Only now have I gotten all the sand out of my lungs. My teammate, a 21 year old dude from Oregon, wanted to do the first lap which was just fine with me. He put in a 1:19 on a geared bike, I did the same for my first lap. On our next laps we each had 1:24:02 exactly. Then shit got interesting. after my teammates third lap, it was now dark, 35 mile wind, sideways freezing rain, and my turn. I put my head down and just kept moving, putting in a decent enough 1:32. When I got back I realized I was out of dry clothes so I stood by the fire and tried to dry out while my teammate did 2 laps. (we were going to do this once each to give the other a longer break) It had stopped raining at the very end of my previous lap, and by the time I went out again, the trail that had been dusty and loose, and then gone to puddles everywhere, was now pretty hard packed and fast, but I was pretty cold and wet. The temps were in the low 30's and the wind was still blowing hard and it was my turn to crush out two laps. toward the end of my first one I started not feeling too terribly good, by the end of the second one I think was headed toward hypothermia. I went to stretch and try and warm up in my tent. When my teammate came back, I got up to go out and both of my legs just seized with cramps. I knew I was done. I had only made it till 6 oclock in the morning, the race ended at noon. I had done 5 laps and about 80 miles. I laid in the tent trying to stretch the cramps out and get some motivation to ride, but that cramps stayed and the motivation never came. I drank IPA's while my teammate did 3 or 4 more laps for ten total, which put us in 15th out of 81 duo teams. I had found a ringer on the internet. He didn't even know how he rode so much, his longest training ride to date had been 4 hours. He said he had a heart rate monitor and just stayed in whatever gear kept his numbers in check. 160 miles is a pretty healthy road ride let alone mountain bike. Cheers to that kid, and may he try solo next time. I will be going with a four man team so I can drink beer and relax a bit more. February is too early to be too serious. The two guys from my shop Crushed it, putting down consistent 1:25 ish laps for 16 laps, a fair 8 each, and a tenth place finish. Nice work fuckers. On rigid single speeds no less.
     While I didn't accomplish too terribly much during the race, I had a good 5 day weekend, and met some cool people, and had a pretty good time, which is all I really had set out to do anyway. The weather made the party atmosphere a little more subdued than it apparently has been in the past, but we made the best of it. This would be an interesting candidate for a national Seagal meeting, but a lot travel for everyone but me.
In the meantime, watch out for assholes when you're on the road, sage words of wisdom.
Doctor

Feild Report: Zambia

2011-03-03T17:33:00.000-08:00

Well fuck me running. It has been a long time since I posted on this turd of a blog (which was hijacked in my absence) Shortly after my last post I began an exceptionally long journey, sort of a jenkem vision quest if you will. I travelled to Colorado for Stove's wedding, and from there continued travelling the jenkem highlands in search of answers, and new tube shapes. Praise Energor. I finshed my journey at 24 hours of old pueblo in Tucson and am now home coughing up sand. (seriously) and Jenkem. (seriously)
As March rolls around the days are getting longer and anticipation is high, for many great things are only days away. As you may remember that jerk ass jerk Nico Toscani came here last year to wreak havoc on the Sedona Big Friggin Loop (I'd put a link, but seriously it is just a couple of posts down, just scroll down) Many things hampered our planned Team Seagal domination. I was reduced to hiking a couple of weeks before the race, and Toscani got a little turned around and blocked by a river. This year we are going back, with reinforcements in the form of a healthy collar bone for me, a charged GPS battery for Toscani, and Stove. That's right. Stove. A flock of Seagals. With a Chinaman as our guide, we will form a pabst powered man train hell bent for gloryland. (insert criss angel joke here) I also hope to show these jerks some prime Prescott singletrack, and maybe a little black canyon trail. Their trip also coincides with the weekend that Mrs Dr and I are moving to a cabin in the woods (seriously) So it should be an interesting month, followed by camping in Utah and the Whiskey 50 in april. Holy Shit. BTW should I be worried if I had a 3 pounder this morning?
More to come us events unfold. Until then, fuck you

We're Back!!!!

2010-07-04T16:36:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-04-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-24T07:43:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-03-16T09:09:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-02-12T08:47:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-03T08:11:00.000-08:00

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

AZCross Race 4: The Dr. gets sand in his cavernous vagina

2009-11-15T22:03:00.000-08:00

Good day jerks. It may take a while to type all of this with two snapped wrists, but I'll give it a shot. Yesterday I woke up a 6:00am to travel to Phoenix for the 4th race in the AZCross series, and my first cross race since that jerk Rich Pierce decided to set a car on fire and make us ride the spiral of death across the most rutted and painful course he could find. The smell of burning PT Cruiser haunts me to this day.

I wasn't sure what race to do. There is a cat4 only race, Masters 30+, cat 3/4, and mens open. I opted for the mens 3/4, knowing that the Open was going to be the "A" race and that I would be eaten alive in that one. Now it is important to understand that this is a much smaller scene that STL. Checking over the results for the previous races I noted that the largest category was only 20 dudes give or take. I went into what would be the equivalent of the traditional "B" race expecting a mid pack finish, but with mild delusions of a podium spot, and maybe a Wheaties endorsement deal or something. Anything could happen in the 3/4 race. This is me on the start line, unknowingly facing near total anihilation.

(1 or 2 more guys raced, for a total of 10 or 11)

The bell sounded and we were off. I got a good jump off the line and started out hard to try and hold it. This did not work. 2 guys fly past me almost immediately followed by 2 more and 2 more. I was able to hold this place for about a lap. I settled into the fastest pace I could keep for any length of time and tried to hold on. This also did not work as I soon found myself being passed again and hanging off the back with only 2 guys behind me. The rest of the pack had a rapidly growing gap on me, and one of the guys behind was starting to nip at my heels. I held him off for a lap, maybe two, but he eventually passed me and I was struggling to hang on. I passed him again at one point, but not for long. He came around again and I was unable to respond. I spent the next 2 laps trying to bridge the gap, riding way above my head. This also did not work. Here we are either right before or right after I passed him:

(Note that he has horns. Like the devil)

By the last lap I had accepted my fate and kept pushing because I obviously need the training. I did snap at least one wrist, and I will do the 3/4 race again next time. Hopefully next time I am in a little better condition. I still have two weeks (11/28) and I have had a taste of what the pace will be like.

It was definitely different without my jerk ass teammates and friends from STL. I made multiple attempts to hand off a beautiful PBR 24oz'er to the leaders in the A race, and to no avail. Finally a gentleman named Pace (who ironically was in the back of the pack) who had been eyeing the beautiful PBR 24oz'er that I myself was drinking during his race gladly took it and crossed the finish line in style. Scott and I had some PBR 40's during that race too which I think contributed to our not thinking to capture photographic evidence of the handoff. You jerks need to come teach these people how to drink and race at the same time, except of course for the 15 year old kid that I inadvertently offered a beer handoff. He was in third in the "A" race. How was I supposed to know? We need a few more people to party like this guy, a resident of the park the race was held in.

(Nice fella letting us race in his living room, passed out about 10ft from the course)

The course was awesome. It looked pretty flat from the parking lot, but the backside contained all the ingredients for a pain train. Tight downhill S-turns, tight uphill S-turns, and even S-turns on flat ground with barriers midway through the turn just for kicks. There was a sand pit that was in the middle of a playground complete with actual children that somehow seemed deeper each time I waded through it. Where is the Park Tools Vagina De-sandifier (VGS-12) when you need it. There was even a concrete drainage ditch at the bottom of a short downhill, which looked worse than it was, but it still kept you on your toes.

All in all it was a good time, although not quite as rowdy as the STL races. This is the 3rd year they've had the series, as it goes on more people will get involved. I would like to try and host a race in the series here in Prescott. Maybe a couple to fill out the schedule a little bit. A little bit bigger turn out would be nice. That's all I've got to say except that Kid Rock sucks, even more than knee deep sand pits. Even more than dreaming that you pissed the bed, only to wake up and find out that you really pissed the bed. Until next time, I bid you goodnight.

Cyclocross in the Desert?

2009-11-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick!! I just realized that I haven't put anything on here in over a month now. I have been working on an epic post about pretty much the only road ride here and it is no where near completetion,. It looks at this point that it will be my life's work and personal memoir, a heroic tale of a Doctor and his travels. So in the meantime, a bit about current happenings in the wester-regions.
This coming Saturday I will be traveling about 2 hrs to Phoenix to race Cross. There is a "statewide" cross series here that consists of about 6 races. The first two were held in one weekend in Flagstaff and the remaining four are in Phoenix, one of which is taking place this very afternoon. Since I have to work today I won't be able to swing this one. In preparation for next weekends event I spent the entire week camping at the top of Thumb Butte

You can camp up here free for seven days, although they are pretty lax about it and you could stay for a while this time of year. The roads leading up to the campsites are primitive fire roads, think Matson Hill or Terry Rd but for 8 to 10 miles depending what side you go up. These roads are curvy and bumpy with huge washboard sections and pot holes with the occaisional sand pit thrown in to keep you on your toes. Perfect practice for cross. Long steep technical downhills on the way to work and climbs back up after work. It feels good to be on the cross bike. Amazing all purpose machines. Speaking of which I am supposed to be on mine right now. More to come, I mean it this time.

SSWC09:Race Report

2009-09-22T20:58:00.000-07:00

Good day Ladies and Jerks. As I write this, my dog Taco is licking up the bits of my blown mind that are still dripping down my sleeve. The Single Speed World Championships is simply the BEST race on the face of the planet. I don't even know where to begin. The race itself is merely the climax of a week long string of events. In addition to all the BeerBque, group rides, and other debauchery, Durango has some killer trails. Almost literally.
On Thursday, Gino Fellino (of Team Seagal fame) and I set out for one of trailheads near the downtown area. After passing Carl Decker on the way there (he was going the other way) we rode with some local guys on some crazy technical trails that spit us out into a Wal Mart parking lot. No shit. Friday found Gino and myself joing Nico Toscani and Casey F. Ryback (also of Team Seagal fame) for an hour long shuttle ride up the side of a huge mountain to ride back down on the Colorado Trail. This ended up being an amazing ride. The first 3 or 4 miles of the descent is wet, technical, and very slippery. The trail is littered with wet rocks, roots, and water bars. While attempting to ride a fairly innocent looking creek crossing I was Judo flipped face first into said creek with a nice scorpion like motion that tacoed my rear wheel and left me beat up, wet and freezing. I ended up with a huge gash in my hand that wouldn't stop bleeding. Another rider caught up to me and wrapped it with gauze to stop the bleeding and allow me to ride the rest of the trail. At the top of the 1,000ft, 4 mile climb in the middle of the ride, it was holding up fine. What followed was close to ten miles of the most amazing downhill I have ever ridden. Close to the bottom I find Gino, Coarch, and Nico talking to some other riders, one of which is a real doctor, Dr. Darcey. She stitches me up in the parking lot over a beer and did such a good job that it lasted through the race the following day. Thanks again Dr. Darcey! Coach put some pics up here.

Now to the race. Holy shit. Almost 1,000 people signed up for the race, the SSWC09 website says 2,000 people rode the course that day. I have never been in a race with that many people evar. There were soooo many people, most of them in some sort of costume. Only about 10 of these people actually raced, the rest of us went on a gigantic, drunken, really really hard group ride. There were beer tents, Jager Faries, and strange hippies with whiskey and bacon. All other races should be like this. I crashed a couple of times, and broke my chain on a climb with about 6 miles left to go, but by that point I was too drunk to care. The last couple of miles were downhill and had me coasting in to the finish line. Which brings me to the race within the race.

I had one goal, and that was to destroy Robort, thereby saving millions of schoolboys mental health. In a conventional race, the winner is the one who crosses the finish line first, Robort crossed the finish line before me, as evidenced in the above photo. But did he beat me? Let"s review the facts.

So, by my math it seems like I completed the race as it was meant to be done, but since Robort did cross the line before me, I have changed the letters in the title to this blog to his gay favorite colorway, pink. anyway, here's some pics:

Adam Craig in his drawers and a TT helmet. So Aero.

WTF?

Nico helping up the hill.

The after party was amazing, pros were running rampant in the Ska brewery following the basketball game to decide next years host. Start saving for your plane tickets to New Zealand. Jerks.

D9 Bulldozer

2009-09-05T22:52:00.000-07:00

Good evening ladies and jerks, and of course, rabid Team Seagal fans. September is here and that means that we are only days away from the most glorious event of all time evar, the D9 bulldozer aka the Single Speed World Championships. Holy shit! Energor, in his infinite wisdom, has seen fit to send me to Durango to share classified information and PBRs with several members of the original Team Seagal (St Louis) and a contigent of men from China. He has also charged me with the task of crushing Robort, which will in turn crush Robort's will to cruise by middle school playgrounds, drunk on Zima, and hellbent for leather.

The mental well being of thousands of school boys is in my hands.

Keeping that in mind, I have been riding a lot. I have a new favorite ride to work. It begins with a 4 mile sustained climb on the road which puts me on the east end of the 396 trail that I mentioned in my last post, and several hundred feet higher than my house. From this end of the trail it is 4 miles, almost all downhill to the western trail head, which is less than a mile away from the shop. On the way home the trail is mostly climbing and the road is all downhill. It's a great ride in either direction. The service manager at the shop took me on a couple more routes that he likes to do. One of them begins with a 7 mile climb to the top of Mt Francis, which is about 7200 feet (my house is about 5400 feet). Once you get to the top you are faced with some pretty ridiculous downhill, followed by a brutal trail that has lots of long, steep ups and downs. This trail drops you out on an old jeep road called Quartz mountain. This is an amazing downhill. After going down for a solid 7 minutes you are spit out onto the road the shop is on, about a half a mile away. The riding is pretty difficult here, but it is truly awesome.

This is awesome in a different sort of way

The D9 bulldozer is going to kick ass!!!

2009-08-23T10:28:00.000-07:00

Good day to you, the rabid Team Seagal fan. It has come to this, having forgotten the password to Robort and I's amazing blog, and no longer satisfied with posting in the comments section, I have started the Team Seagal AZ blog. Although I am currently the only member of the AZ branch there is a lot to cover as I attempt to spread the general vibe of badassery that is Team Seagal. I am also considering marketing a Team Seagal fragrance, because badass dudes should smell badass. Right now it is hovering somewhere between napalm and chicken soup, with hints of vanilla. Delicious. So I guess in a way I am breaking up with Robort, but what we had was mediocre and horribly misspelled and no one can evar take that away.

So I have been in Arizona for a couple of weeks and I like it a lot. There are trails in every direction, several within a ten minute ride from my doorstep. The shop I work for is pretty cool, the bars have two for one beers, and my ride to work only takes about ten minutes. The service manager at the shop I work for is a singlespeeder with Team Seagal written all over him. He got 8th place in the Whiskey Offroad, which is a 50 mile mtb race leaving from downtown. He completed the race, which has over 7,000 feet of climbing, in 4hrs 08 min. Smoking fast. I will likely be carpooling to the D9 Bulldozer with his buddy Ed, who may also soon have Team Seagal written all over him. There is a singlespeed only race scheduled for 10-3, which as it happens, is sponsored by PBR. Things just keep falling into place.

As far as riding goes, I am still adapting. The altitude has taken some time to get used to, but I am getting there. I took an early off season, between working RAGBRAI, packing, moving, and adapting to the altitude I didn't do any regular riding for about 3 weeks other than riding to work, which is only 2.5 miles from my house. The first mountain bike ride I did was short and it totally kicked my ass. Wednesday I went for my second mountain bike ride with a guy from work. We climbed about two thirds of the way up Thumb Butte, which is the title picture for the blog right now. It is part of the Prescott National Forest and is absolutley covered in randomly intersecting trails and fireroads. It was a good ride, a little short, and very low intensity. There is a singletrack climb, leading to a fire road, leading to some downhill singletrack. The next day, being off work, I decided to head back that way for a longer ride. The fireroad leading to the singletrack that we took continues to the top of Thumb Butte and beyond to a few even higher points. Armed with a pretty basic map and a lot of spare time I decided to continue on this fire road to some even more distant single track that, according to the map, would eventually drop me out on the same downhill single track that we had taken the night before. I proceeded on the fire road, which turned out to be very reminicsient of Matson Hill, but it just kept going up. By the time I reached the highest point at about 7,400ft I had been climbing continuously for over an hour. I eventually turned on another fire road which dropped me about a thousand feet in about 5 minutes. I found the trail head I had been looking for and proceeded into the woods to climb back up to the top to connect with the downhill. This is where things started going wrong. At some point I made a wrong turn. As it turns out, some of the trails on the map were not marked, other trails were marked, but not included on the map. I ended up horribly lost, out of water, and my map began disentegrating in my hands from being damp with sweat. Things were not looking good. I had some idea which general direction to keep moving in, down being the most important. I finally ended up on an unmarked trail that got me back out onto the road and on my way to water. All in all I rode about 25 miles with at least 3,500 feet of climbing on only two water bottles, a peanut butter sandwich, and some cereal. I believe I will be using my camelback more often in the future.

That is about all I've got for now, I'm going to have another go at the 396 trail (my first mtb ride here) in the morning before work. In the meantime you guys should start training in altitude tents for the D9bulldozer, it's gonna kick ass. Jerks. Here's some pics to tide you over. Jerks.