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What an incredible weekend in Naples. Weather was super all weekend long. Big rides, big views, big fun had by all the entire weekend. I’ll skip to it all and let the pictures sum it all up mostly.

Saturday

Saturday, hooked up with Todd and we railed around Naples area. Some super fun climbs and some incredible descents. As usual Todd tore me apart on the climbs (I promise I’ll show up fresh for a ride sometime!) and I taught him a few skills going down.

Ride was great a solid 4 hours with 2 rips down the DEC descent.

Groc Fest

After the ride with Todd, I headed into Naples for some Lunch and some grocery shopping. Had I been 10 minutes earlier I would have caught the group ride. No big deal though as I was already hosed from earlier. Though I did have to go pick up a dozen or so riders from the bottom of the tower drop and drive them up to OCP. They dropped a bunch of crushed stone on Gannett hill and no-one wanted to ride that stuff.

The evening was filled with the usual debauchery that occurs when you mix bikes, beer, bands and brisket. Schwarty’s brisket is good stuff and I think I must’ve eaten a good 5lbs of it. The band rocked out all night long and I even made my debut on the cowbell along with a full on cowbell solo. I may have a future as a musician, if I can only keep some tempo As usual you combine beer and boys and there were a few man-challenges thrown down on the playgrounds and even in the barn (my upper body is sore today!). I dutifully retired so I could get some sleep in my car for Sunday’s ride. I completely forgot my camera and wasn’t about to head back down to camp to grab it and walk back to the pavilion…

Sunday

Well, a little bit too much debauchery had us up late and tired for Sunday’s ride. The route plan quickly got shortened and we even shuttled it to skip all the climbing.

We climbed up the backside of Bristol Mt and hit Radar’s new piece of Singletrack. All I can say is friggin awesome. Rippingly fast fun flowy and long singletrack that shoots you out onto the fire-roads for a 70kph descent!!

After Bristol it was time to head over to Stid Hill

Perfect day, perfect riding. Couldn’t ask for much more. Glad to get out and hang with some good friends for the weekend. Times like this past weekend are the real reason we all ride bikes!

Off to interbike wednesday!! I’ll be updating via twitter (see sidebar) with loads of pics!

Here’s the pictures from this past weekends 155 mile Summer Soulstice ride. Another incredible journey down, this time shared with a great number of friends. An Epic day for sure.

21 of us took off at dawn, in the fog and drizzly skies and made our way through the Southern tier and into Northern PA. Crazy weather patterns, fog, rain, sunshine, downpours and epic views greeted us all along the way. We even got to do a little dirt-road drifting on our road bikes as always, it’s not a Hollow ride unless we are ripping up the dirt roads. 45 mph descents on seasonal roads on road bikes, yup that’s fun. Captain Conte yelling at us cause we rode 2.5 miles past the turn cause we were ripping up the descent, priceless.

7 flats total on the ride, 2 by myself! I felt great by the end of the ride and the prep for the 24 hour solo is coming along great. Perhaps it was the massive calorie intake I had during the ride; oatmeal creme pies, pizza slices, snickers bars, red bulls, pringles, orange cupcakes. How can you go wrong with all that tasty food

Been just crazy these past few weeks. Don’t even know where to begin here on the blog. This past wednesday I did manage to get out for a good ride with the GBC and Hollow crew prior to my departure.

We hit up Shindagin Hollow for a few hours of play. The night prior we had played hard at the Hartman’s. Suzanne served up some great chili, then it was time for some pool and mod racing. The mod crit quickly grew into a who could do better donuts. With that, we preceded to open the garage door and try to do them out on the wet driveway.

Needless to say, there was some fun that we had. Wednesday down at Shindagin was a great day. Fall foliage was in full bloom and the trails were in perfect shape.

We managed a huge crew (Jer-Bear, Casey, Der-Kaiser, Hanggi, Fry Guy, Marky Mark, Suz and I) for a wednesday afternoon. Mark was kind enough to lend me his Hi-Fi 29er. I made sure to put it to work hitting some gap jumps, riding 6 ft high skinnies, north shore bridge drops (and subsequent crashes) and tearing up the trails. Could a dualie be in my future?

The past few days were spent at a Coaching Seminar in Ypsilanti, Mi. I learned how to go real fast, and learned boat loads of info. It’s going to come in real handy. Next week I have the Coaching Summit in Colorado Springs and plan on learning even more info. Believe me, if you want to be fast for next season, hit your goals, and have fun, there’s nothing better than a coach

Yesterday was worthless. I slept for 18 out of 24 hours. I’m still a little bit tired today, but no where near yesterday. I consumed probably 5x my recommended caloric intake also yesterday, and it was great. Eating is good!

Resting up today, then back to the grinder tomorrow

2008 Humbler is in the books. I’m completely wiped out today.

111 miles, 14,030ft of climbing, 12:19 of riding, 6229kj, 4 finishers. It took us 3 friggin years to finally complete our grandiose plan of ultimate misery.

Mark, Casey, Hanggi and myself soldiered on for the final loop. Spent, exhausted, sleeping in the middle of roads. We surged, we struggled, we finally slayed the dragon.

I’m exhausted today, far too exhausted to do a full write up currently. Pics and more to come

In the meantime, go buy my bike

It’s been a long past few days of bike riding. Nothing really over the top insane, but just some random adventures and fun with friends.

This past Wednesday, Mark, Suzanne and myself put in a good 57 mile mix of road, rail-trails and cinder path, with a mix of some ATV trails for good measure.

Cruising along the Erie Canal

Rail Trail Express

Thursday, I headed down to the hollow for Casey’s big birthday bash. The usual shenanigans occured, including a fireworks war and a 3am night ride occured, but I have no recollection nor evidence that it happened. I have some mysterious bruises and had a hangover the next day. I’m pretty sure we rode and rode hard as is the usual.

Friday was some more tooling around the Hollow and then heading over to the “bog”. The ride came to a great end as Mark, Casey and I had a dogfight down Hungry Hollow road. 40+mph dirt road descending and 10ft 2-wheeled 3-wide drifting was a blast. Someday we’ll catch that fighter plane style descent on film in all its glory.

War time Relics

Dogs and Bikes

Climbing up Shultz before the carnage down Cannonball Run

Casey and Val rolling along

Sunday was an epic day at Shindagin Hollow. The hollow-geneva (pronounce hallejeneva) crew spent the day bombing descents, jumping roots, hitting doubles, crashing in creek beds, cartwheeling through the woods, power sliding, catching air of bridges, listening to the casey cackle, world-cup racing, flat-tire fixing, smiling, and have a grand ol time as we put in 30+ miles. We pretty much took it easy up the climbs then just ripped it as hard as possible down the descents, racing the whole way and having a blast.

Chasing Casey and Mark through the woods

Gorrila Bear?

After a while we decided to take breaks on the descents (fixing Jer’s wheel)

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Prep work before the downhill assaults

Just put up a big entry over on the 29er site from the last week. Read it here Too lazy to repost.

The Whopper is alive!!

EDIT:
Slideshows for ya:

Past Week or So

Pics from CAT Classic

Took a podium at the Rambler!! Nice for the first victory of the year.

Full write up over at the 29er Crew site

Headed down to Corning yesterday with the Geneva Crew to meet up with the Hollow Crew. Jer-Bear had pre-scouted some roads and terrain for what would shape up to be an “epic” day to say the least.

Temps were great, sun was shining; perfect day to be on the bikes.

Group climbs out of the city into the hills, enjoying the sun

One of the many monstrous climbs on the route. Climbing was a horrid ordeal, if the road was dirt, it was likely mud, zapping your energy with each pedal stroke. If it was snow you had to ensure you didn’t spin out.

Unknown to us on this very road, would be where we would do most of our playing

Coleman Rd aka the road of a million crashes. Under these few inches of snow was solid ice. Any sudden movement on the bike and you went down. Everybody hit the deck, often multiple times. It was hilarious, you could hardly go a few pedal strokes with out starting to slide sideways. Once you got speed, it was just inevitable you were going down. I can only imagine the thoughts of the people who lived in the area. For the howls weren’t from the coyotes, but our howls of laughter.

Casey slip sliding around on Coleman as we approach the end

Poor Bert. On a road bike, with slicks. He went down so many times on the road, we just stopped counting, but we had to give him huge props. For right after this photo, he had on of his best crashes that included about a 40 ft baseball style slide.

Good time, loads of climbing, 40 miles out in the sun playing around. Can’t wait to go back for more