this summer has been a barrage of rain, mud and broken bikes. seems as long as i keep myself in one piece, the bike ends up in pieces.

heading out for the street ride last night, i noticed that my fork was still making tons of creaky-cracky noises even after replacing the cracked headset cup. on closer inspection i realized that i had two cracks running up the crown of my fork. it should be a warranty issue, but it still means i’ll be without it for another 2 weeks or so…

i’m thinking about just biting the bullet, buying one of these and selling my rebuilt fork for $200ish once I get it back… why doesn’t money grow on trees???

that bike definitely hates me. luckily i’ve replaced almost all the parts from the original bike (because they’ve all broken). yesterday, i dropped the ford off at the dealer for my 30k service. threw the ‘cross bike on the rack so i could ride the 6 miles to work afterward. made it about a mile down gallows rd when i blew out the sidewall of the rear tire and flatted. no tube, no patchkit, no pump, no choice but to walk the remaining 4 miles back to my house. change the tire & patch the tube & ride to work. great way to start the day!

… definitely hates me, no question.

spent sunday riding down at wintergreen. some of the best riding on the east coast, no doubt. we hit nearly everything in the park, ladder drops, skinny to drop in, cough drop (~6ft to mostly flat). jason had 12 runs, i had 13. absolutely perfect weather. dunno why i’m not down there every weekend. as usual, we were the only 2 on hardtails at the park. no riding pics, we were too busy blasting thru everything to stop and shoot.

i’m not usually one for quizzes … but how can you pass up “Which Smiths song are you?”

You are “Sheila take a bow.” You know that life hurts, and you’ve had your share of pain, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still have a good time. You know the importance of not dwelling on your problems. You have a generally positive outlook, and you are a really good friend.

‘nother excellent urban ride last night, woke up with a wicked leg cramp and sore all over. good stuff ;>

check out some of jason’s pix from his trip to the north shore… seems like everybody i know has gone out to whistler this summer. everybody except me, sitting here with 3.5 hours of vacation stored up… [sigh]

saturday afternoon, i was taking jack for a swim in the creek at a park near our house. after about an hour, i figured it was time to head home. as i’m toweling him off i hear the voices of some kids walking through the woods near the creek. nothing too strange about this, even though there’s not really any walking trails back there. i looked up to see about 30 young latinos dressed entirely in blue and white strolling out of the woods. creepy enough by itself, but after doing a little googling today i think i might have seen a chunk of the salvadorian gang “Mara Salvatrucha 13″.

“MS-13 may hands down be the most dangerous gang out there,” said Wes McBride, president of the California Gang Investigators Association and a veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “They have no compunction about killing. MS-13 will kill a cop at the drop of a hat. They just don’t mess around.” [via: streetgangs.com]

time to hilite the local crew:

head over to rodeoRob’s for his european journals.

welcome lex to america. and to a new grapilicious layout.

stephen posted up a new blog, but i can’t find the url … yarrrggh!

**edit: stephen’s site is: aboynamedsous.blogspot.com. thanks scott**

had an especially good urban session last night, hit some new spots on georgetown u’s campus and rosslyn. some new faces in the crowd are always nice, especially when they’re tearin stuff up! thursday nights have really become the pinnacle of my riding week, i look forward to it all week long.

damien’s pix from whistler are so incredible … i want to make a point to try and get out there next year, if only for a couple days!

and now… show reviews from LAURA!

8/12/03 – Hey Mercedes/Sensefield – 9:30 club

“Hey Mercedes was up first….They had a very nice drum sound. I believe he had a sound switcher thingy that he would press and make it all echoy and loud. I like loud drums. I liked that a lot. The lead singer was very mouse-like and seemed to lack the confidence that a lead singer should have. he seemed a little nervous and uncomfortable. The guitars were rockin in a wild stalion kind of way very big very I am going to strum you with my whole arm and whole arm you will love. We got there about 15 minutes into their set and I was just praying I didn’t miss the convienent store song (7-11/11-7 song) cause that is their claim to fame in my heart, which they played as the first song on the home stretch….All in all it was……. hmmm average at best. With the highlights on the drums and the 7-11 song which was true to recorded efforts. On a side note: Lance of course doesn’t like anything the slightest bit emo so he resorted to trying to figure out ways to make the entire audience hate the band. (He decided that wearing a pink tu-tu and slow motion slam dancing would sufice) Yet since lack of a tu-tu and the motivation to slam into 12 year olds for fear of jailation he sat there quite like a good little monkey.

Now the people who make sense of fields…. Cheesey pooofs does not come close to the awfulness of the new album. For real. Not good…. Yet when they played the songs off Building and Tonight and Forever it was pretty freakin amazing. The lead singer was wearing one of those funny hats that the golfers like to wear that have become stylish with the younger generation of 12 year olds that were in high presense at the show. Except he had no rhythm. None at all. I mean he looked like a gorilla going from one side of the stage to the other. It was quite amusing. But he sounded great. The keyboard guy was caressing the mike as he was singing which was pretty freakin funny…. The #1 fan was this old dude who was screaming and putting his cell phone up to the dudes face, it was so amusing. He was a trip. The guitars were average, bass guy was good, but I saw Claypool on Sunday night so the bassist was in for some large scruitiny and falls way short of the master.”

- laura

yours truly descending a rock garden at the Hoo-Ha last weekend. less hardtails ran than i thought, so i actually placed 5th … out of 5 riders … d’oh! comparing my time with the beginner and sport guys (both on full suspension DH bikes) i think i did pretty well. woulda placed 2nd in beginner and 10th in sport. dylan, moni and matt were FLYING!

so amazingly frustrating… i somehow managed to snap the derailleur hanger off the NEW redline frame last nite. i have no idea how it even happened, just riding along the sidewalk. must be the derailleur that i pounded back into shape after the mangling it recieved last time i broke the hangar. ugh. at least this frame has a replaceable hanger.

getting ready to paint the living and dining rooms again. this time with some actual color. should be purty.