Day Two, Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 Challenge

Today we got up early, did Christmas, I got a nap in, sledded with Aida a bit and then we lazed about watching the flurries for a while. Most of the day was spent watching Aida swing on her new tree swing, which I installed in the living room:

See this set for more info... I stoked the woodfire up so it was nearly 85F in the living room and we sort of lost the will to do anything. Finally it sort of cleared up and I busted out a quick(ish) 8 mile ride on the Pugs on the perimeter to roundabout to walnut canyon to bridges loop.

I took the road route (about a mile and a half) through Quemazon neighborhood to the pipeline-perimeter intersection so I could get the loop done quicker. It was a nasty climb, but I was treated with some nice views of the area from the high point of the ride. It was around freezing when I left the house, but the temp was dropping pretty quickly and I was not quite dressed properly. So I pretty much rode as hard as I could to keep warm. The rest of the ride was on snow packed singletrack, choppily packed down by peds. It was pretty much ideal snow biking conditions. 12" wide singletrack that the pugs ate up. I got up to the top at about sunset, descended and rolled to the roundabout in somewhat sketchy flat light conditions. I did the walnut canyon rim trail in increasing darkness, but the moon and other ambient light and the snow cover got me through bridges trail back to home without me needing to turn on the lights until I hit the last couple blocks on the road to home. I will add that this was a really good ride. Despite lingering sickness of indeterminate cause, I pushed it and it felt good and I returned home after and hour and a half to find the ladies napping...

So that puts me at a massive 11.5 miles total thus far. I am totally going to cheat by going to Santa Barbara for the rest of the challenge, but I will pay for it by having to travel twice between now and New Years. I will have to be a bit sneaky to get my rides in on the travel days, but I am nothing if not resourceful.

I am pleased that Big Dummy Daddy and Cyclotourist have taken up the challenge. Remember all you need to do is:
1. Just ride your bike 100 miles from 12/24-12/31/12 and you have achieved the challenge.
2. Or just ride your bike every day from 12/24-12/31 and you also have achieved the challenge.
3. Or just try to ride your bike just a bit more than you might have otherwise and you have achieved it.
You can prorate the challenge if you did not see it until after it started, or you can just go for number 3, or whatever. Just let me know how you did and I will send you a TSBC pin.

The Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 Challenge

Welcome to the Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 mile bike challenge. There are three ways to meet the challenge.
1. Just ride your bike 100 miles from 12/24-12/31/12 and you have achieved the challenge.
2. Or just ride your bike every day from 12/24-12/31 and you also have achieved the challenge.
3. Or just try to ride your bike just a bit more than you might have otherwise and you have achieved it.
This may appear like another groups holiday challenge, but the TSBC is better and cheaper and infinitely more inclusive than anything they do. I have no roundel prize but I have pins.

I am going to try for all the three prongs of the challenge and will document it here! You can document it in the comments or wherever you want. If you want an achievement prize, I will send you a TSBC pin gratis, email me with what you did to do achieve the challenge and a valid mailing address and I will send a TSBC pin out to you. Remember, club rules are 1. Ride bikes, 2. Try not to be an ass. And in this case, at least ride a bit between Christmas eve and New Years and then tell me about it.

It has been kind of cold and snowy here and we have been slightly waylaid by stomach issues and holiday stuff, so I did not ride during daylight hours, but then just around dark this started happening.

And then Elena and Aida and I went for a walk and then ate dinner, put Aida to bed, then did christmas prep, and then I snuck out for a ride.

Today, a mighty 3.5 miles at night on the pugsley in a combination of fresh snow, plowed slop, trails, sidewalks and interstitial neighborhood pathways. I felt like crap, but the trails were fun. It was around 30 degrees F and really humid for here, some sort of post storm inversion layer. It was good.

Ubikequitous 10, Fat Bike Yoga Pants Shootout!!!

Everyone favorite battling purveyors of yoga and sporty gear for women both featured Pugsleys in their latest catalogs.

From Top, cover of Title 9 catalog, back page of Athleta catalog

From Top, innards of Athleta catalog, innards of Title 9 catalog

Clearly Title 9 is the victor as they have a cooler schwinn and the cover model actually riding the bike (the catalog also has a lemond city bike and a generic stepthrough in other photos). But well done to both catalogs in capturing the fat bike zeitgeist.

I do have to admit being very nostalgic for the Title 9 catalogs of 10 years ago or so which used to feature what I called the "Title 9 Barbies" (ironically, see below) who usually were shown surfing or skateboarding or gardening their organic farms or building a school for impoverished children with descriptions such as "working on her third PhD, raising her 4 adopted children on her organic turkey farm, still finds time to shred the morning break" or "built her own wooden yacht and sailed around the world in between her career as pro kiteboarder and her current job as CTO of a biotech startup". There was one page of the catalog I used to carry around in my lab book for inspiration when I was working on my dissertation, I can't find that page anymore, but I figured if she could look great in yoga pants and get her PhD while she was skateboarding/surfing/alpacafarming, well then, I could finish my dissertation while living by myself and riding my bikes a whole bunch, with little pressure to look great in yoga pants (even though I could totally rock those if I wanted to). I used to call them the barbies as those were the type of barbies I would like my future daughter to play with, alas, now that I actually have a daughter, the current Title 9 catalogs have dispensed with the awe inspiring overachievers for less impressive and breezy descriptions of the models.