Broken Films Cross

Fellow BABBLE member Steve A (DFW Point-To-Point) had the crazy idea to compete in the Broken Films Cross cyclocross race. Since the race was being held in Fort Worth, and there was a good possibility that I could get a photo of Steve puking or worse, I decided to go. My little girl accompanied me and really enjoyed taking photos and video of the carnage occurring in what I'm calling the mud pit. Unfortunately there are no photos of Steve losing his lunch. Steve actually did a pretty darned good job.

Here's Steve hanging tough in the mud pit. There were lots of crashes here at the beginning of the 10:30 AM race. The ground seemed to firm up as the day continued resulting in fewer falls.

This is my daughter capturing the action on video.

The mud was worse than it looks in these photos.

I was really impressed with this guy, first of all because of his cool white beard, and second, because he was the only guy on an old lugged steel framed bike. He was pretty tough.

I think 1x9 is a great setup for this type of event.

Mad Duck Cyclery. These guys are always at the major cycling events.

Cyclocross wasn't the only thing happening at the park this morning.

Racers gathering for the start of the 11:30 AM race.

Me and my daughter took turns filming the race. We didn't bother moving out of the mud pit area since that was one of the more entertaining sections of the course. Unfortunately we didn't stay for the men's 1,2,3 race.

My New Hobby

This is our new Singer 328K sewing machine. I saw it on Craigslist Sunday morning and decided to jump on it. It appears to be in great condition. The lady I bought the machine from said that she received it as a birthday gift in 1962.

We set it up in the girls room until I can get the garage situated. My nine year old daughter has pretty well claimed the machine as her own. I may end up buying another one for myself later.

The cabinet came with the sewing machine.

I found the instruction booklet and some extras in one of the cabinet drawers. I have no idea what most of the attachments are.

I've been practicing sewing straight lines and turning corners. My wife bought me a beginners sewing book from the 50's. I'm going to study it and concentrate on the basics for now.

If any of you are wondering why I'm writing about an old sewing machine on what is essentially a bike blog, it's because I intend to eventually make my own panniers and other assorted bags. Since I've never sewn before, this will take some time.

Coffee and The Dying City

I'm going to work a second job on Saturday so I took the day off work today. We were blessed with another beautiful day. There was a nice chill in the air. A fleece pullover kept me riding in comfort.

A quick stop for coffee. For coffee my choices are the Starbucks at Hulen and Bellaire, the Starbucks downtown, or the Starbucks on University. I chose the Starbucks on University. Notice a trend here.

This is Texas, and this is Cowtown. Hence the skulls.

Beard Progress Report: About what I expected. This is usually where I get disgusted and give up. I've decided to push on this time. Hopefully things will start filling in.

I don't know what led me to this, but a couple of weeks ago but I looked up home prices on a Detroit, Michigan realty site. The thought of buying a nice old home for $12,000 was really attractive to me. The idea of patrolling the edges of my property with an assault rifle to keep the thieving hordes away was not so attractive. I wonder what day to day life must really be like for the average citizen of Detroit. Are things really as bad as the media portrays?

Today my wife came across some photos from a blog post titled "Feral Houses" on the Sweet-Juniper blog. Amazing. How could this happen to a major U.S. city? You should take the time to browse through this blog. There are some amazing but heartbreaking photos of fantastic buildings going to waste.

Feral house

Abandoned zoo. This is from another post on the same blog.

From a post titled Four Rooms.

You can also check out this blog by a Detroit cyclist. Very interesting.

Ditch Work and Ride

I started the day at work but I couldn't concentrate on being productive, the weather was just too perfect. I had to go for a ride. I took off early, aired up my tires and hit the road. Like the majority of my rides lately, I had no destination in mind. My goal was to just get out and ride.

I made a quick stop at a church across from the TCU soccer fields. I like the stone construction.

Art truck. I usually run across this vehicle parked in the Fairmont area. I eyed all the trail users as I rode trying to figure out who might be the owner.

Art truck has some new competition. I found this truck while working on the east side the other day. It's a terrible photo but what you're looking at is a large collection of Mexican figurines mounted all over this vehicle. Awesome!

I rode onto the Trinity Trails intending to head towards home when I remembered the heavy rains the other night and realized that the only crossing would be flooded. I turned around and rode the quiet neighborhood streets back home.

I don't take too many of these shots but I wanted to announce that I am making one last attempt in my life at growing a real beard. Every other attempt has seen me shave in disgust after a couple of weeks. I don't think I have the best genetics for beard growing but I have this stupid urge to try again. This will get ugly in more ways than one.

This has nothing at all to do with anything else in this post. I just thought my loyal readers might enjoy it. I found this photo on Fuzzytnth3's photostream.

Work & Rain

I haven't been on my bike since the BABBLE ride on the 17th. This has been due to the combination of work and heavy rain. Speaking of rain, I saw this unusual sight while I was "out on the job". It rained hard last night but I didn't realize just how hard untill I saw this church parking lot. The rain slid this fresh coating of asphalt off of the parking lot like the toppings off a pizza. Okay, I know it's not real exciting but it's all I've got right now.

On the bike side of things, I've decided to replace the drop bars on my bike with a set of Albatross bars and inverse brake levers, just like the setup I had on my Long Haul Trucker. After riding around on drop bars again I miss the comfort and multiple hand positions that the Albatross bars offered. They were perfect for my style of riding. I'm not sure if I'll stick with the downtube shifters or mount a pair of thumb shifters on the bars near the stem. I've got time to figure it out.

Now this is comfort!

Injured Cyclist

I just saw this on Bike Denton. Ian MacDougal, guitarist for the Riverboat Gamblers was struck by a car while riding his bike in Austin the night of October 17th. You can read more about it here. He looks terrible.

BABBLE

Chris (Pondero) came up with the acronym "BABBLE" while we were brainstorming, trying to name our social ride. BABBLE-Bicycle Authors, Bloggers, Bold-face liars, and Exaggerators, is basically just a group of bloggers who regularly comment on each others blogs and decided that it would be cool to get together and ride.

I started a Google Group the other day for BABBLE as a way for current and future members to keep connected. I know there are other, cooler means of doing this, like Facebook, Twitter and the like, but some of the members are a little long in the tooth, and, bless their hearts, are intimidated by these new fangled sites. Notice that I didn't include myself in that category despite my aversion to Facebook.

What does it take to be a member of BABBLE? I think membership should be in the vein of the Association of Caffeinated Cyclists, where if you drink coffee and you ride a bike, you're a member. So if you fall into the category of Bicycle Authors, Bloggers, Bold-face liars, and Exaggerators, congratulations you are a member. Now click on this link and join.

Yes, I know, the group is listed as CycleBABBLE. That's because BABBLE was already taken.