It’s winter, it’s getting colder around the Midwest. Pass 2 hours of your time with a le Tour “Living in Hell” video:
le Tour – Hell on Wheels
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Category Archives: stuff
something power this here pops
be on the look out for tartan and toast passing by
West Side Cold Ride
WOW it was cold this weekend. Almost too cold to ride. Almost. This past week we have been crushed with snow. I mean crushed for cincinnati. We had like 6 inches!! Anyways the white death had kept most of us off the bike outside for a couple days and I was beginning to grow tired of my intense trainer work outs. Saturday night I went out to party with the likes of the BSM crew, well maybe only Max. It was a fun night of bowling, beers, and too many beers. I woke up sunday morning around 9 a.m. to max’s whining cats. I could hear it out side of the office couch where I was sleeping. MEOW ME ME MEOOOW. Damn cats… don’t you realize I’m hung over. At this point I am moving around and having coffee with max. I looked outside and it looked like a beautiful sunday. Sun was out snow was white and it was about 8 degrees. At 10:13 a.m. I sent Chewning that motivating text that read “Quick Ride? Out Side?” The only reply I received after that was “K”… oh michael, such enthusiasm. It was on!! We had planned a team trainer ride for about 3 p.m. but i just wasn’t feeling it.
Chewning and i met around 11:30 and we were on our way to scoop up Scott to ride some west side. Scott always wants to ride outside. So this was it. We were really going to ride outside in this 15 degree day. Scott took us on some sketchy, windy, downhill, slushy, decents and some hairy climbs. We had a nice pace until this pretty short but very steep climb. I could tell Mike and Scott were turning it up about half way up the climb. Let me first mention how weak of climber I am to both of these two. The pace seemed to get harder with each foot but very steady. I was on Mikes wheel and I wasn’t moving. Wow!? It’s over? I’m finishing with Scott and Michael?? How could it be?? Congratulations were coming from both parties unfortunately followed by Scott mentioning that we took it pretty easy. G’ Dangit! I’m still slow.
We started the crawl back into Northside from West Fork Road. We came up to another steep climb off of Montana Avenue. I was on the front and had no intentions of riding off the front. I was seated in a nice grove trying to keep my heart rate some what low. I noticed I had put a bit of a gap on those two fools. With out any warning I hear Michael drop like 5 gears and he was in his drops crushing a sprint up the hill. Of course Scott followed after Chewning and I followed Scott. Michael peeled off and I was still trying to hold onto Scott. G’ Dangit! I blew up about 50 feet from the top. I looked at my HR Monitor and i said Oops! New Max HR. 183 BPM. At the top we were all laughing about how dumb that was and michael said… ” I don’t know why I did that… I instantly regretted it.” Yep all smiles and head nods all around. We finished the ride with the cruise through Mt. Airy forest. Michael and I chatted about the ride over burritos from one of my favorite sponsors… The Comet. Michael said we have the best lives. I couldn’t agree more. There is nothing better than that small intimate group on a terrible day to make riding the bike that much better. Followed by that awesome jerk tofu burrito and a nice Bell’s Winter Lager. Here are some pics from the ride.
Hungry winter training
Jamie and I went out to Team Hungry’s top secret winter training routes. Think Mt. Ventoux with a mountain top lake.
Team Hungry Grows for 2011 Season!
Thats right! Team Hungry is happy to welcome the addition to 5 new hungarians. These are all people that we believe live and breathe the Hungry lifestyle. Words can not explain how excited we are to have all of these wonderful people on our team for 2011 season. Here are the names.
Anne Mcdonald, Blaire Barter, Jamie Williamson, Matt Harbaugh, and Adam Noderer.
First and foremost I must say how excited I am to have Anne and Blaire on the team. Anne has been on the “Thursday Night Hungry Buffett All You Can Eat Ride” and absolutely smoked me. Very strong rider indeed. I haven’t personally had the chance to meet Blaire yet, but i have heard some great stories about her abilities.
I first met Jamie at Gun Club Cross a few months ago. I was taken back because a stranger came up to me in the plaid nightmare that is our skin suit and introduced him self. I could already tell this guy was an absolute kind heart and incredibly strong on the CX course. He is also very close with James, Anne, and Blair. Unfortunately that means they are all going to work together on the Thursday Rides now and crush the rest of us!
Where do I begin with Matt Harbaugh. At the start of CX season I knew I wanted him on Team Hungry. He never missed the Thursday Night Devou Park Hotlaps and also never missed the opportunity to drop me. Thankfully he has already been intiated so he is settling in quite nice. I can’t comment much on the initiation other than there was lots of great beer, bourbon, home cooked dinner, and two Hungry riders almost finishing dead last at the Lexington CX race the next day. Matt was one of those. I’m not sure who the other guy was 
(yes thats an emoticon).
Adam Noderer… I don’t think I went on a single ride all year that Adam wasn’t on. I was first introduced from Glenn. At first I thought oh great he is a friend of glenn.. I already know his riding style.. super proper, quiet, rides 150 miles at a time without flinching, excellent goatee and hair grooming before and after riding. HA Far from it! Adam is a great rider who had some serious miles under his belt last season. He is also radstoked to race next season and we are radstoked to have him.
Ladies and Gents’ prepare your selves for a long season of beer, food, pain, long rides, and jokes.
-radstoked
Thankful for CX
I need a good morning of pre-gaming (moonshine & bikes) before closing myself indoors for a few hours with the family during the holidays. Many people share this sentiment. Team Hungry usually heads for the mountain bike trails every Thanksgiving, but Corey Green’s rain dance brought mud and an impromptu cyclocross race that we couldn’t resist.
The race began with a track-influenced qualifier – Miss-N-Outs – where groups of five weaved around a small bunch of trees. The last person around on each lap was removed until you had a winner. The catch: if you were first on any lap, you had to take the mandatory desert hand-up (see below).
Starting order of the main event was determined by the qualifier and Corey Green’s discretion. Racers were released in heats based on some six-sigma algorithm that was worked out in seconds before the race.
The course was full of flying candy corn, mandatory pit stops, challenging short-cuts and of course, MUD. Finally we have soft ground! With all of the desert hand-ups, I’m pretty sure I had a net calorie gain by the end of the race. It was Thanksgiving, after all.
Hours later I am meeting my future in-laws…Dreaming of getting rad and thankful to have the momentum of an early morning cx race to get me through the day.
Thanks Corey!
Alison Delgado and Move With Love
On my morning commute last week I stopped to call Chewning with an idea of creating a benefit t-shirt for Ali to help with $tuff so she could put her mind on more important things… like healing! Micheal got busy chew’n away at some ideas that would be good for the cause and wouldn’t be cheesy. By mid-day he had a great concept to bring awareness to the whole “bike / car” world. Move With Love was hatched that day… Continue reading
life in pittsburgh
Life in Pittsburgh has been a slight adjustment. Yins is apparently a word, fries go on everything, and of course grad school is eating into precious cycling time. I did manage to get out this past weekend for an alleycat on Saturday and a cross race Sunday. A couple of fellow first years saw me Saturday on my tall bike, and were shocked that such a thing exists.
Sunday was the real fun though. In an old quarry dump just south of the largest city park I’ve known some people threw a cross/mountain race and couldn’t have picked a better day. Blue skies and perfect weather hide the mud pits, steep woodsy downhills, and 85% gravel runups.
Also unseen are the kids running around on 4-wheelers at the last laps and the ladies walking their dog in the middle of the course. I also took a pretty good spill on a gravel hill. I finished the race but was forced to call Mary Kate to haul me home. Can’t wait to get some real riding in though, race season here starts in a couple weeks.
Stay Hungry,
Ben
Brighton Bicycle Club Cincinnati
So as promised, I poked around a little bit more at some of the State and Federally funded repositories here in Cincinnati and found some more interesting bits on the Brighton Bicycle Club. This was a group of guys in 1885 who rode bikes and drank beer and wore a lot of wool. Today, they would look right at home at the local “tweed ride.” I find this club interesting for several reasons. One being that I lived for a number of years in Brighton and was curious about this group from more than a hundred years ago. Another being that this group was a fringe group to the “Cincinnati Cycle Club” and they seemed to have some similarities to good ‘ole Team Hungry; They raced (or scorched as they called it), they went on long rides, they were not opposed to having a good time and well, when they wanted to go on a ride they all met up here:
For anyone who has been on a Midnight Madness ride you will immediately recognize Garfield Place. It was reported that on any given night that cyclists could be found riding fast up and down “Race Street.” I wonder where that name came from? Oh, there was also a Cincinnati Club in 1897 called “The Comet Wheelmen,” but I cannot find any more information on them.
Anyway, in my last post I shared the snippet from Outing magazine and have since taken some terrible I-phone photos of one of the club rides out of Cincinnati.
So here’s the crew taking a breather. They’re wearing the new team kit for 1885. Anyway, they got to drinking a little Moerlein and there’s the facebook evidence to prove it:
These chaps had some fun – I only was able to sneak a couple of photos under the watchful eye of the old lady who is the Matron of the Cincinnati Historical Society Library, but there were a ton of their bike party pictures.
These fellows had fun and drank beer, but they also raced.
Here’s a view of a race from the 1880′s in Ludlow Ky. I apologize again for the crappy picture, but the Matron got suspicious and started to turn around. Damn Iphone “shutter sound” function. That’s Fritz in the front. Here’s the start of a scorcher in 1886 outside of downtown Cincinnati:
The Brighton Bicycle Club was listed from 1884 to 1888, after which I lose their trail. So for about four years this club raced and had fun on their bikes. Their clubhouse was on Freeman Ave just down from the Canal in Brighton. Their members were all living in the area bounded by Blood Run Alley, the slaughterhouses, several breweries (Bellevue was one), and Spring Grove , which at that time was lined with Elm trees and was a favorite race track. In my little bit of research I’ve just encountered a trip report that a cyclist wrote about his trek from Cincinnati to Lexington in 1887 which I haven’t digested yet. It’s kind of interesting to think that the roads we ride on have had riders and racers scorching along them for more than 150 years. Something to ponder on your next excursion.
Interesting Trip Report from our predecessors
For any of you who are interested, I came acroos this nice trip report for the Brighton Bicycle Club in the archives for “Outing” from 1885. For those of you who don’t know, Brighton is a small neighborhood at the corner of Central Ave and Harrison Ave in Cincinnati. It used to be home to a large German population. There were a number of breweries here also. Bikes and Beer have been pals for a long time. Here is the excerpt:
I believe “Outing” may have been an early name for “OUT” magazine, but in the 1880′s these brawny lads rode bicycles and lunched rather than sitting around in their underwear or figure skating. There is a book of their photos at the Historical Society that I’m going to go take a look at. Might find Glenn in there somewhere. Hell, I might even be in there. I’ll post up when I get a chance to scan it.
Here is a picture of a nice affordable bicycle from a few pages later in the journal:
On long trips you could use this bicycle to provide you with valuable shelter:
Let’s be sure to present a handsome appearance this season dear chaps.