No, No, No, NO!

2011, you were a good season.  2012, I expect you to be even better.  To do this, I have to make a few sacrifices.  For example, I'm not training or racing again until after finals week.  Of course this is when my friends all say things like "Hey, I'm going to go on this sweet 80 mile endurance ride tomorrow.  Want to join?" Or "We're going to go do this mountain bike trail that you really want to do!"  Or my favorite, "there's a cross race tomorrow at the Velopark that's going to be all muddy and they'll give you free beer and waffles!"  I'm finding the phrase "Thanks, but I'm not allowed to have fun right now" to be very useful.

Speaking of waffles and things I'm not supposed to do, I am dieting right now.  Some people would believe that I lose weight while I'm riding my bike on a regular basis, but they'd be wrong.  When I ride, I feel really good about myself and the calories that I've burned.  I also realize that if I want to ride again tomorrow and the day after that, I need to fuel myself.  I really enjoy fueling myself.  Many strips of bacon are consumed and many trips to Betos are taken.  I tend to overdo it and gain a few pounds over the course of the season.  From now until about mid-February is the time that I drop that weight and as much as I can so that I can eat my brains out for the eight months after that.  Without further ado, my Ingenious Weight Loss Miracle Plan (tm):

1. Find a really awesome food that you really like to eat.  For me, there are a lot.  Most of them are cheese.
2. Weigh yourself when you wake up in the morning.  I like to eat breakfast, rapidly lose the weight gained from that (I'm talking about pooping here), then weigh myself.  That's just how I do things.
3. Do your every day thing.  Way to do that stuff that you do!
4. Weigh yourself when you go to bed.
5. If you weigh less than you did this morning, way to go!  Keep on living your life!
6. If you weigh more, don't eat any more of that food that you really like.

For me, most of the foods that I really like fall squarely in the "don't eat" category of the Paleo Diet.  For those of you that don't know, the Paleo Diet consists only of foods that our cavemen ancestors could find and eat.  This is mostly meat, fruit, vegetables, and nuts.  While these foods are awesome, I really like cheese.  And bread.  And pasta.  And Nutella.

Another recent development in my life is that I rented my car out to a friend.  My reasoning for this is that I don't really need a car, but I do enjoy having money.  I thought that I'd share some of my observations on being carless:

• My friends are cool.  They let me sit in their cars and drive to bike races.
• There are times that cars (or at least a bike trailer) are needed.  I'm talking to you Propane Tank.
• WinCo by bike is awesome.  First of all, you can park right next to the front door.  Second, you start planning your purchases less by price and more by what will fit in your backpack.  Third and best, I can totally out-green the ladies that bring their own grocery bags.  I always knock the self-satisfaction right out of them when I set my backpack with my helmet clipped to it opposite of them in the bagging area.
• I spend less money.  Obviously on the car related stuff, but there's more since it takes more effort to get to places that take money in exchange for stuff.  WinCo is right on my way home from work, so it's pretty easy, but making a trip to Target or Wal-Mart requires some time and planning.
• Drive-Thrus that won't serve bikes are really annoying.  MY MONEY WORKS JUST AS WELL AS THE FATTY IN THE CAR!

The last thing on my list of things is that I was temporarily without a computer.  I was doing my usual activities of playing FreeCell on my couch when I decided that it was time to go to the bathroom.  I stood up and began walking towards the bathroom when I felt the power cord across my foot.  The laptop got pulled onto the floor.  I tried turning it back on and it told me that it could not find the operating system.  My guys is that it went out the Window (get it?).  Whatever it was, it was not awesome.  Being computerless is not a good way to live.  Some things cannot be easily done with a smartphone.  Have you ever tried creating complex spreadsheets on a phone?  It's possible but terrible.  So I called Lenovo and asked for assistance.  The guy told me to punch some numbers into the Googles and download the first result onto a USB drive.  So I did that, then plugged that into my computer.  Then magic happened.  My computer came to life just like I had left it, including my 1965 game FreeCell winning streak.

See!

Give to BSU Cycling or I'll be Smarter than Usual

Over the past 3 weekends, I've become a bit of a crowd favorite in the local cyclocross scene.  In the first weekend of the Waffle Cross Series, it rained a lot.  This made for a muddy Sunday race, which made me really bad at staying upright.  After about a half a lap, I realized that people were just going to go faster than me.  I decided to work on my skills and try to ride everything as quickly as I could until I fell over.  There was an off camber corner right behind the announcer's table and registration tent that I fell over nearly every lap (nailed it the last time though).  After entertaining all the nearby spectators for the entire race, the promoters named the corner after me.  Here's the end result:

The next weekend was much sunnier, but that still didn't stop me from entertaining.  Here's my recipe for ridiculousness:

• Gold Shorts

• High Speed Barricades

End Result:

You're welcome.

I'm still waiting for some good photos (I'll post them as they come in) from this weekend but since it was Halloween, I stepped the costume up a notch.

You get the idea

Also, I fell in the creek crossing.

The whole reason I'm telling these stories is this: I'm tired of doing it for free.  So here's the deal:

If you (the general public) donates $500 or more to BSU Cycling in the month of November, I'll do Kringle Kross on December 18th (last year's high was 41 degrees) in nothing but the gold shorts.  Since I am Brian Parker, there's a pretty good chance of me doing something stupid.  Not a fan of the gold shorts?  The highest bidder picks the costume!  Speedo?  Sure!  Borat man-thong?  Of course!  Bikini?  Definitely!  Gorilla suit?  You bet!  My only requirement is that it doesn't lead to me being thrown in jail.  Beyond that, get creative and support Boise State Cycling!

I'm trying to simplify this process, but Club Sports doesn't really like it when I modernize systems.  In the meantime, do the following to donate:

• Make check payable to "BSU Foundation"
• Enclose check with a note indicating that the check is a gift to Boise State Cycling Club
• Mail the note to the following address:

Boise State University Foundation

1910 University Drive

Boise, Idaho 83725-1030

• It is important to use the 9-digit zip code
• Foundation will automatically mail back a receipt indicating that the contribution is tax-deductible
• Send me an email to brianparker@u.boisestate.edu with some sort of proof of the amount you donated and your costume idea.  I'll let you know if you've been outbid and tell you to step your game up!  The highest total donor (not individual donation) will be the winner, so you can bid your way to the top.

Help us race bikes and help me make a fool of myself!

I'm Becoming a Jedi

I went to Moscow this weekend.  I did the following:

• Raced cyclocross bikes
• Ate gyros
• Watched Star Wars
• Raced cyclocross bikes again

The combination of these items has led me to one conclusion: I need to step up my training if I'm going to join the ranks of the Jedi Knights.  Eating gyros really has nothing to do with Star Wars, but they were pretty awesome.  The rest of the trip has me wanting to get my midi-chlorian count checked.  Here's how it went down:

The first race was out at the Fountain's Ranch.  By ranch, I mean there's a dude that lives in a shed in the middle of a cross course/gravel airstrip.  By dude, I mean a one-geared freak of nature.  The Fountain Brothers both ride SS cross bikes, and ride them significantly faster than everybody else.  They also occasionally show up at road races and are still faster than everybody, on a single speed cross bike.  Consider them Han Solo and Chewbacca (I have no idea which brother would be Chewy and which one Han in this analogy).  The Millenium Falcon may not look like much without a derailleur, but they were definitely doing the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.  This course was almost all dirt and rode like a short track mountain bike course.  It had a nice little pump track section, a bunch of flowy lines, some stairs, and a bunch of general coolness.  We started the race, and I figured out pretty quickly that most of the people there were faster than me on this course.  The Force was not with me.  However, my generally good shape made me very annoying to the people that got stuck behind me.  I would be slow and sketchy through the technical parts, then go flying down the sections where they could actually pass me.  For a viewing of how the course should actually be done, check out my teammate Nick Bell (2nd Place) working on his Jedi Jump.  Also flashing some Jedi Jumping skills was the collegiate winner, Brian Morra, in UI's school paper:

In conclusion, I got lapped by the crew of the Millennium Falcon and didn't do anything remotely Star Wars-y in the process.  On the plus side, an excellent picture of my junk emerged out of the race:

In the photographer's defense, my skinsuit points straight at them.

After the race, I got some Mikey's Gyros in my belly, then went and watched The Phantom Menace at Morra's.  I'm pretty sure I could podrace after watching it.  I may have picked up some skills from watching that, or Sunday's course may have just been way better for my crit-racing-idiot skill-set.  Whatever it was, I did a lot better the second day.  I finished 2nd in the collegiate race behind Morra once again.  I nearly won this time though.  It wasn't because of my capabilities or even Morra falling apart at the end.  It was close purely because Brian pinch flatted with about 1/4 of a lap to go, but was far enough ahead that he could run the rest of the course and still finish about 30 yards ahead of me.

The Force is strong in this one

And this is why I went for a night ride yesterday and turned off my light from time to time.  It's like the part where Luke is blindfolded and fighting the floating ball with the lightsaber.  Soon I will be able to shoot a laser beam into the hole in the side of the Death Star.

Thanks to Idaho Vandal Cycling for showing me a good time this weekend, and thanks to Wookieepedia for helping me spell all these words.

P.S. For more excellent crotch shots, check out Follett's Mountain Sports' Facebook page.

New Silliness

I gave my bike back this week.  That was pretty lame.  Arnold will be missed until I get another brand new beast in the spring.  There has been some definite non-lameness recently though.

Unlame Activity #1: Harvest Moon


I wanted to get one last race in on the Fuji before I had to give it back.  So I ventured south to Ogden, UT for the Harvest Moon Criterium.  This was my first real race since upgrading to a Cat. 2 and in a couple months in general, so I was curious how my form was.  Other than a few chases early, I was pleasantly surprised.  I put my momentum from the back of the pack to good use early and got off the front for a couple laps, got caught, tried again, did another lap and a half solo, then got caught again.  This apparently caught the attention of FFKR and Canyon Cycles, the two big teams at the race.  From that point on, every time I attacked, 3-5 of those dudes would be on my wheel, prompting the rest of the pack to chase us all down.  I was going to have to do something big to actually get away.  So I attacked on five or six straight laps towards the end.  Nothing happened.  I cruised in with the pack for 15th place.  For being my first race with the big kids, I was pretty happy with the effort.

Unlame Activity #2: Downtown SLC


It's a little more walking than in Boise, but there's a good amount of quality bars in Salt Lake.  On a related note, I sat on top of an ice box and ate a Slim Jim outside a Maverick station.

Unlame Activity #3: Riding in SLC


The day after the race and other activities, we went for a good little hangover ride.  We were staying with Chris Stuart and his fiance, Ami.  Chris was one of the guys that helped me get into bike racing.  It was cool to see those guys again, and cool that I could hang with Stu now that I have been racing all year and he's been on his couch all year.  We went up Emigration Canyon and started up Big Mountain until we decided that it was too big to handle in our conditions.  The ride was super scenic and not Idaho sagebrush.

Unlame Activity #4: Cyclocross


Like I said, I gave my bike away on Friday.  You might think that would mean no more bike racing for Brian this year, but you'd be wrong.  I'm done road racing for a while, but this weekend was the opening weekend for the local CX series.  For those of you not in the know, cross is the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups of the cycling world.

"Hey, you got knobby tires on my road bike!"

"Hey, you got drop bars on my mountain bike!"

It really is an odd activity.  We ride on grass, dirt, sand, mud, asphalt and whatever else the promoters decide to throw at us.  They put tape up so we end up weaving through a really small area, then they put barricades up so that we either have to get off and run with our bikes or bunny-hop them.  It is a sport that could only be invented by drunken Belgians.  If this still doesn't make sense (it shouldn't), watch Chris's video for a visual aid:

The craziness of it all makes for some excellent spectating.  Since we weave around like rats in a maze, you can find a central location and see most of the race.  All of my readers should get out and watch some cross.  I'm talking to both of you (hi, Mom!).  Grab yourself a cowbell, a 6-pack, and a costume.  Fans are expected to heckle and hand beers to riders.  You'll probably get to see something like this:

That man is talking to somebody in China

And with a little luck, this:

So I got myself a cross bike, and threw down some racing this weekend.  I got called up as a first timer to SICX, since my only previous cross racing experience has been on Chris's converted touring bike (aptly named "The Brick") or that time I got my foot stuck in the front wheel of my mountain bike.  I am a noob at cross, but I'm in good shape.  Since it's tough to pass people and everybody spreads out quickly, your finish position +/-3 is determined by the first corner.  It was chaos for the first 30 seconds of the race.  I nearly got pushed into a tree.  After the opening sprint, things don't get any easier.  You go really hard all the time, and try to stay upright.  Saturday's course only featured one barricade as opposed to the usual two, so I only had to get off the bike once and that was purely out of fear of bunny hopping into people.  After 40 minutes, I thought to myself "Self, I've never been this tired in my life!"  Instead off taking a nap in the grass, I rode for another 20 minutes.  At one point, I took a feed from Kai of what I assumed was Red Bull or some sort of golden, foamy sports drink in a bike bottle.  After slugging that down I realized it was a beer, at which point I learned is only delicious when you're expecting it.  Moral of the story: handups are out of original cans or bottles.  So I hurt and drank, and I think finished 4th in the 3s.  I really have no idea though.

I may have engaged in some extracurricular activities Saturday night, which seems to have affected my performance on Sunday.  They also got the 2nd barricade out, forcing me to dismount and remount my bike every lap.  While I have no idea what I'm doing as far as technique is concerned, I'm relatively athletic compared to most cyclists, so I cleared the boards pretty quickly.  I think I sweated the last PBR out at around 45 minutes in, and found a rhythm.  By then I was way back and had been lapped by Richard Feldman, multiple Masters TT World Champ, cyclocross beast, and the subject of a suspiciously well maintained Wikipedia page (thank you to Sam Johnson/Krogg for pointing that out).  I may have a new game for the rest of the season called "Don't Get Lapped By Feldman."

Now you all know why the last couple of weeks have not sucked.  Next up, actually learn some technique, go to Moscow, throw down with those kids.

Blog-Worthy Poutine

I'm back!  It's been a while since I updated this, but I'm a busy man.  While I was doing stuff not involving blogging, the Cycle Learning Center opened, I raced up Bogus (one hour, three minutes), and classes started up.  All of this was cool and all, but it took something special to bring me back to the blog: poutine.

For those of you that don't know what poutine is, let me change your life.  Take some fries, add some cheese curds, cover in gravy.  It's a Canadian standard and therefore a staple of the Sub-Canadian-Ski-Bum diet.  America really needs to adopt this, or Canada needs to invade.  As long as poutine becomes more widely available, I'll be happy.

Poutine does not need a reason to be eaten.  We happened to have one though.  My friend, Mark, got his hands on some Irish aged white cheddar.  It was amazingly sharp and flaky.  There is nothing quite like super-sharp cheddar.  We decided to utilize this in some really high quality poutine.

We had cheese, now we needed fries and gravy.  We decided that gravy is gravy, and got some canned stuff.  Glass can, not tin, because we're gentlemen.  Fries were a different story.  After discussing what sort of potato should be used and how to properly fry them, we realized we needed professional assistance.  Being in Idaho, we have a wealth of potato expertise at our disposal.  Our best resource was the Boise Fry Company.  Only the best would suffice for this project.  We got ourselves two orders of The Bourgeois.  Those are the ones fried in duck fat.

Unfortunately, man cannot survive solely on poutine.  We needed meat.  In keeping with the traditional Canadian ski lodge fair, we made smokies.  Smokies are sausages sliced lengthwise, grilled, and served on either toast or buns with cheese.  Canada is sounding better by the minute, isn't it?  Some buns from Boise Fry Co. nicely held 3 halves of Basque chorizo and the awesome cheese.

It's like American food, but northerner

Mark, Colton, and I ate like Sub-Canadian royalty last night.  I suggest you find yourself some fixin's and make some poutine and smokies.

What a Week!

The last 7 days have been crazy. Here's a few things that happened to me:

1. I went uphill faster than most people.

Now that the Tuesday Night Crits are over, Boise's unofficial World Championships are the Tuesday Night Half Bogus. There's no entry fee, numbers, officials, or an actual start time. People show up around 6:00, chat in the shade for a while, then go climb the hill. Normally, a half-Bogus is not my kind of hill. It's a long, gradual half hour of pain. But, I'm riding stronger than usual right now and everybody else is tired of racing. The combination of those two things led to me coming in 2nd behind Sam Johnson. He is a professional who is both on good form and not tired of racing, so he went way faster than everybody.

2. We started moving into the Cycle Learning Center.

There's about to be a bike shop on campus! We're buying stuff like crazy and starting to arrange stuff in the shop. It's going to be super cool! The Grand Opening is August 23rd from 11:00-1:00, so be there.

3. I hit a goat.

Saturday was the State Championship Road Race. I wanted to do well in this so that I could get my upgrade to Cat. 2 and do two crits on Sunday. I felt good and was climbing pretty well all day, then the goats came. Apparently, to prove that this was the Idaho State Championship and not some yuppie, urban state, the one of the citizens of Sagebrushland (the area of nothingness between Emmett and Middleton) decided to take his tribe of goats down the race course. By the way, tribe is the collective name for goats. My first thought upon seeing this was "please be fainting goats!" Despite how funny that would have been, Jethro the Goat Herder left them at home. I navigated 45 of his 50 favorite goats with no problem, then I hit goat #46. He got spooked and ran in front of me. Luckily, I had slowed down to dodge the rest of the tribe and unclipped and was fine. When I put my foot down, I accidentally caught the startled goat between my leg and bike. Since my bike rarely the cleanest in the peloton, there is now a goat running around Sagebrushland with a 53 tooth, Ultegra chainring branded on it.

4. I got a flat tire.

It's common knowledge that goatheads cause flat tires. What most people never learn is that the entire goat can take out a tube. I hit a goat in the belly, then got a flat a few miles later. Until I see a counterexample, I'm going to stick to my theory that the goat caused the flat. As far as I know, there is a perfect correlation between hitting goats and getting flats. Like the Chicago Cubs, the Curse of the Billy Goat extended to my whole team. Charles double-flatted about 100 yards before I did. The wheel car was back dealing with him, leaving me with no wheels. The official's car went up to the field and got Nate to come back with his front wheel. We swapped out and I went to chase. Nate and Charles believed that there weren't any wheels in the car, so they swapped tubes out on the course then rode back to the start. The flat happened about two miles before the major climb of the race where everybody went really fast, so I never caught back on.

5. I went to Costco.

It was awesome. My parents got me a lot of food. Yay for food!

6. I won a race.

Unlike the Chicago Cubs, we won a championship in less than 102 years. However, Team Bobs-Bicycles.com will likely never win a World Series. Sunday was the State Championship Criterium. It was a course with a bunch of corners and no long straightaways and I felt good about a break taking it. So I attacked early, and stayed within bridging distance for a couple laps. Nobody bridged, and I went back. Then some people attacked and everybody followed and I got shuffled. I worked my way back up toward the front and found that I had some momentum and decided to just let it roll and went off the front by myself again. Again, I rode solo but kept the gap close enough to entice somebody to come across. Sean O'Shea was the man to do it. He came up and we were gone. He was a Masters racer and I was a 3, so as long as we stayed away we were both State Champions. We worked together, then I sprinted at the end and he didn't. I threw my hands up and it was fun. I thought about asking for the upgrade between races and going again, but I'd had enough fun for the day. The team handled things okay without me, finishing 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 8th, and 9th. There were 12 starters, 5 of them weren't Bob's racers.

Cascade

First: congrats to Cadel Evans. Never before has anyone looked so much like a shaved pug and still won the Tour.

They're twins.

Anyways, this weekend was Cascade. It's 3 days, 4 stages, and a lot of pain. The first day was a 70 mile road race with a 10k climb at the end. I learned about 5 miles too late that I couldn't shift up into the 53 tooth ring. Well, I could pull on the cable at the down tube, then hold it up with the shifter, but I couldn't keep it there for very long. So I just did the whole stage in the small ring. I decided to Clif Bar it up at about mile 60. Then the road turned up mid-chew and I lost a bunch of spots while gasping for air while chewing. I was still at the back of the pack on at the bottom of the climb. Then I was off the back of the climb. I chased the rest of the way up the hill and came in a couple minutes down.

The time trial was hard. TTs are always hard, but this one is hard and uphill. I was mediocre as usual, but I did have some excitement. I was nearly kicked out of the race by this guy.

Now for the good part. The crit course there is a long, slightly downhill straightaway through the start finish, two corners that are really close together, a long, slightly uphill straightaway, and a bottleneck down to one lane coming into two corners that are really close together. This was the hardest crit I did last year. When I say I "did" it, I really mean I "started." We only raced for a half an hour, so it was really fast. I tried being faster than everybody else a few times and went off the front. Nothing ever got away, so I stopped trying after about 15 minutes. I got shuffled a little coming into the last lap and wound up about 30 riders back. I waited until the backside and powered past about 20 guys through there. Then I went really hairball into corner 3 and moved up a few more spots. I came out of corner 4 5th wheel, perfectly positioned for the sprint. I knew I couldn't hold the field off for all three blocks to the line, so I waited a little. I was still the first one to jump. That worked for a while. For 250 of the last 300 yards, there was nothing between me and the line. A guy came around me with about 50 to go and just put in a better sprint than me. I tried but couldn't quite catch him. I wound up in 2nd place.

That's beer you're seeing. Typically, cash is given for doing well at races. I tend to take that cash and buy beer, so this saves a trip to the store.

Stage 4 is the Awbrey Butte Circuit. It's like racing dump loops, which I enjoy doing. It's a bunch of short, steep climbs then a sprint for the line. I liked my odds on that course. We were the only field that didn't get the whole road, so I had to work really hard at staying at the front. That didn't always work, and I had to move up in the corners and hills. Somebody yelled at me for moving up in the corner. I apparently "did the same sh*t in the crit." The same sh*t all the way to the bank! I didn't really care and just kept doing it. I didn't ever actually see who was yelling at me. I would have been intentionally sketchy around him if I had. I moved up a lot on the Archie Briggs climb every lap, so that was a complete reversal of last year. I made it with the lead group over Archie Briggs on the last lap, and was scheming for the sprint. I wanted to make another crazy maneuver in the final roundabout and get a gap between me and the rest of the field. Back in reality, there were cars parked on the descent. We got all slowed down and I got confused and moved to the back of the pack. Had I known about the cars, I would have attacked over the top of the climb and gone crazy through the cars. But I didn't, and just wound up shuffled. I finished in the pack. When I got back to the car, Josh had drank all of my remaining podium beers. He made Ben drive him home. We're an elite cycling team like that.

It says so on the trailer.