King Ridge::Grasshopper

What I'll be doing Saturday May 9th...during the day.
I'll be sleeping early that night.

Jake and the gnome home

Jake and my gnome home
Originally uploaded by babageik

Sunday's are finding Jake and I at Alston a lot lately...he's really digging taking his Kona out for some mountain bike riding-which I am happy to join!

I have to say, it's pretty incredible watching him grow and ride stronger and faster with each passing adventure...the pure joy and sense of adventure I see in him at age six, is the same feeling I have at age 36 when I am out there...

Needless to say, each ride includes a trip to the Gnome Home rock pile where we set about constructing something new for our gnome-friends... this trip I found myself going skyscraper-style while Jake focused on building a low to the ground, well fortified unit...

Afterward, I saw Jake's eyes bigger than I have ever seen as he got a bit too much speed coming down a little single track...I had to suppress all of my Prosser–tendencies to scream "easy", "Slow down", "be careful" and just let the situation unfold... successfully! Jake rocked the funky turn, didn't crash and tasted a bit more of the adrenaline and excitement that comes with exploring your limits...

I couldn't (and still can't) help but smile.

Tam's Cross Bike-Powder Coat

disc brake cross frame & fork
Originally uploaded by retrotec&ingliscycles

Just wanted to post the sweet CX bike Curtis just finished for my friend Steve Tam. I was fortunate enough to work with both in designing paint scheme for this CX beauty...wish I could have pushed you to get fork painted too Steve! Think it turned out real nice though--pretty easy to do when you start with an incredible canvas...

Moving Along

IMG_1229
Originally uploaded by retrotec&ingliscycles

Slow blogging of late...lo siento mucho...

Cool beans though, despite pretty much second guessing myself for a week, I stuck with riding my singlespeed at Lake Sonoma Grasshopper and ended up doing a lot better than I hoped. Now granted, I didn't win, but—thanks to weather that was A LOT more favorable than last year (last year it was 109 degrees out there), a great breakfast and Huey Lewis playing in my head— I did finish almost 40 minutes FASTER than previous year!

Yee Ha!

Funny thing that made me think...riding to Lucie's house with Kara, Brian, Rick and MaryAnne-Brian asked why I wasn't faster if I rode my bike all the time... I didn't take it as an insult, quite the contrary, it played well into my entire reasoning behind doing these races and such... then answer is many-fold.

Top-most, I am not a heavy competitor-my upbringing, for better or worse, led me to be a bit more timid and unsure of myself than others...with that to bear, I am pretty much handicapped by myself...

Secondly, I pretty much ride my bike to help sort myself, my life and my thoughts and feelings out. I got into the whole racing thing as a response to my divorce. Rather than sit around and feel sorry, I jumped at the opportunity to ride more. And egged on by Curtis and Andrew to hit the Grasshoppers, County Lines and so forth, just found that being amongst like-minded folks helped me sort ME out...

What else? Well I am overweight, so pushing the tonnage around is harder. I don't "train" and don't really ever see myself doing that to the extent that the top folks are doing. I think that the entire point of cycling (to me) would be lost if it became a "job"---as it's more of an escape for me than work (even when I'm hiking my bike up the 30th hill) and I'm just not into more "work"...

Anyway, it was a great question, one I am still pondering. The event was incredible as well... almost 6,000' feet of climbing in 23 miles, A LOT of pain, but I resigned myself to walk whenever I felt like it, so it was all good...

I'll try to post more to the ol' blog... god knows there are plenty of really great things going on in my life as well as a few funky things...2009 is still shaping up to be gooder than 08' in many ways though...