Darth Nater created a nice little Shuttterfly gallery of images dubbed Motodelicios from our recent “Loop the Green River” trip, previously described in an earlier post as the Dragon Canyon ride, well, because Dragon Canyon sounds cooler. Actually, what was interesting was the headstone in the old cemetery that referred to it as Black Dragon Canyon. If Dragon Canyon sounds cool, then Black Dragon Canyon sounds cooler. Not as cool as Rathole Ridge, a road that we decided not to venture down, so as to not get ratholed.
Headstone referring to the Black Dragon Graveyard. R.I.P.
Just a quick post after a weekend dualsport trip to Southern Utah. Although there were a few spills, we all made it back safe and sound. Stay tuned for more photos from Darth and a more detailed description of the route that took us into the Bookcliffs, a night of camping in Dragon Canyon, some high-speed dirt road riding across state borders into Colorado, then finally, redemption in the form of bacon cheeseburgers at Ray’s Tavern in Green River, Utah.
The road through Dragon Canyon claimed another rearview mirror.
It took three of us to get Darth’s land speeder upright. Then we turned around.
Packing up in the morning after camping in Dragon Canyon.
Obi-Ben hoisting up the Reposado while the others set up camp.
About a month ago, professional bike racer Dave Zabriskie called me to see if I knew of any nice places to stay in Park City or Deer Valley. His coach wanted him to train and sleep at an altitude above 8,000 feet. This was right after I started my new job as Director of Marketing for Deer Valley Lodging. Duh. This was a no-brainer. Thanks to a cycling-friendly General Manager at The Village at Empire Pass, one of our Deer Valley slopeside properties, we were able to set him up with some nice accommodations while he spent time motorpacing behind a scooter on the roads of Park City, and sleeping above 8,000 feet. Dave leaves for Beijing on Sunday, and will be representing the United States in the road race and individual time trial. A former silver medalist in the World Championships time trial, Z is no dark horse in this event. He beat Armstrong in the Tour de France to claim a yellow jersey, and I believe he still holds the record for the fastest ever average speed in a TDF time trial stage. And did I mention that he beat Armstrong, which was sweet. Unlike current time trial world champion Fabian Cancellara, who can’t help being Swiss but often refers to himself in the third person, which I find quite annoying, Dave is pretty down to earth despite being an international star. If you read this recent interview on cyclingnews.com, you have to think he’s got as good a shot as anyone for a medal. As you can see below, Z has shorn the Dirk Diggler moustache which he sported for much of the 2008 season, something we have never seen before in professional cycling.
Good luck Dave. I’ll give you ten bucks if you race with a face mask on.
After reflecting on this evening’s Wednesday Night Unfriendly Ride, from Park City to Kamas and back to Park City, I was contemplating how much I hate road cycling when my legs feel like wood. I had a few issues tonight:
1. Dead legs because I was off the bike for a week while on vacation.
2. Slight headache from working too hard in an office where little things get in the way of the big ones.
3. Or maybe that headache was from working too hard and forgetting to drink water most of the day.
4. Saddle height adjustment that made sense, but just didn’t feel quite right. You raise your saddle a millimeter and it feels like a mile.
5. Stopping with Jasonn after he flatted in Brown’s Canyon and then riding the whole way up with nobody to draft off of.
6. Headwind. See #5.
7. Freaked out every time a truck went past because of the recent death of a Park City woman who crashed while riding down Brown’s Canyon last Saturday.
It’s really pretty fun when your legs are good and you can get out there and slay people. It can sometimes feel effortless. When it’s miserable and every pedal stroke feels like a punch to the loins, it’s hard to imagine why we do it. So then I read the article on cyclingnews.com that Richie Rich finally admitted to taking EPO in the Tour de France this year. Here are a few thoughts that really describe how I feel about doping:
1. Cheaters will never admit to cheating. They’ll say they made a mistake. A bad choice in a moment of weakness. I’m sorry, but that does nothing to humanize an egomaniac like Ricco.
2. Cheaters will never admit to how long they have cheated. I only used EPO once, the time one time I happened to get caught. But the rest of the time, I was clean.
3. Cheaters who are young have nothing to lose. Ricco will be racing again in two years. He should be banned from the sport and required to give back all his winnings and salary, but he probably has that all neatly tucked away in Monaco.
4. Ricco has a point: the testing must suck if he was tested more than once but only popped a positive once. He says the testing is flawed. I say he fucked up and got lazy with his masking. But maybe he’s right. How many other small fish cheaters are slipping back into the water through the holes in the nets? Maybe they only care about catching the big ones?
5. Like reformed doper and prodigal son David Millar says: if a rider looks too good to be true, they probably are too good to be true. After all, he should know.
6. Ricco idolized Pantani. Enough said. Pantani died alone with a bag of blow on the table. Do performance enhancing drugs become addictive? Are there some athletes who have addictive personalities and they are going to risk everything because they can’t help it?
I’ve never taken EPO when I was racing or even thought of it, but I know people who have. Thing is, for how wooden my legs were today, all the EPO in the world wouldn’t have made me ride any faster or made it feel any less hateful.
Leave it to Darth Nater to find things out in the world that have no other reason to exist but to amuse us. First there was the Hemi-powered snowblower. Some might say a practical item, given how much snow we had last winter. But this takes the cake: Honda-powered blenders. Now, it has been the subject of many rides that someday we are going to open an adventure motorcycle shop like the world has never seen. And in this shop will have to be an espresso bar, and now, a smoothie bar with gas powered blenders.
Here is another update from Race Director T-Mac, asking for some help from Utah motorcyclists:
The Tour of Utah is in need of experienced motorcyclists for our NRC Pro mens stage race. We would prefer those that can handle riding two-up in a large caravan. Our race is being covered by all your favorite cycling news organizations (Velonews, Cyclingnews.com, ROAD, RoadBikeReview, etc.) and we need to accomodate their photographers as well as our locals covering the race.
We also need motos for traffic control support to UHP as well so please let us know if you can help even if you cannot or do not wish to ride the event two-up. Just go to www.tourofutah.com and click on Volunteers. If you will just fill out the application and let us know when you can help (road stages only, August 13, 14 and 16) and that you wish to be a volunteer moto.
I finally got around to having a new Dunlop D908 Rally Raid rear tire installed on my KTM 640 Adventure. I took my rear wheel off and had the folks at Summit Honda in Park City do the honors of installing it, well worth the service charge to have someone else do this. Even with a tire stand, these things are torture to change by hand. The new D908 RR was replacing a worn-out Dunlop 908 enduro that served me well during the Trans-America Trail trip, but was toast after 2,000 miles. The center knobbies were flattened and squared-off, probably from all the pavement on my return trip. The D908 RR is big, fat, and nasty, and I was itching to get it in the dirt. After a day of mixed pavement, loose gravel, some sand, a few minor stream crossings, and lots of dry and rocky mountain riding, I can say that I am optimistic I have found the perfect rear tire for this bike. I hope it will last a lot longer than the previous Dunlop, and it should, as it really was designed for the bigger 950/990 KTM adventure bikes. Now the challenge will be to find the perfect front tire. Rumor has it the matching front has a super aggressive tread pattern that is not too road friendly. The D606 currently on my front is due to be replaced soon, so I’ll give it a shot and see how well it matches. For KTM 640 Adventure riders out there: don’t waste your time with anything else.
The Dunlop D908 Rally Raid on a KTM 640 Adventure.
Massive center knobs hook up really well in loose stuff.
There’s still some patches of snow in July in the Uinta Mountains.
Tour of Utah needs your help. I got a call from T-Mac (Terry McGinnis), Race Director of the 2008 Tour of Utah bicycle stage race. This is a multi-day pro-am cycling event on the prestigious NRC calendar, and will draw all the best U.S. domestic bike racers. Local icons like Burke Swindlehurst (T-Bird) and Jeff Louder will likely be gunning for glory, but there will be only one king crowned after the final ascent up Little Cottonwood Canyon, the same climb as the annual Snowbird Hillclimb. My best finish in the Snowbird Hillclimb was 3rd, behind Dave Z. and T-Bird, but that was just starting at the bottom and racing to the top. These poor bastards in the 2008 TOU will ride a hundred miles or so AND THEN duke it out up the final climb. With a $75,000 cash prize list and a grand prize of a new car to the winner, TOU is back after a hiatus, and from the looks of it, living large indeed. But putting on a multi-day pro bike race all over the state is a messy affair of tangled logistics, and T-Mac needs some motorcycle riders to volunteer for various support duties, such as assisting UHP in traffic marshaling, neutral support, and chauffeuring race officials from one spot to another. I will likely volunteer for a day or two, but T-Mac needs all the help he can get. If you are a Utah-based moto rider with any sort of scoot, email T-Mac and offer up some assistance. Now let me tell you a little bit about my friend T-Mac: we were former team mates in our younger days on the X-Men Cycling Team, and T-Mac helped me win a lot of races at the Rocky Mountain Raceway “Tuesday Night World Championships.” T-Mac was tenacious then, and is even more tenacious now as he continues to fight some nasty cancer. And, did I mention he is race director for the grandest bike race Utah has ever seen? This guy is tough, but needs a little help.
View of my old arse. Stage 1. 2006 Tour of Utah. Photo by T-Mac.
Although my KTM 640 Adventure hasn’t seen much dirt since the Trans-America Trail ride, it has proven to be a good commuter over the past few weeks. With the price of Premium Unleaded hovering around $4.50 per gallon in Park City plus the nice summer weather we have been enjoying, I have been riding the bike to work two or three times a week. It would be better if there were some dirt roads to get me to and from the work place, but all things considered, it adds a little fun to the work week. I just bought a new Dunlop 908 Rally Raid (RR) to replace my worn out rear. The previous Dunlop 908 Enduro tire didn’t last long, only about 2,000 miles. I’ll probably wait until the next dirt adventure to install it, so stay tuned for a full evaluation after I get some miles on it. It appears to be quite a bit beefier than the old 908, and Bartman has had good luck with one on his 950 Adventure, a bigger and heavier bike.
So my phone rings and it’s an unfamiliar SLC number. Turns out, it is founder and CEO of DZ Nuts chamois creme, Dave Zabriskie. Dave is a professional cyclist with Team Slipstream and a former winner of the Maillot Jaune in the Tour de France. In that opening time trial a few years back, he shocked the world by beating all comers including a retired, silly well-known Texan (see Dickipedia) and everyone’s favorite recreational drug-using former Eastern bloc talent-squanderer Jan Ullrich to claim the leader’s jersey in dramatic fashion in the world’s most televised biking contest. Dave has had his flashes of brilliance on the bike since that historical moment, but some who know him well would argue his real talent is in making people laugh. Here’s to Dave and his wife and new baby, and to a speedy recovery from a nasty fall in the Giro d’Italia, right after helping his team win the opening time trial (editor’s note: Dave is still the only American to have won a stage in all three of the Grand Tours). Shaka.