Every Year

Last week was crazy.  Return of horrible rib pain, crazy work schedule, and obviously, not much blogging.  So here goes another stab at being regular.

Friday morning started early, due to the kickoff of BIKE! Charlotte.  The first event was the Mayor's Ride, and with having an actual mayor this year we were in.  As always, we do a "ride to the ride."  It's been in a few different locations over the years, but this year we returned to a location that we've used in the past...  Uptown Cycles.  Great shop, and with a a few changes they are getting even better.  I'm grateful that they let our local mountain bike club, the Tarheel Trailblazers, meet there for our annual BIKE! Charlotte kickoff.

Anyway, after the crowd gathered we hopped on our bikes and headed to the meeting spot a short distance away.   And here's where I give a special shout out to DeFeet for letting one of their employees take the day off to support cycling in his community.

Lunchbox!

On a side note, that little ride full of climbs hurt me.  My ribs suffered a setback last weekend when I decided to ride on an actual trail, and after taking a bunch moar days off to heal my fitness went right back down the shitter again.  Meh.

Anyway, we met up at the usual spot just south of Uptown Charlotte and the crowd was small.  After a few minutes of concern, a huge crowd rolled in and our group looked better.  I heard that the count was about six hundred.  Not bad for a bunch of folks that are supposed to be working.  After a short speech by our new mayor, we rode through the streets and headed for breakfast.

The Mayor's Ride concluded at the Government Center, where we were treated to an awesome free breakfast.  It was a great way to start the morning.

I do this every year, and haven't missed one since I moved to Charlotte.  Although it seems like they hate people on bike the rest of the year, events like BIKE! Charlotte are a good way for people to see how important cycling is to our community.  I'm glad we have stuff like this around, and an awesome community of cyclists to support it.  

Now, if I could just get myself back together.  Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow.

Don’t You…

Forget about me.

Sorry if you missed me while I was gone.  I know, you didn’t.  But if you did, I didn’t mean to be gone so long.  I had to spend the weekend in a hospital.

It’s not what you think though.  Remember that big project at work that’s been kicking my ass?  Well, it’s almost over.  We switched over to a new phone system at one of our hospitals, and I spent all night Friday and all day Saturday getting things to work.  I was back on site first thing yesterday morning, which gave me no time to blog.  So anyway, I’m back.

What did you miss?

Well, I went on The Ride Formally Known as The Mayor’s Ride on Friday morning.  Different name, same great ride, same great breakfast.

The weather was a little iffy, so the turnout was a bit low.

That didn’t stop Lunchbox from showing up as usual, and this time he got to ride with some other fixie types, namely Dicky and Kurt from Faster Mustache.

The destination was a little different this year though.  Instead of rolling right into the middle of the city, we ended up at the Government Center.

They have some weird shit up there.

As usual, Neal Boyd did all the announcing, and introduced us to many people of importance here in Charlotte that dig us cycling folks.  It was a great way to spend the morning, and I’m always happy to skip out of work to attend.  Lunchbox usually likes to go back to school afterwards, but this time he opted to stay home.  Since I had to work that night for my project, I told him I was gonna take a short nap.  We planned to hang out later, but I ended up sleeping for almost six hours.

Damn, I guess I was tired.  To be honest, I was still recovering from being sick.  I didn’t think I’d get a chance to sleep so much, but I’m glad I did.  Things are finally getting back to normal around here. 

Maybe that means I’ll get back to riding my bike soon.

See you tomorrow.  For sure this time.

Why Am I So Tired?

I’ll tell you why.  It’s not because I “raced” in the Rivers Edge Mountain Bike Marathon this past Sunday.  It was all the shit I did leading up to it that wore me out.  In fact, it might have had something to do with my performance out there.

I haven’t slept well over the last few weeks, and I could’ve used a good night’s rest before my big race on Sunday.  Instead, I got up early to ride with the Mayor for Bike Charlotte.  We met at 7:00 a.m. sharp Friday morning at Queen City Bicycles, and the crowd was a lot bigger than I expected.

Photo Cred: Bart from Queen City Bicycles 

We hung around for a few minutes to wait for a few more folks, and we rolled to the meeting spot near Uptown Charlotte about one hundred riders strong.  We had a police escort and everything, so it was pretty rad.  Once the mayor showed up, he gave his little speech and we rolled out again, this time heading into the heart of the city.

Once we got there, everyone started lining up to get the free breakfast.  That’s when I saw Dicky sneak to the front of the line to get his before everyone else.

Since the line was really long, we took an opportunity to talk with the mayor (who has recently been nominated to be the new Secretary of Transportation.)  Lunchbox got a nice photo op with him.

The fun didn’t stop there though.  We hung around for a bit, then I had to take Lunchbox back to school (he’s a good, responsible kid you know.)  The rest of the usual crew wanted to meet up for a ride, so once we all got our shit together we took a nice stroll through BYT.  I didn’t take any pictures, but I can assure you it was fun (and tiring.)  We headed over to a local watering hole afterwards for some grub, and after we ate and had a few beers, I received a survey that for some reason was already filled out.

Pffffft.  I took it with me instead of turning it in.  Bastards.

I still had more to do that night, so I headed home to get cleaned up.  I had a rolling birthday party/pub crawl to go to later that evening, but instead of managing my time responsibly I ended up falling asleep on the floor while I was stretching.  I woke up with what I thought was plenty of time to spare, but when I checked the start time I found out that I had only about thirty minutes until I was supposed to be there.

Shit.

I texted Good Guy Greg (who was also unaware that we were gonna be late) and told him that I would be there as quickly as I could.  Since he lives near where most of the festivities were taking place, I parked at his house and we rolled through the city to find the rest of the cycling pub crawl/party goers. 

We rode through Uptown Charlotte for quite a while, and we eventually found them all.  It was after they had already hit one brewery, so we had a lot of catching up to do.  We rolled into NoDa Brewing Company (which we had passed earlier in our quest) and did our best to catch up with beer consumption.  After spending a little time there, we rolled out to the next destination which was a small pub up the street a bit.

We had a good group of nearly drunken cyclists by that point.

We stayed there a while (still drinking of course), and eventually we rolled out again to head to Common Market which was only a short ride away.  We were all feeling pretty good at this point, and having a shitload of fun.  The details are fuzzy after that, but I do remember being on a rooftop with a pretty good view of the city.

Eventually I called it a night, although a lot of people stuck around for even more drinking.  I didn’t crawl into bed until 2:15 a.m., and I had one last thought before my head hit the pillow.

“I’m getting too old for this shit.”

I still had to get up the next morning for another full day.

All this happened on Friday, by the way.  I got into a whole bunch of shit on Saturday too.  Of course, I’ll get into that tomorrow.

Rollin’ Through The City

Friday, we left the B-43 Worldwide Headquarters all bright and early to meet up at Queen City Bicycles.  Then, it was time to roll out to the Bike Charlotte Mayor’s Ride.

I’ve been leading this “ride to the” Mayor’s Ride for a few years now, and this year I was really surprised at the turnout.  I think we had close to 50 people in our group, and it was really cool to have so many of us on the scene.

Lunchbox is always happy to be there:

Before long, Mayor Anthony Foxx arrived and we were ready to start the “real” ride.

There’s nothing like riding into the city early in the morning.

A free breakfast was provided, and some people were already getting their grub on…

While I took the opportunity to introduce myself to the Mayor as the Vice President of our local mountain bike club.

I swear I didn’t get that photo just for this blog, although in hindsight it was probably a good idea.

After hobnobbing with the Mayor, we hung out and socialized.  Of course, Lunchbox was hanging out with the ladies.

Eventually Little Miss Sunshine tried to get a word with the Mayor, but his personal security team seemed to be ready to take her out.

It was another great Mayor’s Ride, and I continue to be impressed with the amount of cyclists that show up.  Sure, some people only come out for the free breakfast, but at least they are on bikes.  Thanks to everyone from our local club that got up extra early to ride with us too.

My day wasn’t over though.  There was more bicycling adventures to be had, this time in a land far away.

Well, Uwharrie isn’t that far away, but it’s so isolated out there that it seems like it is.  I took my new friend Tom out for a ride on the fun trails out there, and we had a great time.  In fact, we had so much fun riding that I only took that one photo.

Sometimes you don’t need photos to prove you had fun.

Unfortunately, I’m such a shitty blog writer that I need photos to tell my stories.

At least I took photos at the Mayor’s Ride.

Too Busy

Mondays kind of suck for me as far as work goes, so it was all I could do to post something up today. I was busy as shit over the weekend, so I’ll probably have quie a bit to talk about this week. Since I’m pressed for time today however, I’ll just throw up some photos from the BIKE! Charlotte ride with the Mayor on Friday. We all met up at Queen City Bicycles to get the day started.







Another local shop owner showed up on a not-so mountain bike.



After a few minutes of milling about, we headed out to meet the rest of the Charlotte cycling population to ride with the mayor. I got a photo along the way, but it didn’t come out so nice.



Anyway, after riding a mile and a half or so, we met up at a local YMCA to get ready for the real ride.









There was a good turnout, and not just from our local club either.



After a short speech by the mayor, we were off to the city.



Little Miss Sunshine was happy to be riding with the group:



Did I mention that Lunchbox skipped a little bit of school to attend?



After a short ride, we made our way into the concrete jungle.



There were a ton of people there, getting everything from free breakfast to free t-shirts. This was all to show our support for cycling here in Charlotte.





I have to also give a big thanks to these guys:



They gave us a bicycle police escort to the ride, and it was greatly appreciated.

The morning ended with Little Miss Sunshine protecting the Chick-Fil-A cow from an attacking dog:



It was a lot of fun. That’s it for the recap though. I’ll be back tomorrow with a race report from the Race To The River down in Harbison State Forest in Columbia, South Carolina. It was an interesting event, so you won’t want to miss that one.

A Little Late To The Party

As much as I wanted to be here, I was M.I.A. on this blog last Friday. Instead of coming up with barely entertaining reading material for my legions of fans, I went on a little bike ride. Actually, it was the Mayor’s Ride and Breakfast, which was a part of Bike! Charlotte. This short ride was a way for cyclists here in Charlotte to make ourselves known to the masses, by parading through the city on our two-wheeled machines. Our local mountain bike clubs, the Tarheel Trailblazers and the Dirt Divas , decided to do a little “ride to the ride” so to speak. We all met up at a local shop, Uptown Cycles.



After everyone arrived on the scene, we headed out to the real meeting place, the Dowd YMCA. We had plenty of time for a nice, leisurely ride.




When we arrived at the Y, there was quite a large crowd gathered. Some of the local news teams were there too.




I knew this was going to be a big event, but I soon realized why so many news people were on the scene. I looked over and saw a limo pull up, and I wondered which local celebrity was inside.



The mayor was already there, so who could it be? Well, after hovering around it like a teenage groupie at a Backstreet Boys Concert, I found out that the limo belonged to Bad Idea Racing, and the local celebrity was Charlotte’s very own Rich Dillen. I know how he feels about the paparazzi, so I quickly snapped a photo before he caught me with the camera.


Lunchbox said, “Look Dad, it’s Team Dicky. Let’s pretend not to notice”


I guess he has better deals with Cane Creek and Backcountry Research than I do, or else Dirt Rag is paying him a crapload of money to write for them. Either way, I need to step it up so I can get limo rides to local events. I bet that thing even had a bar in it, stocked with PBR and other fine beverages. Lunchbox even commented after he left, saying “I like his moustache.” Weird.

So, what were we talking about here? Oh yeah, the Mayor’s Ride. Our recently elected mayor, Anthony Foxx, said a few words before we took off, so we all listened to his non-political speech.


“Hooray bikes!”

And just like that, we were on our way. Hundreds of two-wheeled human-powered machines took to the streets, and we somehow managed to squeeze in there.




We headed right into the city, hoping to get there before Chilly Willy and his friends ate up all the free breakfast.




We parked our bikes, stood in line, and got our breakfast and free t–shirts. Luncbox was happy to have his.



All the good seats were taken, so we lined the steps of one of our local banking headquarters and chowed down.



It was a fun ride, and I guess we raised some awareness for cyclists here in Charlotte. The food was good, the t-shirts were pretty cool, and we got to see a lot of our cycling friends on a beautiful Friday morning in the city. I can’t wait for next year to do it all over again.

Speaking of waiting, you’ll have to do that if you want to hear all about my adventures at the 6 Hour Grind On The Greenway over the weekend. I know you all came here to see the “race” report, but I had to talk about the Mayor’s Ride first. See ya tomorrow.