East Tide

I've always had great luck with the construction/burn of those. Great smokes. Mindless but thouroughly enjoyable.

Yeah, $40 retail bottle relatively easy to find 5 years ago and now $99.99.

Wow, looking through my bike pics to find these makes me realize how many fine bikes I've had. Missing a handful of cross bikes that I can remember and not including any MTB or road bikes!!! One season I think I went though 6 different mtbs looking for the holy grail. Current rig Amazing bike. Dura Ace 46 teeth rings were not easy to find. With training wheels. We had these custom painted for our team. I only rode it for a short bit before being sponsored by Specialized but it was a great bike (way better than the S-Works above). First bike I bought after not riding for 10 years A few guys on our team did mowhawks for the state championship race, 06 or 07. I'm in the Saeco shirt. The S-Works was a POS. Nice tubing but not a real cross bike. Way ahead of it's time as a gravel bike though! Terrible geo but it was free! Had a ton of fun racing every weekend just about all year round before I got married in 2010.

That's what people mean when they say "the sun is poking through"

It's crazy how much different 100+ proof stuff hits. I guess when you think of such a small volume being 20% higher than your average booze and then drinking a large volume it's not that hard to understand it

Wow, looking through my bike pics to find these makes me realize how many fine bikes I've had. Missing a handful of cross bikes that I can remember and not including any MTB or road bikes!!! One season I think I went though 6 different mtbs looking for the holy grail. Current rig First bike I bought after not riding for 10 years With training wheels. We had these custom painted for our team. I only rode it for a short bit before being sponsored by Specialized but it was a great bike (way better than the S-Works above). Amazing bike. Dura Ace 46 teeth rings were not easy to find. A few guys on our team did mowhawks for the state championship race, 06 or 07. I'm in the Saeco shirt. The S-Works was a POS. Nice tubing but not a real cross bike. Way ahead of it's time as a gravel bike though! Terrible geo but it was free! Had a ton of fun racing every weekend just about all year round before I got married in 2010.

Nice! Those Rock Lobsters had quite the reputation as great CX bikes. I never owned one. I've went through a custom bike phase as well and had a Seven, Serotta , Landshark and IF but all road. I pretty much only rode Specialized bikes for awhile, so was limited in choices for a number of years, but Ridleys have always been my favorite riding CX bikes followed by the Ritchey Swiss Cross and then probably the Salsa Chili Con Crosso. The Fuji Altimira CX 1.1 I bought 2 years ago and broke was a great riding bike but had so little BB drop you felt like you were perched above the bike- excessively so. I like the ride of steel and can't imagine there will ever be a better material to make bikes with than carbon but a high quality aluminum frame, like the Rock Lobster, has such positive ride feedback it makes you feel like every bit of energy you put into the pedals goes directly to the rear wheel!

Interlodge Travel Only... lots of that this year!!! We stayed at the Cliff lodge and woke woke up to front and center avalanche mitigation (bombing). First time for that. Pretty cool. Snowbird/Alta would be my first choice for ski resorts in the US.

Hanging out after racing with one of the guys that worked for my mom at the Scwendi Hut when we lived in Waterville Valley in the early 80's. My kid and I doing some Nastar at our little ski hill here in St Louis Pow day at Snowbird 2019 They got 40" over the 2 days before we got there and day we got to Winter Park in 2020. Lots of tree skiiing with the kid for the first time, which she loved.

Yeah, he hung in there and seemed to remember the words!

No indoor riding for me. in 2007 I was riding massive hours inside and it wasn't fun. I bought every cold weather piece (we don't get much snow/ice here in the midwest so it's just cold you have to deal with) and sold my rollers. Much happier that way. If the weathers really bad I run, ski or lift. The NE is def a great cross scene but I'm amazed at how spread out the races are. I lived in MA until 2001 and will often look for a race when I come back to fish in the fall but it's usually a 2-3 hour drive!!!

Nice! Yeah, I raced on the road some but I'm talking about mtb and cx mostly. Did a few seasons of 12 hour mtb racing as well when I got bored with cross country. I'm 47 now but with a low training load and all that time off I am still super motivated. We have a great CX scene here in St Louis and I can race 12 times in 10 weeks and not have to drive more than 45 minutes. It's the perfect discipline for old guys that don't want to train as much but still want to compete. I do some dirt crits in the summer which are fun too. I have zero interest in most group rides (unless it's gravel) or racing on the road. I ride very little off bike paths these days which is in stark contrast to the 6 hour training rides in the hills without a helmet I'm sure you're familiar with.

Damn, @ 389 that puts makes your ftp 370, over 5 w/kg, which is crazy high, like domestic pro get paid to ride a bike high! Before my 10 year cycling sabatical I was (winning) regional/national Cat 1 events with a FTP of 325 and weighed 152 / 33 years old. I got free bikes, gear and some travel but wasn't getting paid After a little over a year of training I'm back up to around 300 but weight 157 or so. I'm assuming I'll be able to get back to 315 or so at that weight by the fall, but I'm literally riding half as much as I used to. Funny you mention that about sprinting, I've got the diesel power but am having trouble building the turbo back up, which is needed for CX (all that I'm racing now). Starting that VO2 workouts need to be maintained all year round as we age, which I didn't need to do when I was racing a bunch. I didn't realize SRM was still in the biz, they were the heat 10 years ago. I have a Quarq, which I really like (compared to my old Power Taps!!!) but would like a more accurate dual sided one because I'm having nagging issues with my left itb/quad and am more than curious.

That's some pretty serious power/ elevation for 3.5 hours! What type of PM are you using and how much do you weigh?

Mild-ish winter here so skied a lot less and have been riding more... just passed 1k avg about 6 hours a week. Last year I think I skied 3-4 days a week and only rode 1.5 hrs to this point, so feeling pretty good so far.