It is a full circle.  I think I gave away my last BMX bike five years ago?  Since then it has been a cornicopia of cycling induced awesomeness. Raced and promoted alley cats like it was my job.  Rode the hell out of a mountain bike.  Rode everyday for a year here in Chicago.  Dove head first into cross.  Became completely infatuated with cross to a point where I have fun getting destroyed by my competition in the races.  Focused, trained, hated the bike.  Kept getting destroyed (although I don't think I expected anything more or less).  Trained a little less and loved the bike again in the process.  Rode really far with some awesome people.  Focused a little more on having a good time.  And; Wah-Lah! Back on the little wheels of a 20" BMX bike.

I am not exactly sure what path the bars on my bikes are going to have me travel in the next year or decade, but this ride is something I have wanted for a really long time.  It took about 50 feet on the pedals of this thing and one little roller to feel at home again.  The bike hasn't felt this good in a long long time.

I haven't even seen Follow Me yet and there is this one now too.  People are stepping up constantly with this film production business and the results are getting to be so good.  To think what these are like compared to the black and white VHS tape of Anthem I had back in the day that I bought from Stu himself at Woodward one summer.  Did I mention I am days away from having a BMX bike again.  So excited.  Smiles for miles.

So, I work for a pretty awesome company.  When I mentioned I needed to get my cross bike to Vegas so I could race on Wednesday night, they said just ship it out on a pallet with all the other bikes.  Today my Rock Lobster cross racing machine started its' slow journey on a truck across the country surrounded by about $100,000 in carbon crazyness.

Vegas will be my first race.  I am there for Interbike for 9 days, thus missing Jackson Park the weekend before and Madison the weekend after.  The race that is superceeding all of this though is our not-quite-kid-yet's journey out into the world.  We are hoping it wins and gets out before I leave for that hell on earth.  And then after I get home, my season consists of, well, I am not sure.  As much as I want to race cross like crazy there is a fundemental shift happening in how I feel about cycling.  If my time is going to suddenly become more limited, I am not inclined to spend it punishing myself on the bike path.  There are a million and one ways to have fun on a bike, I have been fairly limited in the last couple years.  I am still going to race my bike as fast as I can and with everything I've got, but I am looking forward to taking myself a whole hell of a lot less serious and hopefully have a little more fun in the process.

1st Annual Fourth of July Old Style Palos Race from Mike Hemme on Vimeo.

First the good stuff.  I am the champion of the First Annual 4th of July Old Style Cemetary Hill Time Trial.  Basically it comprised of deciding we needed to race in some manner to be rewarded with the beers we were carrying in our back pockets.  basically we would race around the cemetray hill loop at Palos, then drink our beer as fsat as we could.  The person who finished the loop and their beer first won.  It took about 3 minutes to hatch that plan and have some old guy on the trail say "Go!"  Well, he didn't actually say go, it was more of a convaluded hand wave and a mass scramble onto the trail.  Hemme got a sweet post race interview of the podium and put on Vimeo.

Other than that you have heard it all before.  Lake front this, Kettle that, Palos and the what have you.  Along with the mundane cycling routine, which actually has been great fun as of late, my thoughts and time are becoming much more consumed with family life.  And so, I am going to stop posting to this blog for a while.  I will get back at it when cross season rolls around, so you can have updates on what it is like to race with a new born under my skinsuit.  But until then, because of the ease of making posts with pictures via flickr, I am going to update this blogger thing with much more varied posts about me in general.  So some bike stuff along with cooking for expecting mothers who have railfan husbands trying not to electrocute themselves during home improvement projects.  Update your readers accordingly.  <3