They are growing and liable to eat you whole if you are not careful. They have been using the snow and slush to conceal themselves and then grab at you at your most unsuspecting moments.  The underground fight against them has picked up word that they are recruiting membership from Morocco.  I am going to go on a two week peace treaty trip to try to stop the surge of them from flooding our streets.  Be careful of these wheel eating monsters.  They strike when your guard is at its' lowest.

 

Are you one of the many people who talked me into the Hillsboro Roubaix?  You should be ashamed.  I don't really even know where to start.  Brick road is kind of like single track, right?  Does this mean I need to shave my legs?  Can I still high five people on the start line?  I am not taking out the toe spikes from my mountain shoes, is that illegal?  Are the officials going to give me a hard time when I hand them my International Elite license to enter as a Cat5 to race?

 

Seriously, it will be fun.  It has given me something to look forward to and work towards, even though I will be on vacation for quite a few days leading up to it.  It will be fun to ride with the guys from Half Acre.  Killjoy teammate Mike will also be in the same race as well as Chris from TP.  It will be a good way to start the 2008 season.  No, this doesn't mean I am becoming a road racer.  If the dates do not conflict with something better and off-road, I might go race snake alley and the Baraboo road race has always intrigued me.  It would work well into my training schedule, but also really depends on who else wants to go.  It does mean I am now forced to swap the SRAM from the Voodoo to the Waterford and buy a load of crap to make the road bike ridable.  But that was inevitable I guess.

Two last pictures from the show, taken by Bikeportland.org.  Go to the website itself for some great coverage of the show.

Nothing really going on in the vast wasteland we all call the Chicago Metro area, well at least for me anyway.  I know a Zach and Kevin are getting ready for a road race down in Cincinnati the weekend of February 16^th and 17^th.  Starting the year super early.  Sam stopped by on Friday night and we did some interneting.  He enlightened me to a couple pretty sweet things that exist out there in the inter-spaceland.  First is the Mountainbike Militiamen Movement, where I suggest reading up on the "Headshok Review" and "Downhill Tips with Spoolie."  That group is really on the verge of setting some new trends.  And speaking of the next new thing.  Since the NHMBS has highlighted that fixed gears are out and that cyclocross and utility bikes are in everyone needs to stay ahead of the game and see that Unicycling will be the next big thing.  The Unicycle Bastards are right there on the forefront winning world champion titles and all.  The Cross Crusade out in Portland has an entire category for unicycling and this page has pictures and video of the action.  And if Portland wasn't cool enough already, this weekend is Minibike Winter Five, which amongst a bunch of other awesome events has Bike Chariot Wars, Ben Hurt II.  The list of different events they are putting on over 5 days! is pretty amazing.  Back to the Midwest, via the snot rocket, Cog Magazine has released issue number 2.  Leaving for a foreign land in a few days.  Pictures of it on Flickr, but probably no updates here after Friday for a couple weeks.

And keep the bottle of windex handy for when you mess your screen.

The flow has begun! Some of it is so remarkably sick, I just don't understand.  Hand Carved racks, double tubed fork legs and curvy everything!  The level of eye candy increases every year as frame, and bicycle building for that matter, becomes more and more an artform.  And so much of it is coming out of Portland.

Both pictures graciously borrowed from bikeportland.org's photo stream on flickr.