Well Hello again!

     Where you been? The "Off" time was wild around here. Finished, I say Finished up quite a few jobs that have been needin' doin' for quite a while. We cut down a huge tree in front of our house (with minimal damage done!), cut a lot of firewood, tore the pantry apart and put it almost all back together. I put a new master cylinder in the plow truck today and now I'm ready for the impending snow. Somewhere in there we started riding bicycles again, too. Today was so nice on the bike. No reason to not be riding, sun was shining and it was just me and the fast girl I live with. We both were really happy with our newest bicycle related purchases, the Louis Garneau 0 degree winter cycling shoes. Scott recommended them and they do not dissapoint!! Thanks a bunch, Scott! Those shoes are going to make winter riding much, much more gooder.
   There's talk of riding The Kettles tomorrow if they're open. Not having house projects is a wonderful thing.

Dark O'Clock comes early

It's getting harder to get everything in before dark these days. If you can't read the PowerTap display the workout isn't really happening, right? Seems like it still hurts though.

Got the car started last weekend. Put the touch starter in this week and it is sweet!!! I'll get a video up of it soon. Hopefully the exhaust goes on next week and I can get it home. We'll see. If I learned anything in this process it's that everything takes way longer than I thought it should!

Reforestation Recap

What a fun race! I had so much fun ripping the super fast singletrack yesterday. It was good to be back towards the front again. Crazy finish with the lappers and spectators but still one of the best races around. The Dark Helmet from Title Town Brewery the night before must have put some Ludicrous Speed into my system.

Green Bay

Here we come. Looking forward to some high speed racing fun this weekend. This race was the first place I ever got a Top 3 in WORS Elite. We had recently returned from 2 weeks in Italy and I had a lot of miles in me at that point. I chased down people I had no business running down and surprised myself with that finish. What a day. Notice I wasn't at top form on the podium pose. Sweet hair, though.

Jeezaloo

It's almost time for Ore to Shore!! Summer seems to have just started and WHAM!! the Fall Classics season is almost on us.Hopefully I can come close to the result I had there last year, it made all that suffering worthwhile. I wonder if we're riding through that canal again this year?

Why stop at 2 Mustangs

When you can own 3?

So last weekend was pretty awesome. The race course was perfect as was the weather. Results for me weren't exactly what I was hoping for but it was another great 212 gathering which is just as good! Lisa did her first PRO race and that was fun to watch. The short track was a spectators dream as we could see half the track from 1 spot. The attacks were vicious and plentiful and watching them I could tell I would've gotten pulled in about 8 minutes or less of the 30 minute ordeal.

So not only did we get another car last night, Kylie fell off the monkey bars and broke her arm just below her elbow. Both bones broke so she did a really good job. Lisa was gagging when she saw it! She said Kylie's arm looked like a lightning bolt. Nasty. So she'll have a cast on for the next 4-6 weeks if all goes well. Longer if they have to do surgery next week if the 2 bones fuse together.

I guess Summer is over.

                                        Seemed short this year. I didn't even get to drive our car.

George of the Jungle and me

had  a little bit in common on Saturday. I was at the WEMS race and totally had a "watch out for that tree!!" moment, just like in the song. Much like George, I smoked it pretty hard. Just shy of seeing stars, I shook it off and carried on. Chris and Michelle took the wins for the 6 hr race while Lisa and I gathered up the 1st losers spots. A good day for riding and a big thanks to the Pedal Moraine Team for putting on the event and dishing out plenty of unwanted encouragement to go faster and ride more.
    Monday was the annual Meat's Memorable Memorial Day Ride event which was followed up by lots of beer, brats, burgers, cake, more dessert and then a service call from work. Crap. Oh well, at least it was double time.

The wheels and tires are on but the car needs some weight in it to get it to settle where it will sit decent. The rear wheels fill up the wheel wells pretty nice and it'll only get better when it's lower!

Missouri 5 uh-oh

    I almost got to find out what it was like to be in a Southern jail! Luckily, the Officer ended up being from Minnesota and after some football banter and a lot of in car help I was free to go with a citation for "being a Packer Fan!" I'll take that! Lots of memories made during the drive back. Not all of them good, some are burned into our noses and others would be better to be forgotten!
   So I ended up 8th in the race. I'm pretty happy with that as I went in with no expectations. Finishing that dang race was a win in itself.
   Annual pilgramage to Rhinelander this weekend. Hopefully my legs made the trip back from Arkansas...

You never want

  To answer the phone and hear your Wife say "We're ok but I'm in the emergency  room." Especially when I you live in Wisco and your currently just south of St. Louis. Kelsey came up to Lisa and said she had a headache and her stomach hurt, then dropped to the floor quit breathing and turned blue. She came to after what I'm sure felt like hours to Lisa, the ambulance was on it's way and they were off to the Hospital. They didn't find anything wrong, really. So on Monday she get's to have a CT Scan and more tests. Scary stuff for us. Thanks to Grampa for picking them up and bringing them home.
   So, while Lisa was dealing with all that, I was down doing the NUE race in Arkansas. The events at home were weighing on me a bit but I let it rip as best I could. It was pretty wicked. We had 3 people with flats on our 7 mile pre-race! The race outlook changed a bit after that. Today, Chris flatted 5 times (yep, 5), Scott twice and Michelle, Sara, Lee and I somehow managed to avoid the seemingly inevitable and finished without any. I had to use a pump at a checkpoint but that was it. The course was wicked, lots of rocks, 3 deep creek crossings ( Lee took a swim at one of them), lots of mudholes and did I mention rocks? There were some really fun sections, very little doubletrack and a lot of rocks. I went through 10 bottles of heed plus most of my camel back, 5 flasks of Hammer Gel, 3 bars, 2 pbj's and a bunch of Sport Legs and Endurolytes. The gastric distress is at an all time high tonight. They were really slow on the results so we left before they were posted. I guess I was somewhere around 10th, give or take.
   Thank you Chris and Michelle for putting up with me and for bringing me along on the trip!

I heart The Kettles

It's hard to beat that place. Thank you to all the folks that build that marvelous trail system! One of the best places I've ever ridden. Darrin, thanks for the ride. Hit rim on a rock for the first time on carbon wheels. OK so far! Smell that? Mother's Day brunch coming up!!!!

Dang you Chris.

I'd never even heard of someones earholes getting cold before. You bring it up and then bam! Last night on my ride, my earholes got cold. Almost 39 years and never had CES until now. Thanks.

WORS family reunion

It's like going back home. The first race is always a great day regardless of results as we get to see a lot of friends we haven't seen for a few months. Iola is a great course and it was perfect even after all the rain we got. Pretty good day for The Team, the ladies showed us how it's supposed to be done and Mike and Darrin held up their own. The same can't be said for me yet but I'll come around. It's good to have one race in the legs and know I can at least still finish! The new S-Works Epics are amazing and worked perfectly all day. It's nice to finish up a race and not have wicked back pain.
     On another note, who would have thought the wind would ever be a factor at Iola? Jeezaloo it was wicked in some spots. As if the climbing wasn't enough to deal with. The temperature was another wonderment. I knew it was a little on the cool side when I saw some kid with his back tag pinned to his winter jacket!!!

WTH?

       There's a race this weekend? crap. I better start riding.

       I ordered the other 3 wheels and tires on Saturday. Can't wait, they look amazing on the car. Lisa took the rest of the stuff to get powder coated today. I started putting the front end body work on. Can't wait.

Lust Level is Rising

Lisa got her Carbon Fiber!!

Not much Junk in the Trunk.

Having a wife who trains, kids, endless house projects AND a car project isn't really very smart. Luckily, Lisa is amazing and puts up with all of it and she does it all with a smile and a great attitude. I often wonder how I would have handled our life if the roles were reversed. At least when the car is done she can boil the tires on it. If the house ever gets done, all we can do is live in it!!!!!

By the way, yes I know the wheels aren't straight. It hasn't been aligned yet.

Marriage is still on

It may have been touch and go for a while. I told Lisa we could ride to Richland Center and back and it would be about 4 hrs. Well, we arrived at the Kwik Trip in 2:45, not exactly the 2 hrs I had planned. I guess the GPS I was born with didn't calculate properly. So after a bottle fill up of Dr. Pepper and a bag of BBQ potato chips we were off for home. So I says to Lisa, "We're going to be close to 100  miles today." Silence. Suffering. Mild bonking. We rolled into Denzer at 96 miles and had a decision to make. I knew what I was going to do but Lisa surprised me when she said she was good to go for finishing up with the 100. It was ugly, not real smart but in the end it was done. Not a real huge feat as far as riding goes. Some people do 100 miles all the time. I don't. Lisa don't, it was her 2nd one ever. It's really just a meaningless goal that means something to people who care about that sort of thing. Bottom line is race results, I guess. I sure don't know how I'm going to pull off that NUE race!

Trainer?

I think I've finally weaned myself from it. It's kinda' lonely riding outside as Liza isn't spinning stationary miles next to me. That's about the best thing of riding the trainer, I don't get dropped by her.

Our car got painted while we were in Texas. The picture isn't that good. Our hood is almost done and it's so bad ass you won't believe it. I never thought I would have custom anything! This has been an amazing process so far. I can't say enough about how awesome it's been to work with The Ring Brothers.

Northshore (Texas)

Our final MTB destination was pretty cool. A big loop around the park along with a few wrong turns took us about 2 hrs to do. Lots of cool trail including Lisa's first big drop. We were ripping downhill and I saw the drop coming but it didn't look different until I was over the edge. It was a little different as it was sheer cliff for about 2 feet then the slope. Lisa was right behind me and ended up rolling it as well. She didn't think it was as cool as I did, even 10 minutes later. Maybe it's a guy thing but anytime I'm with guys, after stuff like that happens we tend to get pretty pumped up after the almost dead shock wears off.
  So today we'll do a little ride and then start packing for the ride back. I promised everyone that we will never do another 7 hrs straight (Emporia, IA to Dallas, TX) like we did on the way down. How amazing was that feat? Add onto that we consisted of 1 male, 1 Female and 2 kids under the age of 8!!! We would've made it all the way to my Dad's if there hadn't been an accident and the ensuing traffic jam.

Lisa vs. Tree

This ain't nothin'. Jerry knows how to smash fingers.

My apologies

to the State of Texas. It was sunny and in the 80's for the past week and now that we're here it's only going to be in the 50's and rain. That's very typical for us when anyone from our family comes down to visit my Dad. Yesterday was decent (85 deg) but today it's cloudy, spitting rain and 51 deg. Oh well. It started raining right when we left for our ride but thankfully it stopped after 15 minutes or so. There are 2 separate trail systems within easy riding distance from my Dad's house, so we started out at Squabble Creek. It was our first ride on our new bikes and they were amazing!!! I've been fortunate in that every new bike I get seems to be better than the last. However, this years Epic absolutely blew me away! I don't know what they did different but it worked. Acceleration is so quick coming out of the corners, I was grinning ear to ear the whole time. Lisa was riding so dang fast I was working to stay with her right up to the point where she drilled a tree. We were still rippin' along pretty good after that as well but the taste of the tree (not literally) ratcheted the intensity down just a bit. We had to ride on a pretty major road to get to the other trailhead and, of course, I got us lost but we made it. Good times for sure. Hopefully it won't be our last MTB ride here this year as a few more days like this would be all kinds of awesome.

Coming together

The fenders are on for good now.

Last day I'll be at the shop for over a week, hopefully I don't suffer from some sort of withdrawl. Motor is supposed to show up next week. That should fill up the big empty space beneath the hood quite well. I'm anxious to hear how the Flowmaster's sound with the 331 c.i. stroker motor at full tilt! BAWAAAAAAHHHHHH! It'll probably cost $5 every time my foot hits the floor.

A big day

No pic's but it was a big day for us. They actually sprayed color on the car today! I was giddy. Lisa even made the trip over to check it out since we still haven't packed for vacation yet,we leave on Friday night and she may not have a chance to get there again this week. The color is flippin' sweet. Maybe y'all won't agree and that's fine. Get your own car.

Land of the Lost

I like finding new roads. Today I got to ride a lot of them. I started out from the shop in Spring Green and rode towards Richland Center in a round about way. Met up with some random guy with huge bushy muttonchops and he gave me some advice on routes. That got me into 'Center and the Kwik Trip for some Dr. Pepper. It wasn't as good as the stuff in Loganville but it was still pretty good.
After that the ride became interesting. I had no idea where I was for about an hour and a half. It was awesome!
When I saw this road I was really drawn to it.
Once I got here I knew right where I was. Nowhere I had been before.

I saw a lot of Amish folks around but couldn't find a buggy to draft. Oh well, it probably would've dropped me anyway. I eventually came to find Loganville and if you've ridden with me at all you know that's where you find the Top Shelf Dr. Pepper. I had my daily limit already so I kept going but my bike kept trying to veer that way. Met up with Lisa and the Girls at the American Legion in North Freedom for the best fish fry around. Plus ice cream. Booyah.

nice

Because I checked the radar before my ride I knew that the rain that was falling was really some sort of manufactured reality I happened to ride into. Luckily I was dressed for -50 deg instead of the +50 it really was. I have issues with remembering how to dress as the seasons change. One time a few years back I "overheated" due to overdressing, stopped a little too late to jacket off and passed out in the ditch! I remember waking up and seeing blue sky, wondering why I was laying down. Neat, huh?

Another Christmas

We made the trip to S-Works Central and picked up our bikes this weekend. AMAZING! We can't wait to ride 'em. Thank you to Mark and Chris for building them for us. Mine even has the reflectors on it so I didn't have to put them on myself when I got home. Safety first, danger second I always say sometimes. So sweet to have the carbon wheels this year. Balinggg! Another special thank you goes out to Bottle Ninja Tim for passing his knowledge of handups and Africa on to our children. We all (well, everyone but Lisa) had a nice ride yesterday. Thankfully it's Lisa's rest week this week. It's getting ugly.

It's getting towards busy season

Bikes are itchin' to be built. Hopefully that happens next weekend as we leave for Texas in a mere 3 weeks. Watch for temps near Dallas to be in the 80's the week of March 21'st and then rapidly drop off into the low 40's the following week with a quick rebound the first week of April. Pretty typical when anyone from Wisco go visit my Dad. Maybe we'll have better weather while we visit if he moves The Carolina's.

Seems like such a shame they did such a nice job on the panel replacement and how perfect the floors are and now none of it's visible under the Dynamat. This picture represents about 3 hours of work to get about 3/4 of the trunk area done. Should really cut down on road noise, though. The hole is where the gas tank goes, in case you were wondering.

Yeah, I'm still pulling Trainer Duty

But isn't everyone? Nothing too exciting about that. So, I tend to focus on our Mustang as that's far more interesting to me. Here are a few more pic's of it. The Cobra front apron is pretty cool.

The inside is all painted black. Soon to be covered in Dynamat to help keep the noise down inside. That should help keep some of the noise out of the passenger compartment.

How sweet are these Ring Brothers billet hood hinges? Lisa saw this picture and she was super excited to see them on there. I didn't even know she knew what hood hinges were! She has really good (eg. EXPENSIVE) taste. The wheels she liked were only $1300 a piece.

So after a bunch of re-engineering I got the rear end in the car last weekend. Still waiting for the center section of the 9" to be rebuilt and the new gears installed. Hopefully this week I'll get the offset of my wheels figured out so I can order them or try to find another style that we like and will fit better. I tell you what, picking out wheels and a paint color has become as difficult as picking out names for our kids!

The 2010 Optima Street Car Shootout is next Friday night. Looks like it's going to be pretty badass. There is rumor of a viewing party at the Eye Diehl Tap in Plain....

If the aftermarket auto industry

were as good as the bike aftermarket stuff, life would be much easier. It sucks that the stuff costs so much and it fits like junk. Well, I guess most of it is junk. Case in point my new fenders. Passenger side is ok, drivers side fits not so good. The original fender with a rot hole in the bottom of it may end up being less work to fix and get it to fit right than massaging the new one. One would think stuff would be right and it generally isn't. I didn't fully believe Mike at first but it's become painfully obvious. Even parts that aren't that complex or oddly shaped don't fit without some sort of "customization."

I was surprised to walk into the shop today and see the car looking like a car for the most part. Click here to see a better version of what my car will look like when it's done. That car is for sale if anyone is interested! It's also part of the 2010 Optima Ultimate Street Car Shootout that should be on The Speed Channel pretty soon. They're on to the next one when this one's gone. If that's not your style, they'll build something for you. I'm waiting for Chris to pull the trigger on something....

Yee Haw!

We got the Internets at home now! I voted for Pedro and all my wildest dreams have now come true. My mind is dizzy with anticipation of the world of opportunity that has now become available to me. Wait a second, maybe that's the African Russian...

Primed up

Getting close to paint.

Rode outside with Lisa on Sunday. I could barely hang on. Good for her, not so much for me.

Scuff-o-rama

So my car came back and they got it primed. That left me to scuff the whole thing to ready it for the next phase. I may have an overuse injury after 5 hrs of that! All the guys at the shop say I have a really nice piece. I'm pretty sure they're referring to the new floor section in my car. Lisa rode to the shop on Saturday and then helped me out for a while. That was nice. With temps close to 30 deg I suppose I should've been riding, too but the prospect of being behind the wheel of my car this summer had more pull today!

I put the last coat of stain on the woodwork in the kitchen today. With only the clear to go it's the closest I've been to finishing a project in quite some time!

Christmas in January

My first order of parts came in last week. Won't be long and I'll be able to start bolting stuff on. I got the undercoating scraped of the bottom of the car on Saturday and Lisa got the trim ready for powder coating. It was a long day and I was filthy dirty but it was very nice to get that job all done in one day. The plan is to get it sandblasted, primed and truck bedlinered this week. Then I should be able to start bolting the suspension in next weekend. It's starting to set in that I'm actually going to be driving this car soon! Can't wait. The only downside is with the motor I have planned to go in this car it's probably going to melt the tires as the widest tire that will go under the car is only 9.5". I could have had them mini tub it for me but the undercarriage was so nice I couldn't bear to see it cut up! Maybe a set of drag radials will help....

Moving along

Yep, still riding the IHTD (In Home Torture Device or Trainer. Whichever terminology you prefer). The really exciting stuff for me is going on at the shop. Both quarter panels are on, the decklid is ready to go and it's about ready to go on the rotiserrie so I can remove the undercoating from the floors. My suspension stuff shuould be here this week and the brakes here the following week. I ended up getting a kit that will let me run the 94-04 Cobra Mustang brakes. Should be sweet. I'll have to do a braking test and compare the stopping distances between the 13" front and 11.5" rear disks to the 4 wheel drum brakes the car came with in 1965.

Here's a picture of the car with the drivers side quarter panel cut off. I thought I had a pic of the new one on but I don't. Stay tuned.

New Year

Same start. Another New Years Day Ride down. It was a little on the cool side but nothing like 2 years ago. At least the roads were clear. Spending a lot of time with the Wii Fit +. Better watch out this year, I'm gonna' be so ripped you could get cut!