Enjoy

the add if you have not already, it's from the Australian DOT.

An ad campaign aimed at preventing traffic deaths in Australia mocks the manhood of speed-obsessed drivers by having women waggle a little finger at them.
The pinky gesture, meant to symbolize a small penis, hits male drivers where their sense of humour stops: below the belt.
The new ads show one young driver at a traffic light revving his engine and burning rubber in front of two young women.

As the car speeds off, the women exchange a knowing glance and slowly wave their little finger. The ads' tagline? "Speed: No one thinks big of you."
The Road and Traffic Authority (RTA) in New South Wales opted for the cheeky campaign when recent research showed its previous ads with images of horrific car crashes and fatalities were not working.
The statewide ad campaign coincides with the introduction of new restrictions on learner drivers, including a ban on all cellphone use, limits on the number of young passengers allowed and tougher speeding penalties.
Speeding is a factor in about 40 per cent of road deaths in New South Wales each year, according to RTA figures.
"We accept this campaign is controversial, but we must find new ways to make our anti-message sink in," said RTA spokesman John Whelan.
"This campaign continues RTA's efforts to do all we can to save lives on our roads.
If the road toll is to be reduced further, we must make speeding socially unacceptable," Mr. Whelan added.
"We will do what we feel we have to, to get the message through."
The ads provide new meaning to giving someone the finger.
One of the 45-second ads shows a female pedestrian being forced back to the curb by a speeding driver.
As she glares in disgust, the pinky gesture is made by a grandmotherly woman sitting on a nearby bench.
Their unmistakable message to the speeder is, you drive like a jerk so you must be compensating for your paltry physical endowment.
The first stage of the $2-million campaign includes television, movie theatre, and bus shelter advertisements.

Hitchhiking.

Hi, my name is Jake and I break way to many Bontrager wheels...
As I was finishing up my 499th recorded hour (plus or minus a bunch of hours) of training this year, I heard the now all to familiar pop of a breaking spoke. I was 58 minutes straight out from home. Luckily my wheel broke today while I was on a fairly busy road, rather that way the heck out in the middle of nowhere on some random gravel road that there is one car per hour on. Especially because there is no cell phone service way out yonder, not that there was any where I was either. But hey, thats when your hand comes in handy.
I had to ride a bit with the broken spoke, the last few breakings have been quite bad. Just throws the wheel way out of true, it must be the paired spoke design. I was always able to ride broken wheels home in the early days.
Anyway after about 30 min of waving at cars I finally got one to stop. An old guy named Ed. The car ride home was nearly 30 min long as well. So we had a nice chat about life. He was even nice enough to go 20 minutes out of his way to bring me all the way home. I know he most likely will never read this, but thanks Ed!
He said he picked me up because I looked nice, and non-threatening. The matching kit does it I guess. I like nice people.
Anyway, back to wheels. That is the third wheel I broke this summer, and 4th or 5th for the year. I don't really know why I do it so often, maybe because Duluth roads are basically like single track, or maybe its all the gravel, or maybe its the single track...hmmm. Whatever the reason they should not break so much, I am down to my last rear wheel, which is my race wheel.
Oh, I also went to the State Fair, all the food is always a good time. Just think of it as energy, then eating all the crap is just fine.

Rippin legs off

Tonight I rode with the mountain bikers from Ski Hut. I did so because they were going hard often, and on gravel. Both things are exactly what I wanted, and of course I rode my madone (I also rode 2 and a quarter this morning with Christoph. Not hard, but not easy).
Anyways back to the action. We rode out on pavement for about 50 minutes to the first gravel. I pulled the whole time at a good 34 km/h or so. The gravel was a road I had never been on before, so I had no idea what was coming. More fun...I took off right away and dropped all but one guy who did all he could to hold on for the next 24 minutes. It was great, the road was a bit sketchy at times for a road bike, but no all that bad. After about 15 minutes of easy it was time to light it up again. This road I somehow managed to get a good gap early on and just kept making it bigger. This road was about 10 minutes long, I came to the pavement over a minute ahead of the others. On most of the gravel I was going about 35-37 kmh, but saw up to 53, never below 30 though. Shortly after everyone was back together we took off again. I was out front at first pulling, but got a little at the start of a nice hill. I was still recovering when the guy who held on during the first interval took off with a great attack, there was nothing left to respond right away, and he got a good 100 meter gap quickly. After a short decent I got it back and just flew up the next small hill and on the next flat section just blew by him. Good times. Another 15 minutes of balls to the wall done. Just one little section remained, which we did not go super hard, but hard, only for about 5 min though.
Anyways it was a great ride, exactly what I needed. I showed myself that I am feeling quite strong and have lots of power when I need it. And it looks like my battery has a pretty damn good charge at this point too. I guess I have been doing something right in my training...
The whole ride the others were waiting for me to get a flat, the Refuse tires refused everything and baffled everyone, and made them hurt. HA!

Bikes and Beer

This past weekend I attended Trek Worlds down in Madison. Trek gives anyone who carries Trek in their shop to come and see all the new products, eat good food, drink free beer, and visit the factory. Usually the new bikes are available for demoing, but because of the rain they canceled the demo just for my group. Lucky me.
Anyway, it was a good weekend. I got to look at all the new stuff Trek and bontrager (and any company affiliated with them) have out now. To bad I dont have any money to buy a couple of those fancy bikes. I guess I'll just keep plugin away with mine. However, I am pretty sure I will be getting a powertap. If I am training as much as I am currently, I should probably do it right as to not hurt myself. All I have to do is suck it up and dish out the cash...

Other than that the big new is that summer is officially over up here in the arctic. Last week it started. Two weeks ago the high temps were 85 or so, and cooling off down to higher 50s at night. Last week up until Wednesday it was down to 75 as a high and low 50s at night. Then by the end of the week highs were less than 70 dropping to mid 40s. One evening last week I walked out of the house and smelled fall. Today the high was 62 with a 25 mph wind off the lake...
Which brings me to my next topic, along with a strong lake wind. Comes large waves on Park Point. These large waves are really fun to play in. Last year a friend and I took out the lazer (14 foot sailboat) in 14 foot waves. Todays waves were 5-7 feet I heard. Unfortunately we were low on time, thus could not sail. However, I did go surfing for the first time in my life. It was quite fun, I was able to stand up on the board. Sadly, most of the time, right after standing the wave would die and I would fall in. Even with all the surface water being pushed in the lake was still really quite cold. I only laster about 20 minutes with a 3/4 body wet suit on. On my way to the car a lady asked if she could have her son take a picture with me. Ha!
I forgot to mention that riding in Madison I got no cramps. Upon my return home (yesterday) I got pretty bad cramps when I rode. I tried to get them out, but only dulled them a bit. I ran this morning on the beach and cramped up in strange places. No fun. Then I hit it hard on todays ride and managed to get rid of most of them. But now my legs are more tired than they should be. Damn Cramps. I called Mayo after that, they have not looked into my case yet....

6 hours and a nagging question

Tone and I rode just over 6 good hours today. I felt wonderful the entire time. Even coming back up the hills home. I had forgotten how nice it is to have a training partner. The time goes by so much quicker.

Anyway, and more importantly. I was browsing the Olaf website the other day and came across this picture.

One can't really see that well in this picture. But the guy in the light blue shirt looks quite (if not exactly) like me. However, I know for a fact that it is not me because I don't wear button up shirts, and the guy has a bracelet on, another thing I do not wear. I have never seen anyone on campus that looks that similar to me. I am wondering who my clone is...

Pain be gone.

For awhile now I have been getting pretty bad hot foot. I don't remember it much from before getting new shoes, but can't say it was not there. Im told the stiffer shoe will cause a more noticeable pain because the foot won't move around as much. Anyway like I mentioned before I was messing around with cleat position and all. Nothing seemed to be helping relieve the pain. Whitey at Ski Hut and some others eventually figured out that it may be because the crank-bro pedals have to small a platform. It was concentrating to much pressure on the ball of my foot. So today I switched back to my old looks to see if the bigger platform would help. It for sure did. My feet hardly burned at all. Finally! Next week I am going to try out some different types of pedals to see which work best.
Also I finally got the seat height exactly right. No knee pain anymore either. Now I just need to figure out how to get rid of my upper back pain...

Finding a fit

I decided that I actually need to get my bike fit properly. I stopped at Ski Hut on the way home today. I changed a few things a bit. Seat up, and forward. I still need to work on the cleat position. My 3 hours of straight ride time had my feet burning almost the whole time...

Yesterday was the Brewhouse Triathalon. I have gotten to know the director (and owner of all Brewhouse establishments) pretty well. He put me in charge of the bike course and all involved. It was really good to be a part of a bigger event (there were 690 entries). Good experience to bring to my smaller races.

Other than that things have been pretty low key. After getting back from the BW I have picked up my training again. I did not have a whole lot of time on Fri. or Sat. so I only got to ride about an hour each of those days. But other than that I have been doing at the minimum 2 hours training, with 2 hours total of commuting. With commuting today is 5 hours. Good deal.
Rowing is going, but it just makes me so tired. This summer I have come to realize how important sleep is for good training. I can't wait until rowing is over...

Also I am a published writer!
The website makes you register. I will just put what I wrote on here. It was published in the Sunday paper. I posted something very similar before, but this is all jazzed up.
Recently, I have noticed a drastic increase in the amount of road rage toward cyclists. In the last week I have been honked at, yelled at, swerved at, sworn at in a variety of ways, and nearly been hit by passing cars in multiple areas of Duluth.
What I don't understand is why riding a bicycle angers some motorists so much. Honestly, he or she will maybe, just maybe need to slow down. Most likely all one must do is nudge the steering wheel just a little in order to not come dangerously close to hitting a cyclist. Maybe the motorist will be another 20 seconds late to getting to where he or she is going, surely no more.
Back to my question, why do some motorists hate cyclists so much? Is it because we cyclists are out using our bodies in the beautiful summer sun while they are sitting in hot cars? Is it because we are enjoying our ride for training or commuting? Or is there some other reason. And as long as a cyclist is going the speed limit (or the speed of traffic when it’s faster) there is no reason we cannot use the main roadway. Often, it is yelled by someone in a passing car to “get on the sidewalk,” when in fact riding on a sidewalk is prohibited by law.
All I have to say is that motorists should get accustomed to cyclists, because our numbers will grow as the price of gas goes up. Why not stop fighting a losing battle and get out, get in shape, save the planet by enjoying one of life’s simple pleasures. If you are unable to then please give us some space, wave and smile instead of honking and swearing. Is that really too much to ask?

Way up North..

Where border rules don't matter and there is no news of doping (which it appears they all did dope now)!

I just got back from a nice trip in the Boundary Waters. It was great, I really love leaving civilization behind and going off into the woods. No news, no phones, just rocks, trees, and water.
Our route took us along the US-Canadian border for quite some time. It was my chance to get out of the country this year, so I took multiple excursions off into the Canadian wilderness. Good times. Other than the trip being really enjoyable, it was made even more enjoyable by the absence of cramps. I felt them coming on lightly on some portages, but never lasting.
Today when I got home I had a bit of energy so I got in the saddle again for the first time in a week and a half. And again, no cramps. Good deal. The ride felt great, nice and hot out. I also had lots of bounce in my legs, but I could tell the top gears are gone now. It will take a bit of work to get back up. But it was a much needed week.5 off.
Here are a few photos from the woods...

Up I go

Fearless four
Into the abyss

This is how you keep beer cold up yonder.
flying food.
A giant fish.