Band-Aid

I crashed yesterday. just riding along with keaton thru webster. it sucked. i think i was going from the hoods to the drops, and i hit a bump and went straight on by the drops to the ground. the chip'n;seal in webster sucks. they put down tar and then rough gravel, so its like shards of rock stuck to the ground. im pretty banged up, but the bike seems fine. both the levers got pretty scraped up and the left rubber hood needs to be replaced. even the bartape was fine, which im gonna replace anyway, so its pretty good overall. here are some pics from today.

my hand, my knuckles got it pretty bad, mainly the two bandaged.


my arm: kinda deep on the elbow but mainly just scraped.


everything else is pretty standard. some pusspacks are allover my body just starting to ooze out there pungent healing goodness.

these are my new mtb shoes which i still plan on breaking in this weekend racing...yeah get jealous logan.



yeah thats a lot of carbon.

oh and my crash prolly looked something like this (the second one is truly heartwrenching)

Gus Chiggins

So not much as gone on. the weather sucked for a while. it was like winter again. breaking out knee warmers and warm gloves. thankfully its warmed up for good i think. its been around 60-80 the past 3 days, it was 82 on my back porch yesterday. tonite there was a tuesday night, finally after 2 personal rainouts and one official rainout. I didnt feel too good, but Kurt came around and gave me a killer pull. he signaled me to get on his wheel with one to go and pulled me to the top of the hill, where i sprinted and won. yayyy 7 pts. 13 to go. im racing mtb's this weekend, should be interesting. i havent mtb'd in a while, but supposedly klondike is pretty easy. im especially excited for the short track, kinda like a crit on mtb's. i'll report on that later.

uh

so its stupid cold outside rite now. i heard that it might be setting a record low for april? really dumb. those two weeks of 70-80 weather were so nice, and this is pure hell. it made the team ride on thursday suck. it made riding yesterday suck. and it made riding today suck cause i rode inside on the trainier, but the only plus was that i saw that us open thing on tv. it was kinda cool. they had gnarly weather too. i felt bad for the mexican national team, they said that they were going around from room to room the night before trying to borrow cold weather clothing cause they didnt have any. but yea. at the team ride we were supposed to do some time trial tryout stuff. but then mike was like well you can do 2 or 3 laps whatever you want, and that dosent really guage how well people do against eachother. then he said that you would do 2 or 3 based on how you feel rite now in the season, which dosent make sense either cause i feel good, good legs, but it was like 30 degrees and it sucked out. so we all did 2. i was like 4th to go which made my legs completely cool down after the warmup. so i hurt and was super tight for the first lap. then i caught keaton, hand over that jersey, and then i finished second. i think logan is a better tt'r than i am but i think taking off first had some perks for his legs. soo...weather sucks butt.

CHYEA

so i really dont feel like talking about any of the road races the past 3 weekends cause ive explained them already to everyone. hells kitchen was tight and dank, dogwood was hard as shit and not that cool, hillsboro was hard but kinda cool and really bumpy/gravely. Best of the 3 was def hells kitchen, most fun course and best result 18th, and i felt good. Now its crit season, which is good for me cause thats where i do best. also theres a mtb stage race coming up that i think ima do. it should be cool. i dono. so, now i'll keep this thang up to date more.



thats me and the a-man at the base of the hells kitchen climb the day before.

heres a sweet new paul wall song that i heard and i think its rull tight, i dono about the radio stations, maybe too underground for them.. its tight tho.

Hollaback

So, its been a while. Im gonna recap sylvan springs and todays ride, but i'll post about Hell's Kitchen when i get my camera back...AUSTIN!! Sooo...Sylvan springs was pretty fun. I was wooed in by the sirenous calls from Logan, John and everyone else to do the Junior race. It was stacked and i havent raced against the columbia, now mesa, guys in a while. It was pretty fast, and Nolan went off maybe 3 laps in with Logan on his wheel. there were three other mesa guys, Zach Jan and Ben, John, Me, Zach Stein and Daniel Williams, and some kid from Stl CC. So I was content to let Logan and Nolan go, as were the Mesa guys. I wasnt about to chase them down, and i figured with 2 vs. 4, second place would almost definatly be the best that we could do. So then John and Jan went off and stayed off about 20ish seconds ahead of us. I tried to bridge/weed down our main group, and ended up dropping daniel and the stlcc kid off for good. I pretty much pulled out rite after that, with maybe 4 laps to go. I wasnt really keen on busting ass to stay in and then having nothing left for the real reason that I came, the 4/5 race. Logan ended up 2nd with Nolan taking 1st. The 4/5 race went pretty well. I was sitting rite around 20-30th position for the whole race till 5 laps to go where i started to move up. With 1.5 laps left, on the top of the climb, the pack really slowed down and i moved up to 4th wheel. I came thru with 1 to go at 2nd wheel. And then i was 1st wheel with 1 lap to go. Just a little too early. I may have been able to stay top 5 going into the final corner had i had some real gears on, but the downhill into the corner caused me to drift back. I ended up 12th, passing two or three people in the sprint. So now jump up about 2 weeks to today. Today i had a nice ride. Austin, Like and I rode out to high ridge. It was nice, relaxed and fun. Good scenery both on the ride out, and in the outdoor seating at starbucks. total time was around 3 hours and 40 something miles. Tomoro we ride from lukes house, at 11, out to Herculanium. VERY NICE!!

chill.

hey everyone. i have been on retreat for the last 3 odd days. i am not at all religiuos and took the retreat as a break from the usual life. I learned some stuff about myself from my small group and had a great time. But the one thing that i found myself needing the whole time was some good music to vibe to. we were reflecting to the likes of israel kamikawole and jack johnson, both whom ive liked at times, jack johnson more so. but what i really wanted was some Bob Marley. My personal favorite chillout music that i think produces good thoughts and helps me get thru life. if you dont have "legend" then you havent lived. ask me if you want it.

no more politics.

so what has been going on in the wide wild world of martin? well, i have been training pretty well on schedule. its been hard with this hellish weather. This week im going on a retreat with school, we leave monday afternoon rite after school and get back wed around 3. its gonna be nice break because that means i go to school 2 days this coming week, mon and thurs, and then i have a 4 day weekend. its kind of a pre spring break break. last thursday i ordered some handlebars and a stem for my fisher mtb. http://www.raceface.com/components/bars/nextxc-flat-bar.htm thats the sweet bar i got. 135 grams of p.i.m.p. i would have got the nicer sl but it was out of stock..damn. oh well whats 10 grams difference. that staff of glory will be secured to my ride with this bad boy. http://www.lhthomson.com/elite_x4.htm Holla!! its been a while since ive bought, ridden or been really pumped about mountain bikes. i think the last time i was excited about them was like in 7th grade when that was all i rode. since these damn road bikes, jk, have taken over my life i havent given my fisher the riding that it deserves. the bar/stem combo will now make my bike fit me better, my old bars were hellllla wide. so hopefully i'll get out on the trails a little more, no alot more, and make a few races. all i need now are some new shoes that fit, cause my old shoes are 7-8th grade era when my feet were a little smaller. if anyone has any nice shoes that they dont want, size 43-43.5, or wants to go to castlewood or chubb or even make a berryman trip holla at me. peace.

....yea and.

so mr bush is giving his speach rite now. he is saying how we have found these great things that will prevent terrorism in the US. not that i dont think that it is good that we have stopped terror plots, but he completely neglected to mention the fact that we didnt find any weapons of mass destruction, which is ...what ....why we went to war? "to get the weapons of mass destruction out of those damn terrorists hands"?. well...that didnt work and look where we are now. there werent any weapons, and we're in a war that we shouldnt be in, all to get oil. we're in somebody else's country and messing with their stuff. but we're america and we have to right to go out and stir up your shit if we want to.

here is a poem that i got in history class this year on september 11th. i think it puts the world into a good perspective. its not just us that endured something bad. there are other countries, places and people who have had equal and far worse things happen to them, but they go un noticed.

http://www.intraa.org/blog/lorisir/911remembered

ps. i also find it strange, yet very cliche not suprising, that to look better and more people friendly, that laura bush is sitting next to an injured us soldier.

hey

Yea, so long time no post. What have I been up to lately? I've been building a bike for my friend George with Keaton. Its a steel lugged Trek that Keaton got from his grandpa. We've got some nice parts from b-works. The green powdercoating is sick and its turning into quite a sweet bike. Its gonna be a singlespeed with moustache bars. I've been really motivated lately to finish my specialized jumping bike, which means a lot of money and parts that I dont have. Namely disc brakes, disc compat wheels a ss crank and a new tensioner. Today we rode outside, it was 30 on my back porch when I left at 8:55. My fingers were pretty much numb from the start and then the numbness moved into my palms and then into my wrists. We stopped at a gas station about 15 miles in and I turned around. It was pretty dissapointing because I havent ridden outside in like 2 or 3 weeks and my legs felt great. We had a few good sprints. I took the two that were actually contested and one that wasnt. We had a full lane sprint with I think everyone but Rok going. Mike T pulled off, then Austin and then I edged Keaton out by about a foot. It was interesting riding because it was my first time riding my 52x14 outside and also my first time riding in jr gears since before gateway. Usually in regular gears I can get up to 33+ mph fairly easy in a sprint, but today most of our sprints stayed under 30, more around 26-28. I think that I used to be able to get up to 31 at least in a sprint. I think the excess clothing, cold weather, and cold joints had a lot to do with the slow sprint speeds all around. Hopefully everyone had a good ride after I left. Going to the city museum tonite. Oh, the other day I was watching tv and I stumbled across that tv-movie on Lifetime that Austin, Keaton, the Fick and I watched in Iowa. The one where the girls infect like a whole school with syphillis, or the "big s". Pretty humerous movie.

heres an interesting "reply" to the song "vans" by The Pack.
WARNING!! this is a pretty profane song, If you regularly listen to unedited rap then its not bad but if not than listen at your own discretion. give it like 30 seconds to hear the song start.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BEw5wT45sPY

happy new year...i guess.

So it's new years day. I honestly think that new years is the biggest bs of a holiday. Its not really anything to celebrate but everyone takes it as an excuse to party, which is cool with me. I went down to a friend's house in the CWE. We chilled out and played some "Scene-it TV" which I sucked at. I didnt answer a question rite after my first question. We drank some sparkling cider at midnight and watched the worst display of hosting a tv show we'd all ever seen on FOX. It was bad. If you saw then you know what im spittin. I went to the gym today and got in a better workout than I expected. It was like an open house thing today at the y from 11-3, their only hours today, and i went at about 2:15. It was real crowded, probly due to new years resolutions and free t-shirts. The old people dont like when you do 6 sets on the leg extensions when the "legal" limit of the y is one set of 20. Needless to say I was able to get all my work done at the gym. I came home and made a good grilled cheese on the panini maker and zoned out on the couch for about 2 hours watching the discovery channel. I am going over to a family friends house for ribs tonite with my brother and his kids. should be nice. In other news I was let go yesterday by the trek store. Not a huge suprise to me as I hadn't really worked in around 5 months, and even when I did work in the summer it was a sparse few hours here and there. It was just time to cut back employees and I understand, I was already about to start the search for a new job. Chris was really sympathetic and sorry that he had to let me go as I was one of the first people there, even offering to write any letters of recommendation I may need. I think the thing that I'll miss the most is not really like selling people stuff, cause I liked bieng in the mechanic area anyway, but hanging out with the people at the shop and the sweet discounts. I truly enjoyed spending hours on a dead day at the shop when I didnt have school and going in and just shooting the breeze with katie, derek, steven, jess greg, gary and chris about any random topic. But as tightly knit as the st louis biking community is, I dont think I'll be too out of touch with everybody, and it should still be comfortable, and not akward going into the shop. I thank everyone at trek for not only paying me to have fun for the last two-odd years but for bieng cool people, and I think I've learned alot about the biking industry and the working life from working there. peace.

...

"hollister kills babies"

whats hananin.

So, I'll start with, I guess, friday. Friday i got my off day on and took the day off. I was feelin it in my legs and i was also really exhausted from a week that started fast and moved into the longest week ever. Went ice skating at steinberg in fopo on friday night with my peeps, it was awesome. saturday we went out to greensfelder to ride. I'm still not really sure why we drove all the way out there. It was an ok ride, except for like the 8 miles on Hwy 100. That wasnt cool. I liked the scenic roads with like no traffic at times, but i still like knowing where I am when im riding. Didn't really bonk on saturday, cause i took Dan's email seriously, and ate before i went riding. In adition to the eggs and toast before i had a douce of clif bars and a bag of shot bloks, and i was good to go. Mike T impressed me with his prowress, ha ha funny word, on the climbs. there were a few where he got dropped but there were also a few where i looked over my shoulder and was quite suprised to see him rite there. Rok and Chris turned back about 2 hours in due to exhaustion i guess. Probebly my favorite climb of all was up to hidden valley, we finished "all down hill" from there. My final time was 3:11, and 50 miles. Today i went down to school after watching some 2005 tour on dvd, a great time passer, and worked on the yearbook. then i went to starbux and fais mes devoirs d'anglais. I just cooked up some chicken-lime fajitas for my family and neighbor. School is off after wed....YEAHH.

ps. when i switched templates my links got deleted, if anyone knows how to fix this help me, hopefully i havent offended anyone by not including a link to their blog. sorry.

weekend recap

So...I did alot of riding this weekend, about 90-100 miles for sat and sun combined. Saturday was a solid 3.5 hours and 55 miles of pain. I didn't eat enough and was feeling "jelly" all over. Got home and ate 3 eggs and 8 pieces of toast. Somewhat filled. I went to the team partay on saturday night, quite strange. Was more of a friends of our "Sponsor" maplewood bike. we basically just chilled and shot the breeze and listned to the band from hell. They were "new age" apparently, but they caused us all pain, and were so loud that yo had to scream to talk to someone a foot away. Austin bought a tt bike, he got a pretty phat deal on it, almost as good as i can get. Sunday was a good ride with some incidents. Keaton flatted and then we had a run in w/ a park ranger. you can read about that on austins blog as well. Had a good breakfast afterwards at first watch, new tradition on sunday rides. In other news, I have finally put in a really satisfying week of training. I have gone 6/7 days as of today in the last week. I am really enjoying the lifting, the running "not so much"-borat. Why I only went 6/7 days was due to my need for getting my bike fit last night. I had never really had it fit, just kind of eyeballed it. Greg at my shop, Trek Store of St. Louis, did a bangup job. I needed to move my seat almost 3 inches forward. we moved it up afap (as far as possible) on the stock bontrager post. not enough. that brings me to my shiniest new accessory.



thomson elite seatpost with zero setback.. we still had to move the seat up pretty far on that one. just finished up a california pizza kitchen bar-b-q pizza, and now i have to go do a drawing for drawing class "my favorite place to sit", i find it fitting to do my bike seat no?

SNOW FREAKING DAY!!!!!

YEEEE HAWWWW SNOW DAYYY!!!!. woo hoo. as of 8:56 me austin and pretty much everybody else except mike t is off. To the gym early and maybe get my bike refit.



i dont know what this video is, it just came up when i searched: SNOW

Busiest

So. for a real post finally, and a template change. Yea new colors woo hoo. So we rode today. We rode from starbucks to high ridge and the covered bridge route after that, although im not quite sure how much of it we actually did. Before the ride we were all asked to leave the ben franklin/starbucks/chinese place parking lot, by the ben franklin guy who said it was their "busiest day of the year". Basically only john caldwell was the only one that talked to the guy and he informed all of us, except rusty. rusty was almost all set to go and then the goof ball came bounding out of ben franklin and repremanded him. It appeared, from across the road, to get very heated and we were all expecting a fight. the man convinced rusty to move to our side of the road, but not before calling the popo.



The police arrived on our side after rusty. They basically didnt really know why rusty couldnt park there either if he was gonna go get something from starbucks. Anyways we rode and it was hard but fun. People in jeffco need to learn how to keep their dogs in thier yards. we had 3 or 4 dogs start to chase us. One made some amazing bounds through a fence. Tomoro we ride ill-side style, in collinsville. I found these people when i google image searched collinsville. Illinois never ceases to suprise me in a good way.



peace.

So its been alot of videos lately

I've decided that this will be my last video addition for a while to my blog. I am leaving you w/ two funny ones.

CHOCO-CHOCO-CHIP!!



Condams.



girls copying the previous video, almost funnyier.

got my vans on but they look like sneakers.

the white guy busts some dope dance moves. This has reaffirmed my desire to buy some vans.

Will It Blend?/David Blane

heres a clip that i found. Kinda random, but cool. look at the otherones, golf ball is cool too.




david blane spoof, its really funny when he looks at the camera..WARNING: BAD LANGUAGE..

Borat here we come.

The team is going to see borat post riding on sunday. Turner has been talking shit on the message board about going to see it. heres the best clip from the dumbest show on tv, andy milonakis.

In Awe

Wow, i didnt know that this could be done on a scooter. Having recently dug the old scooter out to cruise the streets of webster with keaton and george like badasses, i give them mad props. Yet somehow its quite funny too.