Droopy

You know the moral of the bird trapped in a pile of shit?

I feel like that bird.  Not that I'm dealing with a pile of shit, but I'm sitting in my bike room looking at things that need to be done and thinking about doing them...

but still doing nothing but sitting and thinking.

The tires on this bike need swapped, but one of the tires I need is on that bike, and that bike needs tires swapped before the Trans-Sylvania Epic, so if I already have those wheels in hand, it seems like a dandy idea to go ahead and do them all at the same time, and I need a plan for the upcoming family-less Saturday, but I'll be at the Bike Party Friday, so I don't know how a plan can even be made for Saturday if I don't know how I'm gonna feel about anything the next day, and then there's a Dirt Rag deadline looming on the near horizon...

Yet last night I just hung out with Brian B and looked over his post-PMBAR wheels and BS'ed until The Pie came home and the rest of the night was spent sitting on the porch drinking the rewards of the evening's labor.

Tis the season, I guess.

Lotsa racing and planning will do that, suck my will to do anything in the interim that could be considered the least bit productive.  And it's only May.

I did manage this:

Small victories.

After sifting through many assorted but not sorted bins at Bike Source with Daniel Lenis, we came up with two matching 31.8 reflector brackets.  I know this is hardly as important as swapping tires, but the anal-compulsive lobe in my brain couldn't handle the loss of my previous number plate mount. Add to that the amount of time it took to collect the various nylon and plastic hardware to replace the steel bits, and you have a very grandiose waste of time that does little more than save me from using disposable zip-ties...
assuming you actually dispose of them once used.

My collection of recycled, re purposed ground score zip ties.  I find them at work and stick them in this cup.  That way when my friends come over for some beer-for-bike-work exchanges and forget the proper supplies, I allow them to choose from my stock of resourcefulness.  I use new zip-ties for my own personal bikes, but forget to B.Y.O.Z.T?  Pick from the cup.

Yes, Chris.  I still have the home brew beer bottle you loaned me... like a year ago.  Sorry.

You see what I did there?

Off on a tangent.  I coulda lost an entire week blogging about zip-ties and no deposit/no return beer loans. 

Also more important than tires, zip-ties and beer, but not really?

The final bike to receive to angelic white ESI Racer's Edge grips.  I am now fully converted.  I just love them too much.  Don't know how I got this far without them.  The Meat Carver needed them sooner rather than later since I'll be racing it over the Eleventy-one/Fiftyfivepointfive weekend.  I would link to the Pisgah Productions site, but the it's down right now... apparently PMBAR was too hard for the internet to not fail.

Why race the Meat Carver, what with its 140mm fjork and only one water bottle mount?

Sherman's March to the Sea.  Scorched earth.  Take no prisoners.  I'll be living off the land, stocked aid stations, all-out war.  I can get very stupid on this bike, so what better way to race over a hundred miles of super gnarly Pisgah terrain over two days?  This bike has a certain fuck-all attitude and that's what it's going to take for me to do what I gotta do.

I can run over things like a tank-boss.

Sadly I will not have my Thomson drooper post in time.

image stolen and used so many times I don't know where I got it

I feel it will be key in my plan to let it all hang out on the downhill sections of the race(s).  I've had offers to borrow other drooper posts for the race. 

But I will have no other post.

I am focused if not deluded.  This is the post I want.  I've been fixated on it since Thomson said they were making one.  I bought an entire frame just so I could use it. 

Fixated.  Convinced this is a need, not a want.

So I wait and need and fixate and want.  Perhaps the Thomson drooper will be mine before the Pisgah Enduro in June, another Pisgah Production event of massive importance...

Yeah... I'm stopping here.  Too much shit needs to be done.

Is it too early to fire up my air compressor?