It seems even on vacation the storms still brew. Only this time, I don’t care less. The western Michigan coast received some brutal storms, but with the protection of the dunes nearby, and the beauty of the nearby forest preserves, the lightning, and the howl of the wind have brought about a beautiful calm and fiery night show that has been cathartic to watch. There, in the storm, hides a struggle of peace and the brute force of nature’s personalities. The weather’s struggle to reach this summer day perfection that becomes evident if for glimpses at a time, and with great luck a few days of gentle warmth with breezy air. It’s what we wait for – like impatient children that we are with knobbies at the ready, and helmets in hand, waiting for that perfect day to perform our little feats for no one but ourselves and with each other. Ahh- yes, the beers have been good to me this week.

So good in fact, that my father-in-law and I visited a local bike shop, and there she was hanging from the rafters, in my size, this. The sickness moves on, getting back up and dusting myself up ready for another trail attack feels evident. I look to my father-in-law, and I smile, and he responds simply with – “it looks badass!”. Yes, it does, and so are the dreams to keep on keeping on the dirt, working towards the goal of being the best I wanna be. Thank you Sara and Mia for cheering me up and a special shout out to my father-in-law who has been very cool hanging out with sharing good times with me, I have no idea what day it is and my socks say “Beer:30″ because its always time for a beer.

But you know what? I don’t care.

Recent events in Guatemala have definitely mellowed any spirit of enthusiasm over my eagerness to trail ride and hit the dirt – I love it so, but am humbled by the powerful forces that control the ebb and flow of our planet. Those natural forces will always be well timed and in tune to their own melody that will drown out any silly call for fun, when in nature, fun is strictly limited to time and space available within the eon slot given to us daily. I want to ride the trails badly, mostly for fun, and to ensure that I get my skills up to par for the upcoming Lumberjack 100. But the riding on the road and gravel concoctions have definitely kept me focused and on target and grateful that I have the ability to pedal my bike to begin with.

I spoke with various members of my family in the course of the past week and of course, thanks to the artificial force of the internet, was able to see pictures, audio, video in real time of what a truly torrential downpour is. The ones of ash that cover a city and suffocate the little drainage that existed in a 3rd world infrastructure. The ones of rains that push that heavy soot down streets that turn into raging rivers, and move with such a petulent force that five ton vehicles are merely floaty toys in its wake. The ones of such liquifying magnitude that decades of sediment and rotten engineering give way to what appeared to the twitterati and news crews of the world – a portal into the underworld.

I had given my best effort on Sunday, May 30th at the Half Acre and North Central Cyclery – Gravel Metric Century. I had a great sentiment inside of me thinking of family conversations over how volcanic ash and heavy rain caused some serious misery across the homeland. I wasn’t too pensive about the misery, but definitely said a little prayer to myself and as I always do quietly before the start of any race I do, I dedicated the effort to something personal. On this day, it just so happened to be for all of Guatemala. I think of how easy it was to drive out to DeKalb, enjoy the beautiful day with friends, and ride my silly bike fast. The comparison of what my cousins were doing – not being able to ride their bikes for what will be many weeks before anything is considered safe to ride on because the ground or water may simply sweep them away into oblivion. When the race was over, and the celebrations had passed among many deserved toasts of ale and friendships, I was in the car with Soupy and Nevada Dave when I got a call from my dad. He said a nearby river had grown tremendously and picked up great speed in what seemed like a few hours – and in its rapid rage, took down two bridges that lead to the family village. The first bridge that went down was just constructed one and half years ago – and it had been of itself, fifteen years in the making. The second bridge, was the original bridge that had been condemned for the past 20 years, yet, still stood and was still used by the locals – was destroyed by the remnants of the first bridge by what seemed a comical injustice to the 3rd world. My father was sad to relay the news to me knowing full well, despite whatever political might and saavy he had – to rebuild those bridges, would take another five years, at least.

I was quiet for a few days (hence no Dirty Tuesday News) reflecting on the enormity of the desperation felt back with my family. It was great to hear laughter over the phone talking about the close calls, the crazy scenes, and the jokes over the fact that they actually found the culprit to the sinkhole. I am lucky, as we are all lucky to be in Chicago and face silly thunderstorms that leave us with nothing but greener pastures, mosquitoes, and days of trail-riding limitations.

I wish all my friends well that they may find great happiness in their own friends and families and ability to see them when they can – it’s not a jungle out there. The jungle is down there.

The following sinkhole is no more than four blocks away from my aunt’s house in ‘la Zona 2′ en Guatemala, City. A house she has owned for over 45 years – and despite its new grim looking portal – she isn’t considering moving anytime soon. Tia Rosaura – cuidate y te quiero!

By 8:00AM with the help of my neighbor and my impeccable little girl who repeatedly told me ‘Papi, I help find your wallet’ – I was in a state of unbelievable calm and well impressed that my daughter, cared about this stupid piece of leather its contents, only because she saw it was important to me. The first phase of children’s selfless acts to help someone had me in a wonderful frame of mind. At 8:30AM I received an e-mail from the gentlemen who found my wallet and phone – so the day started looking up and karma had begun its revolution. I figured it called for a celebration – and I looked at my 3′2″ sidekick and asked if she wanted to go riding with papi since taking her to daycare after faithfully searching an hour with me was reason enough to stay the day with her – her answer was ‘YES!’. I had thought of hitting up Tati Cycles yesterday evening as well, so I figured, I’d make that the lunch hour destination around 2PM to meet ‘J’ and pick-up some fly colored skewers that I had seen he had in stock. So the girl and I stocked up the Burly trailer, hitched it up to my bike and the journey to 53rd street from 5100 N. began. The weather was absolutely perfect for riding.

We hit up the trusty lakefront bike path – which at noon – is not so bad of a predicament with people on the path, and I’m pulling a trailer with a super cute kid, so I mostly feared the gals on roller blades who would coo over how cute my girl looked in her helmet while almost riding off into the sand or the rear of a jogger ahead of them. I had a couple of pathletes who found the urge to challenge me and my trailer and work their way dangerously and stupidly around me by playing chicken with the commuters and joggers in the wrong lane. My girl enjoyed the show and as she saw people ride past – she wasn’t having any of it and proudly exclaimed ‘Papi, go faster! Go faster!’ – I guess she doesn’t like it when people passed us. So when I found a few wide berths which aren’t many on the path before downtown, I drilled a good hard pace powered by my Led Zeppelin T-Shirt flapping in the breeze and getting heavier with sweat by the minute. By mile 14 – the girl fell asleep in the trailer with a cool breeze blowing about her and her cuddling her favorite green elephant, coincidentally donated to her by a cyclist’s friend’s daughter. I arrived to 53rd street and wind my way through the tree covered historical grounds that is Hyde Park and found the shop easily. I pulled onto the sidewalk and a funny thing happens – the wheel falls of the trailer!

‘J’ is a soft spoken guy with a love of bicycles and all things orange. He has gleaming blue eyes that reveal a very young spirit and even bigger persona as you talk to him in person. His immediate reaction when saw me pull up on the sidewalk was as astounded as I was that a wheel just fell off my trailer and with my daughter still in it no less. Good thing he owns a bike shop! We worked through the problem and thankfully it was resolved if temporary, but we both were confident he fixed it. During the fixing of the wheel, my daughter helped herself to several apples, carbon wheels, and even assisted one of his customers showing her how to use a bike pump. I had been meaning to get to J’s shop for a while now and moreso meet the man behind the ‘Tatitos’. It was great to talk bikes, and life, and realize that we had a lot more in common than just our love of bikes and the cyclocross scene. Karma turned yet another wonderful revolution as he didn’t charge me for the bike fix and I gladly picked up the actual skewers I was looking for and played host to my daughters curious nature about all his colorful inventory in his shop. A friend now known in person and a great visit to the shop that brings us the wooled wonders from Hyde Park. Off I scooted with my newly fixed trailer, and daughter waving goodbye to Hyde Park and its beautiful denizens in great cheer for the happy sun.

I made it past the Aquarium back north when another rider stopped me to tell me that my rear skewer looked loose on the trailer – I looked back and investigated and it turned out the skewer cap was coming loose but the tire was held on tight still. Befuddled, I had no choice but to chance it as I had 11 more miles to home and the daughter is looking weary in the trailer. So we headed off carefully with me constantly looking back to ensure the wheel wouldn’t surprisingly take off. During those awkward moments, by Division and the lakefront, I came across Adam Clark, and old friend, framebuilder, and proprietor of ‘Pedal to the People‘. He was doing exactly that – setting up his portable shop at the lakefront assisting bike riders. I stopped and we exchanged a great conversation on our going ons and he took the skewer once again to review its issues. After a short bit, he concluded the skewer would hold but to definitely get the factory correct skewer to ensure full compatibility and with that vote of confidence the journey began. My daughter had been playing with even more bike tools at this stop and enjoyed the barefoot run around the grass.

We made it home by 4:30PM – my wife was home already for a happy reunion to the great day. At 6PM my wallet was returned while I made pasta with pesto. All in all – reflecting back, I did admittedly miss the dirt trails, but passing up an opportunity to play hooky with my daughter was too good to pass up. And I enjoyed the day greatly, made a new friend, revisited with an old friend and watched the karmic revolution transpire before my eyes. It was a day for cycling, family, friends, and further realization that it exists daily in our fine city.

As far as ‘training’ goes – pulling 70 pounds 42 miles might actually qualify me as the keg puller for this weekend’s Half Acre Gravel Metric Century.

Speaking of Dirt Riding
This Saturday is the Women’s Trail Ride brought to you by Julia Daher and Half Acre Cycling. CAMBr will be providing energy bars and drinks for those who attend as well! The meet up will be at 10:00AM at the Wolf Roads Parking Lot at Palos Forest Preserve.

Gravel Metric Century
The gravel road ride/race is on this Sunday, May 30th in DeKalb at 9:00AM. Are you ready for some gravely fun? You should be – riders of all backgrounds and bikes are encouraged to participate – everyone is A WINNER at this event. You have a cross bike, bring it (duh!), got an MTB, bring it, got a road bike, bring it, got a cruiser, bring it. It’s self supported, the route will be marked, but if you have a GPS unit, you’ll be even more set for the day.

Follow Me Premiere
A huge thanks for CAMBr for showing the ‘Follow Me’ movie at the Cobra Lounge this past Sunday. A great time was had by all watching some of Ted Blanco’s slick pre-movie features from ‘The Garden’, ‘Plainfield Bike Park’, and ‘Marquette Park’ – and then of course the feature film showing what MTB has progressed into the past few years. It used to be that 30 foot gap jumps and 15 foot ramps were considered monstrous for mountain bikers. It seems with the new technology, lighterweight materials, and bigger gumption have made the sport accept 120 foot gap jumps, and 80 foot ramps as the new norm for serious dirt baggers. Watching the film quickly reminded everyone how awesome it is to truly be free on the dirt and push your limits in a gravity assisted way.

Special thank you for the following Bike Shops that contributed to this event with free merchandise and services for the raffle after the movie:

Rapid Transit Cycleshop
Johnny Sprockets
Get A Grip Cycles

Please continue the support for CAMBr and become a member! With your membership, the organization can continue to bring you great things on the trail and in Chicago. A great example is the ‘The Garden’ who will have a ‘Kona Demo Day’ coming on June 5th from 12-6PM. You can come test ride fly test bikes on a real pump and dirt track. Also you get a chance to see the local talent show you how its done.

Doping in Cycling
Who knew?

In addition to the cool movie premiere – its a fundraiser for CAMBr to keep them keeping on and giving us what we crave – bigger, better, and sweeter maintained trails for Chicago. They and we are encouraging you to come catch the film and perhaps get lucky in the raffles we have going on that night.

Prizes for the raffle will be donated by Johnny Sprockets, Get A Grip Cycles, CAMBr, and one small prize from us! So come on down – have a brew, watch a great flick with a bunch of dirtbags and enter the raffle to win some great prizes and schwag from the MTB community!

Here’s the preview for this fine movie:

Hey There’s Racing Going On!
Don’t forget that Illinois has a Homegrown Racing Series and some strong Chicagoans have been represented very well in the Elite/Expert Class! The Bonebell is tolling for John Gatto and Tim Yuska who gave the IHRS a 1,2 punch in the Elite Category at Black Partridge. If you want to give a strong performance at the Palos Meltdown – then practice makes perfect, select some of the Illinois Series to do some racing and hone your skills and learn some new trails in the process. Stiggity was happy to have attended and may post up some of his experience soon.

Don’t Forget Trail Work Days!
If you want a slot at the Palos Meltdown for preferred call-up at the line – then get in as many trail work days as you can! The calendar is here – get out there and get on it. We’ll soon be hitting the trail work days as well and documenting exactly what it takes to participate in preserving trails the CAMBr and IMBA way.

Hooky Wednesdays Are On!
Every Wednesday, starting next week, if you want to hang on for a long endurance ride at Palos or one of the other trail systems (weather permitting of course) then hook up on Facebook and become a fan of our page! We’ll post up meet times and will generally be playing hooky every Wednesday from next week through June between 2:00PM-6:00PM for endurance riding in the vein of good tempo with minimal stops – so its a good pace but not destructive pace as the aim is for good endurance riding. Join us if you have time on the trails.

Chicago Athlete
Spectrum Magazine

Dave has also been raising as much awareness as he can for the Climate Cycles organization so that Chicago Public Schools can install solar panels to produce as much clean energy as possible while educating students on the benefits of solar power. Its a win/win for both educators, students, and the environment. If you’d like to assist Nevada Dave in reaching his monetary goal of providing a solar benefit to the public school system – simply visit his page and give what you can. In addition, to the fundraising, Nevada Dave will be riding from the Indiana Dunes to Chicago on May 15th with his crazy team from Trader Joe’s who will be donning pirate costumes for the entire route.

Dave has been riding his heart out in search of friendship from all walks of life from all over this country – if you’ve ever met him you’d know that he is genuinely concerned not only of the environment, bicycle racing, or saving the trails – he’s concerned about everyone not having as much fun as they should and making a difference while they can – on their bikes if possible. Dave Norton – thanks for inspiring us.

Here’s the Climate Cycle video from Dave’s team last year – this year will surely be a great time.

I have a fond memory of an old high school coach who could never get my name right. He was a hardened south Texas soul who appeared to have no plan, but followed some old school methodical approach to making some of the fastest 800M and 1600M runners in the region. I would ask him, “Coach, what are we doing today?” to which he responded, “Get your shit on, you’re running!”. It was succinct, blunt, and definitely the most to-the-point training you’d imagine – we’d run, we’d run hard, and we’d run to his whim. I don’t remember ever suffering so hard that I’d puke on the track – but I do fondly remember running some of the most amazing track runs I’ve ever had, hitting memorable times in every event I did.

When I started mountain biking for ‘exercise’, I remember the pain of forking over $450.00 in 1992 for a Mongoose steel frame with steel fork, 26” rigid fork. It was a race bike, with neon green components, including the brake cables. I had the ‘Rocky’ eye of the tiger approach, I knew that I wanted to offset the caloric intake of the weekly kegger and the pack a week habit of cigarettes. I bought the bike at a bike shop in Palatine that also sold lawn and gardening equipment. I didn’t think it was weird at the time – why would I, I didn’t know what an LBS truly was. I would ride that bike through the forest trails at Elk Grove when they actually did have some trails. I would see some pretty slim fast looking dudes on blinged out bikes with purple anodized components, the 90s epitome of ‘fast’ looking bikes. I’d roll up to them and ask, “How do I work on getting faster?” – they’d answer “Dude, you just need to ride hard, and then rest a day, and ride harder that next day, and repeat that for a month”. That sounded easy enough so I did, but the smoking and the drinking didn’t really slow down, but neither did my biking, which was still very fun.

Let’s fast forward to 2004. I’ve been rocking and a rolling for 10 years before that, and I realized that smoking and drinking heavily are taking their toll on ye old physique I once had in the days of yore. I figure, its time to start doing something about that. I had started biking to work, commuting more by bike, and becoming obsessed about this fanatical bicycling thing in my life. My then girlfriend, who is now my lovely wife, could see this amazing change in my attitude as I started falling in love with the mechanical beauty of bicycling. I decided I’d take it up a notch because I was a ‘pathlete’ from hell making aggressive moves on the lakefront bike path. I was ‘that’ guy that loved to show the spandex wearing freak, that I could jam as fast they could on their skinny tired bike. It was disgustingly obsessive. So I joined a cycling team thinking that I could learn a little discipline, like the days of the ol’ high school coach, ready for someone to yell at me “Get your shit on, we’re biking!”.

I showed up to my 1st ever XC Mountain Bike race and pre-rode the course in jeans and a t-shirt. I had a pair of lycra bib shorts and matching jersey that I hadn’t ever wore before – ready for the ‘race’ and not exactly liking the fact that I had to wear it to begin with. Why do mountain bikers have to wear lycra? That 1st XC race, I thank Brian Parker, aka Stiggity, for guiding me through the motions of what XC racers do. I survived the race, and was exhilirated by it. That was six years ago. A lot has changed, personally, but the state of competition has not.

The pathlete that is out there on the bike path, challenging you in the lycra that we wear so brazenly, is the next level of new competition. They are loathing the racers and they are yearning for a moment to show us that they too have what it takes to suffer accordingly. The cyclists that look like ‘freds’ on the trails, on the roads, and elsewhere, are the same ones that have the secret ability to possibly destroy the most fragile egos of those they overtake. We should thank them for that, and encourage them. They are the new base of the Category 5 crew, they are the new base of the fast filling online pre-registration for the latest cycling event. They are the future of what we are trying to build for the cycling community – they are the willing participants.

I fly through the singletrack at Palos and as of the past year, I realize how far I have come. I see the agility in my bike handling, the ease of the climbs, the flow that I’ve mastered, and I laugh with my friends as we howl through the trees. I then see a father and his son, riding through the trails, who concede their spot on the trail respectfully and kindly to me and the fellows with which I ride. I pass, but not without thanking them and ensuring that I say ‘You are all doing a great job and I hope you enjoy your day!”. I am thankful for every rider on the trail, that takes the challenge on to compete faithfully, to suffer happily, and to smile while doing so – to make the state of competition, fun, and showing the their friends, their family, their children – that you can have fun and be fast too.

I still like to ride behind roadies annoying them with the hum of 20mph+ knobbies. Works every time.

Trail Work Days
We’ll elaborate more on Trail Work Days in an upcoming feature – but the gist for today is that – the trails exist because people build them and maintain them. If anyone believed the trails magically sprouted up in the forest or were the results of magical elves who worked their nightly magic for us to enjoy the morning ride is smoking way too much of ‘yerba buena’. No no no my fine ale swillin’ dirtbags – the trails are man made with an actual plan behind them that allows them to be a maintainable and useful trail for years to come. The actual work to get them done is done by a very loyal few trail workers, and “YOU”. There is no help from Cook County on this endeavor, nor is there any other organization in the entire City of Chicago that does this for CAMBr.

Simply put – if you ride the trails, and you’ve enjoyed it – then give back. A few hours of your time, a few weekends, donations of food and kindness – all makes for more trails for you to ride, a stronger community of dirtbags, and greater notice to this City, that we care about what we do.

We have all the trail work days on our Events page – more information is always found at the CAMBr site. This weekend there is a really cool trail work day at our City’s first Dirt Bike Park. Go introduce yourself, get to know it and get involved. That’s how dirtbags roll.

Premiere of “Follow Me” at the Cobra Lounge
For years, there have been annual vignettes dedicated to the awesomeness of dirtbaggin’ as filmed from around the world by the world’s best riders. Dirtbaggin’ had been traditionally seen as the ‘freeride’ junkie escapism, tackling all terrain, all levels of crazy, on what is nothing more than 30lbs of metal and rubber. Technology has evolved for both film and bikes – and the stunts, the lines, and the gumption have gone to whole new levels of incredible. This years premier of Anthill Films ‘ Follow Me’ is an HD view into the world’s best talent on mountain bikes pulling off the fastest, most beautiful, and awe inspiring riding in the MTB world.

You can see this film on May 23 at the Cobra Lounge, brought to you by CAMBr. You can get your presale tickets for $15.00 online or pay $20 at the door. There is a limited amount of presale tickets so get them while you can to guarantee your spot. The proceeds for this event from ticket sales benefits CAMBr to continue to do their work in providing Chicago dirtbags, a place to ride.

There will also be a swag raffle with prizes donated by various CAMBr supporting shops and yes, us.

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