Skuuts and Motorcycles and Time Trials, Oh My!

I have some very exciting news in regards to bike racing. As you may or may not know, I am an official with the American Cycling Association this year. The majority of the races I will be working as a Motorcycle referee. This meant finding myself a moto that is more conducive to bike racing than my Honda cruiser. I had some frustrations in my search for a new moto to begin with, but Tuesday my persistence paid off, and I am the proud new owner of a gorgeous Yamaha FZ6, which is a "sport upright" style moto. Its an extremely exciting purchase for me as it enables me not only to work as a moto ref, but I also just really enjoy riding and this moto is super comfortable. I think I see a long distance moto trip in the near future.

In other news, I recently sold my first road bike. It was a nice Bianchi, but had since been upgraded with the purchase of my Cannondale SystemSix last year, so was just collecting dust. I sold the platform pedals that I had on my commuter bike (The Red Baron) with the Bianchi as well. This isnt a huge issue as the pedals are easily replaced, but it left my commuter pedal-less for a day. The reason I'm bothering even talking about this is because it led me to a discovery. I was leaving for school on Tuesday morning and found that I was running late, which may or may not be an unusual occurrence. I decided to throw my bike on top of my car and drive down close to the school and just ride from there so that I could minimize my tardiness. As I was lifting the bike onto the car however, I noticed that it didn't have pedals, as previously mentioned, I sold them. But I was late already so away I went. When I got to my parking spot, I decided the hell with it. I was gonna Skuut. And it was awesome. For those who don't know a Skuut is a wooden bike built for toddlers without pedals so that the kids can just get the balance part of riding a bike, before pedaling is involved. Here is a video of what I mean. The whole point is that Skuut-ing around town as an adult is apparantly wicked awesome. EVERYONE was looking at me with envy in their eyes as I blasted around on my crazy no pedaled bike. So I'm thinking this company needs to start making those in my size, why should kids have all the fun?

Last, and certainly more in the realm of bike racing, the Cherry Creek time trial series started this Wednesday, and will continue for the next 6-7 weeks. I raced last night in the cold and the dark and the drizzle. I felt slow, and the effort hurt a lot, but I'm back on the bike. I'm very curious to see, with some legit training how my times improve over the next month and a half. Results are here http://www.americancycling.org/results/road if you would like to follow along. Simply use the pull down to select the race, then use the category pull down to select my category: SM3. I was 6th last night, and I'm fairly certain that I'm the only one using no TT equipment. So I'm actually fairly pleased with that. I know I have a lot of room to improve this year.