Mayhem, Stairs and High Life

After spending a jam packed weekend between the shop and 2 related bar adventures I’m actually happy to not have anything planned for the next 2 weeks. Ahh…relaxation. The weekend was semi fruitful as I was able to connect with a few people, some old and some new and make some hopefully important connections for the future of my racing. Saturday this past weekend was the first Midwestern and possibly national major fixed gear trick riding competition titled, Midwest Mayhem.

The event started off at an old place of employment, Hi Hat lounge were they screened a premier for a new and highly anticipated fixed gear film, Revival. Before everyone headed 15 or so miles west I decided to cal it a night and went home in the fog…which would have been an adventure without the beer I had consumed earlier. From what I gathered the event was epic and unprecedented, with out of town people giving the local planners serious respect for the planning and executing of everything. Something tells me that this might lead to something even larger in the national scene.

Now, I’m not a trick rider, I don’t want to be a trick rider. I just want to be able to track stand long enough at a red light to keep from having to unclip, but I do enjoy watching trick riding and have respect for what these people can do, it’s pretty unbelievable. Instead I focus almost exclusively on racing. With Stupor Bowl less than 2 weeks away I have been working my muscled into a nice gelatinous substance leading up to the event by increasing the gearing on my bike from a 48x15 to a 49x14. Not much compared to a friend from track racing who is currently running something like a 54x13 or so, but it’s still a big gear to be pushing up and down the hills I hit. Once it’s time to head to the Twin Cities I will drop it back to the 15 which should feel like butter at that point.

In a round about way this weekend also sealed an idea I was kicking around last week, to participate in a stair climbing race for charity. On Saturday March 20^th the American Lung Association with be putting on it’s annual Fight For Air Climb in which participants race up the stairwells of the US Bank building in downtown Milwaukee, 47 floors, 1034 steps. Part of my registration is to raise a minimum of $100 for the American Lung Association. So once again I send out the call of help from friends and family to help me raise some money for the ALA and make me run up 47 flights of stairs. Now you may be thinking, what the hell is he doing running stairs, he hates running, let alone walking and would prefer to actually just bike everywhere he goes. Running stairs use much of the same muscles a pushing a gear, so it’s all good! I see this as crazy cross training at its best. I first heard about this event last year but was too late and too lazy to participate, this year is a different story.

If anyone wants to help donate to the charity on my behalf for registering for the event let me know. I will post more info soon to how to donate as I might be able to get some sort of deposit account set up for this through the organization for direct transfer.

I was worried that I might have to pass on this event as March 20^th seemed like the most likely date for this year's MMI. Friday I asked a few people if there had been a date set, then Sunday night I took a peek at Cog’s site for the hell of it and spotted the rad logo for this years race posted by Kevin. I had heard about the logo when asking around about the date, but it exceeds what I had imagined what it looked like. The logo clearly states that this year’s race will be taking place in the warmer and cleaner (hopefully) month of April this year. Now I can participate in climbing stairs until I puke and this also buys some more time to unveil something special that should be done by then. That’s it for this unusual type of post and there will be something in about 2 weeks recapping Stupor Bowl XIII.