Upshift

Milestone: 5,000 Miles & Syncardia?

Readers,
Well I'm back west and the temperature is crazy. A high already of 24 C on 8th January! This is a far cry from our recent stay in Pittsburgh, PA, where it was -12 C (10 F). But it's good news for me as I managed to get out in just shorts and a jersey and cycle up both the Tucson Mts, and to Molino Campground on Mt. Lemmon. I set personal bests for each: A 1:02 on Gates and a 2:04 for Molino, smashing my former time of 2:09. BOOM! (That was the sound barrier...)

Molino Campgrounds

The bike turning 5,000. Happy Birthday!

As the title informs, I also passed 5,000 miles. It was somewhere on the climb up to Molino. I was hurting too much to remember / celebrate it though; the side-effect of trying to set personal records. Oh! And you know what else is cool?!? Over the winter break I got a verbal invite to a race team: Syncardia Racing. I can think of no better team to race for outside of Collegiate. They're a company that provides artificial hearts to those who are not fortunate enough to receive a transplant in time; a situation that the majority of patients face. While the company is small, and only a limited number have had the operation, the impact is great. More can be read about the company here: http://www.kgun9.com/news/local/135518003.html

I hope the invitation turns into me racing for them in 2012.

Holiday Recap!

Readers,
I hope you all had a good holiday and managed to remain healthy, unlike me. I don't know whether it was the Buffalo winter or the dry heat within the house, but I had a few headaches and colds scattered through the 2 weeks I spent there. Despite that, it was a great trip up to the northeast. We saw the Bills play football in a 40-14 demolition of Denver and then spent time in New York City, Niagara Falls and Toronto in what was a 6,000 mile road trip.

Ryan Fitz-magic in the shotgun

Look what I found in NYC!

Grover hated this...

Times Square, NYC

The Rock, NYC

Canadia! The Falls

NYC, 82nd Floor

More Falls, Canada

CN Tower and Rogers Centre (Home of a Bills game), Toronto

The road trip took us all over the place. Here's one stop: Roswell, NM!

And those are just a random sample! Thanks to Phil and his family for hosting me and getting us tickets to the big game. I really appreciated it. I also managed to get on a spin machine a number of times to keep up the cycling. That was pretty good fun as it came with a watts meter. According to the machine, I was doing an average of 290 W over 20 min, which is a solid effort. Back in Houston I got on one similar and could only do ~ 240 W over the same time. Noticeable improvement!

1 x 520

Ladies and Gentlemen,
It finally happened. After what I think has been 2 months of trawling ad after ad, I can now say that I have my very own touring bike. Welcome to your new life, unnamed-Trek 520! I hope you're ready to do more than what you've apparently been doing. With me, sitting in a garage for 2 years isn't going to cut it. For one, I don't have a garage. That in itself means I now have to find more space in either my room (currently has two bikes in), or outside (which has about 6). How did it get this bad?

The bike itself is a 2008 model in very good condition, which according to the ebay seller has rarely been used. A new 520 costs $1400 if you buy it direct from the Trek website. I managed to get this bike for $785 (£470) . I'm pretty happy with that deal. I could go into the gear sizes and chainstay length (and don't think I won't if Santa grades you below 'fair' this Christmas), but for now I'll just currently answer the most asked question about this bike.

It's black.

Unnamed Trek 520. The bike that will hopefully get me over the Rockies.

So as of right now I'm waiting for the bike to be delivered to Tucson from god-knows-where, Indiana. The seller has indicated that it should arrive before Phil and I head off to Buffalo, NY for a guaranteed white Christmas. I'm not expecting any issues with the bike as the seller was careful to list all frame measurements. It should be a perfect fit!

This is obviously the biggest step forward to date in terms of getting ready for May. Next on the list is to pimp it out with panniers, new clipless pedals and perhaps even a front rack. Then comes getting all the camping equipment I need bought, before finally taking it on a couple of practice tours. I was thinking the week of Spring Break would be a good time to see a lot of southern Arizona, whilst still being close enough to home that if the worst did happen, I'm within a reachable distance for someone to collect a broken Russ. I'll say this now: An In-n-Out burger would be bought if anyone did do that.

I'm sure I'll have more to say when the bike actually arrives. My wallet can also breathe easy again for there won't be any more bike purchases for a while. OK, I'll take that back. No more bike purchases in 2011. That's 19 days. I think I can handle that. Finally, in writing about this bike, it gets the ever-demanding Kate off my back, who prior to this post was questioning why I don't blog about the tour on my touring website. I think I've just bought myself another month to talk about whatever I want.

Happy Days!