Friday, June 23, 2006

where to next?


regrouping near the cooper YMCA, trying to decide where we'd go next. we ended up continuing south to pine lake road, and then over and through the southpointe mall-burbia madness, and eventually back north up past hwy 2. we stopped for some drinks at a tiny south Lincoln dive called the Grapevine. all in all a really nice evening with some cool people.

two cool chicks


maggie on the left, and meggan enjoying the ride.

A street


erin and shannon about to cross A street.

children's zoo


passing under the walkway at the children's zoo. that's fixed gear erin over my right shoulder. nothing more brazen than a chick riding a fixed gear with no brakes, in cowboy boots.

heading south



a bit of funky distortion in this pic.

maggie's friday night ride


i was down at yiayia's for a slice of pizza friday evening and ran into a group of people gathering for maggie's group ride. maggie (of veggie wrap fame), a few of her employees, and a few friends go out on a nice casual ride once a week. i just happened to run into them so they invited me along.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

emily


thanks for the call emily, it's been a while. was nice to get some miles in with ya.

evening spin


hooked up with my good friend emily tonight. i used to ride alot with her a while back, but we don't get out on the road as much these days. she can be fast when she wants to be, but we were both feeling really lazy, so we just went for a quick evening spin out to Denton and back.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

julie's fixed




caught up with my friend julie on her nishiki fixed gear... pretty sweet. she's had it a few months now and loves it. the brooks women's B-17 is a nice touch.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

sunburned


i'm now sorry for teasing sydney about her fanatical use of sunscreen. i think most of my burn happened on day 2, on the 100 miler. that day started out with a t-storm and riding in the rain, so i didn't think to put any on. later in the afternoon it was hot and sunny, and well.. as you can see i have quite the 'reverse racoon' mask thing going on. it just got darker and darker through the rest of the week, even though i did borrow sunscreen from sydney every day from then on. i even bought some 'after burn' aloe vera gel in Cambridge on day 3, and applied it twice a day since. it has helped (no pain) but i'm sure my face and ears will start to peel soon.

BRAN 2006 in the books


we did it. just over 500 miles, with some long days of mostly hot weather and some hellacious headwinds. but overall a good time. thanks to my friend sydney for setting a good pace through most of it.

two tired horses


the bikes got the job done. sydney's rb-1 and my pacer performed well. aside from a few flats, no mechanicals.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

last day


crossing the platte, heading north to springfield.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

breakfast in Geneva


fueling up before hitting the road to Tecumseh.

Minden to Geneva


a minute after i took this pic i dropped my phone. i cringed as it hit the road and skidded. i figured it was dead for sure, but no... it still lives. so pics continue, props to sony ericsson.

sue and sydney

decor


sue, & her IF, checking out the landscaping decor in Holstein

another day begins


we headed out of Minden @ 8am. the highpoint of our stay had been checking out the Minden Opera House the evening before.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

dan


another shot of dan & his romulus

romulus


Cambridge to Minden, 70mi... we did it in 4 hours flat, thanks once again to sydney's horse power. on the way we slowed down to snap a pic of what we think is the prettiest bike on BRAN, a riv romulus. owner's name is dan, a nice guy.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

black cat


today is 6-6-06. . . but in no way does that mean this cute kitty will bring me bad luck. right?

where do we eat?



sydney and i went downtown to find some dinner. we could always find some good grub at some bar or mom & pop place in every town, and Cambridge was no exception. one of the fun parts of BRAN is being able to explore these small towns and meet people. we're having a great time... thanks syd for convincing me to come on this little journey ;)

oddities


among many odd things one can see @ the cambridge museum is a stuffed 2-headed calf and a dwarf one . they also had a few vintage bicycles, one being a tandem which was parked out front. they said we could, so sydney and i couldn't resist taking it for a spin.

downtown cambridge


shirley k's



chillin' @ shirley k's coffee shop in cambridge

cruising out of Maywood...


we didn't know about the hills coming up...

bridgestone


a first attempt at capturing sydney as the girl in the B-stone catalog from 1991.

Maywood to Cambridge

not camera friendly


now you see why most of the pics are of my friend sydney and not me.

'i heart biking'

trolls



the captain on this tandem (can't remember his name at the moment) has ridden in every single BRAN. here he is with his femme stoker, and with a funky troll at the very back who's seen most of those BRANs with him.

Monday, June 05, 2006

day 2 - Eustice to Maywood, via North Platte


here we are having lunch in north platte after hammering for 60-70 miles. i needed some junk food so we pulled into a taco john's. i wanted to take some more pics during this ride, but it was too hard as it was. we were going pretty fast and i had to hang on rather than expend energy trying to get some pics of the action. too bad though because it was an epic day. sydney kicked major ass on a day that started out with us getting drenched in a thunderstorm in Eustice, catching a good tail wind and flying up to North Platte, and then enduring the heat and hills of the afternoon as we headed south down to Maywood. all total... 100 miles.
BRAN isn't a race ofcourse, it's a tour. people of all sorts of abilites on all sorts of bikes riding for various reasons, but mostly to have fun and see parts of nebraska beyond the I-80 corridor. everyone starts whenever (some of the slower people get going as early as 4-5am!!!) and just rides at their own pace. i've been starting around 7-8am, and with sydney pulling most of the way, well... we end up passing most people. so ya, sydney and i ride alot faster than the typical BRAN'er, but thats how we ride. we like to push ourselves and ride hard on some great roads while meeting people and have a good time. but even on a fun ride like this sometimes things can be a bit competitive. well, between Gothenburg and North Platte we came up on these 7-8 guys who were in a paceline. they were out of Omaha, judging from their jerseys. we came up on them and followed them at a distance for a while. we just kept going our pace, and when they slowed up a bit we passed. they didn't know we were there until then, and thats were it began. i could tell they were totally miffed that they were passed by a woman. well... they may have the nice bikes and everything, but sydney killed them on her old b-stone RB-1. after passing them, they immediately passed us back a few times trying to drop us, but sydney just kept going the same pace as before and then they blew. they sent their 'fastest' guy after us in a vain last attempt to catch us but he was no match for sydney's diesel like power pace. we left them behind and headed into North Platte. we ended up taking a 45min lunch stop, so i figured they would catch up and pass us, but i wasn't worried as i knew we'd see them again. we got motoring again and flew south to Maywood. even with their huge head start, and with sydney and i having to stop a few times for water (and getting one flat), we still caught them and beat them into Maywood by 15min. score 1 for sydney.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

day 1 - Broken Bow to Eustice


a beautiful day... nice tail winds, great ride.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

BRAN

this saturday i'm heading out to ride in BRAN with my friend sydney. it'll be almost 500 miles of riding through mostly the south central/south east part of the state. i think the weather is suppost to be ok, so it should be fun. i've never done a supported tour like this before and i'm looking forward to it. so for the next week, i'll just be posting pictures from my phone (if i can manage to get it recharged every other day).