Monday News And Views

Lots of stuff has been going down since I have been gone vacationing. Here's a recap of some of that and some commentary to boot.

Chris King Does Another Food Gig: From the lovely state of Oregon comes news of Chris King’s plans to host another event involving food. (For those of you that don’t know, Chris King is a food aficionado of the highest order, and a pretty dang good cook to boot!) For the rest of that story hit this link.

Nomination Papers: A while back, I was tabbed by some "wily coyotes" to help craft the skeleton of a nomination submission to induct Mike Curiak into the Mountain Bike Hall Of Fame. You can find the text of the article here. Keep in mind, I basically drew up a template and the other fellows added and subtracted stuff at will, so this should be seen as a collaborative effort, even though my name is attached to it. Only MBHOF members can vote, so if you wanna vote, ya gotta join up. There.....that's all I gotta say about that!

Top 50 Cycling Blog: Some nutter in the U.K. decided to compile a "Top 50 Cycling Blogs" post and in a stroke of pure luck, "Guitar Ted Productions" came in 26th amongst some truly worthy blogs/sites that deserved it more than I do for my work. At any rate, it seems that some obvious omissions were made, which I thought was kind of funny in a way.

Discussions About Fun, Beer, and Bicycles: During the ride in Platte River State Park, on more than one occasion we stopped to discuss the Big Wheeled Ballyhoo and what we were going to do to make it a memorable, fun event. We concluded that just getting bikes, folks, and beer together ought to pretty much take care of that. But to that end we are planning demo rides from potentially six different 29"er purveyors, music, games, a hand made brew down/tasting contest, and some killer rides including a Fargo Gravel Adventure Ride which will give a few lucky folks a taste of what it is like to ride a Fargo in the environment it was designed for. The Big Wheeled Ballyhoo should be a great time and will kick off on October 10th near Brady, Nebraska.

One More Time.... I wanted to underscore the experience in Nebraska I had on the great trails that I got to sample out there. Really, these are killer single track trails not to be missed. It seems from their own descriptions of the parks, especially Swanson and Jewel Parks, that the trails are somewhat "lame". Nothing could be further from the truth. These trails, if they were in Iowa, would be lauded as some of the best in the state. Heck, they have races at Swanson, so you know it isn't a pansy course. It is just that Platte River is so much more. When you gauge these Bellvue parks against that backdrop, well.....maybe you can see why the descriptions are what they are. I just do not agree at all with the way they are presented, and I wanted to put the word out- Go to Nebraska and ride these trails! They are waaay worth your time and effort.