bathroom guttage

i've finally mustered (or is it mustarded?) up the confidence and will to start tackling the rest of the renovations needed on the main floor of our little house. the bathroom has needed help since the day we stepped foot in our dwelling and we've been concentrating on the ceilings and kitchen for so long that it got neglected. not anymore though, yesterday i finally ripped into it and now we have to go to the basement to use "le toilet." it's a little scary down there but i think we'll be okay just having to use it for the rest of the week. the big question that my wife and i have been debating on is tile or linoleum?? at one point we had purchased everything needed to tile both the kitchen and bathroom floors but then got the stuff home and didn't like the way it looked with our choice of wall color. so last night we made a quick trip to topeka to make some decisions.

when we got there we thought...we'll run in home depot, grab the first thing that looks good, leave, get some chipotle in our bellies and go home. not the case, as per usual with picking out things that are going to be permanent in the place you call home. home depot was quite disappointing with their selection so then we headed to lowes where we had success. they have these armstrong laminate tiles that have an adhesive backing and you can grout between them just like real ceramic tile. we found a color that we both could "live with" and that was that. this will create much less dust in our house and will allow me to cut the tiles with a utility knife if need be. but the plus side to it all is that it will have the appearance of tile...but it didn't cost half as much it would to install tile.

so today i am tackling the patching and painting aspect of the job in the bathroom and hopefully can have the floor laid and toilet reinstalled by thursday or friday at the latest.

all this aside my riding has not been going nearly as well as others here in the community and i really need to get back in gear. i had a good couple of weeks there but my zest has fallen to the way side. no excuses to be made except that i have no excuse. races are fast approaching, ouachita is in about 6 weeks to be exact, so my legs and lungs need to be in order. hopefully i can get some time in on the bicycle today while i'm taking a break from the bathroom. renovation that is...:).

in other news the new bike shop is coming along really well. the framing is all finished on the new office and bathroom and this weekend about 7 of us ripped up the old flooring and under layment. i never want to see another 4x8 sheet of plywood with tiles attached to it again. we worked for about 5 hours straight, all 7 of us, going nuts on that stuff and there were a million nails to be pulled as well. yesterday we met up with the guys from the construction company doing the framing and they brought a dump truck to haul off all the flooring. so needless to say, a big part of the project is finished, behind us, and we couldn't be happier about it. if you pray, and are into that sort of thing, ask the Big Guy to help things go as smoothly as they possibly could from here on out at the new bike shop. not that things have been a nightmare down there or anything, but we can always use some help. we're still trying for a march 1st opening, so we'll keep working hard and hoping for the best. can't wait to see people coming through the doors down there.

ah kansas, you are so beautiful

just in case you were wondering, no my bike did not sell on ebay last week. and if you are feeling saucy (or sorry for me) then it is still for sale, and i honestly feel like the price i had it at is practically giving the beauty away. anyway, if you know anyone that needs a sexy off road machine, please send them to kansascampfire.blogspot.com thank you.

there is much to tell of the past week in the life that surrounds me and the bike culture that is emporia, ks, so lets get this thing started already.

eric benjamin (been jammin) and i finally decided (i say finally but honestly it only took us about 5 seconds to make up our minds) that "kansas bicyclist" magazine needed to become a reality. and in the way that most things in my life manifest themselves it happened rather quickly and things needed to be done in some of the worst weather possible. if you go here you shall see where the inspiration for "kansas bicyclist" was incarnated on ol' adventure monkey's site. and if you go here you shall see more photos like this one that were taken on the day that this grand realization began to take form.

yeah thats me standing on top of one of the steepest hills known to man-kind in the tri-county area, smack dab on the edge of the flint hills. as you can tell i was so excited to get out there and freeze that i forgot to where tights, shoe covers or a balaclava. all resulting in my feet, ears and lower extremities being colder than i can remember in the last...oh lets say...20 years of my life. eric wanted the shot for the magazine to be on a cold, overcast and snowy day in kansas to catch the contrast of the latest cover shot on "bicycling" magazine and i do believe that we couldn't have picked a nastier or more perfect day than last friday if we had wanted to. we're going to see what comes of this beautifully crafted photo shoot as soon as the adventure monkey deems the final product worthy of human (or bloggers) eyes.

we couldn't get back to the bike shop fast enough for me to rip my muddy shoes and socks off to shove my feet in the nearest air vent to try and break loose the icicles that had forged my toes together. of course everyone laughed at us, but we didn't care because we had obviously just conquered the world in our minds and if eric asked me...you know i'd do it again man. that's just how we roll around here. lelan knows what i'm talkin 'bout.

oh and by the way...my beautiful wife and i aren't going to have the house to ourselves anymore around aug. 24th. and we couldn't be happier about it.
-bobby

2008 Felt Comp 29er For Sale

2008 Felt Comp 29er. BUY THIS BIKE you know you want it. Rootbeer Brown paint, what else could you ask for in a new mtb bike.

























here are the race-x-lite wheels that i have available for extra cost if the highest bidder wants to make that deal.

if you have any other questions email me at bobbywintle42@hotmail.com
thanks for the interest and i hope someone really enjoys this great bike, i sure have.
-bobby

sneaky UPS man

for those of you that may not recognize me with long hair (or if there actually happens to be people reading this that have NO idea what i look like) ...yes that is me in the picture above looking some what in the direction of the camera and screaming from the depths of my soul. if you happen to look a little closer at the picture, i am in no way facing the band that is playing, and to be completely honest with you, had no idea there was a camera to my immediate right and was caught off guard when a bright flash obscured my view of the show for a moment while in a passionate rage caused by the overwhelming rush of emotions from the live music. i'm a small dude...most people know this, but when it comes to music it makes feel as if i could conquer nations with the power that is pulsating within my pinkie. we're connected, you know, me and and the mystery that is the get up kids, or underoath, or in the case of this picture as cities burn. there is really nothing that i can do about this sacred bond between me and love ballads from the place that i've been raised, or ridonkulous (see theres that word again) break downs that literally force tears on to my face without any sort of nice gesture or an appropriate written consent of such acts, or in the last bands case, connect me with the God that has created me and this whole crazy world that should be riding bicycles in ways that i never thought words could. hence the reason it has not only been words that have done this connecting, but it has been music...it's always been the music that has moved me from this place to the next.

now on to why i wanted to write this thing in the first place...

today i was at the bike shop for a brief moment, usually it's not so brief, and stephanie and i were talking about how awesome it was that garret received his bike almost 3 weeks earlier than trek's dealer website had said that it would arrive at high gear cyclery. then almost like it were planned by one of those savvy directors in an over priced indie film in walked the UPS man carrying an elongated, rectangle, beautifully brown cardboard box. no doubt, a box in which contained a bicycle. stephanie was closer to the delivery man so therefore she saw the box before i did and immediately said outloud "flat black"..."x-cal? could this be your bike bobby?" and of course i was dumbstruck by just the sheer idea of my bicycle being here, in my town, in my bike shop, when once again the website that tells us all that we must know about new bicycle arrivals that my bike should not show up until the 8th of the month of march. "this must be some sick joke" i thought to myself. "steph is just trying to make me cry, yeah thats right...she just wants to see little bobby tears all over the place" i said so reassuring to myself, trying not to let my heart rate get to high by actually thinking that this might be my bike. because as garret and i found out today my resting heart rate is right around 75...which lelan has known for quite sometime and likes to equate my pulse to the pulse of a lab rat running and running and running and running and running and running around in circles in one of those metal contraptions. then finally i get a closer look and sure enough, there sits in front of us a x-cal...but i look closer and it's a 19" frame size. "oh no" i thought, "they sent the wrong size." mine is going to be a 17.5" and now all i can think of is how much longer it is going to take them to get me the correct size and that x-cal's will probably be stopped in production because of the lack of flat black and green paint so i may NEVER get my bike...my heart rate is ridonkulously through the roof now...and then matthew e. brown walks in the front door and brings with him the good truth of the afternoon. "oh yeah, thats a demo bike we ordered." relief washed over me and my heart rate subsided to a calm and cool 92 bpm.

so it looks like there is some hope that my bike will be here before march 8th and therefore i'll have more time to get used to it on some killer training rides before ouachita which is on march 28th. i just hope that everyone else gets their stuff a little sooner as well so the team can be settled in with the new gear and ready to tackle the new season of killer races. if you get a moment to think about matt and steph and the new shop that is underway do so with a positive outlook. there is a lot to be done, and they are some brave people to be taking this step forward, a step that i think is phenomenal. they are great people and i wouldn't have met the friends or lived as good of a life here in emporia if it wasn't for them. well i better get off of here, garret is going to be picking me up at 5:10 am so he can drag me along to his spinning class in the morning. this is my first go at it, so i'll let you know tomorrow how everything turns out. hope everyone has a fantastic day.
-bobby

45 miles + 25mph wind = 105 miles to me

...okay just kidding, it's not even close to comparable especially when the guys from the team that did do 105 miles on saturday ALSO rode it in 20+ mph wind which = ridonkulous in my book. (for those that may be confused "ridonkulous" is a really fun new way of saying ridiculous...but it's actually more ridiculous than ridiculous itself...making it fun to say. annnyways, as i said earlier a bunch of the guys went out for a 105 miles on saturday while i took a huge nap and just hung out around the house. i'm actually really glad that i didn't go out with the guys because i'm not sure if i could have made it that far, let alone stay with the pack. i've actually never ridden a century and the farthest i've gone on the road is around 86 miles or so. i've had plenty of chances on organized rides, but it just never felt like the thing to do. this year, i believe is the year of the first century for my legs and myself. i will certainly be blogging about it when the time comes.

our big group ride for sunday kind of got blown apart, like my legs last sunday, and everyone ended up doing other smaller rides which turned out to be okay. a bunch of awesome people go and get coffee at the java cat-5 here in town after church on sunday mornings so crystal and i decided to head down there to have some good conversation. after a while of laughing about off the wall things my friend jed (whose legs did not blow up like mine last week) and his wife renee asked me and crystal if we wanted to go out for a ride. and certainly we did. so we all hopped on our mountain bikes and went for a lovely stroll in the sunshine east on"old old" highway 50, you know, the one that never gets any new asphalt...ever. it's really great on mountain bikes but definitely a death zone for road bikes. tried it once, and shook for nearly two days after incurring all the bumps through my rigid front fork. as i said, it started out being sunny and then that terrible northwest wind blew in some clouds and the temperature decided to drop about 10 degrees and the wind chill probably 15 or more. we were adequately dressed except without booties so my left foot is still trying to recover from the numbness. crystal and renee took a different route about half way through the ride and jed and i continued on to lebo. when we got there we were glad that we hadn't decided to go farther because the head wind all the way back to emporia was vicious. jed can climb with the best of them, so i was just hoping that i wasn't holding him back at all but we had a great ride back, regardless of the numbness in our extremities.

also (this is for lelan) this past week i hit the trainer for an hour ride on wednesday, went for a 40 mile crush fest with matt and wiggins and then did the ride yesterday with jed. i think it's a step in the right direction for training for ouachita. i just want to be much more prepared this year and try to finish stronger. i'll let everyone know how the next suffer fest turns out, try and keep warm this week because it's only supposed to top out around the 40's. but all that REALLY means is that you should drink hot chocolate and eat popcorn every night to keep warm.
-bobby

let's step this up a notch

the team and some friends went for a good ol' road training ride on sunday and it turned out to be a beautiful day to go for a ride. we hit up the council grove loop and it ended up being around a 75 mile ride in which i came to realize that i wasn't quite ready for, or my legs weren't quite ready for anyway. on the way to council grove which is just around 41 miles my legs were doing great, but then after chowing on some gas station pizza and hot chocolate (not the best nutrition choice) my legs blew up and i rode by myself for 20 miles until we reached americus. then i happened to catch up with eric benjamin (the adventure monkey) and the look on his face was priceless.

he looks at me and says "where did you come from" and i'm like, "man i've been behind you for the last 20 miles." needless to say, i got him pumped back up for the Dirty Kanza 200 that he's entering in this year, and this has gotten me on the trainer this week in hopes to not get dropped from the main group on this sunday's shop ride. but the ride was beautiful with the sunshine and we all had great company. i can't wait for the next one on sunday, its always motivating to have a group of people to go out with, i hope i never take it for granted and i know that we're blessed in this community.

if you want the other side of the story from this weekend's ride hop over to eric's blog site www.theadventuremonkey.com
it's great stuff, and he also takes sweet pictures like the one of me and seacat below.


the adventure monkey and i had a great rest of the ride into emporia, and he really kept me motivated to get home and take a hot shower and see my beautiful wife who was kind enough to make some spaghetti for me to munch on after stumbling into the kitchen. he said something along the effect of "man, taking a hot shower after a long ride is almost like ecstasy for me" and "everything always taste like it's amazing after a ride like this. my wife made stew one time after a long ride in the flint hills and i don't even like stew, but i was like, this is the best food i've ever had."

i totally agree man food, sleep, conversations, my attitude, my opinion on things...just everything seems better after riding the bicycle...even if your legs blow into a million pieces while you're out there. here's to not blowing up my legs this sunday, i'll let everyone know how it goes on monday!

-bobby

selling my bicycles

If you have any questions about the bike email me at bobbywintle42@hotmail.com. Thanks, now go get on your bike and have an awesome day.

-bobby