TOUR OF QATAR, ALRIGHTY THEN...

photos from velo news

Belgian National Road Champion Tom Boonen crushes at the Tour of Qatar during stage three and moves into third overall, safe to say Mark Cavendish is no where near this house...yet. Snore. Intersting enough is the Trek/Livestrong U23 team making it's big timer premier in Qatar with Phinney on board. This has inspired myself to get on the bike for the last four days and start thinkin about it. I need a "Cycling Hero" video game to spin to in the house, now THAT would be cool. Make it so I can pick which stage of which race I'm going to ride, which team I ride for, and if I win a stage I am required to pee in a bottle and pass a drug test to move on to the next level, that would be cool.

And in other developments, the "Aints no more" earned the right to be as obnoxious as New York Yankee and Florida Gator fans for one year.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT....

CX Season is still rolling across the ocean, here is some entertainment vij to keep you rolling towards Cult Cross. Poached from CX Mag online.

SIMI CYCLING CENTER ROCKS IT IN SOCAL

There are some nice perks from working in the cycling industry, especially if you work for the best bicycle chain lube company out there, Squirt Lube. On my recent short trip to Los Angeles I had planned on hopefully and weather permitting squeeze a road ride in while there. Who else to call but the great guys at the Simi Cycling Center, who sell ALOT of Squirt Lube. Greg Dodler has a pretty cool story of how he ended up owning the shop, the shop where he bought his first Stingray as a kid, and he is a great guy with a great crew and the shop is amazing. It's one of the most unique bike shops you will ever see with TWO sides. He's got the actual shop side where the hands get dirty on the work stands, as well as a huge inventory of everything you need from Squirt Lube to Specialized bikes, and then there is what I'd call the "showroom lounge" where you can drool over the latest and greatest from Giant and Specialized as well as some other manufacturers while hanging out and deciding what to buy. It's sweet, and the inventory is LARGE. The funny part about this shop is the two sides are separated by a furniture shop in the middle of the two wings, it's pretty rockin cool as you get to shop and drool twice.

Anyway, these guys hooked me up with a Specialized Roubaix "Test" demo for the day which made the weekend. The bike road like a dream, we ran into the BMC pro roadies al0ong the way and got to tag along, followed by the Adageo pro roadies who let me caboose along as well for a while. A monster fun ride on the coast on a perf day with perf company. Thanks for the hook-up Simi and if any of you are in the Northern LA, Simi Valley area, make sure you check em out, they have one sweet shop! Simi also has one of the best Bike Shop websites I have seen, check em out HERE

I'll be rockin the Simi Cycling Center Jersey in Colorado this summer for sure when the snow melts away, thanks Greg.

Once we finished the ride and returned the demo, it was clear the coppers knew Elgee was in town... Sunday morning brought the big show, here Ray Benson and Michael Martin Murphy and friends perform at the pre-awards ceremonies "Sittin on top of the World", seats did'nt suck. 100 Grammy's were awarded here. Then flying back to freezing ass Eagle, Colorado where I thought this guy was a little to close for comfort...

AND IN THE MIDDLE OF IT ALL...SIA

One small detail left out of last weekend's shananagans was the fact that I stopped in Denver the night before leaving for Cali and crashed SIA, which moved to Denver from Vegas this year, which I would call a VERY smart move. One of my best friends in the history of the world, Duke Brown, who is the recreation director at the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana was down for the show with his crew. This guy rarely loses MTB /downhill events in his age classification and has also held some world record fly fishing laurels over the years. What this meant was multiple beers after crashing the show and a free concert from EverClear at the Bluebird Thursday night.

This looks like a great way to just plain and simply fuck yourself up.

Duke contemplates buying the collector's edition memorabilia book from Hard Rock on the 16th street mall

The Atomic ski pitch for 2011, ski design has gotten CRAZY. Reverse Camber is something I've got to check out if it ever snows again.


Hard Rockin it Downtown Denver.

THE BIKE CONNECTION, SHERMAN OAKS, CALIFORNIA

After picking up my "loaner" road bike from the Simi Cycling Center (more on them soon) I needed a spare tube which was the one thing I forgot to bring. So on the way back to Sherman Oaks we stopped by this super cool bike shop, The Bike Connection, which is run by Felix and his crew were putting a new face lift on the place when we stopped by. Of course he got the A2B coverage for his tube deeds. Sweet shop, check it out if you are in their hood on Ventura Blvd.
From there it was off to Sunset Blvd for a "party", where the largest fixie, hipster night ride ever rolled by.