IT'S ALGONQUIN FOR THE GOOD LAND........................

I just got in from doing a little trail work for all you crazy cats.....enjoy.

DOCTORS ORDERS...............................

Sometimes I think my doctor has a weird way of practicing medicine.

On Saturday evening, I developed a swollen Parotid gland on the passenger side of my noggin'. Because nothing like this has ever happened to me before, I was justifiably a bit concerned.

I spent the day Sunday watching it swell up every time I ate something....only to subside after about 45 minutes....then to looking like I was starting to grow a 2nd head when I ate again.....and so on...repeat.

So...considering all the crap going around these days I figured I would go have it checked out this morning.

My doctor said I had a Parotid gland infection that blocked the gland from secreting saliva. By the time he was seeing me, the blockage had cleared on it's own and the swelling was down considerably.

He said I should go get the most sour candy I could find and eat a few pieces to really clear it and get everything flowing freely again.

After a rather embarrassing scene at Walgreen's because they were all out of Sour patch kids, I just settled for the Warheads.

I mean,,,What kind of pharmacy are they running anyway??......I'll bet they didn't run out of anyone else's medications like blood pressure pills or anti-depressants.

..........AND I SAY-AY.............




....IT'S ALRIGHT.....DOO-DOO-DOO...DOO-DOO-DOO-DA.


O.K...enough with the "Sing-along with Bubba " nonsense.

I bought Julie a new camera for Christmas and she sure seems to be getting the hang of it....wuddintcha say??

She will not have mastered her craft, however, until she can capture classic photos like her wonderful husband.



Geeez...I need to get back into this bloggin' thang...

I missed being accused of being a "player" over here. Yeah....That was me alright.

C'MON DUDE............

Did anyone listen to this guy??......Ub-bub-bub-uhhh-duh....I..I...

Hey Mushmouth...Let me spell it out for ya'.
You either......
A) knowingly neglected to pay your taxes...(making you a crook)....or
B) were ignorant of the tax laws and made "honest" mistakes (making you incompetent)

He's in D.C. today arguing of behalf of his incompetence.

OOOOOOOHH!!!.....But when it comes to finance, he's a genius.....REALLY????

When it comes to buffets, Randy is a genius.....that, however does NOT necessarily qualify him to be Secretary of Snacking.

But in the Presidents defense....he did say he would make some mistakes.

And by the way...... Barack

Good luck with this bitch because she ain't never answered to nobody and the way she sees it you are sittin' in her chair.

And I even like her .....remember I voted for her in 1996.

STRATS GOT YOUR TOUNGE........................

Greg was just one of the neighborhood kids....
The only difference was he was mastering Jimmy Hendrix on the guitar in about the 3rd grade.
A little taste here (after the 3 minute mark it gets pretty nuts) and here.

Some of you have checked him out....the rest of you need to.

One of Tosa'a finest....(not a cop, but he is layin' down the law)

COURTESY OF MY FAVORITE DUMPSTER.....................

UNDER THE BRIDGE..............

The first time I kissed a girl ....back in about 1973-74 was under a bridge at the river.
If my memory serves me, she had the exact same look on her face.

What is it about bridges that give chicks the willies?

VINTAGE CRAP....................

Regardless of how much work you put into a $8.75 Rust-Oleum paint job. Regardless of how much time you spend polishing 40+ year old chrome or cleaning bearings.

A 1967 Schwinn Varsity pulled out of a dumpster is still a Crappy bike.

How do I know???...He said so.

I THINK THE MEDICAL TERM IS BRUISED COCCYX..........

.......but my ass is broken.

After reading a few blogs, I thought to myself....How hard can snowboarding really be??. I figured if The Goat can do it...anyone can.

Well, since I did not have the time or extra cash to begin my snowboarding career in the mountains of Colorado...it was off to Sunburst. (I mean I own that place on a MTB..right??)

I/ it went down sumpthin' like this.....

-Headed to the bunny hill for some instruction and some basics...no sweat.

-Within 45 mins. or so I was able to get up said bunny hill via the tow rope and get back down stopping a few times as to not gain too much speed......cool.

-After about an hour and a hot cup of Joe, I decided I was ready to tackle the chair lift and one of the bigger runs....this also went well.
(I was advised not to try the chairlift my first time out)

-After 10 or a dozen runs I was doing pretty OK. About half the time getting off the chairlift upright...and the other half on my ass. I was making my way down the hill slowly switching back as to not get out of control.....going good.

-Then I got that "false confidence"....I could feel it building....a little faster....a little faster. We've all been there.... I remember saying to myself..."Relax and you might live to do this again"..but I was having a blast...that snowboarding is some fuuuuun stuff.

- Then it happened...WHAM!!!!...I crashed harder than my retirement accounts. Right on my tailbone....talk about peeing in my punch bowl. I was really having fun.

-Dizzy and nauseated I was flat on my back in the middle of the hill thinking...Well Bubba...that's about enough for tonight....I couldn't get up for about 10 minutes except to get myself off to the side of the hill and lay back down.

-Now I've bounced off my tailbone many times, but never like this. I've been in the hurt bag since Saturday and it does not seem like the pain is going to be gone anytime soon.

-The other night I took the opportunity to moon the wife and ask her if it was black and blue....(the kids found it both funny and disgusting.....Julie just found it disgusting.)

I can't wait to get out there again, but in the meantime most forms of exercise are a real chore. I have found that swimming laps in the pool is a pain-free workout that i will employ until I feel better.

I got this cat in the radar now.

MEMORY LANE........

While perusing Dano's blog, I clicked on the London Calling album cover as instructed to check out the Brand New Cadillac video. Then I scrolled down the other vids and stumbled on this and this.......
closed my eyes and it 1979 all over again (only without the hash and Heineken).
The Aragon ballroom in Chicago was the place. I was 16 or 17 years old. Still one of the best rock shows I've ever seen.

Gosh....I hope my kids don't read this.

Merry Christmas.

WHAT'S UP??.........

My blog vacation is over and I am once again ready to entertain..........(1 out of every 20 or so posts).

Not a whole lot happnen' lately.

-My annual "exercise in futility" of attempting to get smaller by lifting weights is under way.

-Been doing a little diving lately.....dumpster diving that is. I've found this dumpster that seems to produce an almost never ending supply of old bicycles. I've been able to give a few away to friends, keep a couple.....and one is so sweet that I am actually going to sell it for money...or keep it. (more on this when I get motivated to take some pics)

-In the last 2 months or so, we have put 1 dog and 1 cat to sleep and Jamie has moved out. It kinda sucks, but at the same time things have gotten quite "roomy" at Mi Casa de Esperanza (ask Carlos for translation)

-Barack Obama may very well turn out to be a decent president...time will tell, but I'll betcha he would have taken at least one of those stinky loafers right to the pie-hole.

JULIE WOLFS SHEBOYGAN PHOTOS...............

I asked her if she was aware that they were having a bike race??











She said...DUH!!!!! I got a picture of your ass....ya ass.

4-3.................

Yup.....That's my record voting for the eventual winner in the last 7 presidential elections.

Do ya' think I got it right this time?

I don't vote along party lines, rather I cast my vote for "the man and the plan" while leaning heavily on my core beliefs. (Hillary came dangerously close to making that rhyme unusable)....Aahh heck..I coudda still used it..... Besides, I voted for her in 1996.

The pessimist in me says....The "out of touch fossil" was beaten by the "underqualified and evasive, big spender"

However...forever the optimist..
I say congrats to Barack Obama...you-da-man now. Talk is cheap. Let's see what you can do.

My advice.....Start choosing your friends better and become a better judge of character.... TODAY!!

I know, for those of you who say Bubba....you should practice what you preach...Yes, I still hang out with Randy and DaSug, but I'm not running for president of the United States of America.

Trust me...I would have had some advice for McCain had he won as well.

RIT'S ERECTION DAY..............................

Already voted?

Nuthin' else happening??

Kill some time here.......

photo by Kip Winger


BOO................

Dude........I finally went pro. I realize I've been sandbagging for quite a while now, so I decided to just cough up the cash-ola and get my upgrade.

This Saturday....
Don't forget about the Wisconsin Night Race Championship at Crystal Ridge. Registration @ 5:30 and racing @7pm.
Yeah...Yeah... there is all kinds of cross racing this weekend, but it's all goin' down in Milwaukee as well and I know you lunatics can't get enough. So get there.

TO THE FOLLOWERS OF THIS PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A BLOG.......

I expect BOTH of you to show up for a night ride this evening on the trails of Tosa.

Hey.....I know it's late notice, but since when has anyone looked to this blog to get accurate information in a timely manner??

I shall depart "Mi Casa De Esperanza" at exactly 5:30 pm and head to the bridge in Tosa at 6pm in hopes of finding some folks there.

HMMMM.....LET'S SEE........

One has a hottie for a running mate.....and the other is gonna let me drink for free?


Suppose that every day, 10 men go out for beer and the bill for all 10 comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this: The first 4 men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59. So, that' what they decided to do. The 10 men drank in the bar every day & seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. 'Since you are all such good customers, he said, 'I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20. Drinks for the 10 now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first 4 men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other 6 men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?' They realized that $20 divided by 6 is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man & the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by roughly the same amount, & he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so: The fifth man, like the first 4, now paid nothing (100% savings). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings). The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28%savings). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings). Each of the 6 was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. 'I only got a dollar out of the $20', declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,' but he got $10!' 'Yeah, that's right', exclaimed the fifth man. 'I only saved a dollar, too. It's unfair that he got 10 times more than me!' 'That's true!!' shouted the seventh man. Why should he get $10 back when I got only 2? The wealthy get all the breaks!' 'Wait a minute,' yelled the first 4 men in unison. 'We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!' The 9 men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the 9 sat down & had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even 1/2 of the bill!

SINCE I'VE BEEN ACCUSED OF HAVING A MAN CRUSH..........

I got to thinkin'....No, not about Jonathan Page....I got to thinkin' what blog couldn't be spruced up a bit by having some pics of fast biking ladies on it?

So here's 1 thru 6 from Sunday's race.

Thanks to Dano, I'm so homo-phobic now the boys get the back page and I'm eating my hotdogs sideways.

PLANET BIKE CUP..............









Jonathan Page's Planet Bike Cup..........


More pics here.

CHEQUAMEGON 08.....................

The weekend was a blast again this year.
I have come to realize that unless you are a fastguy.....The 40 should be taken lightly....Coors lightly.

So, instead of taking it easy on Friday and hittin' the sack early so I could be up at the buttcrack of dawn to set my bike out towards the front......I decided to ride some sweet singletrack on Friday (not too hard of a ride...just hard enough to rip off one of my crank arms) Raw power is way over-rated.

I then decided a few good beers...followed by a few Coors lights....followed by a few more good beers was a better idea than a good nights sleep and setting out my bike.

Besides..this year I had a prefered start. They prefered I start in the back with the rest of the humps. So start in the back is what I did.

In case you fastguys didn't know......the back is the new front.

The hillarious shit you get to witness back there is worth the price of registration and then some.
Like the jackass that slid off the course face first into a patch of poison ivy. He deserves everything he gets the way he was riding. And then there's the guy that had a boombox strapped to his rear rack jammin' with the volume cranked just to name a few. I rode with him for 2 Kid Rock tunes and then moved on.

I rode the entire race with teammates John Timm and Mike Gietner. Everytime I crossed the redline I would back it off only to come around the next corner to see John and Mike softpedaling waiting for me to get back on. That was working just fine until those two stopped to visit our sponsor quick.....that's when I made my break only to get caught again on Firetower Hill. We kept our little blue train rollin' until the end with me jumping to the front whenever I saw a camera.

Speaking of trains....how about the three headed monster that was Adventure 212? Three of the top 8 spots is a pretty nice day's work.
I read that the best gameface in mountainbiking took the front and actually lead the race for a few miles. That would have made for a good photo for sure.

So there you have it.....good friends, good food, good fun.....and Coors light.