Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Off to See a Big Hole in the Ground


Kelly and I are leaving for vacation of Friday. We are flying to Phoenix and then renting a car. Our trip starts off with a couple of days at the Grand Canyon, followed by a week in Telluride. While at the Grand Canyon we are hoping to hike to the bottom, and back up in a day, but we will see. Kelly and I have done some death marches in the past, so we think we can do it. While in Telluride we are planning to climb Mt Sneffels, which is one of the several 14,000' peaks in Colorado, but based on recent reports there seems to be a lot of snow still on top. I don't own an ice pick or crampons, so we might not make it all the way to the top. We also have mountain bikes reserved for a couple of days while we are in Tellurde, so that should be a lot of fun, but I have a feeling I won't be riding too fast because of the altitude. We didn't plan it, but the Telluride Wine Festival is going on while we are there, so we plan to go to the main tasting and check out all the good wines. After we leave Telluride, we are stopping by the Black Canyon of Gunnison on the drive to Denver. After a night in Denver we fly home to the flat lands of Chicago.


Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Speedvagen!!



Yesterday I got my application in the mail to be one of the lucky few to purchase one of these

The Speedvagen is a side project of Sacha White of Vanilla Bicycles, and is to be a more utilitarian cross racing machine compared to the normal Vanilla Bicycles. The other big benefit is that he is planning to deliver these bikes by this August instead of his normal wait of 2-3 years. To meet this deadline he has brought in Mike DeSalvo of Desalvo Cycles to do some of the welding.

The application came with an 8 x 11 piece of wood with the Speedvagen crest silk screened on it. My first instruction for the application was to hang up the crest in my house, which I have done.


Next step includes completing the application which includes a small bag to put a mud sample, as well as a small area to place a blood sample (not joking!!).