Captain Pabst

2008-10-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

a few funny things

2008-08-25T22:48:00.001-07:00

One summer when i came home from college i had a new boss at the bike shop. His name was curtis. The first thing every summer back from college was the columbia triathlon. Curtis shows up with his toolbox and his Ultimate stand. I inquired as to why he had his own toolbox and workstand that he brought with him. He answered back "I used to want to be a race mechanic". I asked him "why would you ever want to do that" i forget what his answer was at the time but looking back i find it entertaining im living his dream. At the time traveling for work seemed like a bad idea. but here i am after the high water mark doing what he wanted to do. Im sure if it was the late 90s it would have been a bigger deal to do what i do. but ill survive just living someone else's dream as i cant figure out a dream of my own.

bikes are fun

2008-06-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

went riding yesterday outside of frisco colorado. riding was fun. rode my Cannondale Rush for the first time this year. it was awesome, i love that thing, ive got a Cannondale rize and PBR fork on order so well see how that compares.

Back to work

2008-05-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

Been working a bit. Was up at the Santa Ynez Valley National where it was 102 degrees in the shade. 102!!! So being outside for 8-10 hour days for 4 days gets a bit tiresome, actually a lot. I would get home shower and change and then pass out till it was time to wake up.

I drove across the mojave desert during all this heat. i was really happy that the truck did not break down. It was 116 according to the thermometer on the truck. I tried to find an egg to see if it would cook on the pavement, Unfortunately chickens are hard to come across in the desert so i had to search for a place to buy eggs with no luck either.

after this i was albuquerque for 2 days. Went out with one of our racers and her husband, Nina, and Jeremy. Then i had to motor on to Angel Fire, NM for the Mountain States cup Chili Challenge.

Weather here was a factor the first few days, extremely windy and a mixture of snow, and rain. I much preferred the snow. So conditions were constantly changing. By the end of the weekend it was almost dry, The sun was out for the last 2 days of racing (sunday and monday). During my time here it was amazing, the cell phone only worked the first 2 days then when everyone was there the cell service went down, too many cell phones it seems. also there was a distinct lack of the internet.

Which brings me up to now, Im hanging out in colorado, Ive got the Teva mountain Games next week.

The undercover bicycle part shopper

2008-05-08T15:06:00.000-07:00

I enjoy being quiet about my status in the industry (which i laugh at). I just go into shops and act like a regular customer. I called around to a few shops in the santa clarita, ca area to try and get some spokes for my new wheel. now looking for 235mm spokes is difficult but when i got a shop that had a phil wood spoke threading tool. I needed 36 of them. now not having one of these at the shop i was at the first time i saw one i was amazed at how easy it was to use.

shop guy says "we're pretty busy i should have them ready by 6:00"
ok i says.

i called back at 5:45 to see how it was going "oh we're halfway done come by 6:30"
i got there at 6:30 to find they hadn't started. Thats cool they went to start nope the phil tool isn't working. they called around to find the shim to calibrate the tool. ok i said give me a call when you get it figured out

a restricted number called my phone. i let it hit voice mail. the message said "Eric this is Waylon from the shop, i thought you look familiar then i heard your message that said you worked for cannondale. Anyways we got the spokes done for you, you can pick them up in the morning."

i roll around around 10 and a third guy is helping me telling me what a deal 1 dollar a spoke is. (DT champion black 2.0) I was like well i worked in a shop for 7 years so i know how much they cost.

anyway i'm tired of telling this story.

i now have a Shimano Nexus Inter7 rear hub with a coaster brake. silver hub, black spokes, black nipples, and a mavic ex 729 rim. it looks bitchin' now i just need to cruise santa monica on it.

since im spending

2008-05-04T21:37:00.001-07:00

since im spending so much time in California i figured i need a beach cruiser. a Cannondale day tripper with a fox 36 in the front and a magura gustav disc in the front, will soon have an internally geared/coaster brake nexus hub.

truck fixed!

2008-05-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

My truck is now fixed. It caused me a few extra days of downtime. But now all is fixed, power steering flush, new brake rotors and pads in the rear pads in the front, an oil change and that was about it.

tried to get a ride in this past weekend but couldn't find the time, but i'm going XC riding tomorrow in santa clarita. im excited. Might swap my parts over to my team paint frame after the ride, but i might just get my perp back up and running by putting my 40 on the front to get rid of my ruined totem.

in other news i got a raise which is awesome. and got to hang out in santa monica with my sister and my friend from high school Ryan which is pretty sweet. he lives right around the corner from my sister which is convenient. anyway 2 good weekends in a row. and now im an old man.....

a couple of bike rides and he goes and cuts his hair.

2008-04-29T23:35:00.000-07:00

So ive been able to ride my bike more lately. up to at least once a week now since Nova. Which is good. Im excited about that. It can only build from there.

Working has been good. Hit a nice groove. Nova was the first time out of the box that i felt pro. I also rode 3 times that weekend a preride of the XC course, then the Super d Course. Then raced super d on saturday and then XC on sunday. and on top of that i had to work. which one guy didnt seem to understand what i was there for. he was asking for help with his fork right after i got done racing, i dont think he understood what tired meant but i think i got it across. had some podium action at that race.

The next weekend i spent at mountain states cup number 1 outside of fruita, CO. only had a few racers show up, but gave me a good amount of time to work on the trailer. Ben got top 10 in pro men XC which was good. I rode my moto after the first day of racing and forgot the right brake lever is the front brake on a motorcycle. so down i went and snap went the clutch lever. got to rie my bicycle the next day which was good.

the weekend after that was Sea otter. Which changed the format of the layout that i had just gotten used to and the number of athlete's attendance went up as we had XC and Gravity folks again. womens XC kicked ass. we had a 2,3,4 finish for the pro womens XC which im pretty proud of.

and now im hanging around socal fixing my truck and trailer, and my motorcycles and bicycles before santa Ynez valley national comes around. My sister lives in Santa Monica so i spent a couple days with her. and ill be back tomorrow if all goes well. I figure this is enough for now. ill drop a few more photos and be on my way.

So pro

2008-04-15T22:14:00.001-07:00

and that was the view from the NOVA NMBS brought to you by Sobe/Cannondale. The event went awesome i have good feelings about the season. Knowing the racers is a lot easier then knowing customers. I actually just got my team bikes for the truck today and they look sweet. Im looking forward to getting them built up to show off at Sea Otter. Should be a good event. will have about 12 athletes there for me to service. Hope it all goes well. this race will be more difficult then NOVA or MSC #1 because there will be gravity and cross country athletes which makes it harder to juggle everything. well thats all for now.

21 days late and a dollar short

2008-03-19T18:46:00.000-07:00

check it one time... I had originally planed for all this product to show up 3 weeks ago. It showed up today. but hey guess what errors were made and we were short shipped. that means more work! oh well.... i leave the factory tomorrow to enjoy the holiday with my family only to leave on sunday to drive out to fontana. should be a crummy drive. not excited at all. thats all for now.

Dog doesn't bite, Gun's loaded, and the keys are in the ignition

2008-03-14T22:18:00.002-07:00

"Dog doesn't bite, Gun's loaded, and the keys are in the ignition". Just another day in Bedford..... Came back to the factory after a dentist appointment. All's well in there fortunately. Puller up to the factory as Troy was leaving he had me follow him to the Chevy dealer where he let them know about the dog and all that other stuff. Amazing how saying something like that gets no reaction. I guess its like on cops when they ask about weapons knives, guns, or hand grenades. You just don't expect it. Thats about all i got right now. Headed to Virginia Beach tomorrow to play Repo man with the Crocs Expo crew then getting some drinks.. Should be entertaining. Im looking forward to it, until then Just another day in Bedford.....

2008-03-14T22:18:00.001-07:00

you asked for it you got it. an update

2008-03-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

really only one person but thats ok. Anyway been cross country back and forth twice since my last update.... so whats happened since then well now im the Sobe Cannondale Team mechanic instead of the East Coast tech rep. Now i get a truck and a Trailer to drag around the country. What does this mean to me well i have to spend less on hotels every night. Which is a bummer but well see how it works out.

Was out for tour of palm springs with Troy. We went to Joshua tree national forest or whatever park it may be. and took some really cool photos. as you will see here. well ill try to get a photo up again soon.

then we went to tour of california which was a big waste of time but fun none the less.

Got a fancy new lefty that im not supposed to talk about but thats cool. Im really excited about my scalpel.

Enough about me.

a little bit of everything

2007-11-14T19:18:00.000-08:00

First i made the first step towards being an audio-loser-phile. I ordered my first tube based piece of audio hardware. a Bottle head Foreplay III preamp. I really should have bought a tube amp first, but my Tannoy's are not really super efficiend (93db) so i would need at least 8 watts of power for them... and 8 watts of tube power is expensive. solid state however is cheap. very cheap infact. I picked up the old Adcom GFA-555 for trade. it used to be in service where i used to work. i also got the preamp with it. the preamp had a bad channel. but the amp (go for about $300 on ebay) was good. so its a deal and a half.

besides that ive been a lefty needle bearing service fool. ive been doing 3-4 tech clinics the past week showing how to do the needle bearing service. i am so well practiced in fact; i fixed a fork today when i could have replaced it. yes i know amazing. not only that but i did the service and rebuild in less then a half hour!

lets see what else ooooh i traded 105,000 marriott points in on a new lense for my rebel. 28mm-200mm so i got me some wicked zoom now. well more then before by about 3 x.

oh my macbook's flickering backlight has psuedo fixed itself.... its not a EFI firmware fix either because the hard drive i put in here i didnt format correctly so it cant fix the firmware (crazy that partitions make a difference for this i know)

on a truck note im at 38.200 miles since last january 15th. not bad for less then a year of driving. i really want to get to 40,000 miles by january. which would be 10,000 in diesel alone. thanks 8 mpg!

thats all for now.

Vegas brief summary

2007-10-12T20:03:00.000-07:00

Vegas was one hell of a trip. it was so much in such a short amount of time that i probably forgot 95% of what happened. Well go back to the first night before we got to town.

We made it to Denver, CO around midnight and went to a bar around the corner from Troy's buddies place. In tow was Troy, Andy, Chris (troys buddy) and myself. We got there drank a few beers and had a few shots. We then returned to Chris' where we were staying and had some river PBR. I was a little confused as the beer was dirty on the outside. Chris is an outdoorsey kind of a person and had gone camping a few days prior so he just put the beer in the water to keep it cool. A few beers and some drunk munchies later we woke up at 8:00 in the morning to the boss mans poking and prodding to get back on the road. We got some breakfast burritos in the ethnic section of town and hit the road for vegas. We got to Vegas Late and headed strait to the strip club. thats all well say about that.

got a bunch of bikes ready for Outdoor Dirt Demo. Then worked that for a few days, then moved onto Red Rocks Casino and resort to do some road rides and mountain night rides. Was too much work for too much cost in my opinion.

anyway i drove back east after all that stopped in Colorado to see Dave and kevin, they just moved out there. Then stopped in Columbia, Missouri to see Anne and Ashley who i had met at Tour of missouri. Then to Frostburg the next night to see Travis a former coworker. then home then back to ohio for work. all in all not much time to myself. at least im riding more....

Headed to vegas

2007-09-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

after hanging out in Missouri for what seems like way too long. Im headed to vegas on monday ( or thats the plan) for Interbike 2007. I should be caravaning out with Troy and our boss, Andy. Hopefully all goes well on our way west. Ive got my logbooks up to date truck is running good, and starts up like a charm. I know its going to be a lot of work (building 150 bikes YIKES!) I am looking forward to it though as former co workers will be meeting up out there, on lives there, one works for specialized, on works for bike-a-log. and then the bike shop guys who are on their way out there. I havent been to interbike yet, granted i believe im getting the shaft and spending the entirety of my time at Outdoor dirt demo. but can you really complain when for the past 2 weeks youve been in Missouri at the Gateway cup and Tour of Missouri? I wont complain I promise.

im in kansis city now, grand junction colorado is the plan for tonight.

Breakfast?

2007-09-09T05:45:00.000-07:00

I dont know why, but breakfast definately is not my favorite meal of the day. most of the time it makes me feel sick to eat it. For example today im in kansas city, Missouri, and i got room service because i had to work early and i know its the only way ill get something to eat before the demo is over for the day (but thats another story all together) 2 scrambled eggs, hash browns, and bacon. Toast, wheat toast, there wasnt even an option for white bread? any way enough bitching about that. im changing my reservation today, i dont belong at this hotel. and not much parking for my truck either. well see if its still on the street when i get there. (wait did i mention im paying 10 bucks a day for internet?)

on the other hand i spent a good period of time in St. Louis for Gateway cup and my days off. There is a good cycling scene there which is great. Troy was around so i got proper introductions. Hung out with team dogfish http://dogfish1.com/. they make some cool tshirts.

Ive been a little bummed out lately, and i think i can attribute it to a lack of riding and working. too much time not doing stuff is not fun. on a very positive note, check this out.

http://getagripracing.blogspot.com/2007/09/cannondale-helps-its-riders.html

these guys were at gateway cup and i think we helped in total about 3 of them. they were great and most importantly they were happy we were there to help them. ive got to go to work now.

Bicycle racing

2007-09-01T13:11:00.000-07:00

Im out in St Louis right now. doing the Gateway cup race. well working it. troy was here for the first day. thats always good. we went shooting at a local range. that was a good way to relieve some stress. 200 rounds of .40 going through a .50 cent piece of paper.

there is some talent here too. lots to look at..... i wouldnt have it any other way. the best part about this is the fact that its not just a one day event. its a multi day event. so i get to see the same people which is always better then a one day event. after this its onto some dealer visits then the tour of missourri.

well im gonna get back to my beer.

traveling

2007-08-23T07:24:00.000-07:00

my truck is being fixed this week (or so i think who the fuck knows) im in SC right now enjoying a bit of time to myself. or some time at the beach. im pretty stoked on it considering i dont consider myself a beach person, maybe its a simple fact of wearing flip flops all the time and becoming the beach persona. who knows. i must say being on a beach here is nicer than where my folks have a place. less people is a lot nicer.

i wonder how many random people i have met that there could have been something more but i was all wasted and came off as a prick or that drunk guy. the world may never know.

im thinking about getting a PS3 as well i dont know why, just to have one i guess. oh well. i think a DSLR would be a better fit for me.

2007-08-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

just a quickie

2007-08-02T09:25:00.000-07:00

Here;s a quickie on why i like my job. Sure i might have had the past 3 days off but here is what i did during them. Monday i gave my parents a factory tour, then i came back to the factory to take care of somethings (getting a package) and that was about it. now thats a day off, tuesday i was at the factory and i dont think i accomplished anything, but we had a meeting afterwards at dinner. and then yesterday, i helped troy with his truck, ran around town trying to buy a subaru brat (what kind of a car dealer isnt there for posted hours?) then went to the new fastenal store and bought some tools. i mean those are my days off, and i tell you this much it sure beat hanging out on the road in a hotel room... i feel like the only time i learn about new product is when i hang out at the factory. anyway i added another 56 cm super six to my truck. im stoked. well today is a real work day and im gonna go get started on that.

sales meeting

2007-07-19T19:34:00.000-07:00

July 4th - july 16th was nothing but work work work.

worked hard and played hard. got to hang out with our central driver which will be really helpful for me knowing how to take care of business.

so i got some new stuff on my truck, a Fox RLC fork in a lefty structure, bad ass i might say, havent put a lot of time in on one yet, but soon. got a 54, 56 and 58 cm super six on the truck. got to ride the 58 the other day, was really stocked on it, quick and comfortable.

i think the company is poised to do really well for 08. we have 2 teams in the tour right now with 3 stage wins between them (thats big from no tour presence last year)

also got some Hollowgram SL cranks on the truck. which are awesome and about time they got updated. Also ot some new 2x9 spiders so i have a taurine built up as a single speed now 18.4 pounds sweet.

Mt st anne

2007-06-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

Figured i would write about uci world cup at Mont Saint anne, before i forget. wow that was an amazing time. got to work with some really good mechanics, and gave me something to strive for. hanging out with the team guys was cooler then you can imagine. also ran into george ryan, i havent seen him since 10th grade. how crazy is that.

then after a short stay at the border (3 hours) i made it to genos place. where i spent the night. was a good time.

now im in boston, and the roads are horrible. especially if you drive something bigger then a car. so many fucked up roads with no reason behind them. almost made the truck a convertible. thats all for now.

why?

2007-06-20T19:14:00.000-07:00

why? this is why....

more familiar faces in strange places

2007-06-15T22:01:00.000-07:00

so im in sherbrooke, Quebec. thats right, french canada. Im at my hotel for no more then 10 minutes when i recieve a phone call from an old coworker / friend Mike. he said "where are you" i said "canada somewhere " he said " im in sherbrooke" i said "no shit" he said "yeah im standing next to your truck"

so here i am second night in french canada and i pick the same hotel as him and his girl Kelly. not only that but 2 doors down from their room.

we got some beers across the street, sadly they are leaving town tomorrow, but it was the most appreciated suprise yet. french canada really makes you feel like an outsider. i at least knew someone. and a suprise at that. oh well.

when i was in toronto, well outside of toronto, i went riding at kelso ridge twice. it was really cool, went riding with this guy Jay from Remy sport. i was on my Single speed. which is amazing and a lot of fun being the single speed guy and keeping up with shop guys. oh well. bed time. and some pics before i go....