Commuting Through BV

Had a great ride home through Bull Valley. There is one house on Bull Valley road that must have 100+ light up reindeer scattered throughout their entire massive yard and over the road, its pretty cool! Awesome riding at night!

- JB

April Approaches

Can't stop thinking about April

Turkey Day Trasher

The Slender Fungus is a crazy thing. The way it has evolved, the members that have joined, the friendship that has formed. These people are my family...and a few to mention in particular. Ari is one of my best friends in the world and the Baggios are right there too. Ari invited me to his family's Thanksgiving this year and instead of acting like a total loser and sitting at home by myself I accepted and drove out early to meet for another Palos session. We were on the trails by 9:20 am and the temps were a bit more manageable this time. We hit some great single track and were both enthused just to have the day off and be pushing each other a little bit knowing that we don't normally get a 35 mile mountain bike ride in during the week. So, taking full advantage...we went exploring. We hit all the trails including the black and orange trails which were favorites of mine and my Surly Pugsley handled everything without complaining at all....that bike is so dialed it is ridiculous. I feel more comfortable on my fat bike than I do on my 29'er...even Ari said his 2.2 tires looked like road tires compared to mine. Moral of the story is that everyone needs a fat bike and they need to take them to the local trails ASAP...pretty sure if this happened we would achieve world peace. The fat tires are awesome and I continue to progress with mine on the trails. I can't thank Ari and Jamie enough for letting me spend Thanksgiving with them....really some of the best friends and most real friends I have ever had. Thank You! You don't know what that meant to me. It was great to see Ari's family including the famous guitar maker Franzi from Redwing, MN and ultra eager Mauri, along with the brains of the operation Jiulietta (probably spelled it wrong yet again), anyhow Ari's brother Fivos treated me like he had known me for 20 years and their family is awesome and they are some of the best people to roam the earth, hands down. On top of that the Bonk King and Ms. Bonk King sent me leftovers the following morning that were out of this world and reaffirmed the fact that the Slender Fungus is indeed a special thing. Great peeps! And Sandy can cook!!! Good job on marrying up Mikey! The brains behind the operation is a large Argentinian man who works at a small bicycle shop...he is the most intelligent man I have ever met and one of the best friends I could ever ask for. Thank you for forming the Slender Fungus. Thank you for our group of friends, we are very lucky to have what we have in this place we call home. 

Slender Fungus Funky Love

- Cookie Monster

Philly

An essential and beautiful piece of my Trans Iowa training. 

Palos Freezer

 

 

Made the venture down to Ari's neighborhood to meet up with the Blue Demon, La Kruz, and El Presidente. We loaded up the cars and parked over by 2Bici bicycle shop. We rode out to Palos and explored some awesome single and double track. We made sure to bundle up and bring plenty of food (or not) due to the freezing temps. We immediately warmed up and were cruising some awesome trails. We rode all over the place hitting wide open double track to the technical and rocky XX trail. This was my first ride down here and it is a great resource in the area, the trails are really fun and you can do some damage to your legs down there. We ended up at the 125 stair set and did 5 reps before riding back to the cars. We ended with about 35 miles in 4 hours and we were all beat! It was a great time and always good to get out and ride with the boys! Hope you had fun watching football. 

- JB

Sunday Storm and Adventure Ride

We had some nasty storms rip through Woodstock and Northern Illinois. There were several tornados in central IL and the weather was not great. It looked like I had a small window after the storms went by (I thought). I ended up cruising over to Bull Valley and hitting some hills as well as assessing the damage from the high winds. I saw lots of power lines down, trees down, and wind damage. The skies were amazing and the wind picked up as I was back there. On the way back it got really windy with 30-40 mph gusts and started to pour rain. I got soaked and headed home with a hard headwind. It was a great ride and I felt like a badass. Only had a couple close calls having to bunny hop downed branches and some fell 2-3 in front of me, thankfully they were small. Anyhow, great fun little ride, enjoy the photos. 

- JB