We will all truly miss Lenny....

I still can not begin to accept the truth that Lenny is gone.
I cant figure out exactly how long its been, but my guess is we have been friends for at least 20 years. He sold me my first 10 speed back at Hillside Cyclery, and after being that kid shop rat that was always there and rarely buying, but always talking about riding, he invited me out to ride with him and the guys. They dragged me around all of the training rides, and sometimes they literally had to drag me home, as a 12 year old, i had a hard time keeping up on 4 hour rides. He got me into racing and was always willing to pick me up at 11:30 at night when he got off work at UPS, and drove me to the races the guys did in the big Buick Rivera. Later he helped me get a job at the bike shop, and there were plenty of days of laughter and pranks to be had. I vividly remember the saturday i got my drivers license i went into work a little late after getting my license, and he asked to see it. After some bad photo comments he grabbed a stapler and put about a dozen staples in it. Back then when you got a ticket, the cops stapled your license to the ticket. So with it still warm from the laminator, i had swiss cheese for a license.
Another favorite was the time we went to do laps of Timberline, and we stopped at the white hen, Lenny bought two cans of silly string and completely coated Scott and i as we were going over the I&M canal. Very funny stuff.
Lenny was like a big brother to me, and i truly enjoyed all the hours and talk we shared both on and off the bike.
I can say for certain that i do not know what life will be like without Lenny, and i know i am privileged to have been one of his friends as he was always the guy with a uplifting joke and a smile to get us all through life.

I will miss you dearly my brother
Rest in Peace

Not so superweek.....

know we all know im fat, and certainly not in superweek conditioning, but i have had some pretty decent rides recently and though i would be able to hang out in the field at superweek. Bensenville is not an easy crit, but its no waukesha anyway. It has a long stretch up start finish, a pretty easy right hander, a block to freewheel, another right hander and another long drag race down about 4 blocks into a tighter right hander into a narrow neighborhood right, left, right progression that opens into the final right hander onto start finish.
Maybe 30 minutes in im finally settled into my place, and im starting to wonder how many of the 50 laps have we done... the answer was 12. not very encouraging. I start checking off all the ' old guys ride smart' methods of staying in contact:
- making sure im in the right gear to not have to stand up to accelerate
- not breaking early and wasting momentum
- anticipating gaps to move thru
- drinking every lap
- moving up when it slows...

you know - all the trick of the fat guy trade
i especially though i bought some time when i made a sweet back to the front move, but the group only lulled enough to look around and then drill it up the S/F stretch. Now i have a pretty handy jump, and was trying not to use it much, but some of the laps we were blasting S/F at over 55kph - thats 33mph for the English folks.
Big daddy doesnt have that kind of gas 2 x per lap, so i started the final trick of the trade - let the gap open up on S/F and the backside long stretch and roll back on at full speed thru the corners.

finally enough was enough, and even though Rich Delgado inspired me to do one more lap with him ( he promised he would talk to me) i was cooked.
ahh well - guess i need more speed and more jumps this season

i will ponder trying my hand at the superweek event known as the Kenosha speed fest. Its basically an oval, so i will see if i can trade in my belly for some legs before then.

Fat Kid - Out

Misc updates

well its been more than a few days and i really need to update the blog. these pics are from a ride about a week ago down to check our fuel reserves at the refinery. we all did the 4th of july ride which was quite nice and pretty mellow for pace. once we got into the last stretch, Tawse lit the wick on the dynamite. we had a group of about 10 at this point including tawse, tom, lenny, matt, myself, feltz, and a few others. after about 4km, we were down to 4 guys going 30. from there, feltz continued to tear our legs off, but i managed to keep coming thru, and in the end, i gave feltz a little leadout for him to finish it off, but it was just him and I. good rides, good bbq's, and a good birthday for carter has capped off the holiday week.
fat kid OUT

carter's new dew

among themany fun things and a great ride (seperate post to follow) we got carter's hair buzzed. any of you that have seen him recently know that he has needed it for weeks. herehe is.. buzzed like his daddy. its gonna take me a few days to get used to his new look.