Missed the race, how'd it go? + FULL MOON REMINDER!

Hey y'all, I didn't make it out to the Cross Catastrophy race last night. How'd it go? Any good wipeouts? Also, Full Moon Cruise tonight! 11:59pm on the Lamar Ped Bridge! BE THERE!

Recently I've had a bunch of people mention to me how much they enjoyed reading the shit I write on this thing, I mean besides all the event notices and such. That's been excellent to hear and has kinda made me want to do more writing on here, so starting now I'm going to try and actually update this thing with more local bike bullshit besides just rides and races. You know, talk about my daily travels or whatever. I dunno, maybe it'll be lame and I'll stop and go back to just events and races like I usually do. We'll see...

I've been doing lots of riding lately and have really been enjoying the weather, rain included. I dunno if any of y'all have noticed it but I seem to be picking up a disproportionate number of flats as of late. I'm not entirely sure what the deal is, maybe more broken bottles in streets or something? Whatever the case is, I freaking hate patching tubes. Oftentimes it's even been more annoying in that the tube didn't flat immediately, but slowly drained throughout the night so I got to wake up to flats in the morning. Good times.

Last week I went into Mellow Johnny's, Lance Armstrong's new bikeshop/cafe/bikestorage/showers/spinclasses/experience and was actually rather impressed. The staff seemed friendly and several of them were rather knowledgeable. They didn't have exactly what I was looking for (replacement clip for my Axiom pannier) but were willing to call the manufacturer and see about ordering it. What they did have in stock was pretty impressive. They had lots of Trek and Oakley stuff (hmmm, wonder why?) but what really suprised me is the number of alternative/small brands they had. They had pretty much the entire SWOBO line-up, a smattering of Soma gear, anything and everything from Brooks, lots of Masi stuff, and a HUGE number of commuter/utilitarian oriented bicycles. Internal gears, fenders, single speeds, fixed gears, all sorts of fun stuff. Definitely worth a trip down just to walk through and drool over some nice bikes.

Also I like the whole shower/bike storage idea. I don't plan on making use of it but it'll be nice to have in case I get downtown and there are already two schmucks waiting for my bus and I don't feel the urge to leave my swank ride locked to a sign pole, hoping to be left alone. I'm sure the opening of another megabikeshop doesn't make the owners of the current ones too happy, but I strongly believe that with the way the Austin cycling community is growing, if the local shops can distinguish themselves in someway and provide good service to their neighborhood then there's more than enough room (and business) for everyone.