Ships Log: Fat Aircraft carrier war games

Dave Taylor

Rex kwan Do
Mooch Madness 2018

Wow, im back. Exactly 335 days since I last entered an XC and finished via ambulance ride. Ok technically I did some unofficial racing at S45, and I did one of the Glen Park Enduros last fall, but this was the first race effort since my ill fated 2017 SSAP.

I have to say, after Short track was canceled and the dogshit weather thru march, I considered just bagging this year entirely. Its been 10 years now that i have been doing this XC thing and some days I find it hard to get motivated. Im probably about 4-6 weeks behind my usual training, plus im 0-6 with races I would have normally done if you count 4 short tracks. But at the end of the day, I do enjoy riding fast in the woods, and as painful as it can be, XC can also be alot of fun.

Anyway, so I wasnt sure I would race. Especially since my lefty on my scalpel has been giving me problems. I think this is my 4th lefty...I have 1 from 2012 13,000miles on it that works perfectly, another 2012 supermax with 7700 miles on it, also perfect, and another from 2008 that never gave me an issue. So im not sure what the deal is with this one, but it has not back to cannondale several times and it wont seems to stay working for more than 15 hrs. But this is why I buy my bikes from @jdog. Its too bad, bc when its working, its the best XC fork I have ever used. Im sure it will get figured out with no ranting required. But for sunday, it was barely functional.

So by the time I decided I was going to race, i was pressed for time, I just decided to go casual with our new button down jerseys and baggys. Jersey is actually super comfortable and very light. If the dam thing had pockets I could put my tools/food in I think I might race in it all the time. I ended up putting my co2, tools, gu flask in my pants pocket and @seanrunnette tells me my ass was hanging out...so there are some issues with this kit. But I love it.

I think there were like 11 or 12 iin the pro class. The start felt pretty tame all things considered. @David Taylor and I brought up the rear for the first five minutes or so until I lost my chain and had to stop. I have a whole new drivetrain in my garage, but my chainring was on backorder so I didnt want to put a new chain on this old beat up ring....so this is what I get. I get going again and soon I catch back up to Dave and another guy who was struggling a bit with the rocky bits of freaking middle. I hang back and just try to remember what this pace feels like after 11 months. Near the end of FM I pass Dave and not long after the guy in front of us. Then I wanted to throw down a hard effort on the downhill and say bye bye....Of course I lose my chain once again and have to stop. I got going without any lost places and after that, I just kept the bike a few gears lower on any downhill...for the rest of the race, this seemed to work. Accelerate hard, then shift down for any bumps.

I think i caught one more guy before the end of lap one....31.5 min or so, like a min or more slower than last year. Not terrible, but I just know im not on the same kind of pace I was in 2017.

Lap 2 I started to get in this lull of eh whatever. I was having fun riding the rocks, trying not to suffer to much. My fork was a pogo stick and forced me to be more cautious than I would normally be, but it was in fact better than @pooriggy s shitty fork. Maybe around the middle of lap 2, i was starting to feel a little better, little smoother. Catching and passing/chatting many of the endurance people....but otherwise uneventful......I got a clean run on the DH this time and when I get out to the lake I can now see Nick M up ahead. I dont think I can catch him, but hes someone to chance. Plus at the split by the lake I see that I have only put maybe like 15-20 seconds on Iggy and company...so I need to start moving my ass.

Lap 3...I can see Nick on the road climb, but he probably got 10-15 sec and I really wasnt climbing very well....But I did try to turn it up. Got thru F.M. clean, saw him again going up the @Mitch slap climb. At Schillings rock he was out of sight, but I decided to give it everything on the last DH to see if i could catch him. Really threw it down and managed to catch up to him near the bottom of ice cream....Nick was super cool for letting me go by and I kept it pinned until the end of the lap. He got close again on the short track switchbacks, but I held him off to the finish line. Thanks to Greg G getting a flat, i ended up 5th. Which hey ill take it after being gone for this long.

So in all a good day. My fitness is still not where it needs to be as evident by my HR doing absolutely nothing yesterday, but I feel like I needed that race.

In all the race went great, and as much as it can be...(like 4 hrs of walking in the snow with bob in my backpack to help sawing down trees on the course) its so awesome when it all comes together and you see everyone out there having fun.

Ill probably do iron furnace next, or work on the mustang..whatever..Thanks @soundz for the great pics!View attachment 67695
Nice write up @UtahJoe ! I’ll get the hang of this soon enough.
 

UtahJoe

Team Workhorse
Team MTBNJ Halter's
ok back to some mustang talk....

Something very intersting happened today...Well 2 things...

Story 1.
Scott the welder calls me this morning like RIGHT before kade is about to paint the fenders, hood, trunk, etc.
"Dude....you know this fender, the passenger side one from a 68 (not 67)...its identical excect for one thing"
"ok, whats that?"
"The antenna mount...it uses three holes instead of 1....should we fix it?"
"FUCK...ya, might as well"
"ok, ill weld it up"

This is how things go on and on...but in the end, im super happy scott noticed this, bc even me who knows alot of useless BS about 67 mustangs totally missed that. 67 has a round antenna base, 68 has a square one.

Anyway...Story 2, which is much better.

So lets go back a while to my search for the shade of blue paint. My dad having his buddy paint this car back in the 70s. Some shade of dark blue that I was never able to properly ID, but I think I got close enough. As the story went, my Dad paid his buddy like $200 to paint the car and do the body work, so for that kind of money, he is lucky he got anything more than water based paint. So this guy, the painter. My dad talked about him alot. He painted many cars for him, and my grandfather, and my dads friends....Ed Jacko was his name...I always remember my dad talking about him and how good he was.

So along with painting my current car in the 70s, he also painted my dads 67 mustang superstock car this metal flake blue...This car was later wrecked in 1971 and my dad would go on and find my current car.
SSG8Y4A.jpg



Here's a video of Ed painting this car you see in the picture in 1969



Ed would paint my blue car like 8 years later

My dad would talk about Ed, but he lost contact with him over the years.....As i have mentioned before, about 4 years ago I got in touch with another one of my dads friends, Butch....Butch and I talk every few months....Hes anti computer and internet, so I usually have to print pictures of the mustang and mail them like its 1872. Anyway, so last night butch calls me and tells me via a long story that he ran into someone who knew Ed and had his number...He called him and talked to him, etc...And hey, Ed lives in Denville. Hmm. ok thats interesting. So I look him up on FB...and holy shit, he is mutual friends with my friend Craig. So then I remember that 5 years earlier, Craig and i were at a party talking about my future restoration project and him saying how his Dad paints cars and I should look into having him do it....Which I later did, but craig said he was getting older and not into doing it anymore. So turns out, my friends dad (actually step dad) is my dads friend from Jersey city who painted the car in the first place. I ended up getting his number and chatting with him today. Wow, talk about a coincidence.

What was funny was that I sent Craig that video this morning of his dad painting...he then sends it to his dad saying...Hey, you recognize the guy in this video?

So I talked to him for a while...he had some funny stories about my Dads ex GF, my grandfather, and some mutual friends....good stuff. So crazy, I have lived like a mile from this guy for years, known his step son for nearly 20 years, and almost asked him to repaint the same car that he painted ~1977. He also retired and worked at autozone in dover for a time...Like 500 yards from where my car is currently being painted.

However, he did not have much memory about the particular shade of blue.

So thats my weird story of the day, I thought it deserved a recap.
 

Dave Taylor

Rex kwan Do
ok back to some mustang talk....

Something very intersting happened today...Well 2 things...

Story 1.
Scott the welder calls me this morning like RIGHT before kade is about to paint the fenders, hood, trunk, etc.
"Dude....you know this fender, the passenger side one from a 68 (not 67)...its identical excect for one thing"
"ok, whats that?"
"The antenna mount...it uses three holes instead of 1....should we fix it?"
"FUCK...ya, might as well"
"ok, ill weld it up"

This is how things go on and on...but in the end, im super happy scott noticed this, bc even me who knows alot of useless BS about 67 mustangs totally missed that. 67 has a round antenna base, 68 has a square one.

Anyway...Story 2, which is much better.

So lets go back a while to my search for the shade of blue paint. My dad having his buddy paint this car back in the 70s. Some shade of dark blue that I was never able to properly ID, but I think I got close enough. As the story went, my Dad paid his buddy like $200 to paint the car and do the body work, so for that kind of money, he is lucky he got anything more than water based paint. So this guy, the painter. My dad talked about him alot. He painted many cars for him, and my grandfather, and my dads friends....Ed Jacko was his name...I always remember my dad talking about him and how good he was.

So along with painting my current car in the 70s, he also painted my dads 67 mustang superstock car this metal flake blue...This car was later wrecked in 1971 and my dad would go on and find my current car.
SSG8Y4A.jpg



Here's a video of Ed painting this car you see in the picture in 1969



Ed would paint my blue car like 8 years later

My dad would talk about Ed, but he lost contact with him over the years.....As i have mentioned before, about 4 years ago I got in touch with another one of my dads friends, Butch....Butch and I talk every few months....Hes anti computer and internet, so I usually have to print pictures of the mustang and mail them like its 1872. Anyway, so last night butch calls me and tells me via a long story that he ran into someone who knew Ed and had his number...He called him and talked to him, etc...And hey, Ed lives in Denville. Hmm. ok thats interesting. So I look him up on FB...and holy shit, he is mutual friends with my friend Craig. So then I remember that 5 years earlier, Craig and i were at a party talking about my future restoration project and him saying how his Dad paints cars and I should look into having him do it....Which I later did, but craig said he was getting older and not into doing it anymore. So turns out, my friends dad (actually step dad) is my dads friend from Jersey city who painted the car in the first place. I ended up getting his number and chatting with him today. Wow, talk about a coincidence.

What was funny was that I sent Craig that video this morning of his dad painting...he then sends it to his dad saying...Hey, you recognize the guy in this video?

So I talked to him for a while...he had some funny stories about my Dads ex GF, my grandfather, and some mutual friends....good stuff. So crazy, I have lived like a mile from this guy for years, known his step son for nearly 20 years, and almost asked him to repaint the same car that he painted ~1977. He also retired and worked at autozone in dover for a time...Like 500 yards from where my car is currently being painted.

However, he did not have much memory about the particular shade of blue.

So thats my weird story of the day, I thought it deserved a recap.

Even weirder...I used to ride mx with Craig lol.
 
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UtahJoe

Team Workhorse
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Crazy.

Please order MOZ-247 as a personalized plate. Full circle and shit.
What sucks is that you can't run that plate and get me the Vin for that car... I would love to know if someone saved it... I found the sales order from when my dad ordered it, but no Vin on it.
 

Carson

Sport Bacon
Team MTBNJ Halter's
What sucks is that you can't run that plate and get me the Vin for that car... I would love to know if someone saved it... I found the sales order from when my dad ordered it, but no Vin on it.

Yeah, most of the old plates have been purged from the system at this point anyways. Well that and it's a crime to do so.
 

UtahJoe

Team Workhorse
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Iron Furnace 50k!

I honestly had no intention of doing this race until @Norm told me his plans to do it with @seanrunnette ....Then a good portion of the team was going, so thats good enough for me. Plus, I love @onetracker and the blackbear crew and I try to support their races. With no SSAP, Jungle or Wayway h2h this year..plus this horrendous winter..my interest in racing has been the lowest it has been since I started 10 years ago. But I did the mooch race and remembered that I still enjoy this and for the most part, I can now just show up and ride my bike. I dont stress the prep much anymore.

So the last race I did this long was in 2015 when I did the first Stewart 45. 3.5hrs of everything and the kitchen sink pace until we died. @pearl used to try to talk me into doing endurance races by saying..."oh its fun, you just ride at this chill pace, chit chatting, etc...its fun!" This has never been my experience in any endurance race I have ever done. 5.5hrs of BS50 included....Everyone I have done goes like this.....Start at full xc pace....ride at 97% xc...bleed out of your eyeballs until all of your blood is gone....then do your best to limp your way across the finish line.

Looking at the guys reg'd for this race, I was certain this would be basically feel like doing the wayway h2h race twice. Which in my head put me in about the 3:15-3.5 range time wise. Considering I have done about 2 rides of 3 hrs or more since last summer, im never sure how im going to feel when I try doing it at race pace.

Despite wanting to race in my new plaid shirt, I went with my kit for no other reason than for a race this long, I need pockets...So I get dressed, hang out with the crew, then eventually we all get lined up. The start goes off hard as I expected...we race down the road at 20+ mph....I am way back out of the lead group of like 25, but eventually I start making my way up. I pass Ross on this SS spinning like a madman....while he was at a disadvantage on the road, I had no doubt he would be back eventually.

We turn into black eagle and there is a bit of a pile up....in my head im thinking im further back then I would like to be, but trying to tell myself "3+hrs, just chill" As we climb up black eagle im making passes, eventually I catch up to Andrew L and stick with him for a bit. 15min in and the pace is really hurting...this is where my lack of fitness this year is really showing...I cant handle the hot starts yet and its taking me a while to get to speed.

I pass mancuso on the side of the trail due to a dropped chain. He gets back on his bike and quickly catches back up to me, I let him by and just try to stay on him. I do this for the next 5 min or so until another chain drop stops him. Into porcupine, I start catching Dave F in the tech, I can also see Mandel and Francis Cuddy up ahead a ways. Im making time in the technical stuff, which is good.

I put down a good effort on the mud climb and get a little closer to Jeff, although I can see in the rear view that steve and Ross are getting closer. Get thru the climb, hold everyone off until the pines climb. I let Ross by and stay with him thru the climb, we close the remaining gap on Jeff....Then hammer downt he Tombstone decent. After that, they gap me a bit, but in my head im going to use the South end/Timber technical sections to recover a bit. This usually works well for me....Like halfway thru I catch back up to Ross and Jeff. Mancuso catches me near the end of the tech and the 4 of us hit the fireroad together. Im struggling to stay with them on the roads and I start drifting back.

Rest of lap 1 I chase the guys thru red dot....One thing I noticed is that im going to hit the line in well under 1:30, so this race is considerably shorter than I planned on, which is a great thing. I cross like line in 1:22. Pull over and notice my 70oz camel back still has alot left...So rather than switch it, I just grab a bottle, chug a little and start rolling. All of this screwing around tho has made me lose sight of Jeff, Ross and Steve.

I hit black eagle solo...I have hit black eagle countless times and I know every section well at this point. Im chipping away at Jeffs gap on me. We both pass @Joe J off his bike with a minor issue...But he quickly gets back on and charges past us. It was good timing bc while he is pulling away, we are picking up our pace trying to keep up. Eventually in Porcupine I pass Jeff, and by the end of the section we catch and pass Francis Cuddy....Soon after than, Scott Grey. Two guys who have beaten me countless times, so I felt happy with getting by both of them. Jeff and I stay together until the big road climb. I get by Jeff and put some distance on him on the hill. In my head im thinking if I got Jeff on this climb, I have a good chance of making it stick to the finish line. Plus it gives me motivation to hit everything as hard as I can to the finish line. I busted my ass on the pines climb then did the same on the tombstone descent.

Im in no-mans land until I hit the river crossing in timber. I look up and see that Ross, Steve and Joe J up on the hill. Probably too far away to catch, but it keeps me pushing. At the end of Timber, I see a guy with a number on his back, running on foot...My first thought is that this guy had a mechanical, left his bike and said fuck it...Put his number on his back and started running...Before I realized what a ridiculous conclusion that is, I notice that this guy was none other than @ryderX out for a long jog. Crazy bastard :)

After this I hit the remaining fire roads pretty hard, and finally started feeling a cramp in my left quad. These hurt, but I have always just been able to keep them at bay by pedaling. So I power thru the red dots climbs knowing that im close to home. Pull in and see Ross, Steve, Monte, Rob Price, few others.

In all a good race.
My laps were 1:23, 1:27. Considering how little riding i have done at this distance/time, im pretty happy with that split. I have to say, I was surprised how little I felt I suffered in this race. Outside of my back hurting after about 20min in, I felt pretty good for most of the race. I would have loved a top ten, but considering the competition and where im at this year, im happy with 12th. Another minute or so would made a big difference. All good tho...most importantly, i enjoy myself.

Great work by the black bear crew...I might prefer the short format, this was very fun.

ok, now off to the garage to put my new lift together.



My rebuilding process is slowly coming along from last years demise.
 

UtahJoe

Team Workhorse
Team MTBNJ Halter's
which lift is that? how much was it? and whered you get it?

i keep toying with the idea of a quickjack or similar for myself but havent laid out the$$$ just yet. . .

Bend pak md-xp... Portable Mid rise scissor lift. This one is 6000lbs and will go up to 50in. It's $2065 at northern tool. This is just one of countless different types of lifts there are now. I would not have got this if not for the Mustang rebuild.... Absolutely everything under the mustang has been stripped... Fuel, brake lines, soon the suspension, steering gear, etc... I didn't feel like like putting all of this back while laying on the floor. I have enough height to have done a side post lift, but they also take up alot of space when your not using them... parking inside of them is also annoying. I like this one because it got the car up as high as I need it I can move it around anywhere and I can always drive over it.... Although the focus needed the boards as I was worried about ripping up some of the plastic aero crap underneath

@Carson once I put it up there today I figured I might as well change the tires
 

rick81721

Lothar
Bend pak md-xp... Portable Mid rise scissor lift. This one is 6000lbs and will go up to 50in. It's $2065 at northern tool. This is just one of countless different types of lifts there are now. I would not have got this if not for the Mustang rebuild.... Absolutely everything under the mustang has been stripped... Fuel, brake lines, soon the suspension, steering gear, etc... I didn't feel like like putting all of this back while laying on the floor. I have enough height to have done a side post lift, but they also take up alot of space when your not using them... parking inside of them is also annoying. I like this one because it got the car up as high as I need it I can move it around anywhere and I can always drive over it.... Although the focus needed the boards as I was worried about ripping up some of the plastic aero crap underneath

@Carson once I put it up there today I figured I might as well change the tires

Nice. Will be interested to see what you think of it as you put the mustang back together. I want to get something in FL.
 

shrpshtr325

Infinite Source of Sarcasm
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Bend pak md-xp... Portable Mid rise scissor lift. This one is 6000lbs and will go up to 50in. It's $2065 at northern tool. This is just one of countless different types of lifts there are now. I would not have got this if not for the Mustang rebuild.... Absolutely everything under the mustang has been stripped... Fuel, brake lines, soon the suspension, steering gear, etc... I didn't feel like like putting all of this back while laying on the floor. I have enough height to have done a side post lift, but they also take up alot of space when your not using them... parking inside of them is also annoying. I like this one because it got the car up as high as I need it I can move it around anywhere and I can always drive over it.... Although the focus needed the boards as I was worried about ripping up some of the plastic aero crap underneath

@Carson once I put it up there today I figured I might as well change the tires


did you consider the maxjack? and if so why didnt you choose that over this one?

https://www.maxjaxusa.com
 
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