James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead

Dominique

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
ok Dan and whoever else clicked... The spoiler I heard was
Tony Stark dies. The GOT connection was the Stark last name. It was a two parter: May Tony Stark and all of Winterfell RIP and then the Tony Stark can't wait for the internet to talk about him Monday... Arya Stark says hold my beer.

LOL. Don't read if you are not up to date on GOT...
 

MadisonDan

Well-Known Member
Team MTBNJ Halter's
and I didnt even get to the bearings yet...

I have taken OPI stems apart like 200 times in the past 8 years....this is a first


My house is the Cannondale scalpel equivalent of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base (LOOK IT UP)

yikes
 

UtahJoe

Team Workhorse
Team MTBNJ Halter's
My thought exactly. I guess the stem was bonded to the steerer due to a chemical reaction?
Stem is the steerer tube with the OPI. I have never had that happen...although those old OPI stems were prone to failing over time....they have VERY thin walls/thread and the 2 halves can get out of round....after in this case 8 years of norm riding it.

The worst part of working on Norms piles of shit is that he would never fathom cleaning the dam things once every few years...so you have to scrape off 2 years of mud just to find the derailleur...Next ask Norm tuesday....Dear Norm...do you own a hose?
 

shrpshtr325

Infinite Source of Sarcasm
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Stem is the steerer tube with the OPI. I have never had that happen...although those old OPI stems were prone to failing over time....they have VERY thin walls/thread and the 2 halves can get out of round....after in this case 8 years of norm riding it.

The worst part of working on Norms piles of shit is that he would never fathom cleaning the dam things once every few years...so you have to scrape off 2 years of mud just to find the derailleur...Next ask Norm tuesday....Dear Norm...do you own a hose?


thats today, ask away!
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
There's just a lot going on these days. Been spreading myself around more in different areas which means this thing goes on the back-burner. I think that's fine. I'm being more useful to the community at-large this way.

I stepped on the scale yesterday and it was sub-200. So that's kind of a big thing.

For those who did not follow the Stewart thread(s), I put this photo blog together from my perspective:
http://www.mtbnj.com/news/2019/05/13/stewart-from-the-promoters-lens/

We ran a race. 2 races. They both went very well. I made some changes for the 2nd one which were received incredibly well so look for more of that. Props to the team for destructing another production in a good way.

Jumped into the JORBA membership thing a little this week and we went from 382 to 425 members. Going to try to help address some of the issues there but like I said in the first sentence, lot going on these days. Due to my new role at work the idea of ARR is sort of always there. Right now JORBA has an ARR problem but we addressed that in part this week. Unfortunately we will need to spot-check that over the next year as memberships expire. But I think it is crazy we have anything less than 2000 active members. Am I out of my mind to think that is possible?

NICA race this week.

Oh I did something really dumb on Monday but I am not sure if I am proud or ashamed of it. Probably both.

Wednesday I rode Round Valley. Goddamn it, that place is hard.

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And I often ride out to Black River Roasters when I am low on either regular or espresso roast. I did that yesterday. It was amazing outside.

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clarkenstein

JORBA Board Member/Chapter Leader
JORBA.ORG
Seriously thanks for the JORBA help. These membership pushes really make a difference. @jdog helped with one the one year and I have already seen the activity on my side.

And that Monday thing was absolutely crazy... in the good way.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
It's almost been a month. So much is going on right now. It's kinda crazy.

Kingdom Trails

We went to KT, it was awesome. I wrote posts on my vacation blog for these, which are here:
  1. Day 1: Starting with the Highlights
  2. Day 2: Moose Alley, then more Highlights
  3. Day 3: Early loop then the Downhill Park
  4. Day 4: All the Awesome
  5. Day 5: That's a Wrap
I love this place, I really do. We'll be back. See "Plans" below.

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JORBA

I jumped into the membership issues in mid-May and have managed to bring membership from about 380 to 500. My target is 1000 within a 12 month span which I think is not unrealistic. I think that JORBA suffers from a PR issue because most of the people in the org like to work in dirt and don't really self-promote that well. This is great for the trails but not for helping people understand where the money goes. I'm going to try and fix that.

Here is a GREAT use of the membership dollars
mtbnj.com/commons

If you believe in this sort of thing, all I can do is ask you to support. Seriously the $25 Green Circle level is all we ask:
mtbnj.com/jorba

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NICA

I went all-in after that first race. Not sure if you've been following along, but I went to 4 of the 5 races and did blog posts for each of those 4. I really enjoyed being part of this and I am stoked that both the team and the OOS crew came out to help support.

These posts can all be found in the NICA category here:
https://www.mtbnj.com/news/category/nica/

I ended up being tagged as the social media guy for the team, and pretty much spent most race days taking pics. Not our racer, but this is likely my best picture of the season:

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Podcast

We brought it back from the dead and brought Jeff Lenoksy on this week:
mtbnj.com/podcast

Hoping to do 1 of these every 2 weeks. That's my aim.

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Plans
  • Next week @seanrunnette and I are going up to climb Whiteface
  • June 22nd we're doing the Nassau ride (mtbnj.com/nassau)
  • Going to Europe after school gets out: Paris, London, Brussels, Amsterdam
  • We get back and immediately drive halfway to Canada. We may or may not stay up in the ADKs
  • 3rd weekend in July we have an Airbnb in East Burke for the return to Kingdom
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Whiteface

Finally got @seanrunnette to go with me to climb Whiteface. It was a great 28 hour trip. Finally crossed off one of these things I have wanted to do for a few years.

Wrote a blog post here:
https://mtbnj.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/biking-the-big-old-whiteface/

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Hoping to get back up there with D in August. There's a lot of living to be done between now and then.

2019 - Halftime

This is effectively halftime, as June will run out while we are away. Some stats:

* I average 6.75 hours of sleep a night
* I've done 2948 push-ups & sit-ups this year
* I'm at 299 hours of exercise (note I am writing this before the Sunday ride)
* Strava says 266 hours of that is biking
* Lowest average weight of the year so far, saw sub-200 again in June.
* I've written 91 things - blog posts of various forms, etc (this will go up over the next few days)
* We've done 126 things out of the normal routine of life, 86 of them at a social level - this may sounds stupid but I have found in the past that if I do not keep myself doing things and seeing people I get grumpy
* I've read 12 books
* I've watched 56 movies or full TV series. 45 of these were in the first 3 months of the year, on the bike
* NICA, JORBA, and especially MTBNJ have gone great in terms of my involvement.
* My job, less great.

I am happy with 2019 thus far.

Tomorrow/Sunday

We fly to Paris tomorrow and embark on a 12 day, 11 night whirlwind tour of Europe with the whole family. Paris (3), London (4), Brussels (1), Amsterdam (3). My intention is to post a recap every day on the travel blog then put it here with a link/blurb/picture. Hopefully you follow along.

See you in the second half!
 

jmanic

JORBA Board Member/Chapter Leader
Staff member
JORBA.ORG
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I find the city pretty bike UN-friendly here based on my observation.
How so?
When we went,
they had just passed some cyclist friendly laws in the city,
and we used Velib almost exclusively to get around.
We took 1 Lyft for a trip that was too far by bike,
but just bike and foot otherwise.
(I actually felt gypped for not getting to ride the Metro).
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Day 3: Lots of Dead Parisians:
https://mtbnj.wordpress.com/2019/06/27/eu-2019-day-3/

@jmanic - my observation is made mostly from looking at the city, and how many people are on bikes and how you see the roads being shared. In 3 days we have seen what I would classify as 3 "real" bikers which I consider a biker with a helmet. The rest are on the sidewalk which is not what I consider "bike-friendly." Compare to NYC which is IMO also very biker un-friendly but has far more people actually riding on the streets with helmets on. Is this an exhaustive survey? Certainly not!

In any event, I invite anyone to travel to Paris with 3 kids and it being 90+ degrees and get around the city by bike for 3 days then get back to me. We can compare notes.

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