Carl Buchanan - Mountain Bike Racer

February 2008 - Posts

• A little American and some Italian

  Well I had the pleasure of going to lunch with Oakley Rob last Friday. He was in town to meet with his customers and brought me a goody bag of shades to try on. Various models, colors, and lenses to see what is going to work best for me for the 2008 season. Lots of really great product coming out of Oakley so make sure that you check out their entire line. Very cool. All will be reveled soon so stick around. :-) Project X-Fire Update: A Campagnolo Centaur front derailleur, a Veloce 13-26 10 speed cassette, and a 10 speed KMC chain all showed up today. All that is left to complete the build is a set of Campagnolo Centaur Carbon 10 speed shifters and a lock ring for the cassette since I forgot to order one.....duh. Should not be much longer before I can start rolling outdoors again. Woohoo!!!!! Posted Feb 27 2008, 10:04 PM by Official Website of Carl Buchanan

• They Know

  We've got it going on. Posted Feb 20 2008, 10:29 AM by Official Website of Carl Buchanan

• Frostbike '08 recap

  Left Waterloo early on Friday morning for the drive into the White North. Road conditions were good so no unplanned delays were had. Planned delays on the other hand were good. We stopped off in Faribault, MN to see Ben at Milltown Cycles so that G-Ted and Ben could discuss a few things and I took advantage of the opportunity to roll the "36er". You may have seen pictures of this beauty rolling through some other blogs but, photos cannot explain it. It makes you smile just to look at it and when you ride you WILL smile from ear to ear. It's just a really cool bike with a very nice ride, I can't say that I would be opposed to having one. Continuing on to QBP, we arrived shortly after noon and set up the Ergon booth for the weekend. It turned out really well and the weekend itself was great. The booth was hopping for the majority of the time answering questions and testing products which a lot of people were impressed with. Be sure that you stop into your local bike shop to inquire about ordering up what you need from Ergon. Had the opportunity to see quite a few friends and fellow racers who stopped by the booth. Working at Frostbike definitely allowed me to see more of them than I normally do when I a just visiting with the shop, duh. Always good to see everyone and talk for a little while. Mr. Clay, super bike fit guy from LaCrosse, stopped by for quite a while and actually helped out in the booth for a while when it got really busy. Such a nice guy. When I went to lunch on Sunday, the booth was busy enough that Jeffrey (from Ergon), G-Ted, and Clay were all busting butt to keep it going. They gave me some flak for that one. HaHa. G-Ted and I took the booth down pretty quick at 3pm so that we could get going for the trip to Iowa which we set out for at around 4pm. Overall the show was really great and I am looking forward to the next one. The drive home on Sunday took us a bit longer than the 3 hours up on Friday. Blowing snow in Minnesota and new snow Iowa kept the speeds around 45mph for most of the trip home. The VW Passat handles it just fine and we arrived in one piece after about 4.5 hours of cruising. Posted Feb 19 2008, 07:23 AM by Official Website of Carl Buchanan

• Frostbike '08

  It's time for the annual journey to the frozen tundra of Minnesota to attend Frostbike at QBP. Frostbike is a bicycle dealer show that gives individual dealers the opportunity to meet some of the people behind the products that are sold at shops. I believe that this will be my fourth or fifth year attending but this year will have a little twist. I had originally intended to ride up with my fellow Europa employees on Sunday but, a phone call just under two weeks ago has landed me a spot inside of the Ergon booth for the weekend. I have to admit that it is pretty exciting to be given this opportunity. If you happen to be attending this weekend, be sure to stop by the Ergon booth to say "HI" and see all of the 2008 product because there are some really sweet items to check out. I have received so many FedEx shipments this week that the back of my Passat wagon is filled to the brim with team green. Posted Feb 15 2008, 08:06 AM by Official Website of Carl Buchanan

• click or no click?

  Pretty busy weekend around here. No roller time was had except for Friday night due to me working on new flooring for our entryway in the house. Spent all of Saturday morning tearing up the old floor and then cleaning it up for the new stuff. That afternoon was all about test fitting a few pieces, taking some measurements, and then heading down to Blue's house to get some pieces cut on the table saw. The flooring consists of the wooden planks that CLICK together nice and easy. I was actually quite impressed at how quickly it does go together. Sunday consisted of finishing up the flooring which had a few tricky pieces that go around this corner or that so Blue should me a few tricks with the table saw to make things easier for the final install. Well, they worked because it all went together pretty nice. Made a final run to Menard's to pick up the new base boards and door casings to finish everything up. We've decided that we are going to repaint the walls before we put the moldings on so there will be a slight delay before it is 100% finished. Saturday also marked one more step in completing Project X-Fire when my new Campagnolo Centaur rear derailleur arrived. Pretty happy about that one. On to the bad news. I seem to have lost my camera so NO CLICK for me for a while. Not sure where exactly but the last time I used it was last Saturday. I'll give it a couple more days and then I am writing it off as gone forever. Posted Feb 10 2008, 09:25 PM by Official Website of Carl Buchanan

• Cannondale is...

  ...now a Canadian owned company. I love Canadians, they're super cool people. Hockey is one of the two greatest team sports on the planet too. What are your thoughts? How do you feel about this acquisition? Posted Feb 05 2008, 07:08 AM by Official Website of Carl Buchanan

• R A N D O M

  Very little going on lately that is worthy of being spread to the world, hence the lack of steady posting. Getting the roller time in on the Six13 as needed and alternating that with some time in the garage hitting the punching bag. I must say that the bag makes a fantastic workout for my off-bike days. Rhea has not been feeling the best lately and is having a hard time sleeping through the night as a result. I guess we have been spoiled with her sleeping through since she was two months old and now we have to take turns getting up with her. She's great otherwise and I am sure that this will pass in a short time....hopefully last night was the last night. Working two jobs is really getting to me lately too. The second job is strictly to fund my bicycles and racing but I am starting to wonder how much longer I can do it and one of them may have to go....eventually. I hate to even think that but, I'm so tired right now that maybe I'm just not thinking straight. The NY Goants won Superbowl XLII last night over the "all-mighty" Patriots and destroyed New England's "perfect season". For the record, I predicted that outcome two weeks ago.....thank you. Posted Feb 04 2008, 07:28 AM by Official Website of Carl Buchanan