So you get a new bike. It is all shinny. All crisp feeling.
The fasteners do not have marks on them yet. There is no duct tape holding on a graphic yet. There are no zipties holding panels together yet. There are no dents in the rims. There are no boot rub marks on the cases [...]
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I have written a few times about glaciers and the effect they have had on the terrain we live in here in Wisconsin. There is a part of our area of the upper midwest though, that the glaciers avoided. I do not really understand that, but apparantly the glaciers were selective about the parts of [...]
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You may recall that I tried to tell the story of Glaciers one other time. I think in reality, I have discovered a devious Canadian plot. You see, the glaciers did their thing a few years ago. They picked up some rocks, and slowly over time brought them south. I mean [...]
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I know this is a blog about our motorcycle racing efforts, but I have to head in a different direction for just one post. I am the proud parent of a high school kid that had a great experience this past week.
The Lake Mills girls varsity soccer team made it to the final 4 [...]
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Brian Terry took these photo’s during the Hixton race on May 31.
Filed under: Joe's blog | Tagged: cycra, D16, district 16, factory conneciton, Harescrambles, Joe Vadeboncoeur, moose, offroad, RM250, suzuki, Vesrah, wisconsin cross country, WIXC, zipty | Leave a Comment »
Eric found our website this past winter. He has become a Suzuki fan as a result and has just built up his own RM 250 and is pretty psyched.
Scott and I are both super psyched that someone else out there has discovered how good a Suzuki RM250 is. We are happy that we could help [...]
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I have discovered some great stuff, called Brave Soldier Friction Zone. Scott found it before me, but I am an absolute fan. You goop it on your hands in the spots that would blister up normally, and then stuff your mitts into the glove – all gooped up.
The potion is magic! I used [...]
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I bugged out of the house this morning at 6am. By myself today, no Scott. I didn’t even have Candi with me, so the drive was really an alone drive.
The morning was perfect. The sun was out, it was nice and cool and not a cloud in the sky. It rained just a few days [...]
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http://blogs.dirtrider.com/6544212/industry-buzz/raines-3-peats-in-wisconsin/index.html
Check out Scott in 5th overall!
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Once a year, we get to race on what is the best course in the state. Rhinelander – Sugar Camp. The only bad thing about Rhinelander is that it is just on the edge of being too far to drive for the day. We can do it, but just barely. It [...]
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Ok. Here is the dealeo. I am trying to decide which bike set up I should ride for the National HS race in Rhinelander this weekend.
I know I want to ride the 06 motor and frame. That one starts the easiest and the frame seems to feel the best. Don’t ask [...]
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A long time ago, the earth was covered with glaciers. Huge slabs of ice, many many meters thick. They stretched from what is the North Pole today all the way down past Canada and into Wisconsin. They moved really slowly. I mean really slowly, hence the term “glacial”.
The glaciers weighed tons [...]
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If you look up in a dictionary what the definition of rocks is, it shows a picture of the woods in Pearson. Specifically, the area near the quarry is littered with rocks. There are so many rocks, that there sometimes is just a bit of dirt between the rocks. Rocks, rocks rocks. [...]
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May 10. Arkansaw Cycle Park. The first D16 race.
Wow. It seemed like winter would never end. But then I went on a long business trip, and when I returned it is spring. The leaves are coming out on the trees, the grass is green and more importantly – we are racing!
Scott picked me up at [...]
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Ok. Just 5 days to go! 5 days, and the curtain goes up on another race season. This is about my 6th now, and I can never get enough of it. I wait and wait and wait, and then it finally gets here. Then we race a ton, and travel and race some more. The [...]
Filed under: Joe's blog | Tagged: China, D16, Harescrambles, offroad, RM250, Vesrah Suzuki | Leave a Comment »
Been in Taiwan all week. Heading to China next week. Big work weeks. Lots of stress, loads of work time, loads of hotel time etc… Never a lot of fun. People ask me all the time what it is like to be in Taiwan. I usually say, drive by the dump in your part of [...]
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I am in the middle of 10 days in Taiwan and China. We are just a little bit less than 2 weeks until the season starts in earnest. The first HS race is on the weekend of May 9 in Arkansaw, Wi. Then we are into the race season pretty much from [...]
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Back in the saddle again. It seems like forever since I raced a motorcycle. The Enduro in November in northern Illinois. Wow. That is a long time ago. Today was the day that we headed down to Indiana, to be ready for tomorrow morning’s Sand Goblin Enduro. [...]
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This is the funniest advert I think I have ever read.
enjoy
http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/765370039.html
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Still hurting from Saturday’s ride. Damn, this getting old thing sucks. My back, shoulders, arms and legs all still feel it. Riding my bicycle to work this morning, to a meeting in Cottage Grove (15 miles away). That should loosen everything up. But, it is just 29 degrees out so [...]
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Perfect! That is about how I would describe it. 50 degrees, moisture in the soil but no real mud to speak of. There were a ton of people there.
Joe Bauer, John Buechner and I arrived at about 9:30. The gate does not open until 10, but we got changed and all set by the time [...]
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Mary Daubert has worked with us over the years, to have us ready for the season. She is magic and easy to work with.
She has a new website for her fitness training business.
check it out.
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Wisconsin can be a wacked place.
It is March 29, and we woke up today to 6 inches of snow on the ground. March 29! They held a golf tournament here 2 weeks ago, for crying out loud. It is bad enough that it snows like this at stupid times, but to have [...]
Filed under: Joe's blog | Tagged: Chad Reed, D16, David Knight, Dyracuse, gncc, James Stewart, Juha Salminen, Nathan Kanney, offroad, OMA series, Paul Whibley, RM250, suzuki, Vesrah, WIXC | Leave a Comment »
So I have to post up. Today, I got one of my bikes completely ready to go. The season is here, and we needed to get our act in gear. AJ, from Victory Graphix sent us our new graphics for the year, and man does it look boss!
Wow.
I am going to go down to Illinois [...]
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Here are some photos that I found from our weekend at St. Joe, back in February.
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Damn, we were so close. Over the weekend, it was 60+ degrees. It was dry. Dirt in the woods was perfect. Scott got out and mapped out our practice loop at our local riding spot. It looked like the MTB trails would be opening up this weekend. Things were [...]
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That is what the local papers are saying about this past winter. Today being the first day of spring and all. I guess that we had a kick butt snow season in December, and then winter gave up. It was still damn cold all winter though. It is still cold and wintry feeling today.
In fact, [...]
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Scott put up this vide from St. Joe. 2nd day, just a short idea of what the trails are like there.
Joe
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2 days later
Here I am in Holland. Staying at a little hotel in Amersfort called Logies de Taboksplant. Neat little place inside the old walled in part of the city. I guess it was a fort at one point. Some of the town is still that old. This is where our company headquarters office is [...]
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Thank goodness the weather dweebs got it wrong today. We are in Farmington Missouri to ride our brains out at St. Joe OHV area. The weather forecasts had been bouncing around between 50% chance of snow and 90% chance of snow. They were wrong. Not that it was really comfortable or anything like that, the [...]
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Right
- Scott and I are loaded up in the van, and heading south. 3 motorcycles, a bunch of gear, coolers, stuff to test etc…
- We have left the snow.
- There is dirt showing on the road south through Illinois and then into Missouri.
- We have been training hard.
- We are getting text messages from our [...]
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It is just 6 days till Scott and I head south to start testing and getting our set ups right for this season.
It is just 10 days till the first GNCC race in Florida. I will not be there this year, but in spirit it is sort of a begining of the season for me [...]
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Wisconsin winter. It goes on and on and on and on. Occasionally we get a break, and it gets warm for a few days. Then, just when you think things are going to stay much nicer, winter comes storming back into play. That happened to us this week.
On Tuesday this past week the high temperature [...]
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As I suggested I was going to from now on, I made time to go for a ride while I was here in Taiwan for work.
There is a group of people from the office that ride every Saturday morning. I joined them this morning and here is how it went.
I brought a helmet and pedals [...]
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In Taiwan this week. That always is an interesting week. Taiwan is very very different than any other place that I go for my job or my passions.
Last week I was occupying a corner at a Peets Coffee in San Francisco every morning, watching the city come alive.
This week, I am watching another [...]
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Hanna is my 17 year old daughter. A long time ago, she and I hatched a plan to go to San Francisco to spend a few days knocking around the city and then go to the SX race. Since she had a long break from school and the SX race lined up it [...]
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Daylight Saving time.
Today at 5:30, I think you could still be out in the woods. You wouldn’t see very well, and you would probably be packing it in then. But, the point is that just 2 weeks ago it was pitch black at 5:30.
Wikipedia says that here in Wisconsin, we are [...]
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Seems like forever. Although, it was a balmer 35 degrees today.
My friend Mat Herrington is planning to go down to Florida to do the first GNCC race. My friend JD Freibel is going to Georgia to do the first National Enduro.
I feel some twinges of longing. I am not getting to the first GNCC races [...]
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Today I spent the day working on my HS bike. It has been a while that it has been in pieces.
When I got started, my HS bike was just a frame. That is it on the right above, the Enduro bike is not much better (on the left), but it at least has a motor [...]
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Lot’s going on, and lot’s to do!
It seems that the season is never going to get here this year. We had high temperatures in the below zero range all this past week. Lows were well below minnus 20 overnight. I mean, once it is below minus 5, who cares anyway. There is a ton of [...]
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So Ray hooked us up with the VIP room at Ray’s MTB. Above is my gang getting ready to ride. Hanna had to face the camera with her bootie. Liz did not actually ride with those boots on.
As you can see from the background, Ray’s is expansive. 100,000+ square feet of warehouse space turned into [...]
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So Friday the 9th was my birthday. Old. But, I don’t like to act my age.
Liz and the girls conceded to going to Ray’s MTB park with me for my birthday. On Friday we had to drive Lisa to the airport in Chicago, then planned to head towards Cleveland – as far as we could.
It [...]
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Today I ordered up my new Moose Racing gear for the season. Scott and I will both be with Moose gear this year, and we are stoked about that.
We are doing blue XCR gear and yellow Sahara gear.
When everything is hear we will post up new photo’s of the team etc…
Joe
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Scott and I went down to Waterman indoor MX track on Friday to ride. Waterman is a really safe little indoor MX track. Not very fast, with only small little jumps. No impossible doubles, and one tough SX style whoops section. It is not my real cup of tea, but [...]
Filed under: Joe's blog | Tagged: district 16, Enduro, gncc, Harescrambles, indoor mx, offroad, suzuki, wisconsin cross country, WIXC | 1 Comment »
Merry Christmas everyone! It is only 2 months till we are all able to start riding again. In the mean time, there is just training and spending time in the garage cleaning and organizing and rebuilding.
Scott and I are heading down to Waterman to ride tomorrow. That will be fun, but it is never a [...]
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Ok. Here it is. December 21. The shortest day of the year. The Winter Solstice. And, man from where I am sitting it is still a long steep uphill.
Here in the Upper Midwest, it is the absolute depths of winter. Today the actual outside temperature was a balmy comfy [...]
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I am super excited about the new WIXC series we have here for next year.
Rick Anschutz, former D16 AMA Harescrambles rep, has changed his role to race promoter. Rick did a fantastic job as the AMA rep here in the District for a long time. He helped organize races, he kept all of [...]
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If you have been following along this summer, you might remember me blowing up my motor in the National Harescramble race in Rhinelander this summer. I thought maybe I had forgotten to put oil in the motor. Turns out that I had a bearing go bad. Looks like there was oil in the motor, but [...]
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Today was a snow day! The storm of the century was supposed to be coming. When I got up at 5am to go to my fitness class, it was pounding down snow. I checked the local school district website, and it was closed for the day.
Sweet! A snow day! I [...]
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As usual, my brother and his family, my sister and her family and my family all descended upon my mother’s house for Thanksgiving. She lives in Hot Springs Arkansas. My brother and sister live in Texas, so it is sort of a central meeting spot for all of us. We have been [...]
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