Just got back from a trip to Austin and Fredericksburg with Amy, and we met up with a bunch of friends while we were down there. We left on Saturday morning, headed down to downtown Austin, and hung out at “Mellow Johnny’s”, Lance Amrstrong’s bike shop, for a couple of hours, and also walked around downtown. The UT-Baylor game was on, but the audience was pretty subdued, and the day was really pretty warm. While I was at Mellow Johnny’s, I got to watch Kevin Livingston do some Lactate Testing on a couple of kids from a Cincinatti Jr. Development Team. He also has a MultiRider System down in the basement of the shop, as well as a Retul bike fitting system. I didn’t get to speak with him, but from the looks of it, he’s mostly using RacerMate’s in-house 3-d videos, and not ErgVideo. That may give the CCD a leg up.
Saturday night, we hooked up with some friends who had traveled with us in Italy, and also met up with Kevin and Jennifer Martin, clients and friends, who are moving to Austin. We met them at a wine bar that a friend from Dallas has opened, and I was also lucky enough to get some time in with David Nayer, of Nimble Wheels. David’s factory burned down several months ago, and he’s been unable to get product back up and running, while he deals with insurance claims, etc. He’s pretty upset about it, but he’s also his usual confident self. It remains to be seen, however, if his wheels will ever go back in to production, or if he will move in to car and motorcycle racing, like he has mentioned in the past.
On my trip to Fredericksburg that evening, I got a freakin’ ticket. I hate Johnson City. It’s a small, stupid town with a highway running through it, and not much else. Grrrr.
Sunday morning, we got up and rode a great little 30-mile loop around the peach orchards NE of town, and then went down to Luckenbach. The girls had never been there before, and it was in its’ full Walt-Disneyesque Splendor, complete with roughly 200 motorcycles, fat dudes, fat chicks, lots of black leather and dew rags, a pet steer you could get your picture with, and us… four fairly skinny folks with bicycles.
We took the back roads home. 🙂
Kevin and Jennifer headed back to Austin that night, and Amy and I drove around looking for a cycling-centric B & B. We found it, and by golly, if we didn’t fall in love with it completely while we were taking the tour. We loved it so much, we actually signed up to go there for Christmas!
Monday Amy and I just did an easy 20-miler on River Road, and then on the way back, we visited the airport hotel, which is decked out in the motif of “South Pacific” in the 1940’s. It’s times like this that I really do worry about the general aviation industry — While we were down in Fredericksburg, we learned that Mooney Aviation, makers of some fast single engine aircraft in the neighboring town of Kerrville, had shut their doors. This recession sucks. I don’t have a clue as to how we’re going to remedy the situation.
I don’t think I’ll make it to Hellweek this year – I need to save up for France. I also want to race Fayetteville, so we’ll see how it all works out.
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