Barring anything unforeseen, this will probably be the last blog of 2008. So, in the tradition of all good media outlets (be this as minor as it is), here’s a quick look at some of 2008’s highs and lows.

The bike season brought a mix of firsts for me. I was out on the road by March 14 (the earliest I’d ridden) and finally called it quits on Nov. 30, a few hours ahead of a snow storm. In that time I racked up more than 5,000 miles -- a first -- including miles in new disciplines, mountain biking and cyclocross.

Best finishes of the season were a pair of 6th places: one in the WiSport training race in April (got off on a solo break for about 15 miles and was caught with about two miles to go to the finish) and the other was in the Belleville race in August (I’ve gone from 22nd to 11th to 6th in that race the last three years. So in 2009 I should finish 3.5).

Belleville, with Jamie Haag

I had a bunch of mid-field finishes most of the year, with my most disappointing coming at Greenwood RR and the RR in Mellen, races I had done well at the last two years but missed the break big time in both this year. Missing the break at Mellen may have been a good thing as a bunch of riders in the lead pack ended up with busted bikes and bones in a late crash.

In the pack, Omro

Favorite race of the year: Blue Mounds Classic. First time riding it, challenging course but a lot of fun.

New experience: Getting disqualified at the ABD Fall Fling for presumably crossing the center line -- along with 27 other riders. Oh, and hitting a 23 mph average at the WiSport Worlds TT -- not a huge number for most of the people we race with, but a milestone for me.

Here is one of our unpublished photos from the season... and one of the few door prizes I won. The shirt was a tad too small so I gave it to Julie, but not before having some fun with it...

Door prize, Greenwood RR

Pulled the mountain bike down late this summer to get ready for a few cyclocrosse races this fall and found it was sorta fun riding something other than the road (namely off road) for part of the year. Enough so that I plan on hitting a few WORS mountain bike races next year and, road schedule permitting, hope to do a 12-hour MTB race here in Green Bay in May.

Whitewater CX, the photos says it all....

Julie says her highlight from the season is, “I’m still alive. That’s a highlight.”

Aside from that she had a memorable solo win at Blue Mounds (“That was cool”) and enjoyed riding with Jamie Haag and Dave Vogt at Greenwood and Kyle Schmidt at the Chris Kerr Memorial RR in Cameron.

Oh, she also won the women’s Cat. 4 state RR Jersey and was awarded the polka dot climbers jersey for WiSport.

The things you see during the season, Brice Prairie TT

I hope to get her out on her mountain bike this year and hopefully into an MTB race or two. I spent a little time and money this week getting her MTB bike into shape and got her some MTB shoes, so that may be some motivation to hit the trails. She use to be quite the mountain biker.

I happened across this photo a few weeks ago. It was taken at Sugar Bottom near Iowa City, Iowa.I’m the second from the left and Julie is third. The good old days of riding in t-shirts, shorts and tennis shoes (no clips even!). The guy in the foreground is Ron Kane and I’m pretty sure the photo was taken by Jon Ericson.

There’s other stuff that stands out from 2008 (most of it covered in previous posts), but needless to say we had a great year and had a ton of fun. We’re both looking forward to 2009 and the adventure it will bring.

See ya on the road!

So, Julie said my blog last week was too much inside baseball for the general reader (I thought it was important news from our world of citizens racing on the Big Ring Flyers). She apparently wants stories about wizards riding unicorns and photos of the dog being, well, the dog..   (umm, I.... I don't even like unicorns.  Now if it was about vampires, then we'd have something...  and I bet you'd post pics of the dog if she rode a bike...  j.)

There will be no tales of unicorns (or Unitarians for that matter) on this blog. Nor will I reference any Star Trek episodes outside of the original series. That means you Mr. Oxmix (“A Piece of the Action,” Jan. 12, 1968 airdate).

Photos of the dog will be included here (but not this week).   (If I could figure out how to post them without crashing the computer, I would... my skills do not lie in the computer realm... j.)

Anyway, more snow this week and more time on the spin bike. The big news of the week was Friday when I picked up all three of my bikes (plus some CX tires mounted on wheels for my MTB) (more ill-gotten booty... Merry Christmas Nate, now at least I don't have to struggle with what to get you... you already got it.  j.) from their annual tune up at JB Cycle in Howard in the midst of a ... snowstorm (How novel, 30 inches of snow this month. Whoopie. We may actually break down and get a snowblower, the last kids on the block without one).  

I had to get creative fitting the bikes, wheels and tires into the back of the Vue, but with some minor acrobatics (maybe more like simple Yoga) I got everything packed into the car. All my rides should be good to go for the 2009 season, which I’m really starting to look forward too. Ordered up a new Rudy Project helmet for next year as well. Plain white should go a little better with our uniforms than the CSC black, red and white I've used the last three seasons.   (Again, Merry Christmas!  j.)

One of the most noticeable repairs was the replacement of the white bar tape on my Tarmac. It was pretty much gray after 1.75 seasons of riding on it, but it is now a new, brilliant, white. I’m pretty sure that will make me faster next year -- or at least I’ll look a little better as I go off the back.

We happened across a Discovery HD Theater show this afternoon while eating lunch on some Joe Schmoes who won some contest to ride the monster climbs of stage 16 of the 2007 TDF. That got Julie and I talking about some of the memorable climbs from the WiSport series -- the Worlds, Blue Mounds Classic, and even the State RR. We’re looking forward to those warm summer days and challenging climbs... only five or six months away!

That’s about it for this week. Next week we’ll take a look back at the 2008 season (and a 10-year-old photo I dug up recently) and maybe even peek into 2009.

Until then, Happy Holidays!

Things are pretty much falling into a winter-time routine here.

Watch Julie shovel in the morning, go to work, come home and spin two hours a night while (while julie shovels the snow plow droppings) watching Netflix movies or bike or car races (American Le Mans Series, F1, MotoGP) I recorded this summer. Yeah, not real exciting.

The team is in the process of finishing up finding sponsors for next year and designing and purchasing new uniforms for 2009-2011. A few of us have been out looking for backers (and uniform manufacturers) since late July and have managed to pull together some cycling-specific companies as associate sponsors.

Among them: Ritchey: County Cycles; Rudy Project; and DeFeet.

We're pretty excited to have them onboard. Needless to say I think we picked an interesting economic climate to go out looking for sponsors and new uniforms, and we’re pretty happy with the results.

Mama Maria’s and Alwins Towing in Hudson have stayed on as sponsors from previous seasons.

Stay tuned for images of the new uniforms sometime in the next few weeks.

That’s about it from here.

It’s safe to say my road season came to end this week with the foot of snow that fell this week (in little increments).

It was pretty good year and I managed to put on about 1,200 more miles this year than in 2007 and rode a few weeks longer (in both March and November).

Here’s the final tally:

Specialized Tarmac: 3512.8

Specialized Allez (“TT” conversion): 1385.3

Fisher Marlin (MTB/CX): 172.2

That’s a total of 5070.3 miles for the year. I made it goal sometime in September to hit 5K this year. Mission accomplished.

Looking through the results from Jingle Cross last week in Iowa city I ran across a pair of names I recognized from years past. Hmm, Paul Buchanan of Waterloo, Iowa. Wonder if that’s the same Paul who was the goalie on my traveling hockey team when we lived there?

A quick search of his team’s website and a link to his own blog quickly confirmed it was. It was quickly established his sons Carl and Adam were also into the bike scene, namely CX. I played hockey with both guys as well.

Looks like Carl “Da Jackal” has done pretty well in CX and Paul has become a hit with the fans. It was fun to reconnect with those guys after almost a decade. I pulled some old hockey photos this weekend with Carl and Paul in them.

(Carl is third from left in the back row, I'm center in the back row and Paul is in front in the goalie gear -- click photo for full image)

(Nate and Paul leaving the ice at Mason City, April 2000. My last hockey game)

I have been thinking about getting a second pair of MTB wheels to put really thin tires on for CX season next year. Julie of course said I couldn't buy new ones which left me looking for alternatives. I remembered this week we have an early 1990s Diamond Back Topanga hanging in the garage.

I pulled it down today and the wheels look to be in decent shape and can use a little clean up and a new rear cassette (it has a seven-speed cassette right now), so this may be new-bike-idea solved -- if my bike guys says they can make it work.

Other notable news:

Busted my first pedal of the season on the spin bike Thursday night.

Kept my job this week too, despite a corporate wide layoff of about 10 percent of the work force.

That’s a good thing.

Julie said if I didn't have a job I couldn’t race.

Pfffsschhht.

What reality does she live in?

(Did I mention I hate it when MSN makes "improvements" to this service? Things that use to work so well and take no time at all now - posting photos in a blog -- are now multi-step nightmares that take 20-30 min. Good job guys)