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Long time between posts.... I've been mostly posting things on the forums and it's so easy that I forget to come one here to spread news.

blah blah blah. Vino blah blah blah, "The Chicken" blah blah blah Astana blah blah blah horrible blah blah blah will kill cycling blah blah blah blah blah

Now, this is the real news. The ToC is coming to Modesto! Stage 3 will start in Modesto and go to San Jose. I'm really really hoping that this will include a trip through Del Puerto Canyon and onto the top of Mount Hamilton. That would be a kick ass stage and go right through our backyard.... literally. As soon as I hear about the official route, I'll post it on the forum.

Couldn't go, I was camping with the family along the NorCal coast. Lots of cool looking road bike tourning along the highway but that's for another time. If you're interested, lots of pictures of the gathering are being posted up on mtbr.

Maybe it was never gone, but there looks like a good weekly ride has started up again at Dry Creek. I'm going to make it out there this Tursday. Get the info.

After the races a bunch of us took advantage of the lifts and rode around the mountain. I had two bikes on this trip. My Blur and Mavrick John's Crazy 8. The first day I spent all day on the Blur. I was worried that I might not have enough travel to eat up the bumps and rocks on the Northstar trails but it did fine. I just had to work the bike and pick my lines. One the last run of the day I had a freak puncture on a new tire.

I was riding and I heard a pop and then a fwap fwap fwap. I thought I had snapped a spoke and stopped to find a stick stuck in the tire. I pulled it out and was was shocked to find that it was as blunt as a stick can be and still poke through the rubber. About an inch of that thing was stuck in.

The day after the races we spent the day just riding around the mountain for fun. This time I rode the Crazy 8 all day. I also got a chance to shoot a little video. The hard part is actually stopping to shoot since it's so much fun to just keep riding.

It's a compliation of 4 or 5 trails, mostly Big Trees, Flame Out, Woods, and Sticks and Stones. I really need to try to get a helmet cam mount the next time I shoot.

Stage 2 had a fantastic ending with Robbie McEwen coming frow way back to take the sprint. Here's an interview with Robbie on Youtube.

Fred and I got up early and rode the Lyon's Res area again on Saturday. The goal that day was to ride the new singletrack we discovered a few weeks ago at the bottom of Pinball. This required that we had to ride down Pinball to get to it. I hadn't ridden Pinball in about a year and Fred was never a big fan of it to begin with. I have to admit, I'd had better times on Pinball. I just couldn't get any flow going. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the previous 2+ hours of riding we did before we got to Pinball, maybe I just didn't have it that day, but Pinball wore on me. But the new section at the bottom was fun.... too bad I had to ride Pinball to get to it.

I think it just might be better to ride up the bottom of Pinball to get to the new singletrack. Hmmmm. I never thought about that before.

This is opening weekend at Northstar and people are off to try the new trails. After being closed all last year, there supposed to be a bunch of new additions. Well, I've never been, so today I'm packing up some bikes and heading for Tahoe. I'll bring back pictures and videos.

Have you been? The Trogspace Forums have been slowly growing. I think I finally got control of the bulk of the SPAMMERS that were posting adds for pharmacuticals and porn. I used to get 5 or 6 a day, now I've been without for a week. It's only been a couple of months but it's getting there.

It's just a week away and a few of us were picking our favorites at the bike shop the other day. I joined in on the hopes that Vino put in a good Tour while others were pushing for the Cali boy Levi. Mostly, everyone just wanted a good race and we're all pretty tired of the drug scandals. Yeah, they're doped up, now let them race.

Everyone is doped up, all the sports are doped up, name one that isn't. I just want a great July of racing. Is it selfish? Maybe, but the people I've talked to are just tired of it all.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a cowork who is in a wheelchair. We were talking about wheelchair DHer's and the documentary Murderball and the like and he explained it to me this way. A lot of my friends like to do crazy stuff in the chair because they're like, "What's the worst that can happen to me? End up in a wheel chair? Pfffft."

You know how I like to post weird youtube bike videos.... so here's another one.

Dennis/Ogre has made a Google Earth file of the trails we've been riding up around Hwy 108. As always, it's been a work in progress but you can use it to compare it to know maps and give yourself an idea of what is available.

Had a great ride around Lyon's Res. again. I'm waiting for some gps info to be uploaded to explain where we ended up but the biggest discovery was an large section of singletrack to add to the bottom of Pinball.

Went to go visit the SWD Racing guys and the 2nd Corral Hollow Downhill Race. Just hung out for a little bit, took a couple pictures.

Even one of the magic exploding wheel. How a rim breaks like this, I really don't know but when those DH guys run hard, they run hard.

It's not in the 100's yet, hell, it's not even in the 90's yet, I hope it stays this way for a while.

What happened to the days when OLN would broadcast each stage? That was the life. Now I had to follow it online or the weekly broadcasts on VS. What made it especially difficult it was that my TiVo never recorded the boadcast. Ugh...

So I really didn't get to follow the Giro this year. All I really know is that DeLuca won, and Petacchi kicked ass this year.

Most Trogs I know are beer drinkers but here's something for the high society Trogs. Either way, you shouldn't drink alone, and I bet that guy can fit on a beer bottle if you really tried.... or maybe a keg tap.

A few of us Trogs went down to explore more of the Lyon's Lake area. Boy did we explore, not only that, we found.

An interesting report from Finch at MBTB, looks like there was some streaking going on. Link, semi SFW.

And a special thanks to all the those that are serving or have served. We appreciate it.

It's coming together. I'm still having problems with the old server that most of you won't notice but it prevents me from doing some stuff to completely update all the old site and getting things loaded.

There is a classic old school mtbr gathering in a couple of weeks. Downiville, June 8-10. It was a few years ago that a bunch of Trogs decided to check out one of these mtbr 'gatherings' at Downiville and the rest is trog/mtbr history.

I got some reports from the weekend Bike Festival in Modesto. Pro Service Cyclery had a nice welcome sign for Trogs.

That's really really cool. Don't forget to visit Pro Service Cyclery if you get the chance.

I was all ready to go to Modesto. I was going to ride from home to watch the races. Was dressed and was just checking the air in the tires on my bike when I noticed a big tear in the tire and just started cussing. I ended up driving to Turlock to get a couple new tires from Gary.

The SWD Racing forums section has been added to the Trogspace Forums. I have a feeling it will be a really active section of the forums since he's got a really big following and one day after I added the section he has at least 3 guys posting from his crew. Steve is REALLY good advocate for the sport and spends a lot of time promoting and supporting racing.

Another thing I want to expand on the forum is the bike shop sections. I already have a section for Cycle Masters in Turlock and as soon as other Trog friendly bike shops contact me, I'll set something up for them.

I'm still working on it... not everything is back yet. The archives and pictures are gone for the moment, they will be back.

I'm working on adding a forums section. It's kind of up at the moment but I still need to add sections to it. If you want, go ahead and play with it now. You can even suggest possible sections that need to be added.

Still working on it. The forum is very raw at the moment, I have a lot of formating to do, but you should be able to register and create an account for yourself.

I can see future sections for local bike clubs, and teams, ride announcement, general mountain bike and road sections, maybe even local shops can have a section so they can answer customer questions and even announce specials deals.