Someone once said, "In times of peace, prepare for war." Here's Saturday's road ride preparing for war. Raincross & then up Hwy 38. About 90.9 miles, 144 b.p.m. average heart rate.

Sunday
Josh & I had planned a road ride, but when Christie emailed me to tell me that Teri & her husband Jay were going to be in town to ride, I figured it would be the perfect opportunity for most of Team K&N Performance to get together for a ride. We were joined by Trevor, Greg Pleiss, Joy, Toni Zukowski & Templeman. A 9 AM start made me believe that I’d be able to sleep in a little, but when I woke up somewhere around 4 & couldn’t get back to sleep, I got up. Maybe I was excited because I was going to be taking the new cyclocross bike out for the first time. Who knows. After coffee I took Sala out for an hour. I could feel Saturday’s ride in my legs while I was walking the dog around the perimeter of Redlands East Valley HS (REV). Walking the dog was two-fold. In addition to giving Sala some exercise, I was also scoping out a cross course for later this year. REV has a ton of potential, as I’ve mentioned before.

The actual ride was cool. We casually rode Crafton, went down Yikes! & then over to the wash. I skipped the wash fearing a hidden rock would taco my CX wheels. From Greenspot, Trevor, Josh & I rode Lower Workout, while everyone else continued into Redlands with a ride to the Pleiss’ house still ahead. Later that day, I rode into town & had lunch with Denise & Ryder at Jazz n’ Java (where the weirdos hang out). I won’t be heading back to J n’ J any time soon.

Sunday's mtb/cx ride & my ride to lunch.

Supercross & Red Bull’s Last Man Standing
While out riding, we Tivo’d Anaheim SX & Last Man Standing. These are my observations. SX was not nearly as entertaining as entertaining as Last Man Standing. David Knight is a bad-ass. The event, held in Texas about 2 months ago brought back memories (some bad) of Nat’l Enduros, so that part of it was cool. What wasn’t cool was that other than David Knight, Mike Lafferty, Nathan Kanney, Jimmy Lewis, Dudek, Guy Cooper, Fredette, Justin Williamson & 3 or 4 other B-listers, the 80-man field was full of no-name locals. With a field like that, of course guys like Knight & Lafferty are going look so much faster. Nice try Red Bull. Why take a small handful of the world’s best & then match them up against locals? Where the hell was everyone else? And even though Pat Garrahan finished around the top-five, they didn’t mention him once in the entire broadcast. No respect for the G-Brothers, ever. What the hell?

Regardless, Knight is a bad-ass (not shown above). Jimmy was his typical self, stating his strategy was to not begin racing until the night portion of the day-long event, which made the whole deal that much more amusing. I went to sleep Sunday night with flashbacks of the Wickenburg Nat’l Enduro.

That's what I'm talkin' bout

Meanwhile, in Africa...

They killed another motorcyclist last week at Dakar. It’s a bad trend. On a high-note, Chris Blais finished second in yesterday’s stage, so I guess my decision to quit racing motorcycles because I was tired of getting beat by Chris Blais, isn’t so bad if you consider he almost won a stage at Dakar. Did I mention David Knight is a bad-ass?

More reasons why Outside Magazine is a crock
This was something that James, Loren & I often discussed on our travels last year. We all agree that Outside is a watered-down sugar-coated rag that creates lame Top 10 lists, like “Top 10 Places to Ride” or “Top 10 Places to Live.” The bottom line is that everyone in the know, knows that most of their stories are not very factual & many of their Top 10 lists are geared toward weekend warriors. That’s not how we roll. However, with that said, Denise’s dad got me a free subscription to the crappy read through some on-line gambling thing he does. Even though I have little, if any, respect for their editors, I still appreciate the subscription because the advertising & photography inside Outside is top-notch. That, and my options were limited. My choice of free subscriptions were Bicycling, which sucks even worse (sorry Cush) & a long list of other crappy mags.

My February ’06 issue of Outside came yesterday with Bode Miller as the cover boy. Now, anyone who knows me well, knows that I don’t like the cold or snow, but I have the utmost respect for Olympians like Miller so I was a little bit anxious to look through this particular issue. Normally someone like Kelly Slater or Jack Johnson is on the cover (it seems like every month) so seeing Miller on the cover was a welcome change.

I have to admit, the Feb issue is actually pretty good. On page 21, there’s a BFGoodrich tire ad featuring my old Vegas to Reno teammate Larry Roeseler due to his recent four-wheel Baja 1000 win. On page 61 there is a sweet downhill ski shot of Daron Rahlves haulin’ ass down a slope in Chili. When I worked at Honda, Daron was in tight with Dunlop & the Honda Riders Club of America, so I spent some time with the World Cup winner talking about mountain biking in Tahoe & Truckee. Flip back a few to page 51 and here’s where Outside proves to be horrible. The story written by Josh Dean, titled Cool Millions about Action Sports Agent Stephen Astephen is not only poorly written, contrived & horribly exaggerated, it lacks facts. In my past career I ran & worked in the same circles as Astephen. I’m not blaming Astephen for what’s been written here. In fact, if I were him, I’d be embarrassed and pissed at the author. The bottom line is that, author Dean, depicts Astephen as the baby sitter of Travis Pastrana, Chad Reed, BMXers Dave Mirra & Ryan Nyquist, amongst others like snowboarders, skateboarders, etc. Here’s the best part of the whole crappy story: “Pastrana makes several million dollars a year flipping motorcycles instead of hamburgers, and for that he can thank Astephen…” He actually wrote that. Then the author goes on to write about a moment when Astephen pulls Pastrana aside at last summer’s Dew Action Sports Tour to give him some riding tips before the event. First of all, Pastrana was in the million dollar mark long before Steve Astephen came around & second of all, I don’t recall anyone ever giving Pastrana riding tips except for The Man. I know this for a fact. I was there. About the only thing that the author did get right is his depiction of Pastrana as an idiot - a rich idiot in his defense.

Dean goes on to talk about Astephen’s bread & butter being motocross, freestyle, snowboarding, skateboarding & BMX and how sports like mountain biking, kayaking & rock climbing are a waste of his time. Unfortunately, I can appreciate & understand that, however, the author totally ignores the fact that Astephen also represents a handful of sport bike & Superbike racers like Jake Zemke, who happens to have some pretty meaty sponsors himself. On the flip side, Astephen also represented young Tony Meiring & despite all Meiring's potential, the super agent of discussion failed to get the poor kid even an A-ride in ’05. That’s Outside Magazine for you.

The inside story – the story that Outside Magazine won’t tell you is that Astephen depends & relies on the manufacture’s PR Agencies like Vreeke & Associates, Freeman/McCue & Paine PR to get his clients ink & TV time. He’s not the one-stop shop that Outside paints him out to be. In fact yours truly use to call Jake & Tony directly when I needed something. Astephen was a road block.

What was my point? Oh yeah, Outside Magazine remains to be horrible & it's damn shame that writers like Josh Dean can get work from other publications like Rollingstone and Inc. I guess it goes to show that you can't believe anything you read, except for this blog. Being a whistle blower is hard work.

Speaking of outside, I found Aarron. He's no longer MIA.