Being absent from this here web-log for the past few weeks (and scarce for the past few months) has been an exciting, but lonely time for me. Lonely because I truly enjoy chatting with you fine people, but exciting because I have been living life on the rivet, to a great extent, for the past couple of months since taking the job at Bike Magazine. Learning the ins and outs, and trying to live up to the high standards left to me by my predecessors has proved no easy task.

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

As I write this, I am at flight level 360, or somewhere thereabouts, staring out the window at a nearly full moon, heading for BRU. That’s Brussels for those of you who do not have the entire list of airport indicators memorized. If you are reading this site in the first place, I think it is safe for me to assume you know the reason why a person like me would be headed to Belgium for Easter Sunday.

Yep. The Ronde van Vlaanderen.

As it turns out, the fine people at the magazine corporation saw fit to give the staff of Bike an extra assignment; make another magazine—just one issue—about whatever you want. We chose to do one about pavement, instead of dirt.

So hang tight sports fans, because for the next few days I’ll be coming at you direct from the place where it all started. And yes, as a matter of fact, I have been promised 6 days of rain. You can almost smell the fritjes, can’t you?

Is this on?

I've been gone for a while, but I have a good excuse. A little more than a month ago, I was offered the position of Editor-in-Chief at Bike Magazine. I accepted the offer, packed a few things and headed south. Bike's Editor, Lou Mazzante, decided it was time to fly the coop, but stuck around until the 19th of February, in order to put his final issue of the magazine to bed. On February 22, I took over the reigns.

My head has been spinning since I walked into the office for the very first time. Bike is a very strong magazine, so I have my work cut out for me. But it's gonna be cool.

It was an assignment for my school newspaper that first got me interested in cycling. Once I'd gotten a bike and started riding a bit, it was a magazine first began to fuel my daydreams about becoming a bike racer. I guess you could say that my life in cycling has come full circle.

If you're a hardcore road racer or cross-country mountain bike racer, you might not have given Bike a look. Racing has never been a focus of the magazine, but that is fine by me—I've already used up all of my angry pedal-strokes. But if you like beautiful photography, and stories about some of the other things that can be done on a bike, check it out.

As I come up to speed, I might be a little slow here on this weblog, but I will still be here.

Cheers.

Last week I posted a wee update that hinted at a top-secret, magazine-sponsored mission that had me in the deep, dark and beautiful Oregon woods dodging poison oak. It was an attempt to cram a little more fitness into my body so that I could successfully pilot the Sh*t Bike to the finish line of the All-Mountain World Championships in Downieville, CA.

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