Bikin' Broads Maintenance Skillz Clinic (Saturday Night)

Hey y'all! Sorry it's taken me so long to get this entry written...but here I am and here we gooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

We had a FANTASTIC turnout at night 1 of the Skillz Clinic put on by TORC/The Clean Machine! This was the portion of the Clinic at which the parts of the bike were sort of de-mystified for many of us...Tamara went over each part of the bike from wheel to wheel and explained its purpose in life...from presta vs schrader valves, hydraulic to cable actuated disc brakes to rim brakes, high gear to easy gear and where the chain is on the cassette or front chain ring...and so much more. And then it was hands on fun time for the chicks...and hands on it was, folks! Men, if it turns you on to see a woman working on a bike, you'd a been a horn dog that night! Bikes on stands, women turning bikes onto handlebars/seats, women with tire levers, grease under their nails, fingering rear derailleurs...whew! The estrogen in the room was overpowering!!

Oh - and whoever picked out the beer and snacks - GOOD CHOICES! I can't remember the name of the beer I had, but I know it was a blueberry wheat beer and it just freakin' rocked! There was smoked gouda, brie, swiss; pears, apples, grapes; hummus and the most adorable little pitas (said like a woman, right? :P)...fantastic and classy food.

Here are some pics from that night:










And thank you mucho to my good friend, and guest for the weekend, Daniel, for taking all these wonderful photos (except the valve photos - those are photos from the interwebs). You can see the rest of them on my flickr account.

I will post part 2 - the SKILLZ part of the clinic later today.

Bikin' Broads Women's Mountain Biking Skillz Clinic

And I'm freaking EXCITED!!!

Here's some linkage to the N&O blog and some linkage to the Skillz Clinic page on the TORC website.

Cool that we got written up in the regional Triangle newspaper's, the News and Observer, blog...and even cooler that Fat Chick Biker is writing it up here! LOL Just kidding. I'm attending, maybe taking some photos and bringing along a friend too! He's from Northern Canada and is a photographer, so he'll be taking pics more than I will, since I will be biking my ass off...learning how to fall (hopefully) and some other skillz.

I wish I had pink stuff to show my womanly pride...someday I'll have my RIDES LIKE A GIRL stuff...someday. But for now, I'll stick with my silver men's GT Avalanche, name of Gustav. He works for me...works me out. ;)

So I hope some other Bikin' Broads see this and come. It's gonna be fun. We'll have two groups from what I understand - a beginner and an advanced. My hope is that we can learn and participate in some of the advanced activities (if we can...I'm totally a beginner).

Anyway...here's to learning bike maintenance and having a wine/cheese treat. And no...there will be no whine with my cheese. :P