Water Bottles... Brackish Stuff. But Drinkable Edition.

Okay, fine. I'll write some. Rather than bore you with two weeks of details as the foot/ankle tendonitis attack subsided (it hurt so I bitched... then I iced it... then I bitched about it for two hours... then I iced it... then I laid there...) I just laid off the writing. But just because my cycling was at a stop for a few weeks, doesn't mean the rest of the world was at a stop. No, I'm not riding again yet; soon I think but not today. Yet still, stuff is going on. Stuff you may laugh about. Or cry about, I don't know. Depends on you.

-------------------------------------------------

For one thing, Mexican police have caught the official "stewmaker" for a big Mexican drug cartel. No, he's not a saucier. It has nothing to do with mole or bearnaise. What the stewmaker does, apparently, is dissolve the bodies of the people the druglord has killed in a big vat of acid. The one they just captured figures he's disposed of a couple hundred people that way, more or less.

I don't even want to know where he's been dumping the "stew."

Sure, that's surprising. But the most surprising part was his companion when he was arrested. According to the CNN article, he was arrested with "a minor female who said she was contracted for a social event."

Just let that one sink into your head for a minute. "Contracted for a social event." I'm guessing the social event wasn't whack-the-pinata.

-------------------------------------------------

More great news: Daphny van den Brand, one of my favorite female cyclocrossers, wrapped up the last World Cup 'cross race of the season in Milan with a win. The ineffable (some would argue eminently effable) Ms. van den Brand led from the start, and used superior technical riding skills to take the win. She's not a powerhouse, but she is having a great season so far and has mad skillz, so she should do well at Worlds, which are being held at Hoogerheide [cough while you say it to pronounce it correctly], a somewhat technical course. If you aren't yet a fan of Ms. van den Brand, you should check out her website. I'm pretty sure it's safe for work... she's a dirty girl, but not *that* kind of dirty girl.



------------------------------------------

In other good news - Jon finished building up my Redline Monocog Flite. You may remember we discovered the rear stays were bent, and something had gone utterly awry in the track forks, the backward-facing slots that do the same work that dropouts do, except the slot faces straight backwards instead of down. The track fork problem was apparently relatively common in some of the lower-end Monocogs, and Redline very graciously replaced the frame with a 2009 model.

Now here's the cool part. The old frame was this kinda-nasty North Atlantic-in-Summer blue color - tinged with just enough green to be icky, but not cool-icky like Surly's Bean Green. Just icky. The new frame is this raging brown metalflake with a touch of purple in it, and sublime red logos. For a fairly basic, mass-produced frame it is a damn fine looking thing. This is a stock photo of the Moncog Flite frame, and you can see it's pretty but the picture doesn't do it justice. It's stunning to look at in real life.


The more I ride Redlines (my cross bike is their high end scandium Conquest Team) the more I appreciate them as a corporation; they make good stuff at a great price and stand behind their bikes. After my recent experiences with this bike and the 'cross bike, if I was looking for a crit bike that would get used hard and put up wet, I'd have to consider their R760 (butted 6061 aluminum w/t carbon seat stay). I've seen whole bikes going for under $1000, with 105 specs. Throw on an Ultegra or SRAM shifter, and you'd be in business. My sights are set on getting a wicked nice steel custom within the next couple years - maybe an Indy Fab - but a bike like that is too nice to beat the crap out of in crashfest Cat IV crits and winter training. Something like that Redline might be just the ticket.