Geritt's Blog

My Blog is alive!

gerittb — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:37:19 +0000

Wow… so much has been going on since this blog was updated!
I won the Gravity East Title last year for 2010 and then I am still working on my cruiser! My FJ40 is looking pretty awesome.!
Although I dont have much pictures of it right now as my computer broke down also.. so I have a new one.

I have a job working at 2 Men and a Truck… I know.. its so glamorous… But I will say it has kept me strong during this Winter and I have only gained a little muscle mass.. The last Winter i gained over 20lbs! Thats makes it that much harder to ride bikes the next year.

I have been Skiing a ton also this year! I have become a Ski addict now. The freedom of making your own trail and pretending you are racing it makes skiing so much fun! You can go so fast down these steep slopes and still feel in total control!
We recently went up to Snowshoe WV where I went skiing with Jeff Braswell , Ryan Bloch and Karl Peters..
It was a good time!.. I leave again to go up North on the 15th!.. going to be amazing!

i also have a girlfriend now!! I met her one year while waiting for a movie Ben and I walked into REI outdoor store and I was looking at bikes and she came up to me and asked if she could help me!.. She admits to now that she knew who I was.. funny.. I think my heart skipped a beat when I saw her as she was my perfect girl.!! Sometimes you just know..!We had since been friends on Facebook chatting here and there for about a year and then we started to flirt a little bit on Facebook.. Then we finally went on a date and now she is living with me!.. pretty quick but we think so alike its scary..

So this Summer is coming up and I have had some offers to race again but with how this Bike industry is going every year is just disappointing and gets worse every time… I’m almost not even interested to be honest to race DH anymore.. I wold much rater have a good trail bike ride with friends! I will however do a couple of races this year like US Open and National Champs but everything else is up in the air..
I’m more focused on making money this year rather than racing and losing money…
I may be back though some day when I have made some money up..! who knows..
Racing will always be apart of me and I don’t think I would ever stop really..!

Thats about it for now though.. I have been looking into real estate investing and have been taking Financial education classes.. I feel that if I had to spend money on an education why not something that can help me invest.. these are skills that everyone should learn and nobody does know to much about.
We will see how it goes! so far I have just started up a small company and am trying to put together my first deal! hopefully it will work out.. at least I know now that its possible to make money without spending your own first!

Ok got to run.. Cheers

2009 US Open

gerittb — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:05:54 +0000

Good weekend!… Great time riding with friends and having a killer race!

This year was a good turn out! Lots of top ranking pros came out for the race so it was going to be competitive.
The track was in good condition all weekend with the exception of it being a little more rough from the previous year.

Friday practice was great.. Like usual first run on the track you think to yourself..” I’m going slow to get all my lines!” but in the end you know all your lines from previous years and they come back to you so quickly that you end up going way faster than you had planned.. luckily no crashes this weekend!.. almost though which counts I guess.. lets you know that either you aren’t comitting all the way or you are going fast enough.. most of the time I like to think of it that I’m not comitting all the way.
After DH practice there was the Giant Slalom which most racer kind of thought it would be lame… including me..! considering it wasn’t a slalom race.. it was racing on flat turns almost to see who can get the fastest time.. so a lot of racer were asking for their money back but of course they were not doing refunds!… Anyways I ended up racing it since I paid for it already and I think because of my mind set of “I don’t really care”.. I ended up killing the track.. which is kind of the mind you want to race on.. keeps you relaxed and focused.
I ended up qualifying in 4th behind Sam hill.. which was pretty good!.. My bike was hooking up!! My Duro tires that I put on was surprisingly the best tires I could have chosen for that track because I litteraly couldn’t get them to break loose! was insane and actually turned out to be a lot of fun!.

Saturday the DH qualies was underway. I was a little nervous because I knew the track was a little wet from some thunder showers and since the track was a little rough I had to just follow my lines and hope I stay on track.. I ended up 10th whch isn’t to bad since I had a pretty crap run.. I made some silly line mistakes and almost had crash out the first woods section with one foot off in the air almost sliding out!… so I knew I could do the top 10 which has always been a goal since I have placed top 10 every year since 2005…
The Giant Slalom went very well! I ended up 4th every run actually.. and missed edging Lopes out by 2/100th of a second!! I know where I could have made that up to… dangit!! But I still managed to edge out Eric Carter who beat me in last years National Slalom title in Vermont!.. so that was awesome to beat a guy I have looked up to since day one.!

Sunday it was game on! I felt pretty good in my practice runs. After practice I had a good nap… The heat can really take it out of you here..! I was out!.. we had some crazy thunderstrom though that closed the track down and the racing for about 45 minutes which kind of sucked really since I had tires that worked really well in the dry conditions but not so good in the wet rocky type riding.. so I made some last minute cuts to my tire that would hopefully help with traction in the rock sections… I think they helped a bit..?? My run went pretty well.. not a great run as my mind was to relaxed I think.. I made some line changing choices through some rock gardens that would be slower but less of a risk and I kept pretty consistent the whole way down.. So I ended up with a 7th which was good…! I wasn’t the top USA rider like I have done here every year but I got a top 10 which is keeping my top 10 streak going now!..

In the end we had a great after party at the Vernon inn with my buddies Jeff, Doug and Karl dressing up in their usual fashion and scaring out all the top international pros.. so funny!! We ended up riding the next day all hungover.. good times!
In the end I made $250 from the Slalom which I’m really glad I raced… it was a rush and a true FUN event..!

Cheers guys.. see you at the next one!

2009 Sea Otter

gerittb — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:43:36 +0000

1st Race over! Its always a trip after a long Winter break to come back to Sea Otter for the first race of the season.. its like a shock to the system when all of a sudden you are put back into the stresses of racing and getting bikes together! I always seem to have bikes to build every year no matter how hard I try to get bikes early…it never works out..
Anyways this year my bikes look!… pretty good I must say but they are definitely on the border of being a chicks bike… but I think they are just a little Metro Sexual that’s all!
Slalom bike looks really good!
The Slalom wasn’t to bad this year. They had changed it a little bit from previous years but due to the hot and dry weather we were having the berms were filling up with soft sand and my tire cuts which work really well in the muddy terrain of the South East didn’t help to much in the soft to hard loose terrain and I was struggling to keep under control a lot of the time.. so in the end I clipped a hay bail with my knee and failed to qualify.. bugga.

Down hill was no better really!
After not qualifying for Slalom I was determined to do well for the DH and that morning I had the bike feeling pretty good! I also felt really strong from all the training I have been doing with Carmichael Training.
I was at the top warming up and I felt good in my little sprints to get the legs warmed up for some serious beatings.
I was lined up in the gate.. 3..2..1 and I was off!!!…. Bang! chain is gone.. maybe I had to much horse power there because for the first time I had managed to break a brand new SRAM chain.. I was pretty dissapointed and had a really easy ride to the bottom.. nothing special.. So all together I had a very boring Sea Otter this year! Maybe next year I will do better. Its just never a good thing when you are on a super tight budget like I’m on to spend so much for a race you didn’t get to race.
Oh well you can never let these things bother you.
We will see you at the next race..! probably US Open right now!

See ya

Cheers

Updated to 2009.. Training and working.

gerittb — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 13:58:05 +0000

well it was about time to get the year rolling!
Started my training in November this year.. I hope to be at least the strongest racer out there.. maybe to 2nd to Brian Lopes…
Been feeling strong already! Colin from Carmichael has been beating on me with the strength workouts so thats good!.
Sponsors are coming together now.. a bit has changed I must say with some of my sponsors since a lot of companies are hurting for money.
I’m on a new Tire company so I’m pretty excited about that.. It gives me a chance to design my own tire in the future!
Right now I’m still hurting on my budget still and its looking like I will be keeping to the East Coast again… : ( although the money is great I wish we had more racers coming out to them.
I just find it hard that even with a National Champion title I still can’t find any decent money sponsors… just a bit frustrating since I’m working and training and then trying to get my other things inline.. having a couple of hobbies doesn’t help either…

Anyways I hope everything goes well this year… I’m sure to be stronger than last year thats for sure! so that any race I do enter I can just out perform the other riders..

Later!

Update Morewood Bike Park

gerittb — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:50:32 +0000

Well it is the end of the month and the Excavator is done and gone and I think I have everything in place!? I hope so… That tool can move mountains of dirt with so much ease and by the time the month came to an end I was able to crawl up steep mountains and basically grab onto big rocks and pull myself up! Crazy… I’m missing it already…

Any ways now the hard work comes of shaping and packing everything down! so far I have had some local kids coming over who are super keen on riding bikes and are doing a pretty good job of smoothing and packing and all I need to do is touch up and tweak here and there..

I tell ya the Winter weather does no help whatsoever… My big set of jumps are still soaking wet and muddy so still waiting to hit those up again!
I’m expecting to get some people over this weekend to help with the packing and shaping as I still need to do the entire Slalom track and I need to build the rest of the DH track.. its all going to take some time but it will get done eventually…
Anyways here are some more pics!

Enjoy

Cheers

http://www.vimeo.com/2416439 Other video coming soon

Morewood Bike Park.. under construction

gerittb — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:15:42 +0000

The Morewood Bike Park has been started! We have the excavator for a month and may end up buying it later on.
Chris Herndon came over yesterday to help with the excavator as I’m still a novice.
The jumps we have built so far are 3 huge jumps! Massive troughs and long big lips!
It is quite spectacular to see them as they stand… built out of a mountain side they look just beautiful!
Should have those first 3 up and running by today and then we are still debating over what to do at the end of it?

Here are some pictures of the work that was done in a day!

Cheers…

MM Festival 2008

gerittb — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:11:27 +0000

MM Festival 2008 was Fantastic!.. we had all the guys there Jeff, Karl, Ryan, Chris, Doug and myself all came up on Thursday and the first day we rode Moto all day long in super tight trails out in the forests of Windrock TN.
I think we may have ridden close to 50 Miles of single track!… It was pretty funny because I was the first one to arrive at Dougs place and we went off to the Trails and met up with the rest of the guys out there.
Anyways we had this other guy who who we met up with to go riding and we were all hanging out by the trucks when Karl and Jeff showed up and of course Jeff made a scene.. he showed up in Dungarees and a mexican face mask! We weren’t sure what the other guy was thinking at that time… it was pretty funny.

We rode Moto for the 2 days straight! 2nd day was Epic! it rained all day and in some of those tight woods we were struggling getting up some of those hills…it was a major effort!
That night was what MM was all about! We all put on our most… “fancy clothes” and we went out to the strip club!! We all had wigs on and some crazy silly outfits on! We all looked like we all came from some Kiss band from hell!!.. Chris looked like a Reno 911 cop and Jeff I guess looked like a …… mexican wrestler from Satans den!… I looked like a crack head Surfer with my wig… it was pretty funny watching peoples reactions to us as we walked into Walmart…. most of everyone just laughed uncontrolable and one woman thought we may be some kind of murders or something and called security but fortunately security knew we were just dressed up… Then off to the strip club!!

Third day of MM some of the guys felt they hadn’t had enough moto so they went out for another full day of it!! Crazy… Karl and I went to ride DH and we met up with a buddy of ours there and rode some of the trails and they were a little slippery with the leaves falling now.
Windmill trail was great! they have done some changes here and there.
That night we went to the 12 hour race to heckle riders as they went by but we ended up chilling by the camp fire and drink free foamy beer all night… I had a ton of fun… thats all I’m going to say… we ended the night going back to the strip club and supporting single moms… Its always fun to see some of the weird people that come to these places!! One guy thought he was so cool and had sunglasses on and would always come up when people came up and would say that this is how you do it!! and would shoot probably about $20- $50 , $1 bills into the air… it was probably half his monthly sallary he spent..

We ended the weekend with some DH runs at Windrock which was great and so much fun!! It was almost super chilled out and a great way to end the weekend….
I would say that this years MM Festival was the best one so far… Good times and good memories!

Cheers!

Collegiate training in Boone

gerittb — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:57:17 +0000

This past week was the first full weekend of riding that I have had in a long time! Chris Herndon and I went for a 2 hour XC ride up in Pisgah national forest along with fast XC collegiate rider Tristan Cowie.
It was such a perfect day that I thought I would need to blog all about it. The leaves are finally turning bright yellow and red and the weather was just perfect not to cold and not to hot! It was sunny all day long.
The only thing that kind of put a hold on the fast downhill sections were (in Family Guy terms) ” Leafers”
These are out of towners who come up to the mountains to watch the leafs turn their bright colours of red and yellow… so we were always on the watch out for people hiking slowly. Amazingly we managed not to piss any of the hikers off.

The XC ride was great and after a great meal at the Hawg Wild BBQ spot we went to this secret pump track that Chris made up and is local only! It was pretty awesome!! it was one of Chris Herndons many great tracks that he had built and was shaped in a almost hexagon!?… very cool and made for some great line choices!

The next day I got up early picked up Chris and headed off to Banner Elk where the Collegiate nationals are to be held this coming weekend.
Chris had spent a number of days building and working on a new Slalom track for the race.
We had a ton of College riders who all came out to train on the new slalom track.
I brought out with me the Free Lap Timing system that everybody was pretty happy about!…
At first none of them were sure how it would help them but slowly they all started to notice the difference that it made for them so it made me feel good that I had somehow contributed towards some possible wins!
Chris and myself had a couple of races just to inspire them to go fast… I had fun just scrubbing the one big hump into the big berms! so sick…

So ya it was a good weekend of riding and so far been the only good weekend of harder riding since my shoulder injury!.

Check out the pics… there aren’t a lot but some good ones.

Cheers….

Preparing for the Meth Mouth Festival Foolery!…

gerittb — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:48:15 +0000

I think this may be some of the best photoshoping I have ever done…..

We are super Pals!…. except Ryan…. we just have our way with him…