Ever want to take a nice road trip to Alaska?  Want to do that on a bike?  The riders in the Texas Atlas 4000 are doing just that.  They are riding 4000 miles in 70 days to raise money and awareness for cancer research.

Wild Basin Fitness is proud to sponsor this event, which kicks-off on June 7 in Cedar Park.  You can join the riders for the first 50 to 70 miles, riding from Cedar Park to Lampasas.  WBF members Nathasha and Dave Collman are helping to organize this event and we'd love to have a team from WBF join the fun.  Go to  www.atlasride.org for more info or to register.

I can't imagine riding 4000 miles, but I have had the pleasure (???) of riding in two multi-day rides.  Last spring, I rode the Get Your Guts In Gear Ride for Crohn's and Colitis (www.ibdride.org).  And this spring, we rode the BP MS 150 from Houston to Austin (www.ms150.org).  Both were incredible experiences and provided loads of "learning opportunities" and humorous anecdotes.  Here's some of what I've learned.

If God had intended for me to ride a bike all day, He would have invented a more comfortable bike seat.  Sitting on a bike all day is uncomfortable.  Sitting on a bike for 3 days is just wrong.  As a rule of thumb, I try to avoid any sport that requires the use of chamois butter on my butt.

Hills are tough, but wind is worse.  Going uphill almost always means going downhill.  And I can always walk up the hill if I have to.  But headwinds are miserable.  I learned this lesson the hard way on the MS150, when there was a steady headwind of 20mph on the entire ride.

Always be sure to actually lock the door on the PortaCan.  Enough said.

Never underestimate the kindness of complete strangers along a long bike route.  From SAG wagons stocked with chocolate to lines of people cheering on riders for the MS150, it can be a humbling experience.

The 3 funniest things on the MS150:  (1) A woman wearing pantyhose under her bike shorts.  That has got to chafe.  (2) A man dressing his wife and braiding her hair in the parking lot before the start of the ride.  This was highly entertaining to certain men in our group.  (3) A man on a giant (and I mean circus-sized giant) unicycle, passing me up.  Twice.  Going up hills.  (I really suck at hills.)

Anyway, good luck to all the riders of the Texas Atlas 4000 Ride. 

Alica

Ever interested in doing a little mountain biking?  See the attached video of WBF member Jim having a little fun on a local trail... 

FYI... There's some PG13 language during a crash or two, so be forwarned...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBreHGOWpfM

Now that we've signed the papers and started spending money, the real fun begins.  And so does the rain.

Anyone that lives in Austin knows that the average annual rainfall invariably falls in about 3.5 days a year.  We are in a constant state of drought, only briefly interrupted by flooding rains.  However, about 12 hours after construction started on the building, Austin became a virtual rainforest.  This had a somewhat detrimental effect on our ability to complete construction.  And no matter how hard we rode Rodney's backend (Rodney being the guy that owned the building), he wouldn't make it stop raining.

Nevertheless, we plodded forward, heartened by the cheers of our charter members, who forked over money to us before the building was even ready.  (Hooray!)  Note that some of these cheers later become less enthusiastic as construction dragged on.

And it did drag on.  So much so that we actually had spin bikes delivered before the flooring was finished.  (Oops, forgot to reschedule the equipment deliveries...)  A few other of our favorite anecdotes related to the construction phase of this endeavor...

As we come upon our second anniversary, it occurred to us that there are many, many stories -- some funny, some not so much -- about how we finally managed to open our doors in Steiner Ranch.  Many of you have heard a few, but many of our members weren't with us during those first few months, so here's the first in a series of articles about how WBF Steiner Ranch was built.

Let me start by saying that Kirk and Julie have been in the fitness business for about 400 dog years.  Both have worked as trainers, instructors, managers, and owners.  I, however, never stepped foot into a gym until my metabolism screeched to a halt at 38.  I had done my 400 years at Dell, retired, and had two little kids at home.  But when Kirk meandered in with a 6 pack of Dos Equis and this bright idea to open a new facility in Steiner Ranch, I jumped in with both (ignorant) feet.

We built spreadsheets, we crunched numbers, we drafted business plans.  ("We" being me.  Anyone that knows Kirk knows that he's more into crunching abs than crunching numbers...)  We interviewed managers, we talked to trainers, we vetted instructors.  ("We" being Kirk.  As I noted above, I'm really not the best person for that job.)  And through a series of late nights (some obscured by Dos Equis and tequila), we decided that if we could just convince everyone in Steiner Ranch and Four Points to join, we'd be money.  So we tweaked the plan, talked to the bankers, and signed the papers.

And then it started to rain.