Summer arrived Saturday, so did a series of lightning storms in NorCal. We haven’t seen rain since it seems like the 7th year of Bush’s presidency, so things are a little dry around these parts.

The paper arrived Monday morning a the headline about 842 Fires Burning in Northern California. Makes for a great sunrise and sunset, but air quality concerns have kept the natives off their bikes for about a week now. And that make us cranky.

Here’s a bird’s eye view of the carnage (those are not clouds):

And one that graphically shows the bigger blazes:

Colin (our engineer) and Tom (our tall guy) are in China, enjoying better air quality that we are back here on the ranch. A typhoon rolled through last weekend and cleaned things up nicely for their arrival.

Yes, they’re over there to button up the last items on the Tranny, and a bunch of other stuff. We’ll report if there’s anything notable.

Ciao for now.

–Hack Ibis

$37,505

As many of you know, we held a little fundraiser over 9 days that ended Saturday (the first day of summer 2008). The fundraiser benefited the LAF, who has been very helpful to a friend of Ibis who has cancer. A $5 raffle ticket bought you a ticket, the grand prize being a brand new Ibis SilkSL road bike with full Dura Ace group (generously donated by Shimano).

Here are the results, by the numbers:

• 1234 people entered the raffle.
• We raised $37,505 for the LiveStrong Challenge in 9 days.
• More than 100 people donated $5 — the cost of one raffle ticket.
• More than 100 people donated $100 or more.
• The average donation was $30.
• One person donated $500.
• The person who won the bike worked an extra shift at his job at a Seattle restaurant in order to be able to afford to donate $100.
• Bicycling.com, BikeRadar.com, and Bike Snob NYC — three of the most popular bike destination sites on the Web — all linked in to the contest.

This went way, way beyond our expectations.

Our friend Elden Nelson, creator of The Fat Cyclist is married to Susan who is fighting a particularly nasty recurring bout of breast cancer. Elden said to me in an email yesterday: “Early in 2007, Susan found out that her breast cancer had come back and had metastasized. It has come back with a vengeance, with tumors in her bones (ribs, hips, and pelvis) lungs, liver, and spine.”

Elden continued: “But then, in May ‘08, Susan suddenly lost the ability to do simple things like tie a bow, drive a car, or walk without falling. The cancer had gone to her brain. Not just one or two tumors, either. Dozens. All over the place.”

Bear in mind that despite all this, Elden wanted the raffle proceeds to go to LAF, not to the Nelson family. They have good health insurance and wanted the Foundation to receive the proceeds so they could continue to help folks in need.

I’m amazed at the Nelson family, what they are fighting and how generous the can be in spite of all this. And I’m totally amazed at the generosity of the Ibis folk out there who have graciously donated. Says a lot about a lot of people out there. I should also mention the generosity of the readers of The Fat Cyclist, who also donated in huge numbers.

A bit about our winner.

Our winner is Matt from Seattle. Congratulations Matt! He’s got a blog apparently, and already wrote about his great surprise he got last Saturday. I guess Matt saw the raffle and bought $100 worth of raffle tickets. That was a good decision it turns out.

Once again, thanks to everyone who donated.

People, you’ve outdone yourselves. Our humble little raffle is over and it’s a success beyond our wildest dreams. Here is the final tally from Elden “Fatty” Nelson.

1234 different people bought tickets, with total donations at $37,505.00.

We used www.random.org to select a winner: Matt from Seattle is a very lucky man. Late Friday he donated $100 to the LAF, getting him 20 tickets: #7223 – 7242, which includes #7232, the winning number. I’m guessing that’s the best $100 he’s ever donated.

So congratulations to Matt, but also to all of you who ponied up for a very worthy cause. It says a lot about all of you and we appreciate that.

We had hoped to raise $10,000 maybe. But early in the week it became evident that we’d go beyond that and maybe hit 20K. We had a late week surge and the number speaks for itself.

We’ll tell you a little more about Matt when we hear back from him.

As of Friday morning, the numbers looked like this:

Number of people who have donated so far: 1110

Amount raised so far: $33,845

Average donation amount: $30

Number of people who donated $5: 118

Number of people who donated $100 or more: 78

Number of people who donated $500: 1

More to come soon, but we just wanted to say a big hearty THANK YOU!

Scot

This is the part where we try to give back a little bit.

Susan Nelson, who is the wife of “Fat Cyclist” Elden Nelson and a friend of Ibis is going through some hard times. She’s battling a recurrence of breast cancer that has now metastasized (to her brain). Elden has been doing various things to raise money to help Susan with her fight, and also raise awareness about breast cancer.

The family (yes, they have young kids) has received invaluable support from the Lance Armstrong Foundation during her treatment. To that end, they are trying to give back to the foundation that has been so helpful to them.

We’ve agreed to help out, by donating a brand spankin new Silk SL road bike for a raffle being held this week. Yep, that’s right, THIS WEEK. We’re doing the drawing next Saturday, June 21st. Longest day of the year. Or shortest day of the year if you’re reading this Down Under.

The raffle will be held in conjunction with Fatty’s Triathlon, an event held near the Nelson single-wide in Alpine UT (not too far from Salt Lake). Don’t be intimidated by the Tri word, the events are mountain bike riding, natural water slide sliding and brat eating. Tickets are $5 each, you don’t need to be present to win, and if you’re off in some far corner of the planet, we’ll ship the bike to you (but we won’t pay your customs fees).

Here’s what the bike looks like all built up and purty

The Bike is a Silk SL Dura-Ace WITH Dura-Ace SL wheelset (not pictured that way here).
I ride these myself in the tubless configuration and they are SWEET!!

That’s right our friends at Shimano are throwing down too. They’re supplying us with a full Dura-Ace kit for this bike AND throwing in a set of the oh so nice Dura-Ace SL wheels. I ride these. I like them. I think you will too.

Please head on over to Fatty’s blog entry about the raffle, read about it, then pull the trigger and click on over to the donate page (note, as of this morning, the donate page didn’t yet have a mention of the raffle). One thing I want to note, there were already >$11K of donations in this fund before we started this. Anything above and beyond the 11K number is money attributed to this raffle. This will help you gage not only your chances of winning, but also what a good deed you all are doing.

As of 7 am this morning, the announcement Elden made at 10PM last night on his blog generated an extra $3100 worth of donations. UPDATE: As of noon, over 5K was raised. Thank you people, that’s really cool.

For your info, you can learn more about the Dura-Ace Wheels here. And here’s a picture of them…

I often get asked, “where’s the best place you’ve ever ridden a mountain bike?”

Ok not often, but I overheard someone asking someone else that once. In a dream.

I’m trying to anticipate the day when someone might actually ask me that question by riding as many places as possible. It’s not easy to answer, because there are a lot of worthy places out there. And I haven’t visited them all. But I’m trying.

Last weekend I took a little jaunt to Sun Valley, which always lingers around number one or number two on my list, along with the trails in Crested Butte. I’ve got my CB trip planned this summer, so I’ll have a fresh comparison in mind, just in case someone asks me that question some day.

There was a huge fire in the Sun Valley area last fall, which might be contributing to this year’s spectacular flower display. Right from town you have to endure trails like this one…

 

 

And there’s more:

 

 

Some burned area visible in the distance…

And right ahead of us…

 

I know there are some flowers around here somewhere

Must we ride down this?

And a little view of affordable housing, Sun Valley style:

A little southwest of town is this ride:

 

 

 

Ok, that’s more than enough of SV.

Crested Butte is very different, here’s a CB shot from a few years ago…

Report on CB coming in August…Enjoy your summer!