For the past 6 or 9 months, there has been a Jack Daniel’s Facebook Group Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey that has been controlled at first by someone in Vietnam, and then someone in another part of Asia, that has simply put, been over run by scammers and frauds.

Photos from the 2022 Rally in the 100 Acre Wood are online! We have posted almost 900 photos from Friday’s Stage 2 and Stage 5 action down near Potosi Missouri.

See shots of the likes of Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, and nearly all the competitors who made it through Stages 2 and 5 (sorry if we missed one). You can search through the photos by Last Name and Car Number as well to try to make it easier to find a specific car/driver/navigator. There are a lot of common names in the cars though, so last name isn’t always perfect (3x Block, 2x Gelsomino, countless Smiths, etc).

In a previous post I covered the Uncle Nearest 1820. On previous trips to Lynchburg Tennessee I had tried to stop at the Uncle Nearest Distillery in Shelbyville, but the first time I stopped they were still under construction. The second time I stopped was their opening weekend, but it was still closed for a Green family event. Finally on March 4th of 2022 I was able to make a quick stop into the distillery.

For 2021 the Special Release from Jack Daniel’s is known as the Coy Hill High Proof. It can come from one of two barrel houses up on Coy Hill near Lynchburg, #08 or #13.

While the previous Special Release bottles from Jack Daniel’s have been hard to find, this one saw demand like no other. Secondary prices for the bottle appear to be almost 10x retail. I hate to tell you what I paid for mine, not that much, but not much better.

The time has finally come, time that I finally have, to try to start getting the 2016 Scion FR-S parted out.

Yesterday I got the car unburried from the smaller side of the garage and pulled it into the bigger 2 car bay.

First things first, I got the car up on jackstands, after finding the wheel lock, and took the Konig wheels off the car. David Z picked those up from me yesterday afternoon, so the wheel and tires from the car are gone.

Photos from 2022 Country Western Showdown in Nashville, TN are posted.

Most of the photos are from the games with Chesterfield Falcons - McCarthy, playing teams from outside of St. Louis, including St. Peters, Center Ice, Nashville and Queen City Royals.

Click here to Purchase Photos

For the first time in over 100 years, Jack Daniel’s has released a bottle with an age statement on it. The initial release is aged 10 years, and is known as Jack Daniel’s 10 Years Old Tennessee Whiskey. This bottle was released in September 2021, with availability being extremely hard to come by. It didn’t hit stores in the eastern half of Missouri until February 2022, and was sold out quickly.

Photos from Olympia Ellisville Excel Silver competing at the St. Louis Classic Gymnastics Competition at America’s Center are posted.

Click here to Purchase Photos

For the past few years I’ve had dreams of buying a new bicycle. I went back and forth on what to get, where to get it, etc. Last year when Canyon announced the Grizl, I knew what I was going to buy.

I was a little concerned about purchasing a direct to consumer brand, but after seeing Canyon’s support of the gravel scene last year, and getting some of their swag at Unbound, I decided I felt safe enough.

Today is my 2 year anniversary of getting my plot! I was super pumped to be nominated to be a Tennessee Squire by a fraternity brother of mine back in January 2020, and even more excited to find out that I had been accepted!

When my dad and I planned out the overhaul of the 1973 Super Beetle I really wanted to go with a wide fender look for the car. We ended up ordering new fenders from Innovations in Fiberglass some time in 1998.

Photos from CXMass 2022 are up on Smugmug and on Facebook.

Feel free to tag yourself and your friends/enemies in these shots on Facebook. The Facebook photos are lower resolution than what we have on SmugMug.

You can download original 45megapixel shots from SmugMug for free, but please make a donation to the CXMas page’s collection links.

Hello there, long time no see…. Where has SpecFRS gone? Well here’s the story of how my autocross car came to a very sad demise, and a couple of tips for you on how to not have it happen to yourself.

First and foremost: Look into Autocross insurance. Lockton Motorsports provides insurance options that cover cars DURING autocross events, you should definitely check them out. It is very likely that your normal street car insurance policy will NOT cover you, and you asking them if they do may even cause red flags to be raised. I did NOT have autocross insurance on my 2016 Scion FR-S, even though I had looked into it a couple of weeks before the incident, I didn’t pull the trigger (if memory serves, it was like $225 for the year for my car), and would have likely made 2021 not be near as bad as it ended up.

For the last 6 months or more our Dyson V6 Handheld Vacuum has only worked for 5 to 10 seconds at a time. If you kept the trigger pressed down, it would "stop" after 5 or 10 seconds and wouldn't run again until you plugged into the wall charger for a few minutes.

I finally broke down and ordered a new battery from Amazon for our Dyson V6 hand held vacuum, the new unit arrived today. I put the new battery in, and even without charging it I was able to run the vaccum for 30+ seconds at the MAX setting, without the unit stopping. 

The Chesterfield Falcons 8U White 1 team had the opportunity to play at the Enterprise Center during the first ever Blues VS Kraken game on January 13, 2022.

Purchase Photos Here

It’s January 10th already? I’ve only been on the bike once so far this year? Sounds like last year, but I can’t fall into that hole again…

So let’s talk a little bit about 2021 before we get into what’s coming in 2022.

So 2021 started off with plans of riding quite a few miles, in 2020 I rode 2100 miles, my highest total ever, so I had hopes of following that up, but ultimately 2021 didn’t play out that way. In late February I hadn’t put any real mileage in, and I started to feel off. It wasn’t until mid-March that I found out I had afib and my heart had been beating crazily for a month.

After a couple of months of dealing with that Unbound Gravel was upon us. Wagner and I went down and volunteered at the event, and got a little riding in, but didn’t actually join the race. In July I thought I was all healed up and then I got a kidney stone that stuck around for a little bit too long and took away another 2 months of riding.

It wasn’t until late August that I started riding again, prepping for Pedal The Cause in late September and Big Sugar Gravel in late October. Overall for the year I barely got in 1k miles, a big drop from my ‘20 numbers, and hopefully only a blip compared to what I can get in this year.

Coming in 2022

So what’s coming in 2022? Well, I got myself a new ride, a Canyon Grizl, and it is awesome (see above). I put about 4200 miles on the Niner RLT over the past 5 years, figured it was time to upgrade. I haven’t yet decided what I will do with the RLT, I may hold on to it until at least March, but then sell it after that.

My goal is to ride it at least 2,000 miles this year. I am signed up for The Mid South (100 miles in March) and Unbound Gravel (200 miles in June) so I really need to get my training started ASAP. I am going to have a hell of a time getting ready for those rides. My biggest struggle right now is finding time, or rather, making time. I need to quit staying up late and start getting up and getting on the trainer each morning…

I am also planning on being back at Big Sugar Gravel in late October as well.

See you out on the trails.

We took a trip to Old Kinderhook for the Synergy Pond Hockey Tournament down there this weekend, I took a number of games (all the games Chesterfield played, plus a couple of others).

Photos are organized by day and available for purchase (digital download $10 per high resolution shot, all photos are 43 megapixels before any cropping)

Click for Friday

Click for Saturday

Click for Sunday

So you think you want to try to take on Unbound Gravel, but you aren’t sure how to get in?

Well, to be honest, for 2022, your options are limited. There are two ways available to you right now, one is a “random” draw, and the other requires you to spend some serious moolah ($$$).

It has been a few months since my last post, been primarily shooting kids hockey games since the last post, though stay tuned for another post soon with some travel photos.

This week after the Christmas Holiday we had the Holiday Jamboree at the Maryville University Hockey Center.

The Chesterfield 8U White Team that was thrown together at the last minute played 5 games, ultimately going 3-2.

View the Galleries for Each Game

Details for Unbound Gravel 2022 are starting to be shared, I'll try to make it a point to update this post with info as it becomes available. ## Registration Dates: ### Deferral or Volunteer Registration If you deferred in 20 or 21, or you put in 10 volunteer hours, Registration for 2022 is November 1st through November 30th, expect an email from the organizers early next week with details on how/where/when to register. ### XL (350) Lotto Unbound XL (350) lottery registration opens early December (12/1-12/15), with announcements for who is picked before the end of the year. ### 25/50/100/200 Lotto The Lottery opens for registration on January 5th through January 18th. Announcements of if you got in the lotto in early February.

Where to start on this one, it’s been an interesting year, not the best to be honest with a variety of things causing turmoil this year, I question how much I want to, or should share, so we’ll see what comes out in this post.

First and foremost, to the family that experienced tragedy this weekend, I am so sorry for your loss.

For the rest of the weekend and ride review:

This weekend I shot my first CrossFit competition since the 2019 CrossFit Games. I was asked to come out to CrossFit Wildwood to shoot the Midwest Masters Experience event. The event was great, with 60+ teams out there, all of the entrants 35+ (I believe) with the oldest being 72.

I took my son out to Indianapolis Motor Speedway over the weekend to catch the Sunday races of the 2021 SCCA RunOffs. We had a blast out there, I may have been to IMS once about 29 years ago for a tour, but this was the first time there catching any racing.

View the Galleries Here

The time has come, I have uploaded all the 2021 Solo Nationals and ProSolo Finale Photos from last week. I did NOT shoot every heat, between running and working announce for Heat 1 on Thursday and Friday, and just being tired all week, there were a few heats that I wasn’t able to get to, those are listed at the bottom of this page. Galleries are organized by Day and then by Run Heat/Classes. I currently have the ProSolo and Friday photos tagged and am working through the other days.

View the Galleries Here