I’m in bed at 12:30AM on Saturday night and my cell phone starts ringing (it’s the rocky theme song… the ringtone I’ve set for all my MTB friends). It’s Joseph the TROG. Turns out he got hooked up to demo some bikes with Francois from MTBR. They had the latest crop of 29″ full suspension bikes direct from the makers and wanted some folks to come down and demo them for a review. Did I want to go? Well… shoot, what a choice. I’d planned to fly and was still a bit sore from the previous days ride, plus that meant short sleep. But how often do you get the chance to go and play on a bunch of brand new high end bikes? Sure I’m game. Continue reading A Day as a Test Rider
Month: December 2006
Round Valley to Clayton
Mark from the Dirty Avocados Adventure racing team (Read his impressions of this ride) was having a birthday ride on Saturday. His choice for trails was the route from Round Valley regional park to the summit of Mount Diablo. The Round Valley -> Diablo route didn’t have any singletrack but since it was Marks birthday he got to make the call. The route Mark planned was about 30 miles and included about 6000′ of climbing. To make things more interesting rain was predicted for the day. More details + Pictures »
GPS Downloads + Photos + Google Maps == MTBGuru
While on MTBR I noticed a new site out there called MTBGuru. The site allows you to upload a GPS track and your images, it then combines the two in a nice layout with elevation profiles and a Google Earth based map with the route displayed and clickable image icons. All in all pretty cool stuff. Here is the MTB Guru himself giving a rundown of the features of the site.
South Yuba, Redhills, and Latrobe Road
Thanksgiving holiday was great, I managed to get 2 days of riding in, on Thanksgiving itself my brother and I rode Redhills (Older Ride Report). It’s been a while since I’d been there and it was a blast, everything seemed rockier than I remembered it being and every bit as steep as usual. Redhills makes a great winter ride because it’s close to home and the trails have great traction even when wet.
Friday after Thanksgiving the weather was great so I flew the 206 up to Grass Valley and did a South Yuba ride with a group of guys from MTBR. Unfortunately, my camera did a horrible job and the few photos I took turned out blurry or out of color balance (I’m certain the photographer had nothing to do with it). In any case… South Yuba is probably one of the best rides you can do this time of year. It’s a phenomenal trail along the South Yuba River. Not an extremely technical trail, but a great cross country route. We parked cars at Purdon Crossing and then drove up to the Omega Road drop in which is above the town of Washington. It’s actually less driving then driving into the town and you add 4 miles of downhill riding. Last time I did this trip I took some video and a few pictures which should give you an idea of how great this ride is.
Finally, today Fiona and I flew up to Rancho Murietta and rode the Latrobe Loop (link of previous ride)… or part of it anyhow. We didn’t realize it until we landed, but right now Rancho Murietta airport is closed for all night operations. We didn’t get there until around 3:00PM so we hustled as far as we could in 35 minutes then turned around and came back so we would make certain we didn’t get stuck.
I flew low and slow (130MPH anyhow) on the way back. We cruised by the Rancho Seco cooling towers. We were so close we could almost look down the top of the cooling towers. Then we were just in time to overfly the beginning of the Stockton Lighted Boat Parade. It was a very cool perspective to see all the boats lit up from the air.