So you’re a bit short of time and you want to get a long ride in. You’re local trail is fun but… short. What to do? Blow it out, ride it every way possible and the good ones twice that’s what you do. Read the rest of this entry »
From everything I’ve heard making the adjustment from Geared to SS is generally supposed to be a rough adjustment, this hasn’t turned out to be the case for me. My commuting has been on flat ground so the 34×13 gear ratio I run during the week keeps me cruising at about 20-22MPH with a nice cadence, my commute time is equivalent or often better than it was on my road bike. On the trail I did a pretty big 36 mile ride out of Columbia and this weekend I did a ride at Salmon Falls. On both rides I did wind up walking in a few places where I would normally ride but on the singlespeed I just can’t help but ride faster. Technical riding is the biggest challenge so far. The 29″ wheels help a lot but I just can’t quite ride up to the level that I was able to. We’ll see how things progress.
One of the biggest reasons I did this was to have an interim bike while I got the fork repaired on the Titus. The thing is I’m having so much fun I haven’t even taken the fork off the Titus yet 
No, it wasn’t some sort of Viagra induced medical nightmare, I just finished up my first full weekend of riding on a new rigid single speed. My road bike was stolen a while ago and I needed a replacement commuter bike. I’ve been using my Titus for commuting but the fork has been slowly bleeding out over the last few months and the 8 mile commute on a full suspension bike is a bit much. So I sold a Giant AC2 I had sitting in my garage and with the proceeds I bought a Redline Monocog 29er. So while my Titus is down, I’m going to be a single speed only guy. This weekend (Jan 27-28th) was my first real trial on the trails and it was quite the initiation.
Read the rest of this entry »Well, I guess it’s not exactly stolen. This freakishly dry winter has left many of the lower elevations snow free. Even with the super cold temps the snow is fairly light at lower levels and over this weekend we were able to sneak in a January ride on Pinball, which should by all rights be under snow. Getting out on this trail this time of year was very cool. We were riding over giant frozen puddles, snow patches, and through occasional sections of mud. Definitely a unique ride. Check out the Pictures Here.
Over the Christmas Holiday we took a trip to Southern California to visit some family and do some riding where it was Sunny (Obviously this was before this cold spell down there). We visited my cousins in Pasadena and saw the very cool Gamble House and checked out the floats they were building for the Rose Bowl Parade. While there I was able to sneak a couple rides, made some new friends and hooked up with some older friends. I met up with Doug (AKA Pacman) and his son and they showed me around Chesebro Canyon. Then Al, whom I met up here in NorCal some time ago, along with Jeff and Ron showed me some really cool trails in the San Gabriel Mountains about 5 miles from my cousins house. After that we headed south to visit with my Aunt and checked out the San Diego Wild Animal Park. On Sunday I met up with Mountain Bike Bill and we rode the San Juan Trail near San Juan Capistrano. Pictures and a tiny bit of commentary here.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
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.
Posts about: Cycling