Had a great ride today… a friend took me to a place called Pipi Valley east of Jackson. It’s an OHV park but we had lots of fun. There was plenty of mud, a few creek crossings and Bruce broke his rear derailer. Overall not a bad time.

No real ride report but perhaps once I’ve been there a few times I’ll put something together. We rode trail 25, about a 15 mile loop. I would suggest if you ride this place you do it soon or wait for another rain, it gets lots of moto traffic and turns to moondust early in the summer.

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As I pushed my bike up a steep section of 2” deep sloppy mud, I couldn’t help but think “What kind of an idiot rides in crap like this in the middle of the night?” Then the inescapable thought bubbled to the surface “What kind of idiot composes blog posts in his head while riding in 2” deep oatmeal at 2AM”.

Our drive to the Coolest 24 Hour race (that’s the name of the event) was interrupted about 15 minutes short of our destination on the climb to Pilot Hill. Pilot Hill is a little town off of Highway 49 at the top of a steep windy road. When we got to the steep part of the hill the engine was running great, but the RV was slowing down, until eventually we had no power at all. I managed to pull the RV onto what is probably the only section of dirt shoulder on the side of the road big enough for a 34’ RV in the 5 mile climb, even so the RV stuck out into the narrow road for a foot. Read the rest of this entry »

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When you are putting the cleats on your shoes make sure you use the correct sized bolts. My shoes came with two screwes and I inadvertently put the longer screws in which poked into the bottom of my feet. I didn’t walk much on them so it wasn’t bad but potentially painful if I’d gone on a long hike-a-bike. Also putting short screws on is a recipe for trouble.

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Sonora to Mt Elizabeth

Things are a little crazy right now, my company lost the contract I was working on and they didn’t have any similar jobs where I live so right now I am officially unemployed. Severance package is decent so we’re doing ok financially but unfortunately it means I have to look for work. If anyone is looking for a DBA with Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and MySQL experience in an enterprise point them my way.

Since I have a bit of time on my hands I’ve been trying to get in some training on the bike. The trails are pretty gooped up so I’ve been grabbing some road riding between the rain showers (sometimes in the rain) and doing some longer fire road rides with little bits of singletrack. The photo linked here is from a ride I did this weekend near Sonora, lots of steep climbing (5800’ over 25 miles) and about 10 miles of riding flumes at 12-15+ mph trying to keep up with some fast riders. Here is the Motion Based rundown on the ride. Click on the picture to the right for the photo log. Quite an interesting ride overall, Jeff cracked his frame then wrangled a spare and finished the ride. Aaron got crossed up in the snow and took a swim in the flume.

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Update: at this point it’s all under snow—Ogre

Some snow remains in Butcher, freezing and thawing, it’s messy for a mile or less then it’s the best ever to the bottom. Shuttling is on for this weekend. The Sunrise Trail is snowed in with 2-4”, very sketchy. The road down to Butcher is open.

For more info check out the Downieville Outfitters Trail Conditions page.

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The most recent storm dumped 6”-8” of snow up top. Limited shuttles this weekend. The snow may melt off. Call for most up to date information. We will post an update to the snow conditions as soon as we are clear if it is sticking or melting. If this melts off, it will go straight into the ground for the best dirt conditions of the season.
530.289.0155

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Fall is upon the Downieville Downhill, and some of the best conditions of the season are upon us. The fall rains pack down the dust, the trails get tacky like velcro and the fall colors entertain the eyes.

We are posting bi-weekly conditions reports for Downieville, so riders can squeeze every possible day of high country riding into the end of the season (which has gone into December on some years!)

Current conditions: All trails are open. After a few rains: tackyness in spots, bone dry in others. Dust is low to minimal.

For more info check out the Downieville Outfitters Trail Conditions page.

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Char and I picked up a Tandem from Morgan about a month ago and we’ve been slowly getting into the swing of the tandem thing. We’ve had some problems with the rack but that mostly took some time to resolve… wrestling a 60 lbs 6’+ long bike onto the roof is bound to take a little getting used to. We’ve also been getting a lot of small evening rides in. Last weekend we had a great ride with Fred-da-Trog and family and this weekend was a bit more challenging a ride, we headed for a ‘solo’ run in Auburn… unfortunately we picked a scorcher of a day to do it.

We suspected it was going to be way too hot for sane people to ride so we brought tons of h2o and other liquid refreshments. We started in the Confluence and rolled up the Clementine climb… it was a warm start but we managed to make the climb in a decent amount of time then took a bit of a break so Fiona could get her lungs back. We nibbled a little then took off down the Connector Trail Read the rest of this entry »

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