Bad riding, good riding

Saturday I took an nice rare February clearish dryish trail ride. Our winter has not been fierce enough for full on fat bike conditions, but the mess of snow-ice-mud-standing water has made it not ready for the unfat. But yesterday it was overcast, fifty and blowing juniper pollen everywhere, but the trails were kind of clear and sort of dry. I finally had some time between a pile of proposals to go for a real ride. I grabbed a fast twentyniner and off I went. I felt pretty good, flipped up some trails and down some others. Got greedy and hit a nice longer descent that ended up being a bit too muddy and icy to continue. I turned around and set to a brisk out of the saddle climb, enjoying the feeling of a responsive bike under me and leaning into the climb a bit.

Next thing you know I caught a pedal on a trail side rock and went over the bars. On the way over I slammed my knee so hard on the stem that I thought I might vomit. I made the sort of heroic gurgling sound that ballads were once writ, and then walked it off for a minute and got back on the bike and kept riding, determined to keep the good sensations flowing despite the rapidly swelling knee.

I had a plan for the ride, I was a bit peaked and sore, but I decided to keep on with it and hit the technical bits that lead to home. I felt OK for a bit, cleaning a few difficult sections, blowing more than a few, but rolling on just the same. Until one little rock step up, where the front wheel got up there, but I did not quite get the english to get the rear wheel up, so I slid off the saddle crushing the back of the stem into my pelvis. Missing the good bits, but still knocking the wind out of me and eliciting more gurgling the ancients wrote tunes about. I rolled off the bike leaving it in the middle of the trail and sat on the side of the trail for something like 10 minutes, watching ravens fly by and clouds blow over town toward the Sangres while I considered my lot. It was not a great day for sitting aside the trail, but I have had worse and sat until I felt more of a need to be home than to continue with the sitting.

I got on the bike after a bit and rolled on the quick way home, bowing out of pretty much every tiny technical bit there was just to be sure there were no more grievous bruising and impacts. Got home, tossed the bike in the bike hole and took a shower and watched my knee swell up for the rest of the afternoon. Later that night, inadvertent bending and flexing jolted me out of sleep, as did sleeping on the deep bruise on my pelvis.

Sunday dawned cold and snowy and blowing, never quite getting above 25F. Desperate to get out of the house, I went for a quick burrito coffee mailbox run on the big dummy, but was underdressed and my knee was not quite feeling it. Did some chores and such and finally decided, right before dark, to see about finishing the ride I started yesterday. I bundled up, grabbed some lights, hopped on the nimble bike and headed out into an increasingly strong blowing snowstorm. I meant to do a quick 3 mile loop from the house, just to get the knee moving, but despite the cold and the snow covered rocks and the inability to see any of the ice in the shadows due to the fresh coverage, I had a great ride. Cleaning some stuff I rarely clean, completely failing on others. Coming off the bike sideways and watching it skitter on ice down to the bottom of a wash a few times, but no stem induced carnage.

I felt good enough to keep going and dropped down into the canyons on fresh snow over old crusty ice and snow as the light left the sky. My way shown by a couple of inadequate LED's and sense of smell. I cleaned the whole damn canyon loop, well, maybe a dab here or there, but no carnage, no bruising, no gurgling. I felt good. I had not eaten enough to go too much further, my water bottle was completely frozen, temp was dropping and it was getting hard to see due to blowing snow. I climbed hard out of the canyon and sprinted up the road to home. Tossed the bike into the bike hole and ate the heck out of some dinner.

I will sleep well tonight. There was a good ride, there was a bad ride. My knee still hurts, but it will hurt less tomorrow. Onward we roll.

Lizards, Ravens, and Me

After a hot short ride to get some lunch and coffee, I took the scenic route back through the county trails in the canyons. I only had to share them with the lizards and ravens, and maybe a few jays. Most of the other trails in the area are closed for fire restrictions right now, so I was surprised to see not a single other person on the trails from the aquatic center to the roundabout. It has been about as hot as it ever gets up here and a bit smokey still from a number of local fires, but still it was a nice bucolic ramble in the canyon.

I drank my coffee on the bridge looking over the depths of the canyon. Dawdled about for a bit, snapped some photos and then headed on my way. Trails are not too technical, mostly singletrack, just combinations of smooth dirt, loose dirt, sand, slick rock, and rocky trails. The ocean air rambler shod in the bruce gordon rock and roads is just spectacular on most smooth trail. Swoopy fast smoothish stuff is a blast. Handles great on single track. The bottom bracket is too low to be really in the monster cross category, but with careful pedaling you can get through reasonably technical rocky bits. I had a great ride.

At the roundabout I hopped back on the road and head back home and enjoyed sitting on the porch and watching some much needed thunderstorms roll over the mountains.

Day 8, Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 Challenge

Got up early and snuck out for a little coffee ride on my Mom's bike again. It was actually just below 40 and I had neglected my gloves. Epic suffering ensued. I basically looped around Goleta and stopped and got coffee at a shop in a stripmall.

The suffering...

The shop had a steady streams of contractors coming in for their morning fix, I watched most of them check out the pink folding bike. I then rode over toward campus and checkout out the excellent bike repair stands with attached tools and pump.

And the wonderful views across the acres of bike parking attached to some of the larger student housing blocks.

Also spied this chevoid mid restoration

I got a solid 6.5 miles in which put me at 101.5 for the week. Hurrah! I did it, rode everyday and hit 100 for the week, and certainly rode much more than I usually would have! The total count for me was 11.5 on the single speed Pugsley in snow in Los Alamos, 17 on my Mom's 3 speed folding bike and 73 on the fixie friday. No deraillers were involved in the challenge for me.
I think there were 14 or 15 participants in the end. I am going to let you all self select on whether you achieved any or all of the three parts of the challenge. Remember though, the bar is low intentionally, so even if you did not do what you wanted to, you probably did ride more than normal this week, right? Please email me what you did and your mailing address and I will get a pin or two out to you. If you already have some pins and don't need any more that is fine too. Los Alamos Jerry, I will leave one on your bike at work. I will try to collate a summary of everyone by this weekend...

The family and I left Santa Barbara late in the afternoon, got delayed in pheonix airport for a bit and then made it back to Albuquerque around 10:30. We drove up home in light to heavy snow and increasingly snow packed roads and got back just before 1am in the new year. Huzzah, happy new year on the road!
Pheonix Airport had bathrooms for everyone

So happy new year everyone and I will almost certainly try this again next year!

Days 6 and 7, Tarik Saleh Bike Club 100 Challenge

Day 6 was busy with measly riding right at the end. I started with fresh fish market and farmers market buying of stuff for a combined family birthday party.

Vermilion Rockfish, got it and eated it

Then some shopping and walking around downtown with the wife. Saw a plating shop on state street, right downtown, looks like they do lots of bike parts. Joes plating on lower state:

And snapped a photo of this old welding shop sign, and grills!

Did some massive and fun eating of scallops, thresher shark, rockfish, crab legs and such and then went home with the family. Nearly did not ride, but my wife needed some stuff from the store, so I lit out at night for a 7 mile round trip to the supermarket. These days, most if not nearly all my rides are utilitarian, usually replacing a car trip. Going to work, going to the store, getting some take out, going to the PO. Many longer rides are just taking the long way (or the super long way) on an errand. This was my first utilitarian trip of the week, might be the only one, I have nothing against riding for riding sake, but I have not really had time to do this much in the last couple years, so big thanks to my wife and family for indulging me this week. The 7 miles put me at 74 for the week.

Day seven started with my brother and mom and I shepparding the kids on a ride around campus. The cousins on big kid bikes, Aida on a way too small balance bike, the adults on foot. It was great fun and Aida went much further than ever before on a balance bike.

Later in the afternoon I road the long low route to the harbor and met the family for a walk through the marina and dinner.

A bike rack air station on campus

Good car action

the Friday fits well in old style bike racks

After dinner my Brother, his wife, Elena and I went to see the Hobbit. It was pretty good. Not brilliant, but worth watching. My bro and I started with some severe conversation, then transitioned to the dream world of middle earth and stuff

I put in a total of 21 miles on the day, which puts me at 95 for the week. The last day is a travel day, but I should be able to sneak a 5 mile short ride in in the morning to get the 100 on the week, barely. I am not convinced I will make it home before midnight to get any riding in Los Alamos before the new year, but any which way I am satisfied with the week.

Seems like we have a bunch more participants, Scott from Spokane, Mindful Mule, and SeanM. That takes it to about 13 participants, plus 14 for me. Awesome. Or as my brother says, who are all these people again? CycloTourist seems to be trying to say he is DNF as he is sick, but I am not sure if it is possible to DNF the challenge. He put a nice comment in with a SB bike trailer pic. I accidentally deleted it, but here is his photo:

For some reason the comments have been coming through in bunches and doubles, let me know if your comment never appeared or some such.

Festive 500 final reports

The final two days as such:

December 29
Returned to New Mexico in the wee hours, slept, woke up to light snow getting heavy. Split a couple of barrowloads of wood, hopped on the stud shod Big Dummy to get tacos

Headed out again a few hours later in worsening conditions to go to the bank and get groceries.
Mileage: 10.17 miles


December 30
Snowing heavily in the morning. Shoveled almost a foot or snow off the driveway. Watched the snow fall and caulked the tub. Decided to bail on the ride to the golf course and xc ski plan and just headed out for a neighborhood cruise on the big dummy. It was probably 25 and blowing. The roads were either packed snow or ice or unplowed. The studded tires did no wrong on the ice and packed snow. The trails and park were under too much snow to ride so I stuck to the road. It was a good cold little ride.

Mileage: 6.3 miles


So these two days added 16.47 miles of studded tire big dummy riding to the previous 92.03 on the fixie friday for a massive 108.5 miles, aka 174.6 km. Not even halfway there to the 500km goal, but I did some good rides, lots of errands and rode everyday. I call it a win. Surf on over to the rapha blog to see how everyone else did.

Festive 500 reports

OK, here are the first few days of the Rapha Festive 500 attempt.

December 23rd
Got up early, got to the airport, chased the baby through the infinite halls of Pheonix airport,

got to Santa Barbara (see I cheat!) unpacked the fixie friday,

headed to the markets to get some beers and sundries:

Fiddled with the non-working cyclocomputer for a while and then gave up and rode back to a bike shop to get a new bike computer.
Mileage: 5 miles (low estimate for fairness sake...)

December 24th:
Rode to the butterfly grove in goleta, some muddy riding/running to find the family, tried to keep the wee ones from getting the butterflies,
headed to lunch, ate a burrito, rode back on the foot hill route, up to mountain and down.

Ran a bunch of errands. It were a good day.
Stem QR wireless computer mount hack with super pro bidon

Mileage, 35.66 miles.



December 25th,
Christmas with the family. Rode from the hotel to my brothers house. Tried to sneak in a ride while Aida napped. She did not nap, my ride was enshortened. Probably saved me from a very wet ride.
Mileage: 5.65 miles



December 26th,
Rode out with my bro toward mountain, he turned back after five miles, I headed for parts unknown. Great ride, found the bike butt mailbox, did a loop and lots of climbing.


Mileage 20.28


December 27th.
Got out for a good afternoon ride. Completed the mountain to sanysidro loop, back through montecito and downtown. Absolutely beautiful day. Lots of wet on the roads.

Mileage 24.92


December 28th
Rode from the hotel to my brothers house. Put helmet on for ride, but baby would not nap, so I put helmet away and walked to get coffee and treats with the young lady.
Got back, packed up the bike and headed to the airport to return home.
Mileage 0.52 miles, but I did ride.


So the total for the warmish part of the festive 500 was 92.03 miles, aka 148.11 km. So still a bit short of the planned 500 but probably one of my best weeks in december since I have lived in NM, tune in tomorrow evening for how the final two days went...

Vegas trip - Red Rock Loop - sort of

I have been doing a righteously crappy job in race and travel reporting this year. Maybe I will catch up a bit over Christmas break, or maybe I will just sleep in, but here is what I did the week after Thanksgiving. Business trip to Vegas. Here is the good part:



Ok, I hate Vegas. I have fond memories from the years 1998-2000 or so attending interbike and staying at a hotel on the strip, but boy is it kind of nasty when there is no interbike to distract me. I apologize to everyone who I have scoffed at when they complain about Vegas and interbike being in Vegas. It does suck. My bad. You were right. I think interbike anywhere for me would be fine, but I now agree that interbike anywhere but vegas is finer. Although, I might enjoy interbike in Vegas more than interbike in Anaheim (without a car). But I was not there for interbike, I was there for a work meeting, so Vegas, you suck.

My hotel was just one megablock from the strip, across the street from a golf course. I packed my bike friday and my running shoes with the plan to do some after meeting riding at night and also a big ride planned the day after the meeting, and perhaps some running on the golf course at night. Turns out the golf course was surrounded by, no joke, something like 20 foot fences. Probably to keep dinosaurs out. They successfully eliminated any chance of me running though. So the running shoes stayed packed.

It took about 20 minutes to walk the megablock from my hotel to the strip. It was not a pleasant walk. The good news is that there was a cool monorail going to the strip from just outside my hotel. The bad news is that the monorail costs 5 dollars PER RIDE. While probably more pleasant than walking in vegas, this fails the public transportation model. You can get from Fremont to San Francisco for 5 bucks on BART, no way less than a mile of walking is worth a 5 dollar trip. Unless it comes with a 42 ounce steak. I did go to the strip one night and got stuck in the worlds biggest most empty mall. Glargh. But anyway, lets talk about what i did do and what was fun.

As part of the meeting, I did get to ride in a very cool and very expensive restored landcruiser on a tour of yucca mountain. This was fun, but it takes forever to get there. Which is good. because that is probably where you want to store waste. Forever away.

Me and the really fun vehicle:


Me and the yucca mountain:


The next day I tried to get up really early and ride from my hotel to the Red Rock Canyon loop and back before my 12:45 flight back home. I splurged on a 6 am room service breakfast so I would be well fueled and ready to go by 6:30 at the absolute latest. I got up got ready to go, ate my expensive egg and coffee breakfast, checked the temperature outside and it was 28 degrees at 6:30 with a low sun. Crap. I am used to cold, but I was not packing my subfreezing kit with me, so I waited about twenty minutes. The sun was still barely up, but it was a balmy 30, so I hopped on the fixie friday and went on my merry way. I was staying near the convention center and to get to the main east west bike route (Alta) I pretty much needed to head the wrong way for a bit and then loop north around the strip through downtown and back west on Alta.

Fortunately I had had some email correspondence with Bob from Hawaii from the bike friday list and he gave me some heads up on the route and a link to his map-my-ride map of his route when he rode the loop a few weeks before I did. I also had the chance to stop by a bike shop an pick up a las vegas cycling map and plot out my route. Unfortunately the map considered this a bike route:

That is South Maryland Parkway, three lanes each way with no apparent shoulder due to the fact that they pretty much oil sealed every road in Vegas recently and there were no visible traffic lines anywhere. But hey, look at the photo bigger, see there on the right? Hawaiian food at the Walgreens! Bob would have been pleased. Probably...

Not a great route, but not a big deal at 7 AM. What was kind of a pain were all the traffic lights that take minutes to get through. It took a long time to get to downtown and across the highway and headed west. Alta pretty much starts on the west side of Highway 15 and has a bike lane all the way out to Red Rock Canyon. Just as Alta starts you pass by YAEGB (yet another excellent Gehry building), the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health:


Alta pretty much climbs steadily from downtown out to Red Rock Canyon, it was a slow cold grind on the way out there. It took about an hour for my fingers to warm up as the climbing kicked up a bit. There were at least 4 sections of road construction that required taking a lane amid Los Angeles quality SUV assholes. There were also a fair number of construction signs planted in the middle of the bike lane. Sometimes they were facing the other way. I assume your experiences may vary greatly, but I did not particularly enjoy the ride out on Alta. It is something like 11 miles of stop and go traffic with lots of construction. Feh. Probably would have been fine sans construction, but it was there. After an hour and a half of riding I finally felt like I was on the outskirts of the city:


But there are no outskirts in Vegas really, just varying densities of sprawl. If the economy ever kicks up again, I am pretty sure it will be sprawl right up to the Red Rock Canyon loop. There were lots of subdivisions sketched out in the desert awaiting houses. Anyhow, I think it took about 2 hours for me to get to the visitors center from my hotel via this route. Probably 22 miles or so. Once I got across 15 i was riding pretty hard to try to get to the loop and through it so I could get back to the hotel, pack the bike, shower and get to the airport. Alas. Reality kicked in. I had no time to do the route.

So enjoy pictures of me getting to the Red Rock sign:


Near Red Rocks:


Look mini-joshua trees, lower reaches of higher altitude mojave desert is soooo cute:


I stopped at the really nice new visitor center, got a post card, ate a bar, refilled my bottles and headed for home. My camera ran out of batteries so no pics of the visitors center, but it was nice. It took 1 hour and 15 minuted to get back to the hotel. All told it was 3 and a half hours elapsed time. It would have probably have been comfortable if I had 5 or 5.5 hours to spare for the round trip, but it was too darn cold and it took too long to get out there. Red Rock Canyon, you and I have unfinished business. In retrospect, if I had a rental car, it would have been wiser to drive out there, do the loop and bike some of the scenic highways outside of town, like this one heading away from town from the Canyon loop:

and then just pack up and drive to the airport and go home. Or just take a later flight. Or something. If you are planning to do this loop and you have a choice, I recommend staying at a hotel at the north end of the strip on the west side, or downtown, that will save you some very gratuitous lights and city riding. It was about 44 miles round trip as i did it. That was one of my longest rides of the year, so I am pretty happy I did what I did. I enjoyed it. I hope you learned something. I bet no one is still reading. Here are the rest of the photos from my trip.

Big South Fork Mountain Style Biking

When I was in Knoxville a few weeks back, I was able to sneak in some mountain biking with much of Team Ed. Plans were afoot for multiple evening rides, but we were thwarted by an inch of rain a day. Cleverly, we took advantage of G's thursday off and a hole in the interesting talks at the conference to set forth to the TN-KY border where lies the well drained trails of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. We set off early in Gary's mini Race Squirrel and headed up to the Norris exit to rendezvous with Hammer and KD.



We met up at the Starbucks at the Norris exit of 75 north. The fact that Norris rates a starbucks cracks me up no end. Poor poor waffle house, usurped as the default meeting point. After coffee and oatmeal and nary a grit nor biscuit, we headed into the wild jungles of northern Tennessee. Along the way I enjoyed the cultural dichotomy of the big cross over Adult World:


Eventually we rolled into big south fork, unleashed the bikes and changed into our matching outfits:


After a few miles of gravel road riding we reached the trailhead:


And enjoyed 20 miles of swoopy fast, mostly smooth singletrack.

With gorgeous views:


And tiny little bicycle men:


And valuable trailside artifacts:


Despite the torrential rains the trails were clear and fun. I borrowed a well undergeared singlespeed cannondale from an honorable judge and spent most of the day fruitlessly trying to keep up with the other three on their properly geared single speed 29'ers. After a while I pushed the hammer down and stole his bike and was relieved to be able to at least hang onto G and KD. While my single track skills have eroded somewhat, they are not as bad as it appeared.

After the ride we headed back, firstly negotiating the drive through big south fork canyon:



and then enjoying more cultural oddities along the way:



Once back in town, I went back to the Tomato Head and ate my third (of four) Kepner Melt of the week.


As I was heading back to the hotel Clarko called and coerced me into attending Cycling Specific Pilates taught by the Geri Mewetmaster5000. Alas there are no photos of this event, but it was painful yet fun and I was able to see more people.

The day was capped by a visit to the bar in the sunsphere. The sunsphere was closed to the public for my entire tenure in knoxville, but now there is a bar up there and I was compelled to visit. G, KD, hammer and myself all met up there and were surprised to find the bar nearly empty. No matter, the beer was cheap and the views were great and the decor was barely updated eighties woodgrain lounge and the bathrooms sported black toilets. The champagne of beers was served in champagne glasses:





After a short while a horde of identically dressed young women from UT and their prospective paramours ascended upon the sunphere for fancy attire drunken revelry. I do not really miss this part of knoxville at all. Fortunately when you are not living there anymore, it is funny.


And with that, the long day came to a close. It was good to get back to Knoxville, I was able to see almost everyone through planned events and random occurrences. I want to thank Gary for making the mountain biking possible. It was great to see everyone.

The official Team Ed take on the day's activity.
Rest of the photos here