Very busy few weeks

Im sure my many admirers (three readers?) have noticed I have not posted in a while.  Things have been very hectic and I have been under the weather.  On top of that, this last weekend I flipped over my handlebars not so gently and roughed up my shoulder.

Saturday I was starting to feel the onset of yucky stomach, but really wanted to get out for a ride since the weather was great. It was supposed to rain all day Sunday (which it did) and I knew I had things to do that day.  My plan was to go to Santos, however feeling a little under the weather I just headed over to Snowhill rd.  While getting geared up in the parking lot I saw my boss just coming back from a ride.  His leg was a bit bloody. I said 'hi'. He seemed to be fine: there was alot of blood from a very little scratch. After riding the first little bit of the trail, and making it to the river portion - I realized "I left my phone on my car".  So I headed back to pick it up.  Luckily it was still there. iPhones are expensive and non-insurable.  At this point a realization should have struck me: "These are signs that I should go home."


There is a funny thing about crashing.  It seems to happen somewhere that you have ridden a million times and have not thought twice about.  About an hour in, I was going down a steep sandy bit that has a little switchback at the bottom. Its not that difficult - you just have to watch your speed coming down. Right at the bottom my front tire dug into the sand, stopped, and sent me head over heels  over the handlebars.  Of course, the natural reaction is to put your hand out to stop from faceplanting.  I did. Afterwords my shoulder hurt like hell. I checked the ol bones to make sure my collarbone was in a single pice, and all seemed to be ok.  Luckily I wasnt too far from the car, so I just rode back and headed home.  For a couple of days I wasnt able to lift my arm up over my head at all and is just now starting to feel like I can get on the bike again. My guts are feeling better and tomorrow might be the perfect time for a 'sick-day'.  The weather has been gorgeous and I feel like a schmuck letting it go to waste sitting in this stupid office.

Econ trail sunday..

Posting from my iphone -while taking a break on the trail. It's a Nice day and the trail is in great shape.







Overlooking a cliff into the river. I switched out the seatpost for an old one I had laying around. I needed another inch or so but, the ritchey was not long enough. This seapost sucks: it's heavy and the clamp barely works.








Mmm this water looks delicious.Ok, I have a few more miles to ride.

Palmy trail

Pretty trail...

Living up to your potential

For anyone who lives in the Central Florida area this should not come as news.  It rains here.  In fact, it has been raining off and on for a week.  Luckily all of the rain has coincided with the end of the year which even luckier is when I get all of my vacation time.

Yesterday, however, was a nice day.  So I went out and rode for a couple of hours at Snowhill.  Im sure everyone is pretty bored with hearing about my rides at the Snowhill trails (or rather, Little Big Econ State Park) so I will keep a ride report 'short'.  Needless to say, my bicycle finally lived to this blog's illustrious name.

Mud.  Oodles of it.  This doesnt really look like much, as I didnt get a picture DURING my ride and before alot of it fell off.  The trails off Snowhill can get really wet after a few rains.  I did one small 'river' crossing going through the swampy area. The other 'river' crossing I did was alot deeper than I thought it was.  There was about a five foot wide area that was pretty wet at the bottom of an embankment.  I assumed it wasnt very deep.  I was wrong.  It was deep enough to soak my feet pretty well - and make my drivetrain sound like it was grinding for a few minutes.  For those of you who dont know - when a drivetrain gets wet and muddy, it can sound like hell for a while.  The tires were absolutely slick with mud until it flung off.  My legs were also absolutely slick with mud.

The waitresses at Tijuana Flats asked me 'what were you doing to get so muddy??'  Im not sure what they must think of me when I go in there after a ride - shorts and a t-shirt with bib tops dangling out, and the most atrocious helmet hair ever.

Anyway - the bike is absolutely a dream to ride.  I zipped by some dude on the trail yesterday and he shouted after me : "How do you like that 29er?"  I can honestly say - I love the frigging thing.  I have put about 120 miles of single track on it over the last month. All of the kinks have been worked out: The brakes have bedded in and do not rub at all.  They squeal when soaked - what brakes don't - but will stop you on a dime. It flies through gears with no problem.  There have been zero ghost shifts on any of my rides after adjusting cable tension.  The saddle is comfy enough for 2+ hours straight in the saddle.  I do need a few things, however.  I could use another half inch of seatpost to get optimum leg extension.  A slightly shorter stem would be nice as well, and the front wheel is slightly out of true.

El Nino says 'Rock on!'

Suffering with a smile..

Yesterday was the first time I got out on the bike, or rather any bike other than the motorcycle, in a week. The whole Thanksgiving, family, and a bit of rain got in the way. I also did some work on the motorcycle and on the car - cleaning both of their K&N air filters, and re-oiling them.  I had to put the SV on the battery tender for a couple of hours to get it started - then went for a nice ride on saturday for a couple of hours.

Oil, oil filter, and spark plugs need to be changed next weekend.. I do all of my own maintenance and I hadnt ridden the motorcycle for about a month. Mainly I havent been riding it much because I need to check and possibly adjust the valves - Im about 6K miles over the suggested check mileage. (Im at about 20k miles on a 2006 SV650) I do know, however, that I probably wont have to adjust them till 30k miles. But - I also know it will be a pain in the ass. For a while I was riding it almost every day to work, and on the weekends for fun.

Anyway, back to the bicycle...On previous rides the squishiness of the Reba front shock was very apparent. It was obviously under pressurized.  So, before going for a ride on Sunday I picked up a shock pump from Orange Cycle Orlando. It is a 'Buzzys Pollinator' Pump. Yes. That is what its called:  Buzzy's Pollinator.

To be honest, I dont care what it is called, as long as it works.  And this works, and was around 30 bucks.  According to recommendations the pressure I should run is 130 positive and negative.  So, I got to pumping the shock up.  It was very easy.  On the Reba, the positive chamber is located on top, and the negative is on bottom.  As shown in the pics below:

These photos are kinda dark, but you get the picture.  The air chambers are on the left side of the fork.  When I screwed the pump in, it was reading a very low 80lbs pressure.  No wonder I bottomed out a few times.

Sunday, I went for a 2.5 hour ride and covered about 20 miles out on the Snowhill trails.  I averaged almost 9 miles an hour - which includes about a 5 minute rest stop.  Thats not bad for Snowhill and its switchback laden trails.  Thats about a mile an hour faster than any previous ride out there, and I didnt fall off the bike. The shock made a difference, for sure, but it may have also had to do with the fact that it rained alot last week and the sand was packed down.  The shock was not squishy at all, it soaked up bumps but didnt bottom out and jolt me.  Much more plush than the 'wet-noodle' feeling that I had before, and I didnt have to struggle through gobs of powdery sand. I really pushed myself through alot of this ride.. I had a group of guys that looked like they were pretty experienced mtb riders on my tail for a bit of the ride - and I managed to keep them out of sight and behind me until I took a different trail than they did.  I could hear them yelling at the blind corners.  Thats a pretty good idea out there - considering I almost had a head-on collision with somebody when I was coming around a blind corner.  Off work again today, and may get out for a ride...

Big Sandy Wheels and I need a Camelbak.

Yesterday marked the beginning of some vacation time I needed to take.  I only work about 2 days over the next two weeks. To start my vacation out right - I went for a nice bike ride out at snowhill.  To be honest, it was a pretty miserable experience. It has not rained more than a sprinkle in about a month. Needless to say, a very large portion of the trail is sandy.  When I say sandy, I mean it is as sandy as riding through a sugar sand beach.  The entire east side of the trail is tight singletrack - of sand.  This means that trying to whip around these switchbacks at any speed is fruitless. It sucks. period.

Once you get out to the river side and over west, its alot nicer.  There is another entrance Im going to use that skips the east side and just drops you off on the west side.  I got a good workout, and again basically ran out of water.  I got back to the car after about two hours with only sips left.  Endoing and going end over end caused one bottle to lose a bit of water.  I dont even want to go into that, particularly.  Lets put it this way:

Stump + high speed + not managing to get rear wheel high enough = ouch, suddenly dirty and sore.

or :

Lets just say that after that mishap I was pretty miserable, and barely cracked a smile. The trudge through sand on the way back left me grumbling and unpleasant.  Afterwords, I trekked right over and picked up one of these:

It is a Camelbak MULE.  I got the non 'NV' model. The NV is supposedly more breathable - but its a pound heavier. I was going to get a small one, but the Rogue and Lobo just wouldnt carry much stuff in case I want to do a long unsupported ride in the woods.  This has a 100 oz reservoir and quite a bit of expandable storage.

It is absolutely not as huge as they make it look on the website.  You can fit a ton of stuff in it, but when it is not packed with 5 days of crap you can cinch it down pretty tight.  It also has the 'Air Director' which consists of six 'meshy' pads which lift a bit of the bag off your back for airflow.

The reservoir has to be removed to be filled.  This sorta sucks, as it has a quarter length zipper in the back and you have to take the reservoir out, and stuff it back in when you fill it.  Here is the zipper opened all the way:

I guess you dont have to remove the reservoir from the pack.  It may be awkward to fill with it inside. We will see.  The storage is laid out very well.  There is a small 'overflow' pocket and a small zippered pocket with an organizer and key attachment:

I was able to fit my wallet, keys, a tube, a multitool and tire levers in here with room to spare.  There is also a nice felty pocket for your ipod, complete with a little earphone hole on the zipper.

There is a huge main pocket that I could throw a base layer, arm warmers, leg warmers maybe even some shoes in.  It does seem to get squeezed a bit by the full bladder.  Theres a giant overflow pocket that can be opened up by uncinching the buckles. Heres a pic with it uncinched:

You can see how huge that is.  I could easily store enough water and supplies for a full day's outing.  The hose can be run on either side, and it has both sternum and waist straps. You can remove the waist strap altogether with velcro loops on each side. With the waist strap on you cannot reach your jersey pockets, but with it off the side pockets are available to be used for gels and other quick grab food.  The pack seemed to be very stable even with the waist strap off.  I jumped up and down and it barely moved.  I also practically stood on my head, and it wouldnt slide up and bonk my noggin.  Ill give a ride report tomorrow, as I plan on going out for as many loops as I can stand of the west side of Snowhill.

No Pain, Some Pain.

Since I wasnt able to go ride yesterday, I wanted to get out for a nice long ride today.  It got cut short a little, but otherwise it was a great ride.  The Fantom really is a blast to ride.  First things first:

Ergon GX1. Not hype.

These grips work.  I rode longer today than I have any day previously, yet experienced dramatically less hand fatigue and zero hand pain.  I really like the way they feel.  The flat spot is perfect for resting your palms, but its not so big that you cant really grab on when going through technical sections.  My left hand got a little numb for less than a minute, and I just changed hand positions, and it went away.  There may be a little too much pressure on my hands, so I may try to adjust with a slightly shorter stem.  I definitely could have gone out for another lap, however.  The lizardskin chainstay protector stayed on all day, but it moved around a little.  Im going to use some zipties to get it tight.

Today's ride was out at the Little Big Econ trail - otherwise known as Snowhill.  Its a nice ride, but there are sections that are super sandy.  Today, I did not get lost right off the bat.  I made it back to the river section without getting turned around at all.  The river section is really nice, and has alot of ups and downs, and great scenery.

Part of the lower section of the trail along the river.  Elevation changes alot here, and in some sections the river is a good 50 feet below you.  Doesnt that water look delicious? Drink up!

Past the river section there are lots of uphill rooty sections like this. There are no real challenging climbs - this is florida, remember. There was a section that appears to be used more for coming down - not up.  I made it up with some difficulty as the rear wheel spun a few times in the sandy soil.  Way out in the back part of the trail, there is some nice open singletrack in a field of grass and palmetto. It was very nice to get up some speed. 

I had to talk to someone out there to get them to tell me which way to go to make it to the back-side of the trail - and then to the parking lot. I was planning on doing another loop, but on the way back in I turfed it pretty hard.  Some really simple singletrack had a branch that lept out and grabbed my handlebar sending me slamming into the dirt.  I didn't think it was that bad, but it was really sore when I made it to the parking lot.  Of COURSE - the parking lot was only another 100 yards or so away.  My knee got a little bloody as well, but nothing serious. I'd take a picture of my injuries, but I dont think anyone wants to see my white butt with a big bruise on it.


Other than falling over, I had a great ride.  I feel that I was really huffing it through most of the less-technical singletrack areas. I dont have a computer or HRM anymore since my edge broke.  However, I am a pretty good judge of effort.  I can say that it was a good workout.  According to the iphone GPS it says I went 10 miles, but I rember the GPS was about 2.5 miles short of my buddy's cyclecomputer last weekend.  Another lap would have been great, but theres always next time.

Dirt ride report - Snowhill

Saturday morning I went out to the Little Big Econ state park over off Snow hill road to meet a co-worker for a little trail riding. Of course, I forgot my gloves. This would turn out to make the last bit of the ride quite unpleasant. I hadn't been out here in a while, but this will be my regular weekend dirt ride, Im sure. Out of the parking lot of Snow hill there is about a mile of fairly sandy and tight singletrack that leads to some nice ups and downs right next to the river. My bike is pictured below leaned over onto a tree with a 20 foot drop into the river just behind.






The riding is pretty nice right there next to the river. There are quite a few short climbs and logpile roll-overs. These big wheels do seem to roll over obstacles very well. The only problem was that the front tire seemed to wash out very easily on the loose stuff. This seems to be the consensus about the small-block 8 tires. A couple of times the bike would just not go where I pointed it in the middle of a quick switchback. The front shock really absorbed all of the roots and ruts easily, and surprisingly the rear didn't jostle me around too much over roots. I could actually remain seated over small stuff without feeling like I was being butt-punched. Im running at 40 psi in both front and rear.

There is a dry swamp area out there that is somewhat rooty, but quite hard-packed with fast sweeping switchbacks. Now that part was super fun. My co-worker, Jim, let me lead for a while. I noticed after a couple of minutes of riding in the 'swamp' area that Jim was wayy behind me... actually out of sight. I stopped and he caught up a minute later.. I thought I was pretty hot stuff, but it turns out he had a little 'incident' running off trail. After riding for about an hour, my hands started to really throb with pain. The grips felt like bricks, and one grip I had to continually smack back into place. These wtbs have got to go. I'm sure one problem with the pain was that I had a bit of a death-grip on the handlebars. I'm not really used to riding in the rough stuff yet, so my fitness level is way above my off-road bike handling confidence right now. So, when really pushing it, I would grab the hell out of the handlebars.

Sunday's ride was much the same, but I had gloves and a lot more confidence - and was able to climb almost every obstacle without dabbing. I think I only had one forced dab in an hour. I was out by myself, and kinda got lost - fun anyway. Hands were sore after 45 minutes, and my lower back started to get a little sore after an hour or so. May need a shorter stem to lessen the stretch to the bars, but probably just need to work on doing a bunch of sit-ups for strengthening my gut-area.

So after my first ride(s) here is what I have to say:

Seat: WTB Rocket V was very comfortable.
Grips: These are crap - even riding with gloves the next day my hands hurt after only 45 minutes.
Tires: Roll really fast through the hard stuff - but feel slick through any sort of sandy or loose terrain.
Drivetrain: Very slick shifting. I was having a few issues with ghost-shifting in certain gears. I will need to figure that out.
Brakes: Grip better than any brake I have ever used. Rear brake is dragging a little. From doing some research, it may be overfilled with fluid.

I have to say that I am really pleased with my purchase. The botched frame sticker bums me out, but the way this thing rides more than makes up for it. The sticker could say 'ButtPuncher' for all I care, the thing rides great.