sycamore and noble grand tour: a farewell to pat

It's been a few weeks now since Pat's last weekend in Southern California. Before he ventured off to Sydney by way of Boston via Denver (dude, why not stop in Vancouver along the way?), the consensus was that some serious riding was in order -- some kind of leg-melting send-off.

And an epically victorious weekend of riding it was.

I'm not sure what the exchange rate between Road and MTB miles would be, but considering that a respectable weekend of road riding might include about 50 miles, and a truly exhausting mountain bike ride might be as few as 15 miles long, the 50 or so that we pedaled on the mountain bikes over Saturday and Sunday definitely rank as "tough". And "Fun".

We can confidently log 8 hours of saddle time, dinner at pizza port, Santana's burritos, and a LATE dinner of kabobs and Super Troopers.

Littering AND ... ?

As soon as Pat got down to SD from Irvine on Saturday afternoon, we headed out to Sycamore Canyon for a couple hours of fun-and-easy riding. Nice loop up at the top, and some fun, fast single track serpentining along the bottom. And let's not forget the BMX jumps. My standards for this aren't very high, since I consider it a victory any time my tires simultaneously leave the ground and then return, preserving their initial rider-to-wheel orientation. Regardless, I was successful in this venture. But Pat and Mike both got a few good launches. (pic: Mike points out that Pat still needs a cooler jersey, and Pat looks away in shame.)

Littering AND ... ?

Our decision for dinner was probably the worst call of the weekend. I'll take responsibility for that, insofar as I think it was my idea, but it was definitely subject to veto all along the way. Kabobs are delicious, but require significant prep-time, and this may not be so good when you're not even getting home from riding till 9pm, and plan to wake up at 5am to go riding again. Dinner was ready at 11pm. Oops. The baked brie wheel with chile jam is awesome.

A mere 6 hours later we were rising out of our respective slumbers to move bleary-eyed towards the focus of the weekend of riding: Noble Grand Tour with Jason. No worries, though -- he was on his single speed.

We might have successfully beaten the heat with our early start had we not just pedaled right through it, anyway. We didn't get back to the cars for 6 hours. When we arrived there were a lot of other cars in the lot, and loads of other riders prepping for their Noble Canyon ride. None of those cars were there when we got back. Given the ride we did, this is definitely a feather in my cap.

Littering and smokin' the reefer.

The Noble Canyon Grand Tour started with a backwards run of the Extra Credit Loop, heading on up the fire road to the Indian Creek turn-off, then up Indian Creek to the Noble Canyon Trail intersection, up to the Sunrise Highway, up to the Big Laguna Loop, and from the end of that loop back to the Champagne Crossing, and finally down the Noble we all know and love. We'd been in the saddle for 4 hard hours before we even got to the descent. I think that the three of us had long since fallen into survival mode by the time we got there (Most of that time was climbing), but everyone managed to perk up a little bit after some shade and the introduction of much-needed negative grade.

Chickenfucker!

A couple of these parts I'd never done before. Indian Creek: Steep and loose. probably more fun to descend. Wouldn't be as bad to climb if the overall ride was going to be a bit shorter, or you're in super-human shape.
Extra-credit loop backwards (Pool tiderc-artxe?) is also less fun going up than it is going down. To be fair, we were all stuck behind some other riders who were neither as fit nor as confident, and we ended up walking a lot of stuff. I guess it's a nice change to go down on the whore. Er... go down the whore, i mean. the hill. not ... nevermind.

Gimme a liter o' cola.

Miraculously, in this 6-hour marathon re-verification of the subtle notion that going DOWN-hill on a mountain bike is generally more fun than going UP-hill, NOBODY FELL. Well, actually, nobody fell BAD. Mike flopped gently into a bush when he pulled the ejection cord in an effort not to land in a toothy, jagged mess of rocks. He got up and cleaned the rest of the section. Pat got launched over the steep side en route to his attempt to clean the section that has haunted him and been the source of all the hilarity in Mike's stories of Pat riding. MIRACULOUSLY he managed to pull it back together, climb back on, find the good line and clean it. It was excellent. I took my small victories, too. Getting bolder all the time ... More fun every ride ...

Some of the best beer EVER was had at the bottom when Jason and James (who both killed us on this ride), after beating us down to the parking lot, returned from an errand of fetching a couple six-packs. Glycogen depleted and dehydrated, we had the awesome experience of effectively taking beer intravenously, without the risk of carbonation in the veins. Beautiful. A quick, clean and instant (if short-lived) buzz.

Am I saying "MEOW"?

Needless to say, the legs were shot for a couple days after that.

One last note: Jason. Holy ... ! Howthehell ... ? whatthe ... ? SINGLESPEED? SERIOUSLY? damn ...

S'more Sycamore pics.

Rabbit hops.








Ramrod!








Goodspeed, Pat.

My new no speed

Bent chain link plus ferocious pedal power plus technical up = drive train apocalypse. On my ride of porcupine I tried to crank over a ledge and somehow destroyed my drive train. The bent link caught in the rear derailleur, torquing the arm beyond recognition, snapping the hanger and throwing the whole works into the spokes. Fortunately, the rear wheel seems to be true and all the spokes survived.



Notice that the cable of the derailleur runs BEHIND the chain stay because the wheel wound the chain and derailleur around the hub half a revolution. The whole works got so tangled up I had to break the chain several times. It took about 10 minutes but I removed the chain and used an ace bandage to hold the derailleur to the chain stay. I was able to coast my new no speed down the last half mile of dirt. No speeds are a bit tricky on the downhill.... No bursts of speed to help over technical spots. But at least they work. For the flats and climbs, I do not recommend them. I got to push/coast/walk my bike the 6 miles into Moab. And despite lots of empty pickups passing by, no one offered a ride, the bastards. Cycling shoes are not great for walking.

For the record, I had sram x9 derailleur and chain. I'm getting shimano this time around. I did not like sram at all. The chain consistently missed teeth when I pushed hard. Then this...



Minus drive train apocalypse, the ride (below) was epic! I still had a ridiculous grin on my face, despite the long walk back and the fact that I'll be dropping $100 plus at the shop.

Solo Ride on Porcupine Rim

So I had this long drive back to CO from CA through the desert and without the modern convenience of air conditioning. The brilliant way to make this all worth it is to stop in Moab for 48 hours to break up the drive. Then hike up Negro Bill Canyon and ride Porcupine rim!

Riding porcupine solo is an experience. Man vs desert, bike vs wild technical desert trail. Riding it solo in the summer adds a bit of dehydrated scorching death in the desert element. Fortunately I found a shuttle company running and there was a group of 2 that would be (way) behind me in case I needed someone to report where my body lay. I left the stock tanks (main trailhead) at 6.45am and the sun already felt way too hot. The 4 mile climb to the view (over castle valley) was as grueling as usual, and already I could feel the oppressive summer heat. But the 11 miles of downhill made up for that. Absolutely awesome. Riding solo lets one get into a certain technical rhythm. I flew down the trail, cleaning sections I had not cleaned before and hitting all the hucks without pause. I even managed some of the tough section on the last 3 miles of single track. Of course, I still had to hike the bike around the insane technical stuff at the creek crossing. After that I blasted down the trail until, with 1/2 mile remaining, mechanical disaster struck. Yet even with the mech problem, I made it back to the road (highway 128) in 2 hours 30 minutes. Not bad. As for the mechanical problem... see the above post.

Next trip we have to do the higher drop!

(Photo: the "death on the right" singletrack at the end of the ride skirts the very top edge of this mesa wall, rising about the Colorado River. The trail turns away from the river after that, to the insane creek crossing, then drops riders out on the road in the river valley.)

vanilla bean gu.

amasa back, revisited.

of course, the scenery. but the important part is the audio.

let this be a lesson that you should never, ever put yourself in the position where you may have to rely on any member of the ucktard racing team for bicycle maintenance, especially on-trail.

A real SS !

Funny how things work out. I prepare to enter a post with a real photo of my single speed, Steve enters a post about his POS SS. Anyway, here is the machine. Notice the lack of chain tensioner, this is accomplished by using a half chain link to shorten the chain. Possible upgrades. . .everything but the frame, stay tuned!

the trek vs the canyon

an attempted ride on the (old, rescued beater) single speed in pq canyon was thwarted inside 10 minutes.

first, the fall. stupid cheep tires just slipped out on the turn.












then, the rattling jingle sound. cassette lock ring came loose, and my spacers and cog were just floating merrily.








then, the fold. i know i tightened the hell out of them after i folded the first chain ring in half. nonetheless, one of the chain ring bolts came out and on the way back up the trail to the car (after less than 10 minutes of riding) i folded another chain ring.

i returned to eric's truck by hiking and scooter-ing that p.o.s. back up the hill.

i'm pretty sure the bike self-destructed because it heard me start to spec out a new, respectable single speed. now it's definitely time to work on that.

Escape from PQ Canyon

Santa came early this evening. That is, if Santa is an over-zealous park ranger whose definition of sunset must be the time when you can no longer see the sun, which is pretty much all day if it's cloudy.

After parting with Mike at the conclusion of the maiden voyage of his new SS ride, I returned to the parking lot to discover a queue of cars waiting behind the locked gate. On my windshield I found a parking violation warning, which promised that the ranger may not return for an hour and a half after being summoned to unlock the gate. The guy who called him initially was discouraged by the apparently complete lack of understanding of the person on the other end of the phone about where we were and why we might need to be released, and had apparently already been waiting a half hour. This was a good 10 minutes after sunset, as far as I could tell.

Some took matters into their own hands. Ultimately we all made it back to freedom by stacking up debris so that all our little sedans and coupes could make it out unscathed by driving up the curb, over the grass, around the locked gate, over the fence that had been ripped out by someone who had apparently been through this process before, and back down onto the street. Any worries about the ranger driving up in time to catch us springing from PQ canyon were alleviated by the guy on the phone saying, "Even the police don't seem to understand or care."

It was a laughably crappy cap to an otherwise extremely fun ride that redeemed a very, very weird and annoying day that involved getting a parking ticket (the real kind, to the tune of $40), learning that I stand a good chance of being evicted from my grad student housing for being too close to graduation but not quite close enough, learning that the resolution to this potential lies in my own delusion about how far I actually AM from graduating, and of course starting the day for the second time in a row on low single digits of hours of sleep after assembling a talk on a subject that was probably nailed down by the Russians decades ago.

The Cask IPA at dinner was beautiful, just like riding the Waltworks and the new SS.