Thursday, June 25, 2009

After work ride

Nothing like a hard ride after work to blow out the office stress and b.o. We've been doing these rides for a few weeks now; there's a fantastic network of trails just 100m from our office door. Since we're on top of a mesa, there is a delicious drop-in to start, and a grinder, sweaty climb to finish. Perfect. Sometimes starting from the office, however, means you forget your gear, so today I was in work socks and borrowed shoes - hot.


The opening gambit - a fast but choppy little descent down to the canyon floor. Taylor's been riding this same exact bike since 1998 and he rides it like a bat out of hell, whatever that means. Anyway he's fast going down.



The ground here is so dry it's like concrete, the 5 days of rain a year in San Diego don't give it much respite. If nobody's coming up you can get some good speed, a couple tricky waterbars and rocks force you to keep an eye open...


The trails go up and down the canyon slopes, although they are slowly being eroded away by new home development. I guess that's what they call progress. Here's Taylor losing traction on the notoriously loose and steep last little climb. But sweet desserts were awaiting not long after.


Taylor rides bikes better than he takes pictures I'm afraid. I look a bit like bigfoot dodging trees as I round the bend here. Anyway, it was fun as hell. I'm glad to have such good riding, so close by.

Friday, June 19, 2009

St. Edward's Park

St. Edward's is one of those Seattle-area mainstays, an urban riding area like Tapeworm but much less technical. Situated at the top of Juanita hill in Kirkland, just east of Sea-town, it's a fun little place to go burn some calories on the dirt. GG and I pulled up to the QFC parking lot across the street from the trails and got ready to ride.


Our bikes were really too big for these smooth, fast trails, but what the hell, it was fun to buzz around. Greg had to adjust his handlebars, gave me a chance to use my fancy camera...


The bikes look gooood, and the Ibis rode tough in only it's 2nd ride. Had some time to balance the suspension to dial it in. This was actually my first bike with a Fox RP23 rear shock and the pro-pedal works pretty well.


A lot of wind storms in Seattle means lots of fallen logs, and while sometimes these are cut out, sometimes they are turned into small stunts, which GG capably rocks... St. Edwards. 1.5 hours of rolling singletrack that is close to town.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Grand Ridge in Issaquah

Greg's family was out of town, so he convinced me to fly up to Seattle for the weekend. This was to be the first full test for the newly packed Ibis (which we would stay up to 2am building, but that's another story). There was also a promise about Seattle Sounders tickets... Anyway it was guaranteed to be a weekend of xbox and sweeeeet trails. After an xbox session that lasted until 4:30am, we got a bit of sleep, woke up, and loaded our rigs onto GG's pimped out 1997 Honda.


This was really an REI ride, all the REI guys like to travel in flocks. Luckily, there are some a-ok people who work there. So we had a pretty good (and fit) group on the trail.


Grand Ridge is rideable from downtown Issaquah (a suburb of Seattle), and basically consists of 95% delicious singletrack. Hard-packed and tight, Grand Ridge goes up and down, is reasonably technical and just fun as hell.


A little technical trouble on the Ibis' maiden voyage - the hub end-caps unthreaded enough to sieze the hub in the fork. Made a fantastic squeaking sound.


But all ended well and the Ibis rode pretty darn tough. A bit of rain in the last 30 minutes gave us a spattering of mud.


After a big ride, it's time for a burrito...

Best purchase ever???????

Lo and behold, my most prized possession of the moment, my new Ibis Mojo. Ok, a bike's a bike, but watch Fiona and I disassemble and pack into a suitcase.


Rear triangle comes off easily with a couple allen wrenches. Fiona helps sort out the loose cables. Thanks Fi!


You have to deflate the fork but everything packs in nicely...


Some packing and then lay the wheels on top...


And SHAZAM! Ain't no airline going to charge me 150 bucks to travel with a bike. Best thing of all, it's a sweet ride and I show up with a full-on 5.5" kick-ass mountain bike. I am winning!!!!


This all results in one happy cyclist.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

LummaLoop revisited


A short trip back to my dear, sweet Meldert gave me the opportunity to ride my old beloved LummaLoop. It's not the world's most epic ride, but I miss it just the same.




You don't see many mornings like this in Belgium. Pristine.




Some trails in Belgium stay underwater all year long. If you want to get your mud on.




This is spring in Belgium. What you can't see are the hundreds of nettles attacking you from the sides of the trail...




Sad to say, every time I ride this trail now, there's another section destroyed by tractors. This was one of the tastiest little bits of singletrack, now it's gone...

Friday, June 5, 2009

Taylor's bikes

My colleague Taylor runs his bikes until they break. He's still rolling his 1998 Specialized Epic. He had to put the long travel kit and a new fork. But it still runs tough.


Direct Max Drive. That's 1998 marketing talk. The front triangle was 2 pieces of extruded aluminum, welded together.


This was a v-brake bike, Taylor had to retro-fit a disc mount, drilling a hole above the dropout.


Also in his garage, something I'd never seen...


A Bontrager cruiser BMX

Monday, June 1, 2009

morning ride @ ivan's - exclusive video footage

Another hour spent on my apple doing video editing, only for you, the reader: