Falls City Again and again

Back down to Falls City for more abuse. Maing, Robholio and i picked up Lon from Boise for a sweet day of riding. Spring like weather and mostly good dirt. Flying J and Mtn Rider showed a litle after us and the fun started. MTN RIder was in Basic and was hitting the Simulator, did a big no footer and couldn't get the pedals back. He must have been 8 or 9 feet in the air and drooped like a rock. Slam! Looked like he fell out of a tree, belly flop style. Shoe came off, visor shattered. Visor shrapnel cut up his face a bit. Got up, took off the rest of his visor and went back and did it again. He's a tough guy and a great rider. I crashed like a fool on the entrance to Sunday stroll twice. Soft dirt is my friend. Mtn Rider crashed there also. Later Robholio crashed hard on a stump jump..o ya and Lon from Boise crashed in Basic. We showed Lon some of the other trails and he seemed to like the area. good day but way to much Carnage asada.

The last three rides

The last 3 rides at Falls City have been pretty fun. I saw the completion of the new and improved Sunday Stroll trail and the new HUGE take off for the ET jump. Pedaling into that all i good see was the jump. Kind of intimidating. Of course Mtn Rider was doing some sweet move on it,like hitting his head on a branch. Maing had a bowell jarring crash. I rolled into the lower section of Grannys foot. That is a cool section. More trail like that please. I had a good crash in Basic, when i nosed in of a down hill drop. Wheel,head then shoulder. I love soft dirt. Fat Larry was hitting up Sunday Stroll and cased so hard that he smashed his wheel. I thought those Atom Lab rims were strong. Not strong enough. He was out for the day ,so he figured he would ask his Girl to marry him. Chip hit the ski jump up top and cartwheeled almost into a tree. Very exciting. I got Dave out there for the first time and he liked the taste of the Black rock dirt. Crazy Jake's kid face planted and got some blood on the ground. The new ladder drop after the Halo drop is sweet. We hit that like 3 times. Irish Rob did the cliff drop and the drop won. Lot's more cool stuff went down.Jamie and I thought we we're working for a tool company at times but that's how it is sometimes.

Spring is coming!

I'm in Bike

Thank's to K.P. ( the photo master) It's the March issue, the Titec add.

Just Another Day

1/22/2008

Down to Falls City for more wet riding. The Red Raja picked me up early and we headed to the closest coffee drive through. We pulled in right behind Whiplash and Josh (who needs a nick name) Raja said “Let’s pretend we’re stealing the bikes” Sounds good. We got low and he started shaking the bikes, I slapped the side of the car and Josh came out ready to fight to the death to defend his new Norco A line. Funny stuff. Got down there really fast ‘cause the Trailhead Cycles van has one speed. Full speed. Played at Basic training for a while. Same ol thing. Josh was looking good on the A line. No one else was showing so we headed up. Stopped by Brake Check and Raja stepped it up and hit one of the jumps by the road for the first time. SMOOTH! We hit Dino’s re-route of upper Bonzi which is always a blast. Whiplash hit the Cliff drop. Again. He landed way down. At least 18 feet I think. Either way it’s big. Did another section of Bonzi then got on Granny’s Kitchen. The E.T. was closed for re-construction so we headed to the Halo/Halette drop. Raja and Josh were first timers on the Halette drop so that was good to see. Whiplash hit the halo really big. Biggest he’s done it I’d say. He compressed so hard and then for a second I thought he was going down , but he caught traction again and was good. Short ride for the raja and I but hey…it’s cold and wet.

Last ride of 2007

Flying J, Mtn Rider, Dirka and I headed to the hills for one last ride of this year. It was wet, cold and snowing. Hiked to the top and rode a new-ish trail that was really fun. Turns, rollers. Berm city. I heard they’re going to keep it going all the way down and do some races on it. That would be sweet having some grass roots racing around. We rode that to Dino’s re -route to bonzi to old Sickter gnar down to Basic. I was cruising down sickter think maybe I would skip the drop to gap since I was riding on snow. I stopped to look at the ladder and saw that a tree had fallen and chopped it in half. Ouch! I couldn’t tell when I was riding up , so that would have been crazy to ride up on it to find out it was broken. Look before you leap.
Mtn Rider guinea pigged another stunt on the evolving Sunday Stroll trail. Snow on the ground,snow on the ladder, snow on the landing. He had to start on the road and pedal into the first jump( gap) and then onto the ladder to the drop. The gap after the ladder was not huge but riding on the snow covered ladder made it slow I think. He nailed both landings right on the edge and said he was sketchy on the bridge. Looked good to me. It was a short day since we we’re freezing, wet and freezing. Highlight of the day was Freezing J. He was changing out of his wet clothes (all of them) when I noticed a woman in the vehicle right beside him. Oops. Guess we’ll be calling him Naked J for awhile. ( no pic’s of that)

Lot’s of ride’s this year

This was a memorable year as our family did a big road trip and had a great time checking out a lot of different area’s . Nothing as good as what you can find in Oregon. I rode in so many places with so many people it hard to keep it all straight. Good thing I took a lot of pictures. Here’s some to check out.
2008 should be great and I’m all ready planning some MTB road trips. Can’t wait!!

I should have known when I got to Trail Head Cycles for our night ride and saw the young upstart Derek finishing putting his bike together it would be interesting. It’s always good to have your bike dialed before riding at night, or any time really. Regardless, the Red Raja and I we’re determined to ride so we took off ( latter than planned) for the trails. 20 feet from the gate the young upstart’s chain broke. Turned out it just fell off so I thought maybe the ride can be salvaged. Not to be. His chain came off every 5 feet it seemed , so after fooling around for about 2 miles we called it and sent him down the fire road and the Raja and I rode one last trail. Waste? Nah. It’s always good to get together with some friends and ride. Even if you stop every 5 feet.

Too cold to stay home.

Generally when it’s 31 degrees the last thing on your mind is to get up just as early as a work day (or earlier) and hit the trails. Well….unless your us. In my often overstated opinion, winter time is one of the best times for free riding. ( is it one word?) I rode my DH bike over to Josh’s house and met up with Whiplash and his little woman. We headed to the trails and watched the temp go from 33 to 31 on the drive. Started hiking up to the warm up area to hopefully warm up and hung out there for an hour. I was warm by the time we got the 2nd run in to Basic training. Soon the usual characters began to show up. Flying J , Crazy Jake, Dirk, Dirks buddy, Mtn Rider, Rubberdown, Maing,. I think that was it. There was some guys I didn’t know and we saw Fat Larry when we we’re leaving . The ride was great. Mtn Rider got the first tracks on a new ladder to gap on a section of Sunday stroll that is being re-done. That was cool to see. I hit 2 things for the first time , so that’s always cool. Maing ate it on the road gap and jacked up his neck I guess. I didn’t see it but he said he landed a little sideways and then went down. Crazy Jake tore off his der. Hanger and rode chain less. Rubberdown was sending it with his new bike and it was good to ride with him again. The vid clip is Me, then Whiplash then Mtn rider then me again. Another great ride. Minus the Chamois butter story.

It’s not the destination, it’s the ride.

Didn’t I hear some one say that once? Maybe. I probably read it in a bike mag or something. Well some ride’s don’t really have a destination, you just ride around and around. Today was a ride within a ride. I was to meet Terry at his house in the morning to ride some of our favorite local trails.
Terry is my go to guy for XC, so when everyone is hitting the DH trails Terry will usually do a XC ride. He’s a really well rounded rider.) I figured I should ride the bike there and then catch a ride with him and then ride the trails. (Jeep Donaldson would not be pleased with us riding on the road, but he’s from Colotucky and things are different there) Marla was getting ready to ride her cool cruiser to the store so I got to ride along with her for a bit which was fun. When I got to Terry’s he said something like
“ Your crazy” I’m not sure if that was a general greeting, or because it was so cold and I rode to his house. Maybe just because I rode to his house. So we loaded up and drove to the trail head , which was close enough to ride to but it was kinda cold ya know. The trails we’re perfect. A few muddy spots but nothing to bad. This was the first time I had done a geared XC ride since Moab in April. I have a crap fork on this old bike so it was like riding a rigid. Maybe I should just put a rigid fork on it and be done with it. We rode some of the classic trails and a few new ones. No crashes, but Terry fell over trying to do…..something. We ended as usual on the Lollipop trail, which is a fun twisty, turny trail, then Terry showed me a newish log ride. Then it was back to the car and his house so could begin my ride home. About half way I started smelling all kinds of restaurants and it was getting to me. All of a sudden it turned out to be about the destination, or at least one with hot food. Which was waiting for me when I rolled up to the front door.

A fine Fall Day

One German,

One Austrian,

One Oregonion ..three mountain bikers

two singlespeeds,

one geared…three Mountain bikes

32x18 , 32x20 , 22,32,44x 11-34

one trail,

one crash, one smashed finger,

one bent brake lever

One great fall day in Oregon.