Saturday, January 26, 2013

Jet Plane Ride

Gonna get on a Jet Plane....in June.  For somewhere.

2 Years ago almost I did the big Pisgah Week trip for my birthday in June.  It was a blast, though doing it by myself was a  bit of a downer, I like my me time, but going with others would have been cool too, pushing myself a bit honestly. 

So the last week I've been thinking of what I wanted to do.  My first thought was another trip South to that area.  Maybe a week, maybe shorter.  Now I'm thinking of doing something else longer for the birthday and maybe doing NC again in May or Maybe July.  Not sure. 

What I am thinking of is hitting somewhere like BC, Sun Valley or a bunch of other area's that were just listed in a Bike/Mountain Bike article.  Not really the big places, but smaller ones where I can do a mix of things.  I want to do a 3-5 day trip then have a few days somewhere else to just do trip things.  Maybe hit a park for some hiking.  Shrug.  Some of the places have signifigant altitude 6 to 9k feet!  Some do 10+k of climbing though that should be a real test. 

Hoping today gets warm enough to melt a lot of the Rails to Trails stuff.  I really need to get in a long ride tomorrow. 

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Snow Baby!

Got a nice 1 to 2 inch dusting of snow last night, we will be having a BITCHIN snow ride tonight!  Hell ya!

The 45 North boots have been most excellent so far.  Wore them up at the shed last weekend in temps ranging from 46 to 56 and my feet were comfortable the whole time.  Tonight will be a real cold test, but I expect no issues.  I have had them out in the high 20's but tonight should be low 20's. 

Shed last weekend was rough, hadn't been out there in almost 9 months.  Thank god I didn't decide to pedal up from the maintenance yard.  We rode from hamburg and did Big Sucky Down, then Long Sucky UP out to Gambrill, then yellow to the connector.  Did the Big Gay DH trail down about halfway and turned around, then went down Grass Mower and over and back some other trail.  Took forever. WAY outa climbing shape. 

Last night I went to lube chain for today and my front tire was flat.  Suspect a very slow leak.  The new D is super nice and shortening the chain also reduced the chain slap a LOT.  New rear pads also helped stopping. 

Ian and I discussed my sizing issues after I messed up my elbow during a descent from locking it.  Ouch.  Think my next ride may be a large not XL.  Tough choice. 

Southern Tier's Un-earthly IPA - Big win!  Oak aged, very malty, nice hops.  Excellent.