First Night Ride at Wakefield.

So this Thursday, I did my first night ride out at Wakefield Park in Springfield, Va. It was a good time. Got out there nice and early and spent an 40 minutes gearing up, adjusting equipment. A new pair of gloves, socks, and headwarmer. Very nice. I now just need my new fleece tights and I'll be almost good to go for the season.

Did a little preride to warmer up and see how things would go. And it was pretty damn good. Put on a extra pair of socks and was good to go. I went out with a nice casual group, we had 8-9 riders through out. We made an average pace of 7.1 according to my cycle computer odometer. We went down to the creekside trail, then climbed to the power lines. The most of us hit the bowl. We then rode the trail back up and out to the parking lot. We then headed over to Accotink and rode most of the trails over there. A bit more challenging. We kept having people not make it up and out of stream crossings. We had a woman along who'd never mountain biked before excluding one light trail ride and never night rode before. She kicked ass and rode hard! I was impressed.

I did head over to kilroy's but it was too noise and smokey and my wife bailed on her late class so I headed home.

Maybe there will be a post ride stop at DFH after Black Hills tonight.

Descente Wombat Gloves Review

So I went out yesterday and picked up a pair of Descente Wombat gloves. Pretty darn nice. I like the knit cuff, the construction of the main seams. Not sure how I feel about the grip material but i bet it will last well. The snot wipers on the back of the thumb(s) are nice and soft. Temp wise I think they are pretty good. I was riding in the mid-40's last night pretty comfortable excluding my already damaged finger. So I did the poor man's warmer and took the glove off and a few breaths into it later jammed my fingers back in. Much better. So now I know I just need to pre-warm them. I'm now thinking about what kind of liner glove I want. My other bone to pick is the the thumb length is a bit short.

Now I also need to deal with my cold feet issue. I wore a pair of Smartwool socks under a pair of snowboarding socks and it was better. I just can't find a pair of booties that will cover my shoes correctly yet. ARGH.

Colder than a Well Diggers @ss in Alaska

Last night here in the Nations Capital Area was our first REALLY REALLY cold night. Even right now the outside is reading 26Degrees at 9AM.

So last night we had the Friday Night Lights at Little Bennett Park. It was cold at the start and damn cold by the end. I was pretty happy with my warmth level in general. The 2 dark spots were gloves/hands at first and shoes/toes at the end, err well by 2/3'rds of the way through. I should have sprung for these at HudsonTrail before the ride.

http://www.hudsontrail.com/viewItem/10/596/7695/
http://www.hudsontrail.com/viewItem/10/596/11622/ - These look good too!

I mainly went there looking for some biking booties to help keep the feet warm, it was really only my toes that were cold, and that was from swelling I think. I need to adjust my shoes a bit out for winter near the front.

http://www.hudsontrail.com/viewItem/10/82/9180/
http://www.hudsontrail.com/viewItem/10/82/12616/

It was a damn nice ride otherwise. Though a bit tricky as a ton of leaves hid a few tree limbs/etc down in the trail. I only partially dumped once though I had to dab a few more times than usual. The full moon made it really bright and nice. By the end of the ride the grass was frozen and the dew on trees was also putting a white frosting on everything. I was back from the 3 guys a lot of the longer sections and it lent a nice feel of being a bit out on my own. Though I hung in pretty well on a couple of the big climbs. Nice for not riding much.

My layers were as such. Lower - Thermal LongJohns, BikeShorts, legwarmers over the LJ's and then a long pair of snowboarding socks. Up Top I had a Thermal LJ shirt with a riding jersey over that with a tech fleece thermal over that then finally a HaleyHansen jacket shell (No liner). I wore a neck warmer/buff but i used a new breath mask and that served as my earwarmer/face mask and it worked pretty well. If only my nose wasn't so runny! So a new pair of gloves heavier than my 661's and a pair of shoe covers and I'll be good to go down to that level again.

I hate my Car, Somedays

Monday was hellish. Rain delayed my car inspection for almost 5 hours, and I didn't get my car back till 3pm. UGH. Then I find out I have 1000 of stupid repairs to do before it's street legal in MD! DAMN IT! How frickin annoying. I may try and do some of the work myself. I dunno its annoying. I want to find a job closer to home where I can walk/ride/metro commute in some fashion.

Afterwards I did pickup my bike at GTown and the new dérailleur was installed and it looks sweet and shifts even better. Nice, quiet and sure. I didn't test it too much but preliminaries show that it is better. I upped to an 07 X9 from the 04/05 X7.

I also got a few pieces of new cold weather gear in but the tights I ordered were too damn small. So they are going back.

And its raining like crazy and it looks like the last Schaefer Farm Night ride is probably gonna be a wash.

WTF is wrong with People?

http://petermckay.blogspot.com/2007/11/not-typical-commute-home.html

Damn this guy was lucky, but it just shows how damn scary and weird the world is getting. Whats next, wearing Body Armor while biking??? (well I'd wear it when doing more extreme mt biking....:)

Calendar Season

Calendar Season is upon us once again. Last year I found 2 cool ones that I wasn't in time to buy due to limited quantity :(

This year one of them just released Nov 4, and I got mine Satudary. It rocks its from the girls up at www.point83.com, check out the calendar itself at:

http://www.point83.com/calendar/

The other calendar I dug last year that doesn't appear to be back this year so far is:

http://www.nsmb.com/shore_news/mudbunnies_calendar_11_06.php
www.muddbunnies.com

Alas, no sign of one from them this year, the group seems a bit less active....Keep an eye out through November though!

Monday was a good day....

Damn it was a great day to ride!

After a coffee trip with the wyf this morning I made a few stops and made my way out to Germantown, a quick stop at Germantown Cycles and Phil hooked me up with a new Thompson seatpost, decided to stay with the leanback/whatever like my original Easton 50, but its a bit less back...A bit of fiddling in the car and viola. Out to schaeffer and i'm off. Its nice and warm so the jacket stays in the car. I layed down a nice almost 12 miles. Not a bad pace either....7mph ish....much better than thursday....

Need to tune the seat height and position a bit more, but thats gonna have to wait for the new x9 to be installed later this week. I'm excited!

Ran into a bunch of bikes all the way from Purceville VA, from the Lands End shop, they said its one of their closest rides, but they are hoping to get somethign going out at Round Hill eventually. County or city lands.....That would be cool for them.

Off to finish my batch of chili! Ye HAW!

The Good, Bad and Scary

Rode a late Halloween ride at Schaeffer Farms last night. Good ride till the near end when a mechanical totally burned me. The bolt that holds the seat bracket on sheared off out on the orange bypass off the main yellow loop. My group ride leader todd saved the day and took his own seat off and lent me his as I was already wiped out and couldn't stand-ride the whole way back. I also inadvertenly unplugged Gwadzilla's light while putting it in his jersey pocket (Face-palm).

For not being active the last 3 weeks I actually felt pretty good, between being sick for a week or more, rain, and travel I was pretty happy though by the end I was blown out and cramped up after a bad failed log hopover.

The ride otherwise was pretty good darn good, the white loop had awesome decorations and stuff. We had a great turnout and everyone had a damn good ride.

I also took the ride into G-Town cycles and phil hooked me up with the best adjustment possible. i also went ahead and ordered a new X9 to replace my slightly worn but sad x7. There was a bit of play in it, that just couldn't be adjusted out.

I want to ride at least 1 more time this weekend. Or at least get into the gym on Saturday and ride on Monday.

Jeez - its almost November.

Crud. Where does time go? I dunno. My riding has been pretty eratic here in the last few months, between extreme Overtime, and commute delays leaving me stuck in traffic. The final straw is that my damn shifting setup is giving me a migraine. I think I could use to replace my rear derailleur but its just not in the cards. The other thing that would serve me well is learning to actually adjust it by myself. Add in a few trips, in Aug, Sept and Oct.....And wow...its been busy.

Winter and night rides bring some new challenges to me in the form a suitable riding cloths. I'm right now considering what kind of windbreaker is going to be optimal. A new pair of clear safety glasses for all riding is also on my list.

I did finally hit a new park for me, Fountain Head in Fairfax Co, Va. Nice with some semi technical descents and a few climbs that broke me utterly. I also made like humpty-dumpty and took a small fall off the 2nd Teeter-totter, due to a lack of that all important momentum. It was a challenging ride plus dark was creeping up on my and I lost my map pretty early on so I had not a great idea of where I was on the ride. Gonna try and ride it one or two more times before it closes for the season.

I need a nap but alas I've got another 4 hours of fun here at work.

So cheers and have a drink for me!

Fatcyclist Gear

Got my new Fat Cyclist jersey and t-shirt on Monday. Sweet, though the Twin Six XXL is just a hair smaller than the primal XL. If I order from T-6 again, I'm gonna have to go mega-sized XXXXXXXXL. Or 3XL. Eeesh. Skinny-arsed bikers. As it is I may have to cut the sleeves slightly if I bulk up in my upper arms anymore.

Should be posting a pic of the new kit soon. Maybe tommorow I'll try and grab one.

Repairs and Replacements

Last week I did the Little Bennett Night ride again. During the ride once again my rear brake lever pushrod came loose again (this controls how far towards the bar you have to pull to get brakes.). I'd had it with it and decided to replace it. It then started to not full return to normal position. Okay sign from above... Then on the way out coming off browning run towards clarksville rd. my rear tire went Hisssssssssssssssssss. And flatted. I caught up and pumped up on the other side. The slime tube got me another half mile before it reflatted mostly up the last hill. A mile push back was all that was left. Argh. Not worth the time/effort to change out in the forest in the dark with bugs and wet ground. Push work out back.

So I replaced the tube Saturday and went and picked up a Juicy 7 to replace my rear Hayes So1e. Very cool, had them install the disc. I got home and went to install the brake....oops. Wrong adapter...203 not 160...argh. Also while at the shop they noticed my seat was looking "a bit" off. The rails were fully crushed and the bolt on the post was rubbing into the seat bottom. I did research that night and a bit sunday. I finally ended up picking up a Terry Fly Ti. I also got the correct adapter and went on. I installed it the brake. Then the new saddle. Man, that thing felt like a frickin brick at first. Had to change my seating position a bit and if felt much better. The new brake ROCKS! One finger all the way, good modulation. And easy install. I just need to drop it off and have the line shortened. Probably wait and have that done after I do the front later this month or maybe next.

Ran at the gym last night. Only moderately cooler than outdoors. Ugh. Here's hoping for a good thursday this week.

Whoops!

Well it had to happen. On a ride yesterday I took my first "REAL" fall due to my clipless and my bungling self. It was a mixture of loss of momentum and bad steering and over onto my close side i went. Admittedly it wasn't a bad fall but it hurt my pride a bit. Sure I got a nice bruise on my hip and my offside ankle but it's really just my pride. I'm also trying to avoid over-fearing/thinking my riding. I do need to work on both my positioning and my vision/line stuff.

So yesterday I took the wyf out for her first ride at Schaeffer and she liked it much better than cabin john and she will ride there again definitely. What I need to do is get her out for a few RLAG rides to build her skills. Tonight I'm gonna do the Wakefield Night Ride since Thursday is looking rainy. Not sure if I'm going to hit the Friday Night Lights ride or not Friday.

Damn, I need a nap. Gotta prep the bikes, power snooze and hit the road!

Monday Monday....

Busy day today with picking the wyf up from the airport at 11, lunch, then a physical at 2. We even worked in a short mtb ride from 6-6:45 up at cabin john doing about 5 miles. I did almost eat it 2 or 3 times but managed to unclip or in 1 case grab a tree and pulled myself on up to ground. We almost made it from the Tuckerman area down to Democracy but one section was buried in dead fall. Other than that it was a good ride, though J was hating on a few parts but she made 2 tough climbs. She wants to change to the clipless also. May we'll work on finding her some shoes this week, I already have a set of shimano 505's for her from my bike's original days. I just took the cheap plastic platform off.

Biking Week!

Busy week for biking, I didn't end up hitting my thursday ride due to being tired from taking the wife to the airport early and storms coming in that evening. I did ride friday doing the monthly Little Bennett night ride. We rode almost 15 miles though my gps log only shows 12 due to me forgetting to turn it back on once we went out for a last lap up the first big climb and back down loggers. I did crash and burn on a small stump. Around then I somehow lost my damn glasses! Argh. I didn't need em I shoulda left em in the car. So the next morning I rolled outa the house in the same gear at 5:30 and started riding again near 6. I covered almost all the same ground and looked around the 3 spots I figured I could have lost them in as well as possible. No sign. Oh well ended upp with another hour and fifteen minutes of ride time for 9 miles.

So not bad that made it a nice 36 miles. Today I tacked on a pair more and made it a nice 38 miles. Those 2 miles were trial miles. Trying out a new change to the bike.... I finally switched to blood clipless. Yep. I got a set of TIME Atac XE's on Saturday and tried on a number of shoes. They were all to wide and slipped off. So today I went back out on the shoe hunt. Tried on a lot of stuff and still didn't find the right fit. So I treked out to columbia to hit race pace, the nearest Sidi MTB center. I'd tried the regular dominator 5 and it was a bit to wide. The guy in here right away hits me with a 6 series Eagle. Has the new heel securing system. Tighten it right edown and wam feels good. Plus they have half sizes and the 46.5 fits the best in the front/side that I've tried. 47 felt too huge. 46 a bit tight.

So i got home, installed the new pedals. Installed the cleats. Tried on one shoe and tried cruising around the basement. Hmm not bad. Tried the other. Not bad. Off to the lawn. Tool around a bit in the lawn....not bad foot commes out okay. A few adjustments. Better. A pair of laps around the neighborhood. Good start.

Tommorow I'm gonna try and hit damn cabin john. After picking J up at the airport and a physical...hmmm well see..

Red Elvises

The wife and i and a friend from work went and saw the Red Elvises down at the Iota club in Arlington last night. Awesome show, even the opening Soul band was good, Eli "Paperboy" Reed & the True Loves. The Elvises rocked and put on a hella good show in 2 sets that must have totaled an 2 hours and more. Excellent show for $15. My wife even got up with a bunch of girls and rocked the stage during I wanna see you belly dance, by belly dancing. It was great!

At least 2 big rides left this week and my legs need to finish recovering from MOnday! Argh!

First Ride at Wakefield

Yesterday I went out and rode wakefield for the first time. It was hotter than a frickin blast oven but it wasn't unbearable as a LOT of it was shaded. Boy it was a fun ride. Nice pump track section, managable climbs, and a lot of nice trail. My one bitch point was how bad the armor'd/rock'd section before you re enter the woods after the big descent from the powerline etc is. God I was wishing for magic f/s by my third lap.

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/3056791

Creek trail is pretty nice and shaded and is pretty well managed. From all the confusion on our boards (www.more-mtb.org) another good future project could be a trail/map system like we have on Schaeffer. Though the blazes are quite good especially with the added race markers.

Felt pretty good until my final lap, ran outa gas a bit but more I think as a function of lack of energy. Need to make sure i get a good meal in a bit before I ride. Also a clean/dry/cool post-ride shirt would be smart.

Happy Trails!

Face of the Earth

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth or anything. I've just been stupidly busy between excessively bad commutes, home projects, and occasionally biking I've been busy. I was pretty sick from Stokesville on for about 10 days my cough got bad enough I was only getting 4 hours of sleep and such. Last week I finally got to the docs, got reproscribed Zyrtec and an advair inhaler for morning/night usage. And it has been working pretty well.

Last thursday, i went on the usual Schaeffer Farm ride and was dieing do to being outa shape and not able to get enough o2....vs this week I was much better off and could have pushed harder than I did. Part of it was our pace was slower but in general I just felt better. Technically it was a better ride for me also, no trees and better line choice. I got over thru some stuff that is always troublesome and was worse due to the damp/slick roots.

Next week should be a good riding week, Monday I am going to try and do Wakefield, Thursday Evening is the Thursday Ride, Friday we have a night ride, then Sunday I may try and do an epic ride for 2 or 3 parks.

Ride Hard and stay cool.

Busy Busy Bee

Another busy week in the books.

The ride on Thursday was good and bad, the ride leader took a MASSIVE spill in a last little rut after avoiding all the huge ones involving at least 2 bounces. He ended up bailing out somewhat early. The rest of the group spun out for the whoop-de-doos on white. After making the hella nasty climb up the fire road we ran into a woman and 2 dogs. We greeted and moved on. At the next intersection we realized she was with us without the dogs. We questioned and she said she thought they were with us, and we thought they were with her. UGh. 2 riders took off to try and track the dogs down to bring them back. I was sweeper on the ride and frustrated, then the rest of the group wanted to get going as it was darkening. So I said I'd wait a few more minutes i waited 5 and no sign of em so I marked the trail direction I took as best I could and took off. I caught up to the group a bit later and so did the husband of the dog hunting pair who thought his wife would be a long....no sign. We rode out at near dark and found no sign of her at the lot. so I told the ride boss who said she'd just been here. So i strapped on the new light (its awesome) and headed out to the main intersection with the husband in tow. Eventually I asked if she had a cell phone with her and had husband call her and tell her to come back. She did make it back7 or 8 minutes after the call. We headed out to dogfish head for brew and sandwhich. Damn good.

Monday I rode up at Little bennet. The first climb up loggers trail is hell. A couple other climbs also sucked a bit but still a damn neat place to ride, got to rail some nice downhills and flet that my line choice was pretty good. Excluding a couple hidden piles of horse crap.

Today I'm gonna try and hit the gym but we'll see...Also moving a mirror home today. UGH!

Thursday I may skip Schaeffer as i"m doing Little bennett on friday with lights. Unless rain is more threatening as of thursday 5pm ish.

Saturday we head up in the afternoon to Stokesville for the VIMBA epic weekend. Just got a new tent and stuff so I'm stoked!

Too Bike or Not to Bike

No biking Monday due to having to go to work for meetings and having one of the cats put to sleep. Yuck.

Tuesday - No biking but J and I got to the gym and had good runs. But alas no biking again.

Wednesday - I finally did some good maintenance to the ride yesterday including adjusting both the front and rear brake's, fixing the front tire (it was on backwards!), cleaning it, re greasing one of the outside bits of the bracket, replaced my grips, and added the new bracket for the light system. Oh and gave the chain a good cleaning and lubing. Cleaned and lubed the entire drive train really. I spray a bit of silicon lube on the rings after cleaning. Seems to help it run even smoother. But boy was it a ton of work! Damn grips! :) Windex is you friend during installs. After trying these new WTB Dual compounds for a while I want to try some of the new ergon grips coming out in june. Sweet.

Thursday at Schaeffer tonight if the weather cooperates again. Right now I'm feeling good that it will. Then a run to dogfish hopefully afterwards.....hmmm gotta print directions.

Cake etc

Wow, we saw Cake last night at Pier 6 in Baltimore. Good show. Too bad it wasn't a double set or longer. My wife and I came up with at least 8 or 9 songs between us that we both would have liked to have heard. Oh well. Interesting bit of news from the show is they are out of their old record deal, back on their own label and have a new album out/on the way. And that now that they are on their own label they won't ever be doing anymore Radio or TV stuff. Only place we'll hear about em is on their site or email list. Pretty cool.

Thursday night I went out to Schaeffer again and boy did I suck. It was really a triple threat of sucky things that kept me down:
1 No fuel in the Afternoon = No Fuel for Riding in the evening. I have to eat something around 4pm or so in order to have good energy for the ride.
2 Front Tires mounted in Wrong Way - I suspected it last week and confirmed it this week, my front tire is mounted in the reverse/wrong direction. I'll fix that today.
3 Saddle Blues - I started playing with my seat the week before. Didn't notice it really on the ride Monday but by the end of Thursday night my seat felt way outa whack. I may have crackd it or something. But I did see how I need to adjust it a bit to be further forward a bit and tilted just a bit down.
4 - Hey! - My brakes are in need of adjustment. HA! Got the new pads in from AEBike yesterday and now I'll replace the old and see if that helps a bit. Right now they are really all or nothing and that was after I adjusted em as before to get em to work at all I had to pull em back almost to the damn bar!

Large group at schaeffer, we started out with no casual ride and a 10-12 person 'tweener led by Dave. We started on white and looped clockwise, then took the loopdy loop cut off and then went into yellow. 2/3'rd of the way thru 4 of us in the back broke off and road out at casual pace. Damn good ride, another month and I"ll be riding the tweener regularly.