B: get digging.....

I mostly just wanted to do a post about this video of Mark Weir on his pump track...I have never seen a pump track this big or cool! Usually they are just crappy little loops that  bore the crap out of you...This actually looks fun!

I wonder how Mandy would feel if I built a track like this in the front yard??? 

I went for a ride with Steve on Sunday last. We rode the Foresthill divide connector trail and it was pretty gnar. The trail is packed nicely and had only a moderate level of underweight lycra cross country dweeb traffic (as opposed to overweight freeride poseur traffic). The trail mostly rolls and winds up the hill with only a few big sustained climbs on the way up and a few on the way back. The return trip drops only a couple of hundred or so feet, but this modest drop is achieved in series of rollers that requires that you pedal the whole thing to keep it going.

I manged to pedal through all of the rollers on the drop at top speed for the first time this trip and it was brilliant! All of the key corners are bermed, the trail is butter, and the only trick is remembering which corners can be jumped across without carrying too much speed into the next.

The views were nice and the open fall canopy was really calming under the oak and madrone. I stole all of these pics off of flickr as I rarely remember to take pics of my own. Here's one of me hitting a sick jump.

It may not be northwest riding, but it isn't too bad...

B: N* and LMTFAD

I had a great day before LMTFAD up at Northstar doing some sick epic totally rad downhill mountain bike riding. The resort doesn't really have it totally figured out yet, the trails are a littel awkward with jumpsa that are too long followed by jumps that are too short. They have 5 foot drops to flat landings that are already dished out, and more loose rock and dust than they know what to do with. It was fun, but they are definitely feeling some growing pains and not quite in the same league as Whistler.

Other than that, I spent the actual LMTFAD sanding the kitchen cabinets. They are coming out pretty good, and I am about half done. I think we may be able to stain these rather than paint them, so I am super stoked.

Hope everybody had a good "fathers day".

PS - Funny thing happened up at Northstar...I ran into Amanda's roomate from freshman year of college. Yes the one that I dated for like 3 months. Totally awkward! I hadn't seen her in almost 8 years, but I have the feeling that I am going to continue to cross paths with her forever. Too many similar interests. She is just as crazy as ever.

B: and there was snow!

Just got back from the first shuttle of the season at Downieville. It was snowing at the top and there was 4" of new snow with drifts to more than 2 feet. After 3 miles of hike a bike through snow it finally opened up a very wet northwest style blazing fast downhill. The preston with^" on the from and the saint wheels rocked that trail. It was just about perfect for the rock gardens and fast downhills combined with a small amount of climbing and quite a bit of flat pedaling.

Fun but very wet and cold.

B: You been out riding fences

Why does everybody cover Desperado? It's such a lame song! When I am a recording artist of national recognition, and Rick Rubin suggets that I cover Desperado, I am just going to say "Go screw Rick. That song is lame. And for christ sake, can we have less cowbell?".

I am currently leading my NCAA bracket thingy, which is awesome and hilarious to me. I know next to nothing about college hoops. I generally pick teams based upon mascot. You know, if a bulldog can beat a cardinal in a fight, I go with the bulldog (unless I feel bad for the mascot because they are like a disadvantaged race that is being exploited as a mascot). Actually, that is a good question. Are we ever going to get to the point that we can stop using native americans and other races as sports team and school mascots? Vikings were people too!

The dudes and dudettes over at UBrdo bike shop in Kirkland, WA are planning a sick, awesome, rad, gnarly trip to Whistler for opening weekend at the bike park. I think I am going, and you should too cuz it is going to be epic.

I finished Phase 1 of the home network set-up. The Cat 5E and wireless are in and working awesome, and the phone gets configured today. Phase II involves re-running all of the co-ax that currently exterior to the house and drilled through the walls, down into the crawl space and hooked into the Leviton plates that I installed. I didn't do it now, because, we don't currently have a TV so it seemed like a low priority. YAY it works. I invented the internet at my house. Now I am even more like Al Gore.

B: The real Chunk Shady?

We are nearing the 3 month mark in Sacto, so I have prepared some observations in comparing Sac to Seattle:

• The air is really dry and kind of dusty. Our faces are always a little dirtier and dryer than we are used to.
• White people here are a bit more redneck middle america.
• It is a way more "diverse" here than we remember. I am totally unaccustomed to seeing so many young people of color all over the place. Unfortunately, I have yet to see any groups of young black men throwing down rhymes on a street corner, so my 8 Mile fantasy has yet to come true.
• It is definitely a bit more suburban here and people take casualness a bit further than we are used to. We don't mean the "i'm outdoorsy" casual or the "i'm uber hip" casual, but the "i am a slob wearing sweat pants" casual.
• Sacto is flat. You know how Seattle has a fucking hill everywhere you turn, and it makes cycling there a bit more challenging? Not so here. It is flat. I can do the 12 miles from the house to the office in <45
• It is way harder to find the pockets of coolness that exist in any city when you have a kid. Amanda and I knew the places that we liked in Seattle from our pre-marriage, pre-baby days. Now with the kid in tow it is harder to try out all of the dessert cafes and thai restaurants to find the ones that are the best.
• People drive fast here and it is good. You know my ridiculously overpowered turbo charged neon? Yep, it makes a whole lot of sense here where merging at 90 miles an hour is occasionally the appropriate thing to do, not just the fun thing to do.
• It is spring and 70 degrees every day for the last week mofo! When I flew to Seattle this weekend it was 45 and grey. When I got home it was 70 and sunny. I know it will be 90+ soon, but spring is awesome.

While we were in the ghetto apartment waiting to get into our house, Mandy and I started playing some games like, How high can you stack Lily's blocks? (ANSWER = 13). I made up a new game I like to call, How many plastic animals can you stack?, but it didn't really catch on.

she loves lasagna

I think my daughter is has little bit of OCD. Sometimes at dinner she has to take everything out of her plate and then put it back in - like five times - before she eats it.

And her favorite new word today - money. Oh dear.

In other news, if any of you are in the greater Puget Sound area, go check out the best new bike shop in the Pacific Northwest!!! uBDRO Cycle and Mountain Supply. Go! Now! And tell all your friends. And give the owners big giant hugs for me.

B: Preston rides again

I went for a ride with my brother this weekend on the newly rebuilt Transition Preston FR. We hit a cross country trail on our free-ride bikes because neither one of us is really inclined to ride a true cross country bike. They are too fragile. We rode the Foresthill Divide Loop Trail. It was pretty fun. There are some good downhill stretches, but it is a true XC trail. I am going to need to get back into shape! My bro royally kicked my ass all around this trail.

The bike with a full 08 XT kit (minus front wheel) is sitting around 34 or 35 pounds. That's down from 38 lbs, so that is a great weight loss! It rides awesome, though I do miss the reverse shift rear derailleur. The shifting is super snappy and a big change from older XT. I am probably a bit crusty, but I am not sure that it is an inherently better release system. It is just different and requires modification of your riding style.

As you can see from the crappy cell phone pic, the new design front derailleur sits really low. It is damn near hitting the pivot and I doubt that a chainguide could be used with it where it is. If you look at that pic closely you can see the rear derailleur. Yup, it's there (barely), but the Shadow is designed to sit in so tight in that it is practically hidden. It also almost hits the spokes, but that is another issue altogether.




My only bitch on the new XT is the M-F'ing Enduro front wheel. The new Shimano XT Enduro front hub doesn't use the industry standard 6-bolt pattern, or the standard Shimano centerlock (the lock ring is too small for a 20 mm axle), or the Shimano Saint centerlock (which was designed for use with 20 mm axles), but instead they designed it to use a new and unique lockring specific to this hub. This is just absolutely stupid to me. Why did they need to create yet another new and unique system specifically for this hub when both a market standard, and a Shimano proprietary system exists?

It's just dumb if you ask me...


Anyways, I am looking forward to getting this bike out onto some trails more suited to it's strong points (ie not sharp steep climbs).