Riding with my brother

Just wanted to post up some video footage I took while mountainbiking with my brother Patrick a couple of weekends ago.  Debbie and I drove down to meet Pat, who's a Marine at Camp Lejeune.  He doesn't have a lot of trails down there in his part of North Carolina, but what he does have, are pretty fun!  He crashed twice, which means he was riding harder than I was!  I rode my fat bike, which I am still madly in love with.   Wish we could ride more often.

Excellent Junk

I had grand plans for this morning.  I was going to get up early and hit the trails, collecting footage for a short mountain bike video.  However, I didn't get out of bed too awful early this morning (Last night's White Russians put the kibosh on that plan - Damn you!  You delicious concoction!).  Still, I made it to the trails, in Union Mills, by 9:30 and had some fun collecting footage in the woods.  I don't think I got enough action to put together anything interesting but we'll see.  I had picked up a Gorillapod from Adorama, specifically for this purpose.  It worked like a charm today.  I was able to wrap it around trees and logs and get some low angle shots with my Micro four thirds camera.  So, the day was spent riding for a few minutes, stopping, looking around and then either getting off and setting up the camera, or pedaling on to repeat the process.  Its fun to collect footage.  You want to collect neat footage; pretty footage; interesting footage; sunlit nature scenery footage.  You don't want boring footage.  So it's a challenge to be creative out in the woods; a fun challenge.  

I've said this before, but I really like finding junk piles in the middle of the woods.  I usually find them when I'm hunting and will spend a while rooting around to see what there is to see.  Junk piles are just inherently interesting.  Today's pile was awesome.  I was glad I had my camera with me.  The toy gun is probably, the coolest looking item I've found in a long time.  Old telephones are always cool to find, bottles are always nice, but toys take the cake, in my book.

I dig the old Tropicana bottle.  And what the hell is Upper 10?  I had to Google it.  Wikipedia tells me that it first debuted in 1933.  Its similar to 7UP/Sierra Mist etc and it's still sold outside of the US.  Weird name.

Several items (shoes, cans, bottles) had moss growing inside of them, among other things.  Spiders seem to like bottles; they make excellent homes.  Several bottles I picked up, held spiders inside them.  And this creepy puppy also caught my eye.  I love the enthusiastic look on his decaying face.

Catching up

Rather than try to catch up on all that's happened in the last month, I'm simply going to dump some images from my phone, onto the ol' bloggy blog here.  I can't believe I blogged only one time during the month of May.  But, life has been busy.  Busy with camping, home improvement, business travle, trips to the rifle range, mountain biking, and enjoying my new truck. 

 

Camping with some of the fellas from work. I took my hammock for a three night stint in the middle of PA. We cooked some amazing meals over the fire place, and on the flat "cooking rocks" in it's perimeter wall. It was epic.

While camping we skewered six chickens with birch limbs. We stuffed a half a stick of butter and a handfull of onion chunks inside each bird and let them cook for a few hours. The onions came out tasting like root beer (from the birch limbs). It was amazing.

Ribs! Yes, we also cooked ribs. We used a screwgun to screw them to the birch limbs, then wrapped them in place with lengths of safetywire. This kept them from spinning off the limbs when we turned them. Man Cooking.

New truck. Yes, I bought a new truck. It's a 2014 Chevy Silverado with a Rocky Ridge package installed. 20" rims, 35" Mickey Thompsons, a 6" ProComp suspension lift kit, custom grill and fender flares. It's got an 8 cylinder 355 horse power engine under the hood and it's a blast to drive. No, I'm not really concerned about my MPG. My work commute is only 7.5 miles.

The fat bike rules. I've gotten a few more good rides in on the Trek Farley. I plan on riding this bike all summer. I just don't see myself having as much fun riding, on my other bikes at this point in time. It's just too cool.

Debbie and I spent a weekend in Gettysburg at a sweet Bed & Breakfast (The Brafferton Inn) which I highly recommend to anyone looking for a great, historic, place to stay in Gettysburg.  We took a horseback tour of Cemetery Ridge and traversed a few battlefields.  Lots of fun and enlightening. 

Photos of the day

Local trails

When I got out of work today, the weather was brisk but sunny.  I have been playing with the idea of exploring the farm land around my house for the last couple of years, but I never have because of the rednecks that live around me.  "Squeal like a pig boy!"  Yeah.  The land isn't marked with POSTED signs, but I'm still reluctant to venture into it.  It's funny though; when I was a kid I never had a problem trespassing on the local farmers' land.  Hell, my buddies and I used to penetrate deep into the Thurston's land and shoot birds with BB guns all day long (Yes, I'm evil I know).  But that's not to say we weren't ever marched off of their property at gun point.  An angry, tobacco-spitting, turkey hunter, in full camouflage, pointing a shotgun in your face is a hell of a site when you're 14 years old.  So, it was with my tail between my legs and my eyes open wide that I dipped into the woods after work today.  As I pedaled on, I laughed at how my life experience has helped to shrink those gigantic cajones I had as a child.  People are crazy.  I followed a faint trail from the road, down through the woods and out to an open hay field.

When the trail broke from the woods I was greeted with a wide expanse of hay fields.  I slowly prodded along the perimeter of the field looking into the woods for other trails.  I was hoping to find a well worn ATV trail; something I could turn into a nice little after-work ride.  I didn't see anything like that.  Instead, what I found were numerous tree stands and some prime rabbit hunting land.  Deer sign was everywhere.  I stopped often to look around and take some photos.  I'm still really really loving my fat bike, so I took a ridiculous number of photos of it.  I peeled apart a milkweed pod just to feel the soft seeds inside.  Did you know that milkweed's fibrous filament is used as a hypoallergenic filling for pillows?  Now you do.  

At one point I followed a game trail through a valley between two fields.  There were deer beds all over and several tree stands were perched in ideal spots for shooting down into the valley.  I'd never venture back here during deer season; I'll tell you that.  At one point the game trail passed over a log a few feet off the ground.  I took a really close look at the briers around this log.  Just as I suspected, the briers were covered in hair snagged from deer that pass over it.  "Awesome" I thought to myself.

When I popped back on to the road around my house, I was stoked to have ridden right from my house, through the woods and back home.  It's something I haven't done since I was a kid.  Something city life had taken from me.  Something I really want to have back. I'm going to have to find out who owns the land I was on today and knock on some doors.  It'd be awesome if I can get permission to ride back there whenever I want to.  Then I could fully enjoy myself.  

Fat bike maiden voyage! (Trek Farley)

Disclaimer: I need to preface this post by saying that these are my initial impressions of this bike. It’s my first fat bike, so I’m learning of the new and different ride qualities that a fat bike provides. That said; I’m already looking forward to comparing these initial thoughts to those which will come later, a month or two down the road.

Yesterday I picked up my new fat bike, a Trek Farley, which I ordered from Race Pace Bicycles.  I took it from the shop, directly to the trail head at Hashawha, my local trail network.  Weather conditions were absolutely perfect for a nice spring ride.  When I pulled into the parking lot, it was a beautiful 65°F and the sun was beaming (as was the grin on my face).  I wasted no time stripping the reflectors from the frame and spokes and socked my Crank Brothers pedals on.  After deflating the tires to down around 12 psi, I hopped on and set off down the singletrack.  

Having never ridden a fat bike off-road before, the first thing I noticed was how soft the ride was.  The tires produced a large hollow sound and the feeling was like that of a dialed in soft tail.  It felt like I was floating down the trail.  My tires gobbled up roots, rocks and divots as if they weren't even there.  I attribute this to the large volume of air and also the wheel's angle of attack.  Though it's a 26" wheel, the huge tires make this bike, effectively, a 29er.  Though the ride was soft and "floaty", the bike handled like any other nice hard tail.  I noticed absolutely no difference in acceleration efforts.  I could stomp the pedals and shoot right forward.  Getting air felt "normal", as if I were on any other 26" bike.  (And I did loft this bike more than a few times!)

The trail conditions were almost perfect.  I say almost, because some sections were a little too soft.  I felt a little guilty for trudging through the muck, but felt that my fat tires weren't doing as much damage as would regular width tires on most other bikes.  And speaking of mud, that is one area where I noticed this bike had no real advantage.  Even with all this surface area, I had a hard time getting traction in slimy mud.  On the other hand, I noticed that I did not loose traction in any other instance!  I climbed some really steep hills, on loose dirt and my rear wheel didn't spin out once. I didn't have to focus on keeping the front wheel down as much either.  It was awesome.

The trails in Hashawha were were well kept. A lot of work had been done since the damaging ice storm Westminster experienced a few weeks ago.  Several downed trees and limbs had been cleared from the main trails, yet when I reached the more remote trails around the perimeter, it was another story.  I had to stop every 100 yards or so, to fight my way through the trail.  If I had a small trail saw, I would have enjoyed clearing some of the trails.  This made for some hard going.

Unfortunately, my ride ended with a mechanical issue.  About a mile from the trail head, I noticed some chain suck.  At first, I didn't pay it any mind because my chain and chainrings were caked in mud, and that's usually a key ingredient for chain suck.  But when it happened the second and third time, I stopped to look at the teeth on my chainrings.  I thought, maybe I had bent one and it was pulling the chain up the backside of the chainring.  This wasn't the case.  Instead, my rear derailleur had "locked itself".  The Sram X9 Type II rear derailleur features a locking feature that locks the cage, removing all spring tension so that you can easily remove your rear wheel.  I never had issues removing wheels in the past.  I think anyone that rides knows to shift down to the smallest cog before you remove your rear wheel.  A little forward pressure on the cage clears it out of the way of the wheel you're removing but hey, what do I know?  At any rate, I could not figure out how to "unlock" the cage and so I had to coast and push my way to back to the truck.  Oh well, lesson learned! 

I am loving this fat bike and cannot wait to get back out on the trails!

Fat bike on order!

This past Saturday I popped into my local bike shop; Race Pace Bicycles and had them order me a 2014 Trek Farley.  The Farley is a performance fat bike.  If you are asking yourself what a fat bike is; it is basically a mountainbike, designed and built around very wide (fat) rims and tires for the sole purpose of flotation.  The much larger footprint (surface area) allows for the bike to be ridden on the surfaces that would ordinarily gobble up and bog down standard width tires (Snow, sand & swamplands).  This makes the fat bike, the ultimate, go-anywhere bike!  

The origin of fat bikes came about years ago when Alaskan bicycle explorers and Iditabike racers would weld and sew together rims and tires to create their own custom fat wheelsets.  Typically fat bikes have been used for snow racing as well as deep, back country exploration & touring.  Though, with the recent hoopla, major brands are now adding performance fat bikes to their catalogues.  These “performance” fat bikes lack the pannier & bottle mounting points on the frame & fork and feature lighter, more aggressive frame geometry.  This is the category into which the Trek Farley falls.  It’s not the ideal fat bike for touring on a multiday adventure (though you could); the Surly Pugsly and similar fat bikes have proven to be the bee’s knees for that purpose.

The Farley is selling out quickly.  From what I have read and heard in talking with guys at bike shops, complete bikes are hard to come by, as most shops have sold them all.  Framesets, on the other hand, are readily available.  Although this information is plastered all over the internet, oddly enough, I had no problem ordering a complete Farley in my size (19.5”).  Lucky me!  

Fat biking is one more niche of the biking world that I am eager to get into.  It’s funny how many areas of the sport you can explore.  My cycling evolution looks something like this:

·         XC riding & racing

·         Urban Assault

·         Freeriding

·         Road

·         Fixed gear commuting

·         Alleycat Racing

·         Road racing

·         XC riding