Phat biking

It's been quite a while since I made a video. This one, was fun to make. The entire video was shot using my iPhone 6S and edited on my iPad Pro. Im super happy with the results. It was a lot of fun to make for a few reasons. For starters, it was a perfect evening after work. I really wanted to be in the woods and the setting sun, smell of the pines and lush trails were just what I wanted. Secondly, it was a 'back to basics' ride; I used flat pedals, took no tools with me, and just wore a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. No lycra. No SPDs. No camelback. Just the essentials; like back in the day. At any rate, good times. Need to start doing this on a regular basis again!

Back in the saddle

It's been great to be back on the bike lately.  I've ridden at my local stomping ground, Hasahawha, twice this past week.  Once on the fat bike, and once on the ol' Cannondale.  I forgot just how awesome the C-dale is.  Although, it sure felt twitchy compared the the fat bike.  The picture below was taken with my GoPro camera.

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!

Mountain road combo ride - 12 miles

I haven't been able to get in this many consecutive days of mountain biking in a hell of a long time. I feel retired. I love being off every day, but I am kind of anxious to start my new job. In the mean time I won't complain; I'll ride. Breakfast this morning was a couple big bowls of bran flakes & strawberries. I'm on a berry kick lately... it seems every time I go to the store they're on sale for buy one; get one free. So I'm taking advantage. I straightened the house up a bit, spread some ant killing granules around the perimeter of the house (we have ants at this place – better than cockroaches but still far from cool). Hopefully the little buggers eat hearty and DIE. After that I paid some bills and researched a mechanical issue I thought I had with my Lefty at mtbr.com – turns out; I had no problem with the Lefty. Sweet!

I was getting ready to head back to Hashawha for some more riding around noon when I got a call from Mark at Race Pace. He was letting me know that the Paul chain keeper I ordered yesterday was already in. Dayamn; that was fast! Right on. I popped in to the shop on my way to Hashawha and he let me use the stand to quickly pop that baby in place. It took all of five minutes and I was good to go. I mounted it as low and close to the chain as possible and wasn't getting any rubbing when I ran the chain through the range of 9 cogs in the back. Excellent.

So I pull in to the parking lot at Hashawha and I'm stretching and slowly getting my gear on when a guy gets out of the truck next to mine and starts asking about the trails. I couldn't explain where any of the trails really went because yesterday was my first day at this park, but we were able to describe sections of trails we'd both ridden before. Nice guy. I was going to suggest that we ride together but he said he was waiting for a phone call. Fair enough, I was happy to set out on my own. I wanted to get a better handle on the trail network at this place and wanted to go past where I found the technical new singletrack and see what the hell was out there. Off I went. “Have a good ride man!” I was back 20 seconds later; I forgot my gloves. “See ya dude!” This time... it's for real.

Ten minutes into the ride I stopped and switched the positions of my rear shifter & brake lever on the right side of the bar. Yesterday I had them set lever, shifter, grip (inboard to outboard). But I kept bumping my shifter with the knuckle of my thumb causing a shift at THE most inopportune times. What a difference the switch made. I can still reach my shifter comfortably and also have my lever clamp far enough away from grip that I can just reach lever with my trigger finger. My bike is fully dialed-in now. The chain keeper looks a lot cleaner than the front derailleur I was using and I didn't drop my chain a once.

So I'm cruising out through the open fields, down through some singletrack to the river, over the old broken bridge and up to the new trails. But this time, I go past the new stuff. I keep going. The trail only goes about another 100 yards and ends at a road. Hmmph. But there's a little kiosk with a trail map and so I see that I can take roads all the way around the park if I like. So I did. And the cool thing was that 60% of the roads were old gravel roads. So I was loving it. I locked out the fork and just motored my way back to where I started, and when I got there, I just kept going and headed back into the woods for another few miles of singletrack. I got back to the car with 12.22 miles under my wheels and I felt tired but great. I had packed a ton of strawberries and grapes in a little cooler and so I housed that stuff and headed home for an unhealthy but delicious lunch of hotdogs. Good times.

Hashawha - 9 miles

Today I got my Cannonndale back up and running. Sadly, it's been sitting around without derailleurs, shifters or a chain these last few months. So I pieced her back together and she's decent again. I'd been running it as a 1X9 but never really liked running it with a bashring up front. The only reason why I did this was because I lacked the proper chainring bolts to mount just the 32T ring to the spider of my crankarm. Mounting the bashring to my spider took up those millimeters of excess chainring bolt length, and so I just ran it that way. Until today that is. I popped over to Race Pace (My new local bike shop) and picked up four singlespeed size chainring bolts. While I was at it, I ordered a fancy-shmancy chain keeper from Paul Components. No longer will I have to use a front derailleur or worse, a grapefruit spoon, to keep my chain from flying off my chainring on those chattery-choppy descents. Can't wait to mount it up. They put the order in today so it should be in by Wednesday; just in time for this weekend's ride at Patapsco.

While I was at Race Pace, I asked Steve if there were any local spots to mountain bike at. Since I've been back, I've been revisiting my favorites: Schaeffer Farms & Patapsco. I had heard that Loch Raven Reservoir was closed to mountain bikers as of late, which blows, because it's a great place to ride. Apparently, the Department of Public Works, suddenly thinks that mountainbiking is hurting the water quality in the reservoir. They claim that mountainbikers are causing excessive soil erosion which is leading to unhealthy levels of sedimentation in the water. Gimme' a break. Check out the Loch Raven Mountain Biking website for details on this sham. But anyway, Steve pointed me in the direction of Hashawha, with the caution that there isn't a lot of singletrack but that it's good for a quick burn if you need a fix.

*poof* I'm off to Hashawha.

Hashawha Environmental Center is awesome. It's a 380 acre wilderness education center and it's in great shape. The trail network is small, roughly 10 miles of trail I'd estimate and some of the trails are shared with horse folk, but they're still pretty awesome. I put in 9 miles today. I ventured off of the Hashawha property and found some really great singletrack which looks very fresh. It looks like it was cut about a year or less, ago and parts of it were very hairy. I found myself riding along the side of a cliff on an extremely off-camber section of trail where a slip of the wheel would have me cartwheeling to my death (or severely maimed status). But, it was a great ride. I love that this place is only 20 minutes from my house. Lastly, I have to say that the Cannondale rode like a champ and I am absolutely loving my new Lefty and it's remote lockout! Enough talk; more photos...