why cats never got the name 'mans best friend'

Hectic

I thought that summer vacation was supposed to be a nice long time for kids to lounge around, eat watermelons, and go swimming. I guess I'm not quite lucky enough to fit the stereotypical definition of the average summer. between the intensive O.E.C. training five to six hours a day the last two weeks, the crested butte race last saturday, leaving for deer valley, ut this thursday, and trying to go ride, not nearly enough hours in the day.
Earlier this summer, I had all these grand aspirations to go on epic rides all the time, go to a couple races, and have a generally all around good time. well here we are almost a month through the summer, and the epic ride count remains at like 1.5 or maybe 2. I've only been up to ned two or three times (something i wanted to do two or three times a week) and all I've managed to write here are is stupid whiny bike racing b.s. and a nicely typical fucking flatlander report about the conditions of nederland trails. thats not the kind of thing i like to write about, and most certainly not the kind of thing i would want to read about, so sorry if this site has been boring. i think its time to bring back the cool to my writing. no more shit, thats what i say. hopefully my new abbey book can help me out a bit with that.

trail season in ned is officially underway, not that it hasn't been for a month or so, but now, the real trails are prime. except, that is, above elevations of 10,000 feet, or northern-facing and or shady aspects.

caught the early ned bus this morning with mike, and proceeded to explore the large climb. asides from one pile of avalanche debris in the first twenty minutes, it was clear up until the last half mile or so. from then on, it was slipping along the thawing plateau. we were following a trail, that when not blocked by large drifts was really more of a stream in the first place.


all the water had frozen over night, but was loosened up by the sun, and left a thin sheet of ice covering the trail, really cool to look at, but cooler to ride over. descended the unconventional route having a really spectacular time and returned to ned around 10:30 or so.


with so much time left, we decided to make more of the day and traverse the freak to freak towards pennsylvania gulch. got to sunset and made a quick detour to get some potatoes. finished out in boulder at 12:30, cooked and tired but wanting more. twas a truely beautiful day.

O.G.

after a tough week of sleep deprivation, hot riding, and the SATs, rallied down to gunnison for the original growler race this sunday. I have to say, it completely blew me away. I knew I was signing up for an epic race. dave wiens put it on, and he said it would be epic. I guess i just didn't quite gauge the level of epic-osity that would be delivered. I guess I underestimated Hartman rocks' ability to dish out brutally technical, steep, and winding singletrack. I also took a complete shot in the dark with my fitness that seems to have ricocheted and hit me square in the buttocks. I am far from the level where I need to be to compete for six hours on the bike, and just barely passing at the level of carcass dragging for eight.

At least I did get to witness some very spectacular riding from the other two juniors who competed. Brae took home second overall just behind T-Bone himself, and the Old Man Vigers once again handled the singlespeed men, deftly increasing his wins-this-season-to-races-this-season ratio to 4:6. yes, and that is at 15 years of age, and on a singlespeed.

In other news went down to the velodrome today with the tokyo joe's kids, and scared myself silly on the steep concrete, too much fun.

summer

I think has arrived. Rode with the devo crew yesterday, ~5 hours for superwalker with maybe three hours on the bike. slightly frustrating to ride for 20, then rest for 15, then repeat. Such is the nature of the beast i guess. First short track this evening, sucks that ill be in the fucking SAT class, at least that will all be over on saturday. last standardized test ever! well, not ever, but for a while at least.
kicked off the OEC course last night, just when I though I could have a reasonable break from classes for a while, no such luck. at least it means i can patrol next year with less red tape to cut through. loveland or brian mountain i think. in the mean time, lets go ride.

happy june everybody! set out to ring in the changing season with the first ned ride of the season. finally a great summer ride, not too hot, until the very end, sweet trails, and hopefully a sign of things to come.


took mostly to the east mag trails, remaining solidly in stupid-flatlander territory. wouldn't want to piss off any nmbys this early in the season. not for want of trying, spent a good turn looking for some of the trails from two summers ago, its really astonishing how tangled the memories of all those secret carryings through the woods get. didn't find anything except the exit to king nmby's private ridge which caused so many problems a while back.


took the legal route back down to flag after a nice break (with a coconut) and finished up with a fine lunch at tokyo joe's. now it's just gearing up for the race next weekend: 64 miles of hartman rocks single track. ooh la.

jackpot

It was far too hard to get motivated today, but after a really late, albeit short night ride yesterday, and a really early morning sat class, i was seriously wanting some couch time. but such was not the case.


I think that in this past week, I've exceeded my recommended annual dosage of upper fourmile road by 10000%. yeesh, it kinda stinks that its the only way to get to some really sweet riding, but alas, not everything is perfect.


Headed up the opposite side of the potato route from last week with intentions of visiting the Pennsylvania region. but got sidetracked by a small ribbon of trail that dropped off the side.



Ended up on a trail that had clearly seen little to no human use in the past half century or so. straight down bouncing off the babyheads trying to avoid the larger fallen trees and the new ones growing right in the middle of the trail(perfect height to grab your handlebars and flip you over onto your back, by the way) I took another spur that traversed through the dense shrubbery and ended up on some random-ass forest service road which, in turn led back to the Swiss Motor Speedway. due to some time constraints, I had to cut the adventure a bit short, but potential has been located. mmm yes, yes indeed.

mmm... potatoes

two helpings of potatoes in the last two days. hard riding, trying to clear the bad out of my legs. up the switzerland yesterday. alone in the clouds, halfway up I hit the real moisture. pin pricks on the skin as up in to the grey fog i followed a sole other pair of tire tracks. exited early in favor of the most excellent route back down. chilly descent that made me glad I had thrown in the lobster mitts and an extra jacket. out to marshall mesa after that for a good 50+ mile day.


same route today, but in exchange for clouds and rain were bright sun and high temps. I have to say, I much preferred the rain. certainly not the same views, but theres less things to worry about when you're climbing in the fog. no big world out there, just the thirty feet around you. not as hot, not as loud, not as distracting, maybe you cant see very far, but you dont need to. everything is revealed just when you need it. popping out of the mist just long enough to register it's presence, and then it disappears behind you. Its also cool and fresh not to be suffering in the heat.

Battle the Bear

Spent the majority of yesterday in the vicinity of bear lake state park yesterday for the race there. the race is not super fun, but thanks to a change in course, there was a fun section of twisty singletrack through the cottonwoods along the river. finally had the legs to punch it for most of the race, and right now it feels like the training might be paying off a bit. finished second. Even though some of the faster kids are in cali for the norba, I was still pleased with it. hopefully there'll be more of that to come.

hide and seek

When i go riding and look out over all of it. all of that which surrounds us, something tells me there must be something more. some other treasure to dig up... so sick of riding the same five trails again and agian, i set off today on a quest to uncover something with some real value.


Armed with a small scribbled map from some ye olde topo bits, i went up the arroyo to find something. poked around and found one of the routes scoped on the aforementioned map. but rather than some nice trail as promised, its a pair of tire tracks labled as a "wildfire evacuation route" or some bullshit like that. sweet. after you pass right underneath the 10 million dollar house's private tennis court, you pop near a cool area of sunshine. tried to follow another trail there, but it think that was more of a couple deer tracks. have to keep looking. I think they're hiding from me.


rode around a lot more, trying to get to the emancipation mine, but no such luck, I got to like 200 vertical feet below it, and right as I was taking this picture I got a bit freaked and moved out. I'm usually pretty good when I ride by myself, but I think my imagination got away from me.



So I was stopped here to take a picture of this huge hole in the middle of nowhere, listening to my ipod, and all of a sudden I hear something behind me. not like a rustle or anything, but do you know what it sounds like when you've got music going and somebody tries to talk to you and you hear them but not very well and don't know what they said? well it was a lot like that. I coulda sworn somebody said something right behind me. scary? yes. dangerous? probably not. I didn't wait to find out.
Well that was far too long to write about a ride that wasn't that exciting. but it was nice to explore in the cool cloudy weather. very nice indeed.