“Urban Assault” Sunday and 29er evangelism

This weekend saw the continuation of the chicken ranch sunday am ride. This time it was the supposedly infamous urban assualt ride.

We met in the San Roque area (i biked there in the early morning fog.. nice) and went up through Rocky Nook, up/down the powerline climb, up Jesusita and down to Steven’s park then out foothill to descend down tuckers grove. A lot of pavement but also a good deal of nice technical riding. 3 1/2 hours of solid riding with a fun crowd.

Did I mention how much I dig the 29er on technical stuff? At first I promised myself I wouldn’t evangelize the 29 inch wheels no matter how awesome they were .. but now I can’t deny other people this knowledge. Unequivocally, without a shred of doubt, if your riding involves any terrain that is remotely rough or technical, 29 inch wheels will make you a better rider. Period. The Jesusita climb, with numerous rock gardens were a piece of cake; they typically toss your front wheel off course and rob your momentum. I didn’t clean the whole thing but I made it up with about 5 or 6 dabs.

The descents, stream crossings, drop offs, etc. were insanely smooth. It was uncanny how much easier the technical sections feel. I found myself focusing on the “bigger picture” – picking good lines up ahead, keeping maximum speed, flowing with my bike, body and trail as one – rather than focusing on each rock that could bump me off course. 29 inch wheels are that good. It will drastically change your riding for the better. You don’t even need suspension (except maybe for comfort reasons).

Front country chicken ride

The Chicken Ranch team is back doing Sunday morning rides and I joined them this week. I’ll be sporting the chicken ranch colors at next years races and this was my first chance to meet a lot of the guys and discover some great new trails too.

We started at the reservoir at the base of gibraltar, rode up mtn drive, down into Parma park and back up to mtn (a really fun but short section of trails). We cruised the road for a few miles before turning up hot springs trail and took the steep fire road up to the catway.

Then it was down Girard trail, linked up with Old Pueblo trail which was a spectacular fun singletrack and a great way to get deep into Montecito.

From there we took the pavement again, then hit Romero road going half-way up. I was chasing Benko for the first part but he just kept pulling away.. the legs just don’t have enough horsepower to stay with that guy yet! Everyone else backtracked down the fireroad; I took the singletrack down. It was the first real test of the Mamasita on a somewhat-technical trail and she passed with flying colors. It takes some very rough terrain to knock a 29er off course so you can point and shoot down pretty technical lines without getting jostled around. And once again the lack of rear suspension was not even an issue. I also had to put to rest the notion that 29ers can’t do switchbacks by tearing down Girard trail earlier in the ride.

Back at the botton of Romero, took the road back into town with a brief excursion down the Fearing trail (At least I think that’s what it was called; ironic since it was not very technical and offered little to fear – but it was a fun fast singletrack). We took pavement back to sea level, up milpas, past the mission and up mountain drive back to the cars.

Fun times with a great group of guys. 3.5 hours and ?? miles since I stupidly turned off my GPS halfway through the ride and forgot to restart it.

Bush finally gets something right.

My opinion of our lame duck president rose by an infinite amount today. That is to say I went from zero respect to a small inkling of respect.

Bush layed out a plan to help open national parks to cyclists. While it will surely be seen by environmental groups as appeasment to the all-powerful bike lobby, I think he makes a great point by differentiating cycling from motorized vehicles. The Extreme-Meathead-DH-Freeride crowd has doiminated public perception of MTBs so much that most trail users equate MTB with dirt bikes. But this plan might prove to reduce that perception, at least from a regulatory perspective.

Epic sunday ride around Gibraltar

Epic ride around Gibraltar reservoir today. 43 miles. 5 hours. ~3000ft vertical. A good steady day in the saddle with some failed explorations and hiking excursions thrown in.

Took off early this morning (but not without stopping at Goleta Coffee first of course) and made it out to the Los Padres Natl Forest. After begrudgingly paying the $5 day use fee (WTF these are our National Forests and we have to PAY to use them? Grrrrr….), I parked at Falling Rock campground and started off down Paradise Road.

The fire road to Gibraltar starts at the Red Rocks parking lot. Its a good warmup, after about an hour of up-and-down I was at the Gibraltar mines (an abandoned old silver mine at the eastern end of the reservoir). I’d never ventured much further past this point so I gave it a shot today. The trail was getting narrow and overgrown but was, for the most part, rideable. There were a few used-to-be-a-trail-but-is-now-a-rockslide sections that I had to hike. The trail could use some work but was certainly in better shape than the Matais trail.

After hitting the intersection for the Forbush trail, I decided to explore the “hidden” trail that lead north across the river and to Mono camp. Or so the guidebooks would have you believe. I couldn’t find such a trail but did find my way to the dry river bed which was partially rideable, partially hikeable and fully a pain in the ass. But I was stubborn and would not backtrack.

Instead of shooting NW to Mono, I went upstream to P-Bar Flats which required about 45 minutes of river bed navigation and following phantom trails. Eventually I found the main forest service road after following the river bed plus portions of what they called the Blue Canyon “trail” . Took the main road (Camuesa) to the east for a while and went up to Pendola, checked out some campsites and turned around before I got all the way to Juncal.

Turning 180 degrees, I took Camuesa back up to Mono camp. From there I made several vain attempts at heading south and seeing if I could find the elusive connector to the Gibraltar trail. No such luck. I thought my GPS might reveal how close I was but, alas, I just managed to find the same dry river bed as before but a mile or more away. God knows if this trail from gibraltar to Mono even exists!

Giving up on that, the best way home was up Cameusa road. Right after the turn off to explore Mono basin and Little Caliente, there was a gate in the road which meant no vehicles and less dust. I climbed that for a while, passing the cutoff to Indian trail (another one I gotta do some day) and over to the Middle Camuesa campground.

By this point, I’d passed another gate so we were now in OHV territory. I met 2 great guys sitting around after a dirt bike ride, shooting their guns and drinking beer. Turns out one of the guys was a mountain biker as well and we traded some knowledge of the trail system. “Keep the sunny side up and the rubber side down”, he told me. Classic.

Camuesa road climbs to 1400 feet up to Buckhorn road. If you go right you commit to another 1000+ feet of climbing up to Little Pine. At this point I was almost 4.5 hours into the ride… so I turned left Descended down the fireroad a bit then took the Camuesa Connector trail to the left. What a fine piece of single track!! Not too technical but has some tricky spots. Very flowing. Lots of steep little ups and fantastic twisting descents. (I did not miss my rear suspension one bit, btw). From there, spun back to the car, drank my recovery shake and drove home.

Now I’m sitting like a lump on the sofa wishing I had a six pack of beer and trying to keep my quads from cramping.

Check out the map. Epic ride.. there will be more to come using this loop as a “base”.. I just wish I could find a decent way to link up the Gibraltar trail with Camuesa road without the crazy river hiking.

Smooth Moves

For the second week in a row, I’ve joined Joselyne and a group of friends for a Thursday night trail run up on More Mesa. The name smooth moves is a play on another big organized run in santa barbara called “night moves” … the “smooth” part comes from, well lets just say it’s originally the name of a laxitive tea. But the name stuck. Somehow. It has even become the name of my girlfriends running blog

Now this is probably my 4th time running this entire year since my knee injuries plagued the earlier part of the year. I did pretty well considering I lifted for an hour and did my 15 mile round-trip fixie commute. My time was about 33 minutes for the 3.4 mile course. A bit off my old high school XC pace of 17 minutes for a 5k but you gotta re-start somewhere.

I plan on getting back into running a bit (barring any objections from my knees) in an effort to do some cross-training leading into the ‘09 season. Since my favorite cross-training activity (cross-country skiing) is notably absent in Santa Barbara, I’ll have to revert to running. Plus some hiking, rollerblading and lifting.

I wish I could do ANY of this…

This guy, Danny Macaskill, is simply amazing. It makes Hans Rey look pedestrian.

http://vimeo.com/1831788

First rain of the year

… and Shaun W.’s inaugural santa barbara mountain bike ride. I rode my Mamasita and Shaun piloted the ole FSR. He looked right at home on the bike and flew up the trail and tore it up on the downhill portion – for his first real MTB ride he was hauling ass!

We pulled off a steady climb up the lower section of Romero Canyon road in Montecito before backtracking down the fire road. It wasn’t pouring but the constant wetness combined with my dumbass decision to wear a short sleve shirt made for a chilly climb and a freezing descent.

The trail conditions were great. The fresh rain diminished the dusty, sandy nature of the trail a bit but it was not so much rain that there was any runoff or even mud. Just nice hardpack. A great ride. And a steady hour of bike maintenance/cleaning to fill up the afternoon…

Elings Park map

OK .. I promise not to get too GIS-geeky on this blog but I will be posting maps of my races and rides occasionally.

Here’s the Google Earth KML file for the 2008 Elings Park Beginner XC Course .. or view it in Google Maps in your web browser here