the jerseys are for the ride leaders only.
But I think she gets a T-shirt if she signs up as 2009 member
Tour of California - NSMB style.
Heckler's wife is hot!
why yes, yes she is!
Sunday - A short drive towards San Francisco brings us to Passion Trail Bikes, who has regular group rides and parking lot parties. Today they've got the Specialized Demo trailer and Maverick Van out doing free demos - take any bike you want out for a spin for free.
Knowing this will always become an expensive demo, we stick to our own wheels.
The demos were mostly through waterdog park, what looks like a small urban park on the map.
Gravel paths
lead to doubletracks,
which led to single tracks,
which led to fast downhills
and eventually led to a great view of the Pacific
No Lee, she's not smiling anymore. It was quite a long ride up and down, and up and down, winding through 3 or 4 canyons, all the time surrounded by beautiful houses.
The long drive and two days of riding eventually caught up to me.
The saving grace was that Passion Trail Bikes also put on a great bbq lunch as part of the demo, including a draw from their fridge mounted keg!
Now that's a shop I could get used to. They had a customer lounge with couches and a tap out of the side of the fridge.
Buff fast smooth singletrack is vastly underrated in these parts. Have a beer D and have a snooze sven/. Thx for the mid winter bike jolt
Buff fast smooth singletrack is vastly underrated in these parts.
I could not have said it better. What a blast!
The San Jose hills are just that - hills.
Dorothy's cousin has to visit Europe on business Tuesday, so he's hooked us up with two of his old friends from Venice Beach. They've taken a couple days off work and are doing a tour of the best shuttle riding that SoCal has to offer.
Looks like we're going to have to get in the Jeep and head south…
glad to see D ditched the switchblade in the later pics, those things will do more damage to that pretty face in a crash than without!!
OK, let's get out of San Jose. Chris has left us a key and is headed on a "work" trip to visit the new Specialized office in Copenhagen, Denmark and in Munich, Germany. I guess the strain of taking out a new prototype Epic race bike on the weekend was too much for him to hang around with us. Sorry, no pictures of it - he likes his job too much.
Chris has hooked us up with two of his old friends who are doing a three day trip of SoCal's best mountain bike trails. The best part is they plan on shuttling them. The only catch - they live in Venice Beach, CA, and the rides are spread from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Our planned 3200 km trip is quickly ballooning to a 6000 km epic adventure! Good thing I changed the oil on the Jeep before we left!
On the way to Santa Barbara, we stop in San Luis Obispo, the home of Lezyne, who sponsored the Rippers in the last couple years. The mountains look like they have some epic rides in them, but we've only got two hours to kill, so make a singletrack climb up and around Cerro San Luis, known as Madonna Mountain to locals, overlooking downtown S.L.O. The trail winds slowly up and around the hill, going through grassy cattle fields and a small lemon grove. It's a popular day hike, and we see lots of other people walking their dogs. The trail winds around 1000 foot vertical hill to make a fairly long climb, but the 10 minute bomb down a gravel road seemed like a waste of time in terms of shore riding, but did I mention - shorts and T-shirt in sunny weather, overlooking the Pacific? I really enjoyed riding singletrack through wide open grassy fields.
Sleeping in Santa Barbera at Refugio State beach park was our first taste of palm trees and white sandy beaches. The plan was to meet John and Fritz at 7 AM in downtown Santa Barbara, where the real riding would begin!
Thanks to Lee for all the lessons on what to wear for photoslutting. Now, if only I could remember Barham's lessons on how to get a rider in focus…
nice winter reprieve!
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nice winter reprieve!
oh, yeah… is it ever!
it really sucks to come back to this rain though. I was just getting warmed up after a week.
Wednesday March 11
The thing I love best about mountain biking is the instant and universal friendship and camraderie that prevails. No matter where you go, and who you meet, riders are always willing to hook up with others and tour the goods. Dorothy's cousin Chris had told John and Fritz that we were looking to ride, and they took us along their trip with open arms.
John had mostly ridden the trails behind Santa Barbara with other friends who enjoy the climb up as much as the way down. He had ridden four trails here, but never more than two during the same day. The road up was long and narrow, winding through last years wildfire damage. Million dollar mansions built on ridges were slowly being rebuilt to their former glory, one of them looking like a Tuscan village had been air-lifed in direct from Italy. Johns goal for the day was to bag all four trails, which involved careful shuttle logistics, as they all dumped into a different neighbourhood in Santa Barbara and Montecito (aka Beverley Hills of Santa Barbara). They all took the same road up the mountain, and a ridgeline road at the top led north to Tunnel, and right to Cold Canyon, San Ysidro and Romero Canyon Trailheads.
view to the west side of the road, overlooking Santa Barbara and the Pacific Ocean
view to the east side of the road, overlooking the rest of the continental United States:
Temperatures at the top were +5C or so, so our southern friends were crying about how cold it was, whilst we were shit happy it wasn't snowing here! At the bottom was a balmy 15 C in the morning.
Our first taste of the Socal shuttle riding was called Tunnel, which started high on the ridge which divided Santa Barbara from the inland desert. The wind and clouds were blowing hard over the ridge, making an amazing rolling fog effect cascading over the road. Tunnel started as a butter smooth hardpacked desert sand that rolled and undulated like a pumptrack. It then went steeper with loose rocks and steep drops, very similar to Neds but a lot longer! It was quite a challenge on our bikes with 5" singlecrown forks, which we planned for San Jose XC rides. The view out over the Pacific was second to none!
Unfortunately, Fritz had a good crash 15 minutes into Tunnel, sliding off the edge of the trail down into the bushes. I asked him if his derailleur looked bent on his brand new Intense M6 that he'd only ridden once, but he told me "it's the new Shimano Shadow XT, they're supposed to be tucked in like that".
Nope. Two minutes later, his derailleur is in the spokes, bending the hanger which is part of the rear triangle, tearing the derailleur out of the hanger (stripped threads), breaking three spokes and damaging the other 13. After rolling Tunnel chainless (which he didn't enjoy), we gave him the new title of shuttlebitch. His enthusiasm was contagious.
Fritz picking up the pieces
Everyone raise a glass to Fritz, who enjoyed ripping the Jeep up and down the mountain all day. I didn't ask him why is was in 4X4 the first time he handed back the keys.
Run two (Cold Canyon) and three (San Ysidro Trail) both became smoother terrain, running like a smooth natural pumptrack down the mountains. Of course smoother also meant faster, so the local mountain bike advocacy group had set up bell boxes at the top and bottom of each trail. In theory, you would borrow a bell at the top to warn the hikers during your descent, and return it in the mailbox at the bottom. Unfortunately, all the boxes were empty, but John brought his own, so he was leader.
Bears? Mountain Lions? Nope. Just a couple hot co-eds walking their dogs and one grumpy full patch member of the Sierra Club who gave us the stink-eye as we passed with Dorothy giving her most girly "hello there!".
After three 3000 vertical foot descents, Dorothy was done and Fritz was sick (literally) of driving the narrow winding road up the mountain. So, on the last chase, John and I rode Romero Canyon trail to Monecito. The three other trails all had a loose rocky section in the middle due to the mountain landscape and the erosion from traffic and water. The fourth trail had a 15 minute climp to the start, and was located furthest away from the road up. As a result, Romero Canyon was high speed butter smooth the whole way down. We ended beating the drivers down by a good ten minutes. Definitely my favourite of the four!
When in Montecito, do as they do in Montecito. After giving the keys to valet of the mexican food restaurant, we all changed in the parking lot, as good mountain bikers do. After margeritas and the most amazing pork tacos marinated in pinapple and caramelized onions, we were on our way to Fritz's place in Venice beach.
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