Winter Blah, but the Ridin' Ain't Too Bad

Winter.  Over it and ready for Spring.  Right?  The weather has been a serious tease lately.  Got a solid snow day, followed by warmer and warmer temps.  Til the next snow day.  The cycle repeats.  Problem is, the cycle hasn't been allowing for much real quality dirt.  Maybe a day or two if you're lucky or now where to go.  I got my day in.  Last week, Monday, at Bobcat Ridge just outside of Masonville.

I got up there, ironically, about 10 minutes after Kevin so we rode together. Bobcat was fun!  Road climb up followed by a meandering, fun descent that had very characteristic Tony Boone style.  Does anyone know if that was Arrowhead Trails that helped design that?  Well, whoever it was did a darn good job.  Bobcat Ridge is most definitely worth a visit if you're remotely close.  Go.

Then more snow.  Just as things were starting to get rideable.  Really rideable.  Now we're kinda back to square one.  I'm going to go to Hall Ranch to check out the rock garden.  Maybe we'll have a run of dry weather for a while ;)

Arizona Roadtrip!

2009 was my first visit to Phoenix, AZ with a bike.  My wifes family has a house that's, fortunately, only a 10 minute bike ride to South Mountain park.  It's like being at a ski in/ski out condo right on the mountain.  2 years ago I said, "I'll be back. Next time, though, I think I'll have to nab the car for a day to check out some other riding areas around Phoenix."

Needless to say when Christmas rolled around this year and there was talk of an AZ road trip, I said "Sign me up!"

Intense Carbine!

For the record, so far I'm LOVING the new Intense Carbine.

Carbon fiber, 5.5 or 6" of travel, 12x142 rear thru axle.  Damn, this bike is sweet and rides every bit as nice if not nicer than the oh so awesome Tracer 2.  After 12 hours of hard riding in the Phoenix area desert, this bike has been thru about everything I could throw at it.  Incredible.  Expect a full write up soon!

Cyclocross comes to Lyons for some Ghetto Singletrack Lovin

The last stop of the Boulder Cyclocross Series came to Lyons on Sunday 12/11.  With the exception of maybe 1 year, Lyons has played host to an annual cross race since the State Champ Cross race in 2007.  The original course was in the middle of Bohn Park.  It would've been blazing fast and flat, but the big dump of snow a couple of days before the event set the park up for some great racing.  Since then, promoters have moved the course to the high school allow for a better course, more parking, and better spectating.  It was a good move.

XT Trail Pedals, PD M785

Favorite things. Favorite, not because it sells well or is marketed well. This is stuff that we ride and like and ride and like some more. Because we like it, because it works like it's supposed to, and because we don't have to work on it any more.

Todays Favorite Thing - the Shimano XT Trail Pedal.  This is a new pedal, part of the 780 series XT.  Shimano introduced the XTR trail pedal early in 2011(reviewed in Bicycling here) with the new 980 group.  By late summer, that had trickled down to XT level and fortunately, XT price point.  Enter my interest!

Trail Work on Picture Rock's First Corner

Redstone Cyclery has been the designated trail steward of Heil Ranches Picture Rock trail since it's inception. Any time we'd have a trail work day set aside, County staff would ask us what we wanted to work on, we would figure out a place, and we'd get a crew out there to get 'er done.  About 8 months after the trail opened, it was obvious that the very first uphill right corner (and the very last downhill left hander) was built wrong.  Going up was no big deal, but coming down was a decreasing radius off camber corner.  In short, it was a corner designed to spit people off trail.  After a few years, the corner got more blown out with more braking bumps and just plain got worse.  We kept bugging Boulder County to let us rebuild the corner.  Always, the answer was, "No, that's too big of a project."  We kept plugging away with other trailwork sessions and continued to build our relationship with Boulder County Open Space. Finally, when we sat down to schedule a winter Saturday for trailwork, we once again asked about this corner.  Finally, we had our chance.

REEBin' it up in the desert down south

Having heard so many great things about the Pueblo Reservoir and having never been there, the powers that be decided it was time for a REEB Cycles road trip to the south!  Thursday pm, 4 of us loaded the car with REEBs, several cases of beer, good attitudes, and a serious desire for some Colorado desert riding.

Given that, it should probably go without saying that we all woke up early Friday with thundering headaches and a lot of empty Dales Pale Ale cans.