THC, Beer, and Moab or..

Work trips are fun. This weekend I closed down the shop to attend the annual Turner Homer Convention in Moab, UT. It's been a yearly thing for awhile now. Dave Turner and company hit the road after the Dirt Demo at Interbike. He brings his demo fleet for Turner Homers from all over to come and ride with the man himself. For an event like this, I knew a stop was in order prior to leaving Lyons.
I had free reign to grab what I needed of the Festival Beer to take down to the boys in Moab. Can anyone spot where the case of Gordon's was in the pallet?
That's a lot of beer for that tailpipe draggin' hoopty.
I made it to Moab safely and in good time and found a good spot to claim off of Sand Flats Road right by the Slickrock Trail parking lot. It was windy at night, but I awoke to a calm and beautiful daybreak. We met at Slickrock Cycles to meet the shuttle. And shuttle we did. We drove about 45 minutes high into the flanks of the LaSal Mountains.
The ride started off on the roller coaster that is Hazard County. I looked hard, but did not see Roscoe or Boss Hog.
We descended, descended, and descended some more. The views of Castle Valley never dissapoint.
Lunch was had. I was the only person at lunch to style it out with a cold Dale's Pale Ale and a big ol' burrito. Lucky me.
more desert beauty.

Porcupine Rim has no shortage of drop offs.
and hip jumps.
Christina, Dave Turner's wife, was rockin'.
So was Barny. It's hard to tell, but she has a super cool silver flame paint job on her Turner.
Near the bottom of the Porc singletrack, Dave Turner sets it up for a sweet pass on the almighty El Chingon.

That's it for the ride pics on Porcupine Rim. We rode back into town to get back to our cars at Slickrock Cycles. Since it was only 2:30 or so, we still had plenty of time to kill before meeting up for our cookout at 6pm. I went back to camp to get some rest. On the way, I saw this and absolutely had to take a picture. For those that don't know the area, right west of Slickrock is a jeep trail called Hell's Revenge. You know, it's gnarly, steep, all that good stuff. I laughed out loud when I witnessed this Ford family wagon stopped on the middle of "Baby Lion's Back." The best part was the 4 wheeler and the Jeeper at the top getting pissed off at this guy. More power to him, I say. I would've stopped to get out and take a pic, too!
As it turns out, I wasn't in a restful mood. Since the Slickrock trail was literally across the road from camp, I suited up and headed out for a late day Saturday stroll. I rode the practice loop then out and back on part of Slickrock. I got bored with the same old trail so I freestyled it a little bit. It was just what the Dr ordered for a good first day of riding in Moab. The Turner Sultan 29er was just the ticket, too.
It's slickrock, but the line is evident.
More desert beauty.

The cookout later was a blast. Lots of fine folks, food, and Oskar Blues Beverages made for a good time. I would've liked to give away more beer, but the very large crew that made it up from St George were all devout Mormons and shied away from the beer. That left more for us! I was so tired afterward, I think I was crashed out in my tent by 9:30. It was quite the satisfying day.

It's CX time...are you ready?

closed this weekend - gone to moab!

Turner @ Interbike '07

While demonstrating my geekiness I found THIS TURNER Interbike 2007 page created by mtbr.com. Thought I would share, below is a video from the page. Enjoy!

night shift

Since we missed the Tuesday night rides the last 2 weeks I figured I would post some shots from our ride last Thursday night. Dave let me take out the Spider 29 on a demo. I was surprised how the well it responded while climbing & then turned right around & rolled over everything in it's way on the descent. I'm looking to get one more ride in on that baby before I ride the Turner Sultan this weekend. Should be good fun.

bfr2

Thanks to everyone that came out for a most excellent Big Fall Ride 2 this year! We had upwards of 30 folks out to brave foreboding weather and technical trails. The group split in to 2 packs pretty quickly. I rode sweep in the second group on this one. It was good - I got to ride with a great group of people with good attitudes. The 50 degree and raining weather on the toughest trails of the day didn't dampen spirits too much, either. Pictures now, words later. Stay tuned!

Big riding on the Sourdough

Most excellent ride today. Big colors, cool temps, and chilling rain.

Go Matt Go

You guys know crazy Matt form Nebraska - well, hes's doing Landahl 24 hours solo. Currently he's a minute out of second.

Realtime results

a little dh action

pablo more pablo
alex from ft collins at solvista
alex at keystone

Monarch Crest

I rode it for the first time last September, exactly one year later, to the day, I was back for round two. I can't wait to head there again!

The Spiders come out in the evening. Great ride tonight Greg and Chris!


Hmm, in other news, Tuesday is my anniversary so I'll be celebrating with Mary and will pass on the ride. Rockin' Ron agreed to lead up a Tuesday ride, though, but last I heard, he was at the emergency room. Stay tuned for Tuesday ride updates!

Von forwarded me this link to get the ball rolling for bikes in city of Boulder's Valmont Park. Check this out and please fill out the survey!

gobble gobble

After months of sweat, toil, budgets and beaurocracy, the new Wild Turkey trail at Heil Valley Ranch finally opened up today. I've put a lot of sweat equity into Heil Ranch over the last several years and was curious how easy this Wild Turkey would be on the pallate. I had my first taste today. It wasn't quite Stranahans, but it was quite tasty. So tasty, in fact, that it's hard to believe that Wild Turkey was distilled by Boulder County Open Space.

I met a few fine folks today at the Geer Canyon trailhead and we rolled out on the trail shortly after lunch. The initial climb went by pretty quick and we arrived at the junction of old, the tip of the Ponderosa Loop. A new sign calls out the presence of Wild Turkey. Straight ahead and on your right.

The new Wild Turkey trail is 2.96 miles long. It's great to see that this new trail is longer than the existing loop. We headed right at the junction, eager to catch the new trail. I knew that centerpoint of the WT Trail was it's lowest, so I thought it would be fun to check this out in both directions. This is a good shot of John and Gina heading north thru a moderately forested section that was both fast, swoopy, but you had to stay on your toes.



Here's Don on about the same section. It was a beautiful early Fall day, too.




Nate in another angle of the same section

I quit taking photos for a bit. The new trail connects in with the existing Ponderosa loop at the cliff lookout with the bench. We went right (counter clockwise) and continued to climb the babyhead section of the old loop. After quickly descending to the main junction, we headed north on the (still going counter clockwise) on the Ponderosa Loop back out to the cliff. We then ducked right, back onto Wild Turkey to ride WT from north to south. Look familiar? Same old junction with a new sign and trail.

The northernmost sectoin of Wild Turkey is .34 miles of crusher fine. I remember this being one of the sections they made with the traildozer. They applied the crusher fine to help stabilize the soil.

The views from this corner are great. Lyons to the north and Longmont to the east. Nate negotiates the first corner and starts to descend into the rocky forest.
But there are a few sections thru the trees that are buff and fast. For now anyway. We'll see how they stand the test of time.



There's even a few turns to be had traversing thru open meadows.
Over the last few trail work days, we had noticed a few sections that were perennially wet and wondered what the county was going to do with them. I'm not worried anymore. They armored the hell out of the trail and it's solid.
The armored sections were pretty fun, too.
It's hard to tell from only looking at the pictures, but one thing that I was tremendously impressed with was the flow of the trail. The trail planners did a great job of allowing the trail to remain fun by constantly flowing back and forth along the countour of the hillside.
Even after having worked on it and hiked thru it several times, my initial overall impression of the Wild Turkey trail was much better than I expected. It had a little bit of everything, with good doses of the type of riding I like best - good flow thru rocky technical lines. Wild Turkey is a trail that will force you to pay attention. It's tight, rocky, but still relatively slow speed. It was a fantastic sampling today. It is (hopefully) a good indicator of how we can potentially shape the connector coming north into Lyons. The connector will come in at the lowest point of Wild Turkey on the easternmost part of the trail.

You need to ride this trail.

The next workday at Heil is Oct 6. We will be working on the new connector to Lyons!