Sedona Action Jackson

A little cold and snowy today, yeah? How about some pictures from a warmer place - I took a trip down to Sedona for Thanksgiving week. Great times, good riding, the best company, and plenty of...you guessed it...ACTION, Jackson.

Who are the studs that got out and rallied last night? Not this sally. Maybe next week.

Good Times....Good Snowy Times!

A great ride tonight Y'all! If you live on the front range you're quite aware of the snow that's been falling all day. The Restone crew was able to motivate for a few hour stomp(a few more motivated than others based on hangover quantity). A super good ride through what turned out to be quite a bit of snow. There was good riding, snow, less lights, some falls & plenty of smiles. What else would you possibly want.?.?.?.Ooo we had THAT too. A few post ride Dales Pale Ales & a little food at Oskars while the bluegrass jam was pickin'. Proper!

tuesday ride 11/28

Meet at the shop at 6. It's going to be a cold one! If it's super cold, we can make the call at that time.

Cross Movie

On December 6th, there is a showing of the movie "Transition 2, Cross the Pond" at the Boulder Theatre. Tickets are 10 smacks and the movie follows a group of North American cross racers in Belgium during the 2005 Season.

Thought it would be fun to get a group and go have some beers and check it out.

Let me know if anyone is interested...money goes to a good cause.

http://www.bouldertheater.com/event_detail.php?id=512

q factor

Well, the day after Thanksgiving didn't exactly go according to plan, but it was a great day none the less. I spent the entire morning and early afternoon watching over 2 sick kids. Sick kids can throw a monkey wrench into pre existing plans. It's all part of the fun of kids, right? Anyhoo, when mom got home from the madhouse that is everywhere other than Lyons, I got to sneak out for a ride. It wasn't the 3+ hour epic we had planned, but it was good anyway. With limited time and daylight waning, I hoppped in the car and drove into the forest. Quality of quantity is never a bad thing.

Intense Spider 29er, Turner Flux on sale, and a few Uzzis are left

I never did snap pics of Chris's 29er Spider when it was built. He was gracious enough to stop by the other day so I could take a couple of quick photos. Plus, he's always a sucker for the free beer in the fridge. Check it out. This particular Intense Spider 29er is a medium in the Works finish. Larges will be available sometime in December.


Chris is also gracious enough to let people ride it, too. Let the shop know if you'd like to throw a leg over it so we can arrange the ride.

In other news, the Intense Uzzi sale worked out well. They only have 1 or 2 frames left in small and medium. There are larges of all colors left, still, so holler if you want one.

Oh, one last thing. Turner is now shipping the '07 Flux. '06's are on sale. About all that's left is Large Polished. How does $1395 sound? That's a smokin'd deal on a fantastic frame.

Everyone have an excellent Thanksgiving. I've got my fingers crossed that the weather stays agreeable. It's been a loooong time since I've had a day without work at either job, so I plan to take full advantage of it!

Tuesday Night Ride 11/22

We're heading south for this one so we can ride Green Mountain in Denver. It's a lot more fun in the dark than it is in the daylight. The meet up place is the Rooney Road Parking lot (the one just on the West side of C470) at 6pm. Rockin' Ron will act as tour guide. See you there!

Um, yeah. Mancation.

Zip




SDA

some fun stuff we've been working on

Intense Uzzi VPX
1.5" head tube and massive reinforcements. Stiff and strong? you bet.

and how about a monster 8.5"x2.5" Fox DHX rear shock.

One of the coolest thing about the Uzzi VPX. Replaceable left and right dropouts so you can run a 135mm qr rear wheel or a 150mm downhill rear wheel. Beautiful, isn't it?

Don't forget about the ample tire clearance. The Uzzi VPX is a versatile bike. Freeride, dh, or hardcore all mountain. The small frame with a coil shock is only 9.5 pounds.

Then, on the other end of the spectrum is the Turner Flux. 4" of XC goodness. If you've got the skills, you can ride damn near anything on a Flux. It's a fantastic handling bike. It climbs like a mofo, too. This one was 25.68 pounds with crappy flat pedals when I weighed it.
The new SRAM X9 is good. Really good.


Can't go wrong with Hope hubs, either.


That's all for now, stay tuned for more!

Permanant Cyclocross Course Petition

Hey all,
After the huge turnout for the US Grand Prix in Boulder the city may consider building a permanent cyclocross course. Take a minute & go to ridewithnickmartin.com to help take action and sign the petition to get some cycling in our culture.

We saw the redstone family getting down to some tunes last night. I snapped a picture with my phone of Dave & Zoe getting it.

I didn't work today. My daughter's 3 year old preschool had a small Thanksgiving program today, followed up by a class Thanksgiving lunch feast. It was a fun afternoon spent in miniature chairs with fun people that fit them. Since I had the rest of the afternoon left, I was torn. Go for a bike ride, or go for a bike ride. Melis and I rallied and we went for a bike ride. It was a tough choice, especially given the most excellent weather we were blessed with today. Light long sleeves and knickers for me. Long sleeve woolie and shorts for Melis. Perfect dirt.

I didn't make this one. This photo (or any of their counterparts that I tossed) doesn't do justice to this section. The ride was an onslaught of makeable technical challenges, but you have to bring your AA game.



We rode hard enough to get hungry so we stopped for a snack.


Another of Melis on the rocks. Sounds like a cocktail.


I was lucky to get out today. I hope everyone was able to get out and play a little today. It was beautiful.

All Right Dirtwhistles

I know i missed the Tuesday night ride which really hurt my pride. So instead I knocked out Green Mountain over lunch today. Not sure how many of you have ridden there but it really does have some really fun fun trails. Many different options and most importantly, night riding is legal. I would like to throw it out there to see if anyone would be interested in making the drive down there next week for a little Nocturnal Mission. I work right near there so we could meet at our normal time at the Rooney Road parking lot and go from there.

For some of those who don't ge the chance to make it all the way up to Lyons, this would be a great way to get in on a Redstone group ride.

Let me know what you think and I would happy to lead the ride. I've gotten to know quite a few fun different routes.

Happy Trails fellas.

November 12th Cross

Chris & I again headed out for the cross scene at Red Rocks Elementary this weekend. We were greeted with misting rain, some snow & a fun course with nearly perfect conditions. The course itself was my personal favorite of the year. A high percentage of off-road with off-camber switch backs, a few deep revines with steep climb outs, a pretty steep run up & some super smooth twisting turning sections. All in all a great course within the beautiful backdrop of Red Rocks park. Chris & I finished around the 50% mark within the field of CatIII & Open. It was a fun race with perfect cyclocross moist cold weather!

Check out this picture of the Canadian Cyclocross National Championships. It looks like a super cool course on a truely perfect muddy cross day.

Tuesday Ride 11/14

Nope, I don't know where we'll ride. Be at the shop at 6pm and we'll figure it out then. Bring a good light and dress warm!

Sunday Update

I have a small window of time to blather randomly about the weekend. Yesterday morning, these two fellas were snacking on one of our trees. A couple hours later when it was time to open the shop, they were still there just hanging out. This is another reason I really like this time of year. Much more wildlife comes down to this elevation. Beautiful creatures, they are, eh?

Despite the on/off chilly weather, it was another great Saturday at the bike shop. Reports were that Hall was busy, but I didn't seem to see too many bikes coming thru town. Just a few big packs of roadies rolling thru. They looked cold, too.

I've been itching to get up into the high hills for at least one more ride before the trail got perma-snowed in for the season. I was up at 7am and out the door and in the car. By the time I got up to about 7000', I couldn't really see too far in front of the car because of the foggy gray skies and the blowing snow. Cars were coming down from the mountains with over 2" of snow on them. I turned around and came back to the bike shop to ride Hall. Hall was perfect. By this time, it was flurrying in town, too. The roads were all wet but the dirt was perfect. You can even see some flakes in the air in this pic.




This was taken from the same vantage point on Antelope, looking back towards Steamboat Mountain. Gray skies, indeed.

I rode up into the park and got 3 quality laps in. At the top of the loop on my first lap, I looked to the west to see nothing but patchy cloudiness and beautiful blue skies. In some ways, I regretted not perservering thru the snow. I should've ridden up higher, but I've had enough blizzardaliscious rides lately, that I opted for something more certain. Anyway, in the middle of lap 2, I ran in to Rockin' Ron. We rolled one more lap, then hustled back to town. I couldn't turn down his offer for a cup of joe, so we stopped to bs for a bit.

The view from the porch of the Stone Cup wasn't too shabby.
I don't know about you all, but I absolutely cannot wait for the new trail to come slicing thru those hillsides!

Hope you all have a great day - the weather here is still on and off. Maybe we'll still see some snow yet. And good luck to all of you crossin' down in Morrison today. Good luck fellas, and keep up the good fight. Also, keep your fingers crossed for one more dry week. I still want to get up to the hills for one more ride!

Apparently, about 10 other states have license plates like these. Don't get me started on my rant about that "Share the road, share the taxes" bumper sticker. I'll just ask where I sign up for my tax refund if that's the case. Want a cool new license plate with a bike on it? The way I read it, it says "I share the taxes, too." This is a no brainer. All you have to do is click here and sign the petition to make it happen.
Sign the petition

So, here's something completely off topic. About a week or so ago, I asked a buddy of mine if I could borrow a Misfits album. What with it being Halloween and all, I was jonesing to listen to some old school gothic horror punk - stuff that I used to love in junior high. Well, Andy's a little older than me and he sends me this link today. Turns out, he was at this show at the Mercury Cafe, not far from the Denver Wax Trax. Yikes - does this mean we'll see more of this if the 80's are coming back?

In other randomness, it feels good to get my my wheel back from Hadley. I had exploded a 108pt rear hub this Spring at the last day of the Memorial Day Lyons Fat Tire Fest. I was too busy to get the wheel sent back so I just slapped on another wheel I had around. I did finally send the wheel in for repair recently, though, and just got it back today.

Hadley has great customer service over there, I was really impressed. I talked to Sue Hadley on the phone -she explained that the bearing was a sub standard bearing that had been substituted by the bearing mfg without the consent of Hadley. I sent the wheel in last week and just got it back today. Given shipping turnaround times from here to CA, I'd say that's a good effort on their behalf to keep me riding Hadley. I'm mounting 'er back up on the Intense 6.6 tomorrow. Can't wait to get back to tubeless in the rear now, too. I've been waiting on that one for a while!

Turner Saddles Have Arrived

XC ti sweetness

Freeridey stylee


The profiles.

Constructing the Wild Turkey

Last Saturday, I closed the shop down all day to help out at Boulder County's Heil Ranch Open Space. Due to succesfull lobbying over the last year (mostly from mountain bikes), BoCo has agreed to build another multi use trail at the park. This new trail, the Wild Turkey Trail, will create another loop opportunity on top of Heil, or the ability to ride a figure 8 at the top. Eventually, the connector to Lyons will split from the Wild Turkey trail. We worked on the trail earlier in the year, about a month ago in September. I left feeling a little dissapointed that we were just building more 4' wide rocky multiuse trail. Don't get me wrong, anything is a gain, but I prefer a narrower trail. Last Saturday, BoCo officails told us to go 24" wide. Progress has been made, slowly but surely.

We got to our spot. It looked promising. Here's what we had after a small chunk of time working the terrain.

After we had cut in trail for about 3 hours, our work was done. Before heading back to the main vehicle shuttle area, we walked north to the lookout. This is looking at Hall Ranch and Indian Lookout Mountain. Our vantage point is just north of where the existing bench is right now.


There's also a good view of Red Hill to the East/Northeast. Woohoo, don't forget about Cemex down there!

The rest of these shots are of us walking back on the new trail to get to the shuttle area. I tell you, I'm pretty excited about this trail. I will hope and pray and lobby to get the Lyons connector to look more like this. For some reason, though, I doubt that will happen. We'll fight the good fight for it, though.





Yep, pretty good stuff, huh? I can't wait to ride it. They say they are on track with probably one more work day, then a Spring opening. I will be there. Anyone care to join me for a shot of Wild Turkey? Plan on it.


After the trail work at Heil Ranch, we drove a short bit up the canyon to the Left Hand OHV area. It's not for everyone, but I like it. There were hunters, jeepers, motos, and even some redneck assholes shooting hand held canons into the hillside. But the riding was sure fun, and once we got up to the 5 points intersection, it was all a memory. The singletrack approach to the area is a good one.
Debaser climbs the ledge singletrack for a bit. The road is already way down there.

There are a few sections, this on in particular, in which the only option is to walk.
But the view is a good one.
And the singletrack descent is absolutely top notch. Want steep, rocky, small drops, and rock fields? Got 'em. Stay tuned to the blog. We'll be night riding here soon enough, as soon as things higher up get snowed in. LHC OHV is rideable almost year round due to its steep south facing slopes.

It's on the Calendar.

If anyone's interested, speak up. The wife put it on the master schedule, so I'm in. Next step is to talk to work and see about taking Friday off. Riding, camping, and some etc thrown in for good measure.

Tuesday Ride 11/7

Well, it's voting day this Tues so we'll have to start a little later. How about a 6:30 start time?

Meet up at the shop. Heading west is the agenda. Prepare for a big ride. I don't know if we'll get one or not, but be prepared, just in case :).

Night ridin', yep.

Boulder Cup CX

A little cyclocross action - Chad was out flying the stone colors, and despite starting 1/3 back in the pack moved up into 6th! He was passing people all over the place. Also, a bonus picture of an expat Nebraskan and his sweet single.