There's Always Beer in the Banana Stand....

One of the many nice things about mountain biking are the logs... They are nice to look at, fun to ride over, difficult to ride down, ultimately make part of the very dirt we love to ride on, grow pretty mosses, make homes for furry little animals and most importantly hid delicious BEERZZZZ!  I do love a good cache.....  There is no higher score in the dude point department than rolling up to a sweet spot on a local trail with your riding bros and walking over to one of the bazillion logs that they have been looking at and riding past for years, and digging out a couple cold ones...... well.... I guess it depends on the time of the year.... in the winter they are SUPER cold, and in the summer you can be guaranteed they will be colder than the air..... So yeah I guess cold ones does still apply in this scenario.  I have a couple different active stashes or as they call them CACHEs on a trail I frequent most days. I just got back from a night ride on the local in town trails and I decided to stash a few beers in the woods that were left in the fridge by a friend a few weeks ago.... Thanks Mike!  These beers might be drank by me tomorrow or I might forget about them for a few months and suddenly remember them while out riding with some friends.... this is where the major dude points would be awarded..... 

There has not been much to report in the bike or outdoor world around here lately.... minus the afternoon or weekend in town trail ride all that's been going on here is house work.  I am in the middle of a big project re-renovating my house..... The house was built back in the early 1900's...... I have seen an old fire insurance map from 1918 and my house is there so it is at least that old... If you get bored check out the maps (sanborn map link).. there pretty cool.  Well, around 1995 someone converted the house to be a duplex, we bought the house in 2007 and fixed it up to make it livable and I am now taking it back to a single family house....  I have been building cabinets, tearing out walls, building walls, ripping up flooring, laying flooring, making countertops, pouring concrete, laying tile, electrical work, plumbing, gas line work, HVAC stuff, painting, demoing, etc.   Oh yeah I almost forgot my favorite thing..... sheetrock..... shoot me in the head.......

I did have some help one day demoing an old nasty bathroom from one of my main riding bros and local frame builder in exchange for some help with an old 1965 Chevy Van procurement and extraction.....

When all this is done I'm startin' on frame number two.... stay tuned.....

Stash or is it Cache?

Cache or is it Stash?

Concrete Countertop Form Building

Concrete Countertop Form Building

Backsplash....

Hey Clark....Shitter's Full!

Easy Crawl Space Access!

Light Fixture Weldin'

Van Winchin'

Trailer ............Pushin' ?????

Guns Flexin'

#2.... still waffling on the sliders????

Look at dem curves.....

All things are not equal...

Pedals that is....

I have been riding mtn bikes for a long time now...  I was an early adopter of the clipless pedals.  For those of you that don’t know, clipless pedals are bicycle pedals that your shoes clip into... this allows for you to pedal more efficiently by being able to pull up on your pedals during your pedal stroke, they also keep your feet attached to the bike when things get bumpy.  

There are several different types of clipless pedals out there, and I have tried just about all of them.  All pedals except for one have proved to be inferior.  

SPD style pedals are the industry standard but they are crap... Yes they are adjustable so you can dial them in to your ability or disability level.  But, this adjustability lends them to having to many parts, and this becomes really apparent when you are a couple handfuls of miles back in the Utah backcountry and one of said adjustable parts decides to go missing..... trying to find an adjustment screw proves to be harder than you would think.... even in a mtn bike town.

Speedplay..... weird 

Crankbrothers......copied Time and they all break 

TIME ATAC!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These are the only mtn bike pedals... period!

In fact I have been rocking the same set of TIME ATAC pedals for 17 years.........

Yeah that is correct I said SEVENTEEN YEARS!!!!!!

I just recently switched these old geezers for a newer pair because the spring rails were getting a bit thin from 17 years of shreddin'.

People say..."but TIME pedals aren’t adjustable" waaah waaah waaah....

Actually they are adjustable, or at least they were 17 years ago... the OG packaging told you to put the cleat on the shoe one way for mere mortals and to turn the cleat around backwards for experts.... so yeah they are adjustable, or they were 17 years ago (I don’t think TIME verbalizes this advice in modern times).

People say "they are heavy".... Who cares....

People say "all of my friends SPD"...... Get new friends

People say "you should try crank brothers"..... better go ahead and by 4 sets

People say "I used to ride speedplays"....... used to (probably on their soft ride)

Smart people say "you should get some TIME ATACs"....... ride with this genius only because.....he is a genius! 

Oh yeah….

Went to Pisgah Forest for some leaf peepin’

We rode bikes, watched people ride bikes, ate burritos, drank free beers, drank not free beers, made fires, slept in tents, slept not in tents, slept in trucks,  played with dogs, hung out with friends, rode bikes with friends and talked about riding bikes….

It was good….

Look at that old geezer!

Close up of the thinning spring....

Just Hangin' Out

Bervard has a good burrito spot

This is real and they were serious!

REEB Ranch Bike Farm 

Athens All The Way

A couple weekends back was the Annual Athens All The Way mountain bike ride.  It has taken a few years off but AATW is back and will hopefully be truly annual again.  

If you Ask Jeeves about local mountain bike trails he does not have a very good answer.  There are a few trails that pop up, one is right here in town but pretty short and caters towards beginners, the others are all a good bit out of town requiring a car or a pretty grueling fat tire road ride just to get your tires muddy.  Soooooo... Athens does not stand out as mountain biking town to the general PUBLIC.

The truth is that there is a core group of dudes that have some pretty decent trails that you will not find any info about unless you ask one of the said core dudes.  These trails are all in town and if you live in town there is no reason why you could not ride every day and never get in your car.  Now, we are not talking about beautifully groomed single track.... more like in town rugged wilderness.... but the trails are beautiful in my eyes.  

Athens All The Way is a group ride that sets out on a pre planned day with the end goal of riding every known trail in town one after the other after the other....

This is no easy task.  I think the guys and gals who completed the ride this year logged somewhere between 40 and 50 miles.... most of which is single track with small amounts of pavement to connect sections of trail.  

I was unable to ride in the morning due to some other obligations so I met the ride at the halfway point... I will call the ride Athens All Half the Way.  The halfway point greeted the group of beat morning riders with a SAG  car complete with a change of cloths, food, water, pizza and a resupply of other necessary beverages.  After ridding the last half of the ride I was kind of happy I did not start with the early crew....Everyone was DESTROYED near the end of the 40+ mile ride.  

 All said and done 29 riders participated in this gruel fest and 17 completed the ride in it's entirety (major props).  We all decided that this will again become an annual event but maybe it should not take place during the dead heat of summer..... To be continued in Fall or Spring 2015.... Not summer!

Necessary Beverages!

 

"Ballers Hill"

Attention All Trail Users............

The trails we all use and love do not maintain or build themselves....

That is all....

Bucky the Tube Slayer!

Hmmmmmmmm... What is the most productive use of my time today.... Seeing how I am midish way through a pretty major home renovation I ask myself this most days..... should I start to tare out that wall, studd in the new closet, relocate the kitchen plumbing, remove/move electrical, start laying new wood floor, relocate lighting, build new cabinet doors, refinish cabinets, etc, etc, etc.  I know.... I'll clean off the deck first because it is getting cluttered with building trash, kitchen sink, wood, old cabinet doors...etc.  While carrying said cabinet doors to back of truck I thought... "these are pretty crappy doors... but this is good quality plywood (12 ply birch, no core voids)".... the mind ran wild and after a couple hours of work, none of which was productive toward home renovation.... VOILA

8 inch radius 

A little jig saw action

A bunch of screws

First test bend.... Turned out pretty darn good!

Crappy Bikes

To preface this post: This post was composed entirely on my phone while waiting for hours in San Jose’s International airport, while waiting on a 1:30 AM flight home…. I might have been delirious but after reading over the post (written on the notepad of my phone) I have decided to fix nothing and publish as is… enjoy any errors you might find and my late night red eye babbling.

Crappy bikes 

Man... There are a ton of CRAPPY bikes in Costa Rica. Well, I'll take that back here are a ton of decent frames with crap parts all over them. All the bike shops.... If you want to call them that, sell bright shiny new frames... Name brand frames... Think big box, Trek, Giant, Cannondale, etc. But then they cover them up with junk parts. ALL bikes (except the few actually nicely built modern road bikes) have front suspension and ALL of these suspension forks are.... Ready for it.... RST???????? I went to a few shops to further investigate and what I found was very subpar shops with a back stock of no lie 200 brand new RST forks on the shelves????? In different colors of course. The end purpose of the bike does not seem to matter they all had suspension forks. Turns out even the "nice" mountain bikes were actually just being used by the Ticos’ (the general name that native Costa Ricans go by) commuters (I guess the suspension is for all the huge pot holes). I saw tons of dudes fully kitted out just cruising on the highway on their "nice mountain bike". The first night in San Jose we were at this place that had their version a Sports Center playing and they were showing a Costa Rican National Championship Mtn Bike race. Maybe all the riders were just pissed about their RST shocks and their Acera derailleurs because the riders were terrible. Don't get me wrong, I am sure most of them would beat the pants off me in a road race or any other endurance heavy, timed event, but these dudes couldn't cross a creek! I'm not talkin’ that manky entrance, a bit too deep, a bit too long with an almost impossible exit creek, I am talkin’ a little piddly nothing creek... Some would have called it refreshing. All the dudes in the race dismounted and carried.... It was embarrassing to watch but after two weeks in the country and TRYING to find mountain biking… ZERO LUCK and seeing where they ride… ON THE HIGHWAY it’s clear.... These dudes need to come to the Southeast USA for a training sesh.... Oh yeah, we surfed the Caribbean, ate coconuts, drank crappy beer, drank ONE good beer, peered into the crater of two active volcanoes, avoided about a bazillion auto accidents, almost killed 5000 dudes on motorcycles, ate more beans and rice and plantains than I care to think about, and got stranded at one international shopping mall.

The only cool bike I saw the entire time

             

The other only cool bike 

The local truck driver... I have friends who would excel at this job

The typical "BIke Shop"

I want one

Where the jungle meets the surf

San Jose Skyline

Hat Trick..... Work, Ride, Paddle....

 I had this idea the other day and ran it past my usual partner in crime.  We agreed this would be a great mini epic if we did it after a full day of work.  I worked my day job, he worked his day jobs, then we met up, set the shuttle and got on the bikes.  The pictures will tell the rest of the story.

Shuttle set... ready to roll!

In town mountain bike trails proved to be a viable shuttle route...

The trail needs a good bit of TLC thanks to this week's multiple big wind storms.  

                                   

Look what we found stashed in the woods.......

Two of my favorite things....

Don't mind if I do!

This set up is actually pretty darn stable

   

Loaded up and truckin'

We took a quick break at a friends house.... Thanks for the picture Jess!

Take Out

   

Getting that up there was terrible 

 A li'l bushwhacking 

Might have been easier to unload at the bottom of the hill... maybe next time...

Lets go home