The Area looks like terrain I've ridden around Beal AFB. I was only there for 45 days but I road my a$$ off, it was great. Here in Eastern WA the sun was bright but temps in the low 30's.
Spent 2.5 hours riding around Riverside and most of the trails in the shade are frozen and fast.


[QUOTE=
I took it out today in its' inagural spin.... 10.5 miles and abut 2,000' of climbing. The weather was perfect, the scenery was grand, and I had one hell of a good time.
This rig is more bike than I will ever need or will ever be able to utilize or appreciate, but I really had a time on it.





http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t...k/diablo-3.jpg

I 3> my Tranny.
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f1...r/IMG_7076.jpg

^ Yeah, I want one, but there's no way I could convince the wife. It's probably just as well, I need to ride a lot more before I can take advantage of a "real" bike anyway. I can tell from your pictures that winters a lot more advanced there than here. Do you ride all winter?

Good times.

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f1...IMG_0143-1.jpg

Slippery leaves.

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f1...IMG_0119-1.jpg

scrub how many bikes do you have?

PIMP dude!!! And how was the ride?

burly hardtail
singlespeed hardtail
burly short travel fully
DH sled
cross bike/commuter/crap weather road bike/grocery getter
road bike


Freakin' awesome. Sadly, the wet leaves meant I couldn't push the corners, but the thing rails. More later.

Got my fork back from Zoke warranty and it's dead after only three rides. Really after one, but I refused to believe it and kept re-airing it just to be sure. Gonna get a Fox 36 Vanilla. Oh well took some pics, first snow ride of the year. Gorgeous... I'm in for a spring ride down in NC BTW.
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...5/DSC_0315.jpg
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...5/P1010495.jpg
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...5/P1010497.jpg
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...5/P1010498.jpg
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http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...5/P1010509.jpg
http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/j...5/P1010512.jpg

Still one of my all time fav bikes on the forum.

I raced a 'cross race today! First one. On friggen ice.

nice! how'd it go?

It was a lot of fun, doing another race february 7. Unfortunately I DNF'd due to the ice, having my derailleurs frozen, and my cleats were covered in ice and was racing unclipped. I'm hooked to the sport now though.

were you riding you mtb? or do you have a cross bike?

Nope, just finished building up my cross race bike. I think that was a problem - I only had about a week to actually ride it before the race.

Pics found here: http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...p=10113970#top

Had an awesome first snow ride of the season this morning at Blue Hills. Crisp sunny day, 2-3 inches of fresh, trees all coated white and drooping. We started with a short climbing loop up some sidetrack with a sick babyhead downhill, then came back and picked up a few stragglers and went across the road to the singletrack along the Neponset River. Finsished with a climb up Big Blue and a shweet rocky, snowy downhill.

A few random shots, mostly navigating the feeder creeks along the river. Cellphone videos to come later.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v2...k/IMG_0024.jpg

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I went out on Saturday with a couple buddies to a new trail I hadn't done before, Clear Bay on Lake Thunderbird in Oklahoma. It's 16 miles of winding, twisty trail that goes up and down the side of the big hill that it sits on. Probably not a lot of elevation for you guys, but for me, it was killer. I'd only been on two other trails before, and they are both flat as boards.

The temperature was about 27 when we showed up, with a nasty wind that made it feel like about 12. One of my buddies from work invited two friends of his, who turned out to be sponsored racers. So there were two guys on Stumpjumper FSR 29ers, one guy on a Pivot Mach 429, one guy on a Niner Airlight w/carbon rigid fork, and me on an Craigslist Cannondale F300 HT. Needless to say, I was scared. The night before, I had packed a small backpack with some food, a few different layers to swap out as the day warmed up, and my hydration bladder. My buddies ridiculed me, and said I wouldn't even need water on this ride because it was too cold. Like a jackass, I listened to them and left the backpack behind, but did grab the hydration bladder.

The trail was cool, and had some big roll-ins through a ravine, as well as a fun teeter-totter that I successfully navigated on my first run. There were also two rock drops of about 3-4 feet that I hit cleanly and was very impressed with myself. The technical, gnarly parts, I handled very well. The guys I was with were impressed for my first run on the trail.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/168335/IMG_1348.jpg
(This is steeper than it looks)

It turns out that riding that distance in that kind of temperature really takes it out of you. After the one guy I was keeping pace with had a crash on one of those big roll-ins, I found myself struggling to maintain pace with the other 3 guys. Eventually, we passed the 10 mile mark and it took us two hours. I was in desperate need of some food, especially something salty, or a banana because I could feel my quads start to cramp. Eventually, I powered up one last hill when my quads broke into full cramp protest. Every time my leg straightened coming around the crank, both quads would cramp and lock fully extended. The pain was excruciating and I knew that even with the best intentions, I could never complete another 6 miles. I asked the guys for directions back to the trucks, but they were all cool and limped out with me. I have a feeling that the guy who crashed was very relieved to be heading back too.


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/168335/IMG_1352.jpg
(Please excuse my buddie's crappy cellphone pics. This is his Stumpy on the teeter-totter)

Here's a PDF showing the trail map. I ran out of gas about somewhere on the Gold loop. I know I did Crazy Dave's Run, Quadzilla, and Dragon's Ragoo: LINK

I feel your pain on the leg-lock-cramp thing. Happened to me once in an 8-hours endurance DH race. Strangest, scariest sensation I've ever had.

It sucked because I had to pull over and get off the bike, but I had to squat on my heels for several minutes which wasn't comfortable while the cramps went away. Note to self: next time, keep the backpack with the snacks.

Yesterday at Ninham. Today is a fresh couple inches, 36F, and melting quickly under the craptacularly constant cold drizzle.

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f1...r/IMG_0019.jpg

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Rode to work the last two mornings. 10deg / 6" snow yesterday...I was having a ball.

This morning it was -0.4deg and just flippin' cold. The snow was all bladed off and it was just flippin' cold.

Great pics, inspiration on this page for sure. Of course I sit with my laptop sipping coffee griping because its only 30 degrees in Vegas. You are the new world mountain men.

2.5 hours this morning at Blue Mtn. I think it hit a balmy 23F as our high... I've done trail rides fairly comfortably into the single digits. I commute pretty regularly in winter by bike, hitting into the single digits pretty regularly as well. :)

Rode a couple hours in Duxbury this morning. Mud season is finally over, and everything is frozen and fast. A nice change of pace.

This is my 8,000th post!!!











Rode last night with the new light. When you actually get it out on the trail...it's not quite as impressive...I'll have to say it's probably 2-3x the light that my 10w halogen was.

Still waaaaay better than the 10w...probably not 4x the light as I previously stated. Still well worth the $85.



As for the ride? Sucked. We had gotten a little over 6" of snow and it's been hovering right around 0deg at night and early morning...up to 20's/30's in the day, so the top of the snow melts a tad and re-freezes in the evening. The crust of the snow was soo freakin' firm, I couldn't even pedal. It was about 6" deep, but was like pushing through quicksand.

I ended up on the sidewalk for the rest of the ride.