Monday, April 30, 2007

Moab Day 2...The Adventure Continues

Porcupine Rim Trail

We (Ray, a good friend, and I) started out doing what no one else wanted to do...ride the pave and gravel road up to the trailhead. Everyone else evidently pays a shuttle to take them and their bikes up....For me it is a normal warm-up to ride 10.5 miles up 1200 feet, but it turned out to be a hurried warm-up since we had a smokin headwind going uphill. So it ended up being a leg burner...Training at its best --- singlespeed, up a long hill, into a stiff headwind...

From the trailhead we climbed up solid rock with continuous stair-step ledges for another 980 feet to the top.

Porcupine Rim Trail is one trail that everyone warned me about taking a hartail, SS bike on. "They" all seemed to think that this trail was a full-suspension, geared bike only trail. I found the Porcupine to be a small bit challenging but perfectly suited for my SS 29er. I had a blast on this one...so much so that I hated to stop and take pictures, but I did get a few.



The top was at the rim edge overlooking the Castle Valley with more of those open-jawed, I-can't-believe-this-view kind of scenery...
Wow is all I could say...





















This is Ray...the only other person with the ambition, heart, and true biking soul to skip the wimp-out shuttle to the top...a true biking adventurist...









Did I mention that after climbing up to the top that the trail is nearly all downhill back? There were a few hike-a-bike sections like this one where the rim above decided to drop down...look closely and you can see Ray standing by one of the smaller rocks that is part of a monster piece that came down here...and yes there really is a rideable trail along this edge (click on the pic for a larger verson - see if you can find the trail).

After Porcupine I went out and did some more trails (alone...it seems that others were a bit pooped) and ended up venturing into Arches National Park...another cool place to see. I finished my ride at near dark with a huge smile on...How can life get better than this?

Friday, April 27, 2007

Moab on a Single-Speed

Moab: Day-1

Against advice from numerous other "experts" I took my single-speed (SS) Gary Fisher Ferrous to Moab.

The experts said it would be futile to ride a SS in lumpy, bumpy Moab and that I would need to either take or rent a super-duper-boingy-full-squish-bike with lots of granny gears for climbing those leg-burning steep hills.

After riding in Moab I have 3 things to say:

1) Gears are over-rated and truly shifting gears is a waste of time and effort.

2) Full suspension bikes are over-rated...such a waste of effort to have to push all that extra junk up a hill.

3) 29-inch wheels rule! I have been "thinking" about getting a standard 26" wheeled bike again, but I must say that Moab truly renewed my faith in the advantage 29ers have in riding over obstacles and on rough terrain.

One more thing...I used some Ergon grips for the first time down in Moab and must say I am way beyond sold on the comfort they provide. After a few hundred miles of riding the roughest desert trails my hands felt fresh and ready for more. The Ergon grips on a Bontrager 12-degree Big-Sweep handlebar was heavenly everyday.

The weather was spectacular as was the scenery...every day on every ride I was awed by the views...I truly could not get enough...

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The Way to Moab...

This is the way to Moab...

Simply put it was full of breath-taking views...

(click on the pics for a larger image)

Monday, April 16, 2007

Restless

Every spring I get extremely restless...which makes me aggitated...which makes me rather untolerable to be around. I seem to have some ancestoral migration gene that pushes me to move to a new landscape in the spring....in the past I did just that, but moving has become a bit more complicated these days (moving is becoming way to expensive and it seems to be harder to dig out the roots). But this year I seem worse than ever so I've tried to subdue these feeling with some longer back-road rides around home...










Resistance is futile....

Over the last several weeks of riding I have come to realize that I must view some new distant lands in order to settle my stir-crazy feelings. During all my rides the winds seem to be carrying a very faint whisper that sound like knobby tires rolling on slick-rock, dirt, and sand. After several hundred miles of listening to this whisper I finally realized it was one musical word played over and over again....

....Moab...Moab...Moab...Moab...Moab...Moab...Moab...Moab...Moab......