11-23-08-BLACKROCK

Went to Blackrock on Sunday with Derek, Darren and Argyle.

on the way down, the sky looked sweet and the sun was coming up. We met up with whiplash, josh, doney show, some of the young brothers raul and agony rob.

The trail conditions were great considering all the rain we have had recently.

Darren was showing us powty. This was his first time back to Blackrock since like May, so it was good to have him back.

Derek goochered up his leg pretty good on one of the sunday stroll ramps.

The camp had some extra money for a big fancy sign...probably to keep out the bikers!

The door man at this restaurant was pretty aggro looking. we decided not to go there, but go to mexican food back in dallas....mexican food is always good after the ride!

The day was great other than a couple small crashes. Argyle went down hard on sunday stroll just before derek crashed.

We go to post next week!

11-16-08-Syncline

Well, we did Syncline part two yesterday and it was awesome! the weather was even better than it was last weekend, the crew was bigger and the ride was crazier!

when jake was doing his morning download, i did the following:

the morning started at jake's house, i found this little figurine guy and a bowl of nuts. i made it look like the guy was throwing the nuts and left them all over the kitchen. he threw them, not me! this guy looks like trouble.

jake had a new set of wheels built...see below. tubeless and i of course predicted three times that he would have some type of trouble with them. what do you know, he had three problems with them. i am a tubeless tire see the future guy.we picked up derek on the side of the road and a guy mike followed us out there. when i snapped this shot, i was talking on the phone, taking the picture and driving while drinking coffee. talk about multi tasking!when we arrived, the crew was waiting and ready to head up to the top of the hill!

let's see if i can list all in attendance. me, mike (trick master), jake, andy, derek, the guys from chris king, johnny thunder, dirk, robholio, jason word, raul, chris calmeth coven, his buddy, kevin, his buddy the new guy, fat larry and skinny april. not sure if i missed anybody, but i'm sure they will pop up in a picture somewhere. i'm sorry if i missed you! i don't think there was anybody there named the tim.

raul had his new camera rockin this run, i haven't seen much of the footage, but i'm sure it will be great!and oh yes, team aggro was in attendance! they we a bit hard to see. their jerseys were syncline camo.

i got this shot of kevin as he was passing me towards the bottom of the hill. i thought it looked cool???this was one of the chris king guys before he ate poop.

kevin had a wimpy crash . no blood or lost teeth. he seemed awful happy and pleasant about crashing. i seem to alway be pretty pissed when i crash and get fired up for the riding. no injuries on the day. robholio didn't even break himself on coyote canyon. we did three runs with a bunch of people at syncline and then a few of us went over to post and did a couple runs around family maing. i think we are going to try and go to blackrock this coming weekend! i got some ok footage yesterday, but i hope to have the cable camera ready for next weekend at the blackrockS!

11-09-08-Syncline

Got up early this morning and headed over to Fat Larry and Skinny April's house in Hillsboro. We rode out through the normal horrible weather on the west side and out through Portland. When we met up with Josh, Raul and Carlisle in Troutdale, the weather was still looking bad! From there i jumped in with argyle and i joke on the way out that the weather would start to get better at cascade locks.....and what do you know, it got better at cascade locks! from there the rain got lighter and lighter until we arrived at the hood river bridge and could see blue skies over the bingen side!

This video was taken on the first run. i think we were all shocked at how dry it was. We did run into donkey show and mrs. donkey show about half way down the first run. they didn't want to shuttle with us, so they only got in a couple "laps" but i'm not sure where they were riding. we met up with a guy justin that i've ridden with a bit out at blackrock...super fast racer guy, but won't really hit any jumps.

the weather was great, we nearly killed some xc riders that thought it was a good idea to stop in the middle of the trail on a downhill section, just around a blind corner. i think each of us had a near smash the guy in spankex experience around that corner. some people have no common sense on where to stop.

raul and i did a bit of filming with his new camera and we may have gotten a few keepers from todays ride. next weekend we have the drunkfest/bike fest 2008 back in syncline. until then...

oh, i also got the old mint green 888 re painted by mormon craig...it looks sweet!

10-26-08 post canyon

post was great today. i picked up raul and his new camera at about eight o'clock this morning and headed east. the drive out was crazy windy. one of the windiest days i've seen on the way to hood river.

we started at family man where josh quickly introduced his head to a tree and he was then seeing crazy! he took a few advil and we headed towards the top of the mountain. the riding was going fine...new guy brian from the east coast lost one of the pulleys on his rear changer at the first jump. we rigged some wire together and he rode the rest of the day on it!

we made the usual stop at the chorus jumps where everybody was coming up short on jumps. robholio cased the second booter on the right side and still went for the third one...boy was that a bad mistake! he exploded his rear wheel and goochered his gnar pretty good. i think there was some blood coming from the junk after that crash. there was a huge divot in the laning of #3 where #hoolio hit it. a guy from hood river was supposed to bring him a wheel, but i never again saw rob or the guy with the replacement wheel.

we saw a bunch of other guys with broken wheels, broken forks and hurt bodies...it was one of the weirdest days out there.

when we were driving up, we noticed a new trail that somebody had carved into a hillside of a recent logging operation. so we had to hit it....boy was this trail steep. it was very soft dirt and went straight down the side of a hill!

after the ride, terry and josh headed home; brian and todd m headed home.....raul and i headed to cascade locks for some of the best pizza i've ever had...sorry paddington's and walking man. the oregon pizza...we finished a large between the two of us. it sounds gross, but it was salmon and shrimp pizza with cheese and maybe mushrooms. GOOD FOOD!

i'm not sure how many more days we will have to ride post canyon this year, but today was one of the best weather days out there! we have blackrock to look forward to all winter!

10-18-08-post canyon

weather was great when i left the house this morning. a bit of rain in the air, but i knew the skies would clear as i headed toward Hood River. I arrived at fat larry and aprils house at 7:30 and we headed out to post.

when we arrived in hood river, we realized we were a bit ahead of carlisle and mormon craig, so we headed back to the 76 station to get beer. we hooked up with some blackrock locals when we arrived at the gas station; we headed back out to the trails...that was about the last time things were going well for the blackrock guys (Louis and Erick) Erick is the guy that crashed going off the cheese grater a few months back and had blood coming out of his goocher...there was eight of us total; fat larry, april, frank (xc bike guy) erick (bloody thingy) louis (don't you want to know what my name is dad) carlisle, mormon craig and myself.

so about 500 feet or so into the ride down from the top ole bloody goocher crashed on a small jump and wacked his head harder than i've ever seen anybody hit their head. This guy scrambled his brain pretty good...just asking the same things over and over, like every 30 seconds! his buddy louis thought that it would be a good idea to get him to a hospital, but guess what.....louis crashed and broke his right collar bone! could the two of these guys had any worse luck? they left the group near drop zone and headed down to their cars...i hope they made it home o.k.

so other than these two guys getting hurt we were having a great day/ride...drinking a few beers sharing some good stories...till we got down to seven streams trail where a lady had crashed off a ladder bridge and messed herself up good. the paramedics were carrying her out in and on what looked like a body bag. they said it looked way worse than it was and that she would live to ride another day!

mormon craig and carlisle were riding awesome today, car hit a bunch of new things that he had never hit before and mormon craig was back hitting the jumps on chorus. the day was a bit weird and i once again did not take any pictures. i need to start working on the filming for this years videos.

10-04-08

10-4 good buddy...was this ever a crazy day.

stef and i headed to the yearly fat tire farm video showing of the latest New World Disorder Video; we picked up Hack on the way there. I was warned about the crazy stuff that happenned the year before (I was in Hawaii, so I missed out). I had no idea that it was going to be this crazy.

we arrived a bit late and fat larry and april were already inside...one problem, they had our tickets. since we were just about the last people in line, we had kinda crappy seats, we were not all in one big group like years past. maybe that kept the mayhem down till later. video was great, bigger jumps, crazier stunts..the normal progression. after the show was over, and the raffle was done, we were still milling around the theater, fat larry and hack were drinking a little much. i was talking with raul near the stage when fat larry thought it would be a good idea to jump on my back. i told him to get off me when he didn't....he did the jamie assisted front flip onto the nice sticky theater floor. after smashing his head in the floor a couple times to get him to calm down, josh came and broke it up. oh, but that's not the good part.

we headed out towards raul's house, gonna go hang out and have a few drinks..but it came to an abrupt burrito beer vomit hault when hack decided to release his stomach all over my wife's car. not just in one small spot like a baby thowing up some milk, but like the walrus in 50 first dates...everywhere projectile vomit. after everybody got out of the car screaming, the only cleaning product i had was window cleaner...not sure why that was in the car? got it as clean as possible with what we had and headed towards home. we called raul and said sorry, "not coming over." on the way home i thought about stopping at the gas station on the top of sylvan hill to try and get some other cleaning supplies, but it happenned again. projectile! this one was better than the first, it got into fat larry and april's mouth...they started to hurl, my wife was hurling...it was like the scene from stand by me. after everybody was done hurling, we got back in the vomit comet and headed towards greg's. he said he needed to get out of the car about ten blocks from his house, so i abliged and let him out.

when arriving back at larry and aprils house, i used their brand new steam cleaning for an hour or so to get the smell and chunks out of the car and headed home spraying febreeze about every five seconds. the next day i spent another seven hours cleaning the car, opening door panels, cleaning window control switches, shampoo carpets and cleaning every nook and cranny of the car....it still stank. tuesday took it to a detail shop $350 dollars later it still stinks when you hit the brakes...the smell comes from some place in the back seat. i'm going to try and take apart the doors today and see if i missed any chunks.

no pictures of the day.

hopefully next year isn't so crazy!

09/28/08-post canyon

causey and i headed out to post canyon this morning for some end of post season riding...

weather was great...way better than i expected. It wasn't too hot (like back here in portland) it was in the mid 60's or low 70's. trails were great with maybe just a bit of sprinkle in the past couple days.

we met up with todd mccarthy out there and we headed to the top of the mountain in the maing bus. first run was good, not much carnage asada. second run was different...todd started to crash and crash and crash. he took a ladder bridge or two in the chest; but walked away from it.

i'm not sure how he is feeling now, but my i am having sympathy pains from watching him crash.

the day was great riding...i just took it easy and am getting ready for the winter riding and filming season.

09/20 & 09/21/08 Blackrock Shuttle Day

Well all of us WTF people put on the end of year Blackrock shuttle day for a fundraiser. I am not sure if the tiny bit of rain scared everybody away, but only about 103 of the 150 or so people showed up.

Jake and I headed down in the Maing bus with Carlisle following us. We couldn't fit all the stereo equipment in the bus, so some of it went into Carlisle's truck. The van was packed with gear as you can see from the stuff behind me.

We got down to Blackrock around five o'clock on Saturday to meet up with Hack, Joe Rykowski, Chip and Ryan. We did some set up of the Stereo equipment and then some trimming back of the trees along the route of the shuttle trucks....it sucks to get slapped on the face with a tree branch in a speeding truck.

Saturday evening we did the usual unusual night ride. some of us had nice lights and some of us had a blinking led on their forehead to light their way. There was not real huge carnage during the night ride...just chip trying to chip off the rest of his teeth on Bonzai Downhill. He also broke his visor and was feeling a bit sore. When we got back from the two night time runs, we started doing most everybodys favorite past time...drinking lots of beer. I made sure not to give Hack my keys.

On the second run, joe took my camera and filmed us coming down the hill. My camera isn't that great, so it looked a bit strange.

We got up nice and early to ready the area for the onslaught of shuttle riders that were coming from everywhere to enjoy our local riding. You can tell it was about seven in the morning from the look on Greg's face. He slept in the rocks by basic training, jim in the back of his truck, raul in his car, me in the back of the maing bus, joe some place in a field and carlisle in the back of his truck. jake was in the plastic bag in front of his stereo equipment.

at the end of the day, it started to rain a bit. some people had their bikes just laying down on the dirt when it started, then the picked up their bikes...leaving these weird dry spots on the ground. i do like the black rock sign that somebody had a plasma cutter and some free time.

the shuttle day went great and hopefully we made a few dollars for the cause.

09/13/08-blackrock

went to blackrock this morning with the chalupa, shawn and mormon craig. weather was great, there was hardly anybody there...only a bit dusty and my 888 worked like new...even better than new!

we rode sunday stroll, bonzai dh...the next downhill trail and hit the et jump and basic training for a while. went back to the maing bus where we had filled the coolers with ice and beer.

we then headed to paddington's pizza in salem for the usual pizza. actually it's way better than average, but it was great as always!

next weekend jake and i are taking the maing bus down full of stereo equipment and a couple bikes on the back for the wtf shuttle day.

i hope to see you all on the trails next week!

09/12/08-fork re build

i am going for zen master status on working on marzocchi suspension products. I have worked on super t's, dirt jumpers, monster t's...both old and new style and now a few 888's. the first time changing out the oil on hack's fork (new style 888) was a nightmare. the process took us around six hours...a case of beer and hack pulling the stansions out of the lowers once.

i was determined to make the process easier. I was also a bit frustrated that I took the fork to a local expert a few weeks back, just before the whistler trip to be exact; the person that worked on the fork did not cycle the legs to drain out the oil that was in the valving of the fork! I measured the amount of oil that came out of the fork and it was almost 50% more that what should have been in there....no wonder it was only getting about 4 inches of travel.

I took the fork apart piece by piece, cleaning each part as i laid it out on the table like a surgeon and body parts. after all was clean and taken apart and i CYCLED THE LEGS OF THE FORK TO GET OUT ALL EXCESS OIL i put it back together, filled it with the proper amount of oil and what do you know...it work like new!

I guess if you want things done and done right, you do it yourself!

We are riding blackrock tomorrow. I am excited, I haven't been there for months! report to follow; it's filming time!

08/29/08-BROWN'S CAMP

check out hack's blog for the details. we rode brown's camp loop last night. i'm still hurting.

i need a new xc bike.

whistler 2008 #2

Just got back from whistler trip number two for the year. went up with hack, fat larry, skinny april and shawn. we also stayed in the same condo with chris and stef yao. it was relentless from the start of the trip...hack and i singing "bernie" songs, talking with the hands doing the april and larry arguing thing all the way up. we also had a guy named shin shi shamalading dong tailgate up the whole way from everett until he passed us when we were getting something to eat in squamish.

april thought larry wasn't going to get across the border and was giving him endless crap, but 10 minutes before the border, april found out that her passport was expired....the crap talking stopped real quickly! however, the old lady rear ending the guy in front of us caused enough of a distraction that april sailed through to mt biking mecca without even a glance at the passport.

we arrived a bit late in the day on friday, so only chris was riding. jake had already crashed once and his arm was hurting. the next day we got up bright and early, got the bikes ready for the mountain then larry's bike broke and my fork sucked. larry's rear cassette fell off and my fork must have had way too much oil in it, because it turned into a four inch travel 888. same mechanic worked on both bikes....coincidence?

weather on saturday was great. partly cloudy, no rain and trails were tacky. i got in a ton of runs. unknowingly the first ambulance of the day that we saw heading up the mountain was going up to pick up jake. he had gotten a bit crazy and the whistler gods decided to make a sacrafice for the day. he wound up with a pretty bad concussion and some pretty horrific looking bruises. bummed us all out for a while, but he would not want us to just sit around and mope..so we on we rode.

after the many runs on saturday, i awoke to a dreary sunday. rain rain rain. we all decided to head home early, leaving whistler around ten thirty am. however, traffic sucked, the weather sucked and it wound up taking us about twelve and a half hours to get home. hope jakes memory comes back...we'll ride again soon!

oh yeah, i didn't bring my camera...it was a riding trip.

08-10-08

rode post today with carlisle, todd m, jr, chris and myself. weather was great, jr crashed, carlisle hates his back wheel and whistler is coming in a couple weeks!

more to come soon!

j

07-20-08 Post Canyon...of course

Weather is still awesome, so we ride post canyon as much as we can till the snow and rain comes back.

Jake, Andy, Darren (first ride in two months) sterling (jake's brother), raul, chris and myself headed out to post. We hooked up with a couple guys, tony and shawn.

I did the stop by jake's house and jake is not awake or answering the door, so I slept on his driveway for about thirty minutes or so until he came outside. He made coffee, then we headed to Andy's place.

Darren was back in mid season form after just a few minutes, he hit both the right and left side of all the chorus jumps. he was even working on the pause mid whip...was looking nice!

Andy was having a good day until a little knock on the knee from one of the legs of his fork. He was rolling into the chorus jumps...I know he's got these jumps, he's just got to roll off em.

Raul hit the egg hunt drop for the first time this afternoon. here's the video:

Raul was plenty excited as you can hear from the video clip. I'm sure he will be killing all the jumps on chorus next.

It turns out that the little crash tony had on the first part of extended play ended up with him having a broken shoulder. this is a tough dude, he hardly said a work and even finished out the ride...with a broken friggin shoulder!

Weather was awesome, riding was awesome and we finished out the day with some taco's at Andy's house that were so good, not even the Mexican's could have made them that good! we will ride again soon!

Post Canyon 07-13-08

Jake picked me up at eight and we headed to Post Canyon. Weather was perfect...hardly a cloud in the sky. We picked up Andy on the way in. Hack, Fatlarry, Skinny April and chip were waiting our arrival out at post.

we headed out in andy's little honda since it was the only rig that we had that could carry more than two bikes. the maing bus has some bad vibration in the rear end...and not in the good way that is keeping it from carrying us to the trails.

I always love checking out the highway on the washington side while driving out to the gorge. i also want to get some good shots of the old rail road tressel that is on the washington side. hack has actually got some good images of the gorge off the bridge shown in this picture.

we headed up to the top of the mountain the check out the upcoming super d race course that is happening next weekend. a few of us we interested in racing it, but after riding it today....none of us are going to race it. today's ride was punishment enough!

when we got up to the top of the mountain, we ran into the gi joe's crew. i don't think i had seem DH Ian for over a year. I haven't been riding in Whistler enough i guess?

this was a shot from the top middle part of the super d course....holy moly it was hot! after finishing out the super d course, we piled into the back of chips truck

this picture was just taken a few minutes before we were pulled over by the local police and lectured about how dangerous it was to ride in the back of a truck. so we did the immigrant thing and piled all sevem of us into the cab that is supposed to only hold five. i think fat larry's leg is still numb.

On out second run we split up...most of the guys went down the dh trail and I...stupidly by myself went down the jump line. I had a small crash on the upper part of chorus. roots hurt when you try and stop yourself by slamming your knee and ankle into them while your bike falls out from under you. my leg is killing me as i sit here typing this.

despite the crash, i was still feeling pretty good. hack got a few shots of me trying to do a few more tricks.

The one footer was fun and actually pretty easy. i don't remember ever trying a one footer over this jump. This one went o.k. so i tried to get better extension on the 3 star...hack got this shot.

not bad, but i have to get that hand extended out better. darren should be back riding soon and he is always good influence to push me learning tricks.

on our first run up top, chip pointed out a small forest fire towards mt. adams. by the end of the day this sucker was huge. we saw it grow from a little fire that we could barely see any smoke....to a fire that had a plume of smoke probably 12,000 feet high! this shot was taken from just outside troutdale looking back towards hood river and you can see the smoke from a long ways away. crazy. i hope that fire is under control by now!

andy's little maing bus did a great job getting us to the the top of the hill and back.

jake was very tired.

andy was tired before we left the trails!

It was another epic day of riding in Hood River. I sure hope that everybody has something they do that is this much fun. I can't wait to get back!

07/04 and 07/05 Post Canyon

There have been a few rides that i've done since the Whistler ride and yep...no pictures. too busy riding and not snapping any pics. But we did go to Post and work on some shots for the upcoming video.

I picked up hack and raul around four o'clock and headed out to post. When we arrrived in post, Todd McCarthy was in some beer garden in town and had been drinking. who knows how many, but he was in great spirits. We headed up and did a run down the technical rocky trail. We experimented with the boner cam.

I think everybody has to do a bit of riding with this thing on to get used to it. Raul had the camera yank down on his helmet when he was doing a run and it squished his goggles down to his mouth...made for some good footage.

JR brought his beagle/lab dog. this guy eats cheese like a champ. He was giving us hell the entire time. i don't think he ever did poop in the truck like we were hoping??

we did a bunch of filming right here near the top of the mountain. the clouds/fog were very sweet looking with the occasional break where you could see all the way down to the hood river bridge.

We did a couple late night runs from the campsite up top down to the bottom of chorus. Todd did his runs with no lights, trying to stay between two people that had lights or riding over the person with lights that crashed in front of him. Big time crazy points to todd for doing the hardest trail on the mountain in the dark, after drinking beer with no lights!!! I was my usual ride better when i can't see where hack is taking me. I cleaned the entire line in the dark with no hesitation. i guess i should only ride rocky steep trails when i can't see what i'm riding.

none of us remembered to bring cooking utensils, but i did have my samurai training

saturday morning we got up and did the donut breakfast thanks to raul. he is the most prepared camper i've ever seen...except for the spatula of which i used one of the trail building machetes from the maing bus. see above image. while cooking we heckled as many people via cell phone that we could remember numbers of.

We headed down from the campsite to meet with all the people that were going to show up for the ride. We got to family man right at nine and not a sole was there. no craig, no kevin, no terry, no jim not even robholio? we had no choice but to wait. finally about ten o'clock jim showed up and shortly after terry showed up. i'm not sure if it was the rain back in town that scared everybody away, but they missed some very nice conditions on the trails.
hack got this shot of raul heading into the fog. this great shot sums up the weekend, great! too bad for all the guys that missed out!

06/13/08-06/15/08 WHISTLER

Friday after work myself, jake, raul, josh and bernie headed north to the mecca of mountain biking....WHISTLER! Jake, Josh and I were in the maing bus...so to make the trip a bit more interesting, I came up with the idea to make the "show me your t!ts" sign. We didn't actually have any action with the sign on the way home. The story about that will be coming soon.

As we neared the border, I joked with josh and jake, "hey, i've never been stopped at the border" and boy was i correct. I'm not sure what it was...Josh's goatee, my van...the THC (trailhead cycles) stickers all over the bikes, but we were stopped at the border for probably 45 minutes. They made us just sit in a room with a bunch of freaks with too many piercings and people of some other ethnic groups that I had never seen before. they questioned me, then jake....then they spent some time questioning josh. not sure what was said, but we were free and headed north. Bernie and Raul had pulled over to the side of the road about 1/4 mile or 12 litres up the road and the train rolled on. I did see this car in front of us with a picture of raul on the back windshield.

We got to squamish and made the normal 7-11 stop for goodies. a taxi with some drunk scantilly clad women pulled up and they were making comments that I can't speak of. wink wink. they left, so we headed out.

When we arrived in Whistler village, of course the front desk of the hotel was closed...so what else do you do, but call the owner on their cell phone at 2:30 in the morning...to my surprise, they answered and happily told up how to get into the room.

Josh was excited to get up there!

The riding on both saturday and sunday was incredible. The weather was in the upper 70's or low 80's and there was no mud anywhere on the lower mountain! by far the best trip to whistler weather wise! josh and raul made huge leaps forward towards being better riders.

some of our late night entertainment.

we didn't take much riding pictures...too busy riding.

trip was awesome, can't wait to get back up there!

June 7-8 2008-No bike

For the past two months or so I have been paddling dragon boats three times a week while still trying to make time to ride my bike. I paddled with the Jammin' Salmon team in the Portland Rose Festival. We are a mixed team that was not really able to get many good races during practice all season long. So it was a bit tough to judge how we were going to do during the actual races. I thought we would wind up being maybe a division three or even a division two team. I would have never thought we would end up in division one with all "serious paddlers".These are just a couple warm up pictures from day one race one....which we took first place!

They can be intimidating looking at times!Captain talk time. Chucks caffeine.Heading down the ramp for the upcomng first place finish.

Admiral Bill speaks his wisdom.

Co Captain Jim and his pre race tips.

Here are a few more random images from day two of the races.

Mike checking out the upcoming races.

This is probably what Mike was looking at. Yeah, how the heck did this happen?

Derek getting ready to race.Don't you all wish Beverly wasn't so introverted and unhappy all the time?Janis and Brent.

These little guys were tiny and very yellow at the beginning of the season. Maybe they ate the little yellow ones? Hopefully not.Please don't throw rocks into the water....that was coming from his Dad and not the announcer. That has to be a first!These were just a couple happy looking dogs that were hanging out with their families down by the water.

This is our friend Jodi that Steph has trained in the ancient art of flag catching...she is catching on. She is on the team that tried to do the race sideways. Her mom is actually the tiller for that team. Too bad Admiral Bill didn't train her, maybe they wouldn't have tried to race into the other boat. All ended well though, they took first place in the womens division even after a rough start on Saturday.

I have video footage of one of the races, but it is too large of a file to be uploaded.

The season was a lot of fun...even though it ended with us racing against all of the year-round "professional" paddlers! Great job all!