Jamie's Biking Blog

Post Canyon 07-13-08

2008-07-13T22:57:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-24T20:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

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!

post canyon 06-01-08

2008-06-08T18:41:00.001-07:00

Went out to post last week. i haven't been doing a good job at getting a lot of good pics or video clips to upload to the site...i'll get back on it soon!

When I got to Jake's house in the morning he was still sleeping. I gave the i'm trying to be polite but yet still knock on your door knock to wake your butt up knock and this is what happened.

On the ride was Raul (newly named the Mexican Jesus) Josh, Aaron, Jake and I. We headed up to the highest point that we have ever ridden from at post. it was off the left split at the top parking area. go left and start hiking for about twenty minutes. The downhill was cool. a bit of a rut down the center of it from all the motorcycles coming up, but was still fun. one dumb jump in the middle of the trail that landed in a bunch of rocks. None of us decided to hit that jump. We headed down trying to be fairly fast and not stopping. We were supposed to meet up with somebody, but I don't remember who.

I forgot about this video, this was Josh while we were waiting for Jake to download at Starbuck's.

Josh is crazy long time!

No bad crashes on this ride. My neck and everything else that was sore from the previous trip to post was healed and not bothering me. Some of us got two runs top to bottom, but Jake and Raul got three runs top to bottom. Those two looked really tired when we were done.

Raul and Jake were tired. We thought dirk was outside stalking us, josh is going to move to hump island and the pizza was awesome. Thanks for great ride guys. we'll do it again soon!

05/26/08-post canyon

2008-05-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

went to post yesterday with hack and dirk. we were meeting robholio at nine. I think he showed up around noon.

weather was dry and sunny. only a bit of mud. I crashed on a small step up in drop out...and my batteries died on my camera before i could even ride.

check hack's blog for the details....i am hurting.

post canyon 05/18/08

2008-05-18T21:08:00.001-07:00

me and the guys went out to post canyon for the first time this year. It was dry and sunny the entire day! We got out early...like eight o'clock at the bottom. that's got to be a record for us. Chris Long and I met up with Hack, Whiplash, Josh and Rubberdown. We pretty much did one fast run from top to bottom. Taking a few moments here and there to check out the new stunts that the gorge guys have built over the winter.

Yes, it was such a good ride that I didn't take any pictures. I'll bring the camera out of the main bus on the next ride out there.

We all seemed a bit rusty, but we started hitting the old jumps and the new jumps. I finally hit the hip jump just above the around the tree stunt....it had been a long time since I hit that one! The next new thing that I hit was a trail called extended play. very well built small stunts, but very fun! I think I rolled up to the first set of jumps three times before I actually hit em...but very well worth the initial frustration! After riding there for a while, we went down the ancient 8 track. this trail seems to be completely falling apart. I heard a rumor that this trail was going to be torn down or the area was going to be logged???

Whiplash did have quite the endo on the second left side chorus kicker today. that put a bit of a dampener on the fun, so we kinda cut the second run a bit short. He's doing fine and you can check out the carnage asada on Hack's biking blog....link on the right side of the page.

It's going to be a great season out there. I guess now we will see blackrock at a couple shuttle days and then again in the winter!

Go ride your bike!

Las Vegas-Bootleg Canyon

2008-04-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't been doing a whole bunch of riding lately, but i did get a chance to ride some place totally different.....Bootleg Canyon in Boulder City Nevada. I'm sitting here at the airport in vegas typing away using their free internet and thinking about the ride.

I had to go down for a work conference, but was able to sneak away for a day and ride some rocks.

I rented a car and drove about 45 minutes from my hotel to Boulder City. The drive out there was cool. just driving through the desert checking out the nothing...except for tons of guys on motorcycles. looked like something out of a mad max movie is guess.

I arrived at All Mountain Cyclery a bit early and met a couple guys from Southern part of Utah. They were decent guys...one of them ate crap about 20 feet down the first part of trail...heck of a way to start the day.

I rented a demo 7 with a totem on it....don't know if it is just my luck or if these fork just suck butt. this thing bottomed out all the time, but was so stiff in the first part of the travel. they had a decent set up to haul a lot of bikes.

This was the view back toward the strip in vegas about half way up the shuttle.

this was a huge satellite dish looking this at the top of the mountain. I was scared to go too close. didn't want to cook my insides.

i'd like to come back to this place with all the guys some time this next winter when it's cold back home. speaking of which...it's still probably cold back home, so i don't know what the hell i'm talking about.

winter is ending

2008-04-10T19:35:00.001-07:00

well winter is ending, we are about to get our first 70 degree day of the year. I've been thinking all winter about improving my filming and ways to do it (without spending money).

so i figured a way to build a cable camera with less than 40 dollars in parts and materials...including the 500 feet of cable that was the majority of the cost.

So this is just the beginning of taking my filming to the next level on pretty much zero budget. Made of garage door parts, shelving metal, some threaded rod, pulleys and a few bolts. I'm going to do the first outdoor test tomorrow when the weather is a bit nicer.

I can't wait to test thing out on the trails, it is going to be an awesome season!

not exactly riding

2008-03-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

Well the Maing Bus (A.K.A 1994 Chevy Astro Van) has been a staple of our groups riding trips, jokes and slow drives by elementary schools for the past year....just kidding.

The past few rides the noise coming from the front of the van has been getting worse and worse. Finally figure out that it was a worn out or broken engine mount.

This first image is what the motor mount is supposed to look like.

This is what the motor mount looks like after 14 years of hard driving.

This thing was not fun to replace. The drive side mount was easily accessible and was actually changed by somebody prior to me. I know why the didn't change the mount on the passenger side.....because it took me and Ross 12 hours to change the damn thing. Not fun...pay a mechanic to do work on cars other than changing air filter.

but she runs smooth now!

the day of riding

2008-03-24T14:37:00.001-07:00

we rode long time on saturday the 22nd. just check out hack's blog...link is on the right side of the screen. He sums it up pretty well. Here are a few shots from the day.

blackrock 03-09-08

2008-03-10T20:23:00.000-07:00

went to blackrock yesterday and trails were great. no mud, just sun and great riding to be had.

jake is getting ready to hit the trails. danners and knee pads. that's all you need right?

it was round.....I don't know how many of "Jakehatesracks.com" he says that all bikes he buys fits his car rack, just the bikes other people buy don't fit his rack? Go figure?

It was a great day of riding. The usual rob talking all day and only hitting one jump...i guess it's better than rob talking all day and hitting no jumps??? The day was so good that i didn't really take any action shots, just took post ride shots. I worked on the video so much that i've just felt like riding lately. My Saturday night drinking antics didn't help the ride all day cause though. I was hurting.

is it just me, or does dirk look like he's not quite sure how to work that bottle? Hmmm?

not exactly sure what darren is wearing or doing in this picture? only he knows.

the sky was also pretty cool looking on the way home.

Post Canyon should be drying out soon. Blackrock is cool, but post is awesome...shuttling is way better than pushing to the top!

It's going to be a great season!!!

02-17-08-blackrock

2008-02-18T05:09:00.000-08:00

weather has kinda sucked for the past couple months, that's why not a lot of pictures or posts....but today was awesome. it was dry most of last week and into the weekend. I was still expecting there to be lots of snow, but to my suprise trails were dry. one of those days you can ride home in the clothes you rode in.

there was a ton of people that showed up, some new people like raul and a guy named todd along with all the usuals. we started in basic training where they finally got the take off on the right line finally dialed in. you don't have to go nearly as fast to make it over to the landing, but you can still go fast and not just go straight up. we also got to hit the new/revised sunday stroll upper section that we have worked on at the past couple build days. way fun and way flowy! after sunday stroll we headed up to grannies kitchen and hit the stump jump several times.

the new e.t. jump was way fun. huge take off (very freaky riding up to it) and an even bigger landing. just a couple small crashes...dirk the usual lay down on the road gap and casey did his best front flip off the hip jump on grannies kitchen. nobody in our group was seriously hurt!

summer is comin!

02-09-08-sitting on the couch

2008-02-09T16:29:00.000-08:00

well, it's been snowing in the hills...raining everywhere else. i haven't been taking any pictures. so not much riding lately. jake and i went shooting the shotguns last weekend, that was fun. we walked past all the little kiddies sledding with their mom's and dad's....our back packs stuffed with beer and ammunition. gotta make some fun out of the bad weather.

i've been talking about riding with people...just a bit depressed and crazy spending all this time in the house.

maybe there will be sunshine in the future and riding.

j

01-13-08-BLACKROCK

2008-01-13T20:45:00.001-08:00

yep, another day at blackrock. i was pleasantly surprised at how nice the weather was. picked up jake at the normal time and headed out...i could see that the fog was going to make for some great shots.
I could see on the drive down that the weather was shaping up to be pretty nice. this was a shot near yamhill or carlton...one of those small towns.
I thought that terry looked like he was wondering where god was in this picture....
funny how in the next picture josh looked like he was god answering terry's wishes.
just another cool shot of the group hanging out near the midpoint on brake check.
the beginning of grannies doubles.

casey getting ready for grannies doubles.
another shot of casey...maing
i liked this shot of darren. i wish i would have got this shot when he was in the air.
another good shot of darren.

the ride today was great! no big crashes, lots of people...some people who i haven't seen in forever...aaron(frisco) steven and his brother on the old demo 8, jon and ryan young and dan and andy all made it.

the weather is supposed to be dry for the next week or so, i can't wait to get back out and jump when the trails are dryer. i'm a wuss for throwing any tricks when the trails are wet.

i can't wait for summer and days at post or whitler!

blackrock 12-30-07 & 01-01-08

2008-01-01T18:24:00.000-08:00

Went to blackrock this past sunday and today. weather was cold as hell both days. sunday was wet and cold...today was dry and cold. I prefer the dry and cold any day. these are some of the fog pictures.
another fog shot.
jake on new years day.
one of the things jake needs on new years day.
we headed down to the trails at blackrock and had an awesome time. trails were dry and conditions were great. from sunday to today, worlds of difference. sunday was cold and slick. today was just cold.

i finally hit the first three jumps on grannies doubles. took me a couple times to get it, but i finally got it on i think the fourth try. obviously no pictures...i'm the one that takes the pictures..and hack was not with us. i can't wait for summer!

12-24-07 Sictar Lars

2007-12-26T23:27:00.001-08:00

Jake and I went out and rode a lap on Sictar Lars in the snow on Christmas Eve. The sun was just barely poking out of the fog and snow. Looked even cooler in person.

This was a shot back towards larch mountain from the parking lot of Jake's bike just before heading up.
Jake just about to go into the clear cut section of trail.
Conditions were great. no sliding around...even for snow being on the ground. sounds weird, but it was a blast. Only did one lap, we didn't have a lot of extra time. Jumping in the snow was a bit weird. Quiet, but weird. No crahses or broken bikes so the day was a success. not sure what ride is coming up next, but i need to get out of the house and ride!

winter riding

2007-12-12T19:04:00.000-08:00

we just keep going to blackrock. i should have some good video footage soon.

blackrock 11-23 & 11-25

2007-11-25T21:55:00.001-08:00

went to blackrock a couple times over the long holiday weekend. both rides were awesome. got some great footage to use towards a blackrock video. no major crashes. darren pinched his goocher and casey showed us his...well, we don't know what it was exactly.

post canyon 11-11-07

2007-11-25T21:47:00.000-08:00

went to post on the 11th. i'm actually posting this on the 25th, so a bit of time has gone by. i don't have to remember much about this ride. It was wet and sloppy.

Picked up jake and headed east.
noah doesn't know how fast to go on a jump.
he left a big divot in the landing and hurt himself.

jake was tired and this look summed it up. when is summer coming back?

11-04-07 Post Canyon

2007-11-05T17:51:00.000-08:00

Went out to Post Canyon yesterday with Rubberdown (Kevin) and Robholio (Talk a lot) for some riding in this awesome November weather. Sun was out, trails were tacky so we headed to the top of the mountain. As you can tell by the lack of pictures, i didn't have my camera with me and robholio forgot the batteries for his camera. I'm not sure who's worse in that situation???

anyway, had a great ride. trails were in perfect condition and other than not having a dedicated ride back to the top, all was nice. Got in two top to bottom runs with only minor complaining from ole broken leg. we also ran into some kids that were building a beginner jump line near family man. they were just about finished when we were passing through.

hope the nice weather and trail conditions last the rest of the year!

10-26-07 Post Canyon

2007-10-28T16:09:00.001-07:00

Went out to Post Canyon with Terry and Casey after work. Conditions were surprisingly dry. We just stayed and sessioned the chorus jumps for a few hours.

It is nice to be able to drive to the spot you are riding. no carrying your heavy pack...just walk back to the car and take a drink or eat something.

Got a couple alright shots. i was using the small camera

Causey was trying to get the air suspension dialed in on his kona. don't buy air shocks or forks. very unpredictable and hard to tune.

this poor dude was right in the middle of a freshly broken right collar bone. his bonhead buddies were trying to make him ride down? shouldn't they have gone and picked up the car and picked his broken ass up? maybe i'm crazy?

I was taking it easy on this ride. i haven't been on a bike for a few weeks, so just getting back in the swing of this. the ground today was tacky...very tacky. you had to pedal like crazy betweent he jumps to clear em! i tried pumping up the tires to like 40psi and it helped. i then started over shooting everything. it's all good.

I was supposed to ride blackrock with the guys this weekend, but boomer is not doing well. gotta get the dog healthy before i go ride.

10/12-10/16-no riding...hanging out in hawaii

2007-10-14T19:23:00.000-07:00

well no riding this weekend. i'm missing the annual video premier put on by the fat tire farm. i heard from hack that it was crazy...he and larry fighting on the stage and in the street. hooligans that i hang out with!

This is the cooler that was filled with beer to bring with me. The smart ass baggage handler threw it and broke a beer bottle. the sweet thing was that he got beer all over him and had to smell like dried up beer the rest of his shift!

this is a new inter-island ferry that is new since the last time i was here. all the local environmental freaks are making a big stink about it....they probably don't care that they barge their garbage out into the ocean and just dump it. i would love to ride on this thing.

this video is from the Pali Lookout, it's one of the highest if not the highest viewing points for the public on oahu. It was windy as hell up there.

that's about all i've done so far. i'm heading out fishing today, so i should have some better footage to share with the world.

10-07-07-blackrock

2007-10-07T17:45:00.000-07:00

dirk and i headed down to blackrock this morning with questionable weather waiting for us. as we drove down highway 47, there was no rain....to our surprise all the way there...no rain. we peddled to basic and stayed there for just a few minutes, then headed to the top. still no rain. trail conditions were great, no mud puddles anywhere! after a run run down sunday stroll, i headed over to the cliff drop. i've been having dreams about this thing for who knows how long. but once again, got to the top and my vag became not so loose! stayed up there and took like five runs at it...no go. next time. i'd like to follows somebody off it that has already hit it.

dirk and i did another run to the top of banzai to ET to basic and then rode the trail out of basic to the car. that was the only trail that had a bit of mud on it.

i sure look small at the top of this thing! next time!

09/30/07-post canyon

2007-09-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

rode post today with dirk, ryan and darren. weather was horrible all the way out, it started to let up a bit at the usual spot just past cascade locks. this was the first real rain out there in months, so i didn't think the riding would be as bad as it was. the temp wasn't too bad. prbably around 60, but with the combo of wet trails and stunts...not much went down. i didn't hit the left line, just played it safe and oh yeah, the disability insurance starts up tomorrow. hopefully rain stops soon.

j