Jamie's Biking Blog-Let's go ride!

progress 07-29-09

2009-07-29T18:36:00.000-07:00

66 days out from surgery and i am walking-no walking cast (but heels on both feet are sore..especially left heel) or crutches!

Physical therapy is going well. this morning was the first morning back on a bike. the leg was feeling a whole lot like jello this morning while peddling the stationary bike. working on strength of pretty much every muscle from my hip down.

not as frustrated as i was a month ago, but i am still anxious to get back out on the dirt. good thing it is the hottest day in recorded oregon history...supposed to be 108. if the ac in the house won't cool below 80...it's hot outside! Let's go to vegas for a cool down eh?

the battle continues

2009-07-21T21:11:00.000-07:00

well, it has been 58 days since the snapped achilles tendon. I am frustrated, bored, tired of staring at my computer screen.....

the first picture is from about a week after the surgery. I went in to be charged another $500 and get a new cast after the first one was filled with post surgery ooze. The second picture is of my ankle about two minutes ago. still a scar, but not much swelling and not quite as frankenstein looking as the first one.

I am making progres....slow progress...but progress. I am regaining flexibility in the ankle, the achilles is firming up and most swelling is gone.

Enough about my leg...I have been able to get out to a few mountain bike related events. The first I went to recent was the Black Rock Demo Day. Just about every bike company that makes a burly bike was there: Felt, Diamond Back, Kona, Evil, Norco...the only guys that were not there was Transition. I thought that was kind of a lame move on their part! There are so many transition riders in the area....just seems like they do not care about the local market??? Maybe I am wrong.

I am a bit bummed that Raul and his buddies from Venezuela are on their way to Whistler as I type. I was supposed to go on the trip, but due to my leg and no money....I sit here typing.

Physical therapy is going well. I have another appointment tomorrow morning and I am excited to go and work this thing out. I wish they had a machine that they could hook up to my leg and make it back how it was before I tried to snap it in half!

I am looking forward to the day I post my first post surgery jump picture!!!!

spring time riding

2009-05-31T11:41:00.001-07:00

well, it has been a long time since i posted on the old blog. i've been doing a lot of spring riding...mostly at post canyon. you have to ride post when it's not covered in snow. my buddy mike from vancouve b.c. came down and rode a couple day...so long story short, spring riding has been great. so much riding that i haven't been taking any pictures. the camera has been collecting dust!

I did forget about this day that dirk took some sweek pictures. Lighting and fog was perfect for taking pictures.

A couple weeks ago we planned to go out and ride one of the local downhill trails. the first four runs down were great! we then had a bb que and hung out before riding after the lunch break. on this run i had a fun little injury. after casing one of the jumps i ruptured my right achilles tendon. so i guess this blog is kinda turning into my recovery blog instead of my riding blog? I'm having surgery this coming friday the 5th and i'm not sure how long i will be down after that. I'm gonna give this thing hell and be back healthier and stronger than before!

11-23-08-BLACKROCK

2008-11-25T20:12:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-17T19:58:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-09T18:31:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-26T18:54:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-11T10:32:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-13T18:03:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-30T14:27:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-25T05:49:00.001-07:00

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

2008-08-10T20:55:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

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

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

Post Canyon 09/22/07

2007-09-25T19:06:00.000-07:00

Finally hit the first one on the left line on chorus. i have looked at this thing for too damn long and it was starting to bug me. don't really remember the first time, but it kicks you up pretty good. next time out, the second one. I forgot my camera, so i didn't have any other pics from the day besides this one from Jack...one of the guys we met out at post.

we met up with a couple guys from bend that were pretty cool. they were novice riders, but you could see that they have the fever for it just like us a couple years ago!

they took this shot on the egg hunt drop and got some other really good shots. one of casey actually made picture of the day on pinkbike....good to see local riding on the canadian scene!

i also hit a couple other jumps for the first time, so the ride was an overall good time. fat larry did go down pretty hard on the side of the road gap pretty hard. i actually saw the bottom of his feet when he was going over the bars.

we should be going back out this coming sunday, so i can't wait to hit the second one of the left of chorus!!!!!!!

Blackrock Bike Festival 2007

2007-09-16T19:27:00.001-07:00

Went to the Blackrock Bike Festival this past weekend. Fat Larry and April stopped by my house early Saturday morning and we all headed down to Blackrock. Had a friend, Mike H that drove down from Vancouver B.C. to check out the local riding. He got off work and drove all the way down from Vancouver during the night. Plan was to ride Blackrock on Saturday then Post Canyon on Sunday. After the party on Saturday night, we were not ready to drive to Post Canyon. We then decided to stay in Blackrock for Sunday also. Dirk also made the trip down for the festival and rode with us on Saturday. He killed his rear wheel on a jump, so decided to head home.

Jake was in good spirits as usual. He was doing the sound and music for the festival. All of us volunteers received nice t-shirts from the B.R.M.B.A. guys for helping with the festival.

The lead singe of Sons of Thunder...A.K.A. Mormon Craig was warming up for rocking the town of Falls City and all the riders. They mised rock, comedy and Craig breaking the jump on Sunday Stroll!

This is Mike the Canadian tour guide that has showed me and a bunch of others around the trails in North Vancouver and the Woodlot in B.C. He's a great rider on super technical riding, but was never used to gap jumps like we have down here. However, he picked it up quickly.

Mike had no problems following me off of the drop to gap on Sictar Gnar. This is an older section of trail, but it is still pretty damn fun!

We even talked him into hitting the road gap. I think this was his third time hitting it, but he had it dialed and looked like a local.

This was Fat Larry hitting the Sictar Gnar drop to gap for his first time.

I was feeling pretty good all weekend, I have been thinking about actually hitting the cliff drop and today was going to be the day.

I looked at it and I was thinking it was going to be a go...then a bunch of other people started showing up to watch. Which made me a bit nervous.
This was what it looks like from above. You don't see any of the landing until you are right on the jump. I think that this one is easy, you just have to convince yourself to go off the edge. I guess it leaves something for next time.

So we packed up Jake's stereo equipment and headed home. On the way home we stopped at Boondock's in Falls City. The waitress there looked just like Uma Thurman with black hair. Service was great, but the food took forever to get there. April paid for the food behind our backs which was not necessary...but very nice of her. Can't wait for next years festival...bigger and better!

09/09/07-timber

2007-09-09T20:17:00.001-07:00

Rode the trail in timber this afternoon. This is one of the shots that Dirk took. He's got the remote flash that makes the images look oh so cool. I don't think he used the flash on this shot, he just used the sun. We did a total of five runs. we all took turns driving....Thanks Chris for the use of the truck. No crashes! The van should be back running fully here in the next couple days, so I shouldn't have to mooch any rides off people when we go for a ride. After the ride we came back to La Sierra Mexican restaurant in Forest Grove. All was good except for Aaron's pink pork...no that's not code for something naughty....he really ordered something pork and in was not the right color.

Next weekend is the Blackrock Mountain bike Festival. Stop looking at this and go ride your bike!

09-03-07-falls city

2007-09-03T20:03:00.000-07:00

went and rode falls city or blackrock today. trail conditions were great. weather was nice. no crashes and oh yeah...i forgot my camera again. i need to tape that thing to my head.

08/31/07-post canyon

2007-09-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

Went out to post and rode after work. rode out with casey, didn't take anypictures. did one run, it got dark early. my brakes and shiting worked awesome. still didn't hit the left line on chorus. too much work makes me tired!

08-25-07-post canyon

2007-08-25T18:31:00.000-07:00

Post Canyon 08-25-07

still didn't hit the left line......argh! that thing is haunting my damn dreams! But here are a few pics of todays ride.

Max's friend...I think his name is brandon

Casey-below

Max
Downhill Dave

Johnny Thunder in the sun.

My riding sucked butt, so i shot my gun.

My bike started off shifting a bit rough. change out the derailleur, so that's never fun to tune in. Then started to change the brake pads on the avid code brakes. to my surprise, the back two pistons were broken. perhaps this is the reason why these things have leg numbingly howled since the day i bought them.. they have always stopped good, but sent horrible vibrations through the bike. Bernie says 11 dollars in parts and we should be good to go on wednesday. no big crashes. Next time out, i'm hitting that stupid left line!

0818/07-post canyon

2007-08-18T18:16:00.001-07:00

Josh was hurting pretty bad
But he didn't pass out like terry

Casey was there Josh was there
Terry was there

today's ride was a bit messed up. josh broke his left collar bone. which kinda wrecked the mood of the day. Oh, Chris was there also, but he didn't make it into any of the pics.

Drop in

2007-08-17T18:25:00.001-07:00

Bernie and the bagel
Bernie and the anger
me and dylan tremblay
bernie and dylan
me and romaniuk-dude is tall for a freeride guy.

Went down to falls city and met up with the drop in guys for a little while. we didn't have time to ride with them, but we did get to chat with them a bit. They were all good guys and Cam McCaul is more A.D.D. that me or at least as much as me. hope they enjoy the best that blackrock has to offer. We ride post canyon tomorrow.

08-15-07-XC ride at Brown's Camp Loop

2007-08-16T19:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I did the once a year XC ride at Browns camp with hack, Lois, Otto, Crazy Jake, Sterling and Austin...oh and E9. We were waiting for Casey and his wife, but I gues they got lost and they wound up riding the same loop a bit behind us.

Hack, Louis and Otto came and picked me up and we then headed to jake's place to pick up him, sterling and austin. I was shocked that hack and jake were bringing the youngsters....but to my surprise, they kept up with us for the most part. they were riding all the technical stuff that we were all freaked out to ride when we first got into the biking. E9 was working at the coast and found the time to hook up with us, even though we were late. trail was in awesome shape and it was really fun to get back out on an XC bike and see if my chubby little freeride body had it in me. I was surprised when i actually made a few of the technical climbs that i used to make a few years ago.

can't wait to get out on the xc bike again!

08-04-07-post canyon

2007-08-04T21:20:00.000-07:00

Went out to post today, stopped and picked up josh then headed to the flying j in troutdale to meet up with the ladies.

A bunch of new guys showed up. i think there was 11 total in the group.

We all piled into a couple trucks and a car and headed to the top of the mountain. East coast Eric was on his new bike. He was having to do a bunch of tuning on the thingy. He was also trying to kill the seat.

We were at the bottom on Post Canyon Road waiting for the shuttle drivers to get back down for the second run. After this, about half of the new group went over to syncline for some downhill action.

I saw this shirt in a bike store window.

We went to Andrew's Pizza in Hood River for some post ride pizza. I got the Pesto Tortellini Salad also. not quite sure what they put in this stuff, but it is good!

This was about the only bad thing that happenned the whole day, Casey exploded his rear shock. He should send it to push and make it a super shock.

There was also a bit of a nasty fire that started near the bottom of country club road. this thing was cranking out a ton of smoke and we also saw some huge flames.

We were stuffed with pizza, pasta, beer and desert...so we headed home. traffic was moving fast,Our little Eric was tired...casey made sure his head didn't fall over.
Josh was showing me what eric was doing when he found out we were taking pictures of old man sleepy. But he turned out to be happy in the end. Until next ride....

08-01-07-Post Canyon

2007-08-04T20:30:00.000-07:00

Went out to Post Canyon after work on Wednesday...it was hotter than hell, probably in the low 90's. met all the guys at the van's outlet store in troutdale where i was buying the new pair of....are you ready for this one.....$9.95 pair of Vans. they are actually pretty nice shoes. tread pattern is a bit weird, but heck for $9.95, what can you ask for.

We then headed out to post. John and Jake in John's truck and Mormon Craig and I in the candy van.

When we got to post, we all tried out the new step up to platform drop thing on two chair. John was having a musty putter of a time getting this. I'm not sure if he cleaned it. It was frustrating jake also. he cased the gap before it and the step up pretty good. it was loud! John was trying to get this one. I got lucky and stuck it after just a couple tries.

My feet were having a great time. I was having a great time.

It was very dry and dusty, so we went home.

07-21-07-WTF fundraiser at Sictar Lars Trailhead

2007-07-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

We finally got the Sictar Lars trail finished and the ODF guys gave us to go ahead to have our fundraiser. Jake volunteered the use of his stereo equipment. he did start out the loading of the van wearind his pajamas. Jake also found a new little buddy, this cat was in his neighborhood and followed us everywhere.

Bernie, Eveth and Jon from Trailhead Cycles brought out some demo bikes for everybody to check out. They had bikes from Norco, Ironhorse and Diamondback. They and a few others also did some shuttle runs on the trail back into Gales Creek Campground. they all came back wet!

once we got all of the stereo equipment and generators in the van, we headed out to the trailhead. Sweet Septic out of Tillamook had donated the use of the porta potty for the day, so that made the even much more enjoyable. Ryan was up at the trailhead setting up his map and tent.

joe and andy showed up next. andy had a very impressive collection of music on his laptop .

He's always to happy looking also. Craig and his brother Tom came out to rock the forest with their metallica cover band. they were awesome. i'm not deaf in my right ear which was facing the speaker when they played as i worked the barbegue, but they were great.

I was pretty bummed initially about this event, I think maybe ten people rsvp'd. i didn't think hardly anybody was going to show up. Randy from ODF & Ryan from the PUMP Club.

The other Simmons brother, Dad and Roger from ODFThe ugly van war rages on! That's not my van, that is an imposter that belongs to a guy named guy.

My view from the grill.

The Causey family showed their trail and eating skills.Things turned out well, I think at one time I counted 36 people in the parking lot and tent area. I think it went awesome for a first time fundraiser. So many people did so much to make things go smooth. All the local riders are great people and i think it is going to make this trail system something great and something that all our kids will be able to enjoy! I know it made Jake happy!

07-20-07-post canyon

2007-07-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

rode post canyon after work this past friday. paul and jon were like two hours late, so we had some time to mess around on the lower trails. I picked up adam from his hotel in gresham and we headed out to post in the van. darren and ryan were just a few minutes behind me.

this is adams bottlerocket. we all like him bash guard. we tried talking him into hitting some jumps, but i don't think the big jumps is his thing. damn so cal people. these were about the only pictures i took this day because oh yeah...my batteries died in the camera and i didn't have extras.

i'll give the lowdown on the ride anyway. we started at the normal spot just above where two chair drop in. we were hitting the wood to wood gap then flowing into the new section where they have a step up right out of a berm. this was a tricky one, you have to really rail this berm and get into the right line for hitting the step up. i got this picture from darren. this thing looks pretty easy, but it is much more difficult to get into than it looks. once i got the berm figured out, it was a piece of cake. we stayed here and waited for jon and paul...once they got there we headed out. paul sure goes big, he just monster tucks every landing and every jump...he goes big and lands hard. this ride took us forever due to the late boys, but it was still fun. to top off the ride, paul thought it would be a good idea to leave his keys in his pack at the bottom of the hill. he didn't notice till we pulled up next to his truck...at the top of the hill. darren was nice enough to take him back up, i was already very late. until next time.

07/15/07-Falls City

2007-07-18T19:47:00.000-07:00

Rode Falls City this past weekend with Jake, Fat Larry, April, Darren, Josh K, Ryan, Chad, Steven, Jon Y0ung and Adam and Ryan. Ryan is from Utah and rips pretty well. Adam is from Southern California and seems to have felt a bit out of his element. I think Adam is a racer and doesn't feel comfortable with the big hucks yet. We are going to take him to post on Friday to get him used to air time.

ride was good. darren had his one big tree crash of the day, steven ate it good on the dual slalom step down over the stump, but all was good other wise. it was hot.

post here we come on friday.

2007-07-09T20:54:00.000-07:00

went out and rode brad's trail this afternoon. did two runs, the first was fast and flowy. the second run i was tired....hard day at work! everybody else but me stayed and did a second run...i hope all went well with them. i'll ride more soon!

j

07/08/07-Sictar Lars

2007-07-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

jake and i rode sictar lars today. conditions were awesome. traction was great and not a lot of dust till the step down. we met a couple guys from hillsboro; mike and bob. bob seemed like he was a better rider than mike. he tried most things when ole mike was just walking around them. we met them just after our first lap, so we showed them the trail on our second lap. two runs on sictar lars makes for a good workout. i climbed everything on the big bike the first run, second run was not as bueno.

when finished with the second run, we ran into another guy at the bottom of the trail and said that he loved the trail. we told all the people we met today about the barbeque/grand opening of the trail on the 21st.

good times!

Glade to Pioneer Bridal 2007

2007-07-05T16:04:00.000-07:00

We started out bright and early this year, left my house at about 4:15 to find this on the back window. Boy dave is so funny! I then headed to Fat Larry's house and was there just after 4:30a.m. we all piled in the larry mobile and met josh at starbucks in beaverton.

From Starbucks we headed out to the flying j truckstop in troutdale to meet up with the rest of the shuttle vehicles. We also saw that the weather was going to be awesome while driving across the bridge.

There was a huge caravan of cars, vans and trucks headed up to the mountain. When we got to Campcreek campground it was crazy. Like 30-40 people on bikes with cars...i've never seen so many people there in my life. Hack was in his normal fine form as this old guy tried to tell a bunch of A.D.D. mountain bikers where to park. I think i just said, "Let's go to the top" and walked away. On the way up to the top of the mountain there were even more riders parked along side the road ready to follow us to the top and join in on the madness!

This was the scene as we got to the top of the mountain. We also had a few European guests and some rednecks from down south.

I am just amazed at Sebastian, he is in awesome shape but still smokes...he's definately a freak of nature!

We all headed up to the huge rock at the top of the glade trail for a group photo.

After a few picture moments up here, we headed down the trail. I can always remember this trail being totally rocky and nargly for the first couple miles. However after doing some riding in Canada, this place seems pretty smooth and flat in comparison. Here is a shot of the the middle section of trail and a shot of Dirk rockin out! The ride was great, no major crashes. There were a ton of flat tires. I think at first count in the first part of the trail there had to be at least five flat tires. No fun for those guys! Most of us only did one run, I think there were six or seven people that did the second run and guess what...they had no flat tires. This ride has been a great tradition for the past five years and I can't wait for the next one. Jamie

07/01/07-post canyon

2007-07-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

Rode post canyon yesterday and it was dusty. no big crashes and no dogs to run into. we rode with fat larry's friends from southern California...very decked out with the bling bikes and the blin gear. they looked very fast and i'm sure they are fast, but the only guy that jumped his bike was this guy aaron....his girlfriend jill was also throwing down fairly well for a girl.

I am finally starting to feel comfortable on the new shore frame. Seemed like every ride out I was on a different fork or different frame. I don't think I could be the type that own and rides multiple big bikes, there are too many small differences in the way the bikes feel both on and off the ground. The 888RC2X is feeling like it's almost broke in, two rides on it now. I just need to replace the garbage FSA Pig headset that is in the bike right now. It creeks and moans like a stinkin you know what.

I know I always say this every summer out at post canyon, but we need a little bit of rain during the week to calm down the dust and ball bearings that cover all the trails. There was nine of us total, one of the girls in the group had to wait down at the bottom with all their bikes on the first run...like four hours!!! yikes, she was pretty pissed when we got to the bottom of the hill. I think she was happy when she saw all the trails and stunts once she got out on the second run. After riding all day at post these guys were heading up to Seattle area to stay the night and hit up Whistler first thing Monday morning. I bet Whistler conditions are awesome right now!

Until the next ride.....Basura Manyana!

06/24/07-post canyon

2007-06-25T21:22:00.000-07:00

We rode post yesterday and had an awesome time. weather was crappy as usual until cascade locks. after cascade locks, the mountain biking gods once again opened up the sky and gave us sun! Rosser, Dirk and I rode up in the mormon mover with the new battery and she did awesome as usual! We met up with Jon and his buddy Reese. Reese hasn't been on a bike much lately, so he was just hanging back and watching. We started out on 2 chair while dirk experimented with his new remote flash. From the little I know Dirk, he has probably been studying how to use this flash for a long time because he sure seemed to know what he was doing. Jon also got a pretty sweet shot of Dirk in this one. Dirk is starting to hit some pretty big jumps and is progressing pretty fast!

Jon was his usual stylish self. Saw him hit the "new" left line on the chorus kicker section of trail.

After this jump, he landed in a manual and manualed all the way down the landing and into the first roller. We stayed here for a while and sessioned while we waited for terry and casey to show up. just after this picture was taken zip felt the urge to play speed bump and was right in the middle of the landing of the second jump/take off of the third jump and i had the bike slide to face manual.

I shook off the dust and headed down for a shuttle back up with terry and casey. Casey was full of style and was hitting all of the "new" left line on chorus. he's made some pretty good progress lately and is riding at a pretty high level right now!

Boy, he sure doesn't look like he would jump out in the trail right in front of somebody??? The new mint chocolate chip green 888RC2X was working awesome! Had a bit of trouble with the headset coming loose, but just kept on tightening it down until it finally stopped. I think i'll have to change back to the old style headset, the basic pig headset isn't going to cut the mustard!

Next ride should be sunday the 1st of July with Hack, can't wait!

Whister Trip #1 2007 June 11-13

2007-06-16T16:13:00.000-07:00

We left from John's place of work at about midnight, the van was packed with gear and bikes and we headed north to the holy land of mountain biking...whistler.

After about seven hours of driving, we arrived in Whistler Village, got settled into our room and headed to the lifts. Weather was crazy coming through Squamish, but it was decent for the moment in whistler. after two runs, the weather turned crappy. All this didn't really matter because my bike was pretty screwed up. The front fork was not working well, it was bottoming out with just slight force applied to it. Bottom line is DO NOT BUY A ROCK SHOX FORK!

Of course this picture was taken after the weather turned nice at the end of the day. One lift ticket....four runs...it was still worth it.

The weather cooperated with us the entire night and into the next day. Weather was dry all Tuesday and it was even hot. We rode Dirt Merchant, A-Line, Joyride, Rock City and Schleyer. I hit a bunch of stunts that I had never hit before. Finally conquered the A-Line rock drop, the rocky roll downs and schleyer and the steep roll down on Rock City. It is always weird to ride all the rocks and roots in Whistler when you are used to riding all the smooth ground here in Oregon. Tuesday was one of the best days ever in Whistler. Finished the day with who knows how many runs and drops...even hit the drop off the road gap to the box jump! Crappy thing was I got my only flat tire of the whole trip on the last run of the night. The sweeper found me on the side of the trail trying to fix my tire and pump. Got it fixed and back to the village for drinking beer with the guys.

This day ended with me laying down because i didn't feel well....I wonder why. Woke up the next mornind and headed to the north...CBC on Mount Seymour.

Mount Seymour is cool because it is one of the rides that you can shuttle on the north shore of vancouver.

It is very technical rocky and old style...flat landing, skinny ladder bridges and wet everywhere.

This was us sitting down for a bit of pizza at the Old Buck shopping mall in North Vancouver after riding.

All this was on Thursday, just before we headed home. Wednesday we rode out at the Woodlot in Maple Ridge with our local resident/tour guide Mike. He was awesome, showed us the way out to the trails, showed us all the cool lines and how to hit most stunts. He also hooked us up with a place to stay since most hotels in North Vancouver were booked up because of cruise ship season. Damn those tourists!

Trip was a blast and was pretty affordable. I think I had less than four hundred dollars into the entire trip and it ended with an awesome sunset! I can't wait to get back up later this season!

06/02/07-falls city shuttle day

2007-06-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

this shuttle day seemed to be quite a bit more organized than last years shuttle day. bigger trucks made for much better shuttling than riding in the back of dad's bike killing trailer. it seemed the price was up from last year, i thought last year was 25, this year 35??? maybe i'm wrong.

weather was beautiful, not a cloud to be seen! trails were starting to have the post canyon ball bearings. not sure what causes those, but they suck. no big crashes from anybody, i think my crash on the first dual slalom jump was the only crash i saw all day. of course, robfoolio hit no jumps but sure talked a lot.

totem is still working awesome! shifting sucked on my bike. whistler in 8 days!

it's going to be an awesome summer!

05/25/07-post canyon

2007-05-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

post was nice yesterday! not too dry, but the ball bearing are starting to come out. got up there early with darren and aaron and we got one fast run in before meeting up with terry and casey. we shuttled back up for a long run of sessioning and hitting new jumps. i finally hit all the new stuff on 2 chair and upper chorus. hip jumps are fun, just a bit weird and don't have full control in them yet.

chorus kickers left line is all torn down right now and not sure exactly what they are doing. they've made the gaps really small but the jumps are made steeper with some rhythm roller type mounds just before each jump? who knows, but they usually know what they are doing out there when it comes to cool building.

next ride is timber dh trail.

rabbit

05/20/07-work and ride

2007-05-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

did some building on sictar lars on sunday the 20th. there was a great turn out for the build. weather was alright, but it started to rain just as we finished the post build ride. johnny thunder and i did a loop on sictar lars.

got the totem back on the bike for this ride and it's feeling nice. a bit too much air in the negative air chamber making the ride a bit rough, but i'll do some tuning to get it back how i want it.

gotta ride more!

05/18/07-the totem

2007-05-18T19:56:00.001-07:00

got the totem back from rock shox today. it looks like it has full travel and is ready to go back on the shore. i should get it back on tomorrow for the ride on sunday the 20th!!!

more reviews to come on the totem after the next couple rides.

05/16/07-timber

2007-05-18T19:53:00.000-07:00

rode some local dh trails today. i was on the back up z150 fork that darren let me use. the bike is still light, but it sure worked me to ride that trail on such little travel.

this trail we rode was awesome. lots of rocks and roots on the upper section then it went into some smooth flowy single track with a few racer style jumps on it. end of the trails was also very cool. step ups and step downs and whatever possible other stunts could be on a dh trail. one of the best trails i've ever ridden! can't wait to get back out there and ride more. sorry no pics, i'll get some next time.

goocher

05/06 & 05/07/07-Mt. Bike Area #1

2007-05-10T00:13:00.000-07:00

Had some free time on Saturday so i went up with jake and built a step down on the sictar lars trail. we worked on this thing for about six hours straight. the stump removal was about three hours of it alone. after building, jake hit the jump on his hardtail. it seemed a bit rough watching him jump it on a bike with no rear suspension. i went back that evening with ryan and dave and hit the jump on my demo...well steven's brothers demo and the stunt felt like nothing. about a six foot drop to a smooth landing. we then rode the 2.3 mile trail back into gales creek. very fast and fun, saw no other riders and trail conditions were awesome.

still don't have the new totem back from rock shox. crazy eh, one ride and it's off to the factory for repair. if it weren't for how nice this fork worked when it was here, i would have told them to stick it and i want my $ back. we'll see how it goes. so this weekend i'm going to borrow a fork from darren and stick it on the norco temporarily.

until the next ride!

04/29/07-falls city

2007-05-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

went to falls this past weekend. had the first ride on the new shore I with the Totem. This fork is AWESOME! feels as stiff as the monster t i've ridden on with better damping that any of the 888's or 66's i've ridden. only little goocher with this fork was that it was losing a bit of the travel...only getting like 140-150mm of travel instead of the alleged 180. expensive xc fork i guess? actually rock shox is going to be fixing it free of charge. apparently they had a problem with the manufacturing of the stansions, small scratch or flaw causes air to get by a seal every time the fork cycles. can't wait to get it back. i guess i have to slum it for a couple weeks on the demo 8 till the totem gets back! On this same ride, mormon craig killed his back wheel on the causey canyon jump just a few minutes after he crashed off the wall ride. not the greatest day for craig. everybody else was having an awesome ride, jake hit most of dual slalom, darren liked the new black bottle rocket and jon and ryan were their normal selves hitting all jumps. can't wait to get back out there!

04/15/07-post canyon

2007-04-15T21:10:00.000-07:00

today's weather and trail conditions were awesome! temperature was probably around seventy, trails were tacky and just a few spots with any mud. i didn't take my camera on this ride, but i'm sure andy or dirk will be posting pictures on the trailhead site soon so i can upload them from there.

no big crashes on today's ride. bernie went down a few times...par for the course, dirk, andy and zach hairdo went down on small crashes. jason bailed on the big booter on the left line of chorus and slid down the landing on his butt. i don't think i hit anything new this ride, i was just trying to get used to the new bike. i liked it very much, it peddled well and the front fork handled everything i threw at it. it's the first air fork i've ever ridden and i'm liking it! right now the norco is handling much better than my demo 8. perhaps i have to do some tuning to get that thing running right? until next time.

rabbit

04/07/07-post canyon

2007-04-07T20:58:00.000-07:00

went to post this morning. rode out with j-word and ross. his truck was super small so i rode with darren and ryan from troutdale out to hood river. conditions were very nice on the trail the first part of the day. chorus jumps were very nice...i just could not get the pinch for the no handers....frustrating! seemed that the lower we got on the mountain that the worse the trails were getting.

weird another one of those weeks were it is sunny and nice all during the work week when there is no riding going on, then the weekend and rain??? summer is coming. no big wrecks on this ride, darren just had a few problems with the teeter totter on 8 track and robholio crashed after hitting the round the tree drop on chorus. seemed that he was a bit shaken up, but he found a 20 dollar bill on chorus, so we made him buy a pitcher of beer at andrews pizza in hood river after the ride. summer is coming soon.

03/31/07-post canyon

2007-04-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

ross and i rode post yesterday. on the drive out the weather was looking rough. it was the usual rain until cascade locks and then the sky opens up.

we got there around nine and only johnny thunder was there. a couple minutes later frisco aaron arrived and we thought that the four of us should just head up to the top and the other could meet up with us. but like usual, about a million other people showed up and we started piling into two trucks. probably close to 15 of us with bikes in two trucks...it was a packed and cold ride to the top. trail conditions were awesome. tacky and a bit more moisture around the trails than there was on the ride there a few weeks ago.

there were a bunch of new stunts on chorus and lower gp, some were finished and a couple guys in our group hit them. a guy in another group that wasn't riding with us broke his leg on the new stunt jump before the loop around the tree stunt on chorus. shitty! for the most part it seems that the newest stunts up there don't have a lot of flow. lots of skinnies....weird, they wrecked a lot of my favorite stunts.

that's about it.

03/25/07

2007-03-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Well, it's Sunday and no ride going on. I went to Bernie's shop last night and got the new Norco put together. Fork feels like it needs to be broken in, lots of stiction right now. This thing is not real light for a single crown, it actually weighs more than my demo 8??? go figure.

Norco was pretty awesome on the whole warranty thing. I don't have a single bad thing to say about them! When their guy Paul Burnett said he was going to do something, he did it!

So Norco sent me the top of the line Fox fork to replace the bottom of the line Vanilla that I had bought for the pre production frame they sent me. Buy Norco.

Now is all I need is good weather and I can go take it for a spin!

03/18/08 post canyon

2007-03-22T18:29:00.000-07:00

went to post canyon for the first trip of the year out there. weather was awesome. got in two runs and nobody was badly hurt. a bit rust on the jumps, but it was coming around a bit by the second run. still need to dial in the 888 on the demo.

summer is almost here!

03/11/07-sunday

2007-03-11T15:28:00.000-07:00

weather still bad. was supposed to ride this morning with bernie and robholio down at falls city, but bernie forgot my bike at his shop. so no ride, just house work. snow should be melting at post canyon soon. going to try and go out there some time this week or this coming weekend.

there's always next week.

03/09/07 friday

2007-03-09T08:49:00.000-08:00

sitting here at my desk looking out the window. the weather is decent, no rain for the time being. wish i was out on the trails. tomorrow i should get my fix at falls city with fat larry.

This past weekend 03/02/07-03/04/07

2007-03-06T00:40:00.000-08:00

Once again, another weekend of no riding. spent the weekend on snow mobiles in the sisters area. weather was beautiful, no rain or new snow. there was enough snow to take the sleds just about anywhere.

Got the new Norco frame together a week or so ago just to find out that they want it back. the guys up at norco said that it was a pre production frame and that they will give me an 06 frame which is exactly the same except for the color and the flaws with the headtube area of the frame. hopefully i'll have time to get the other frame taken apart tomorrow and sent back up to them. New bike should be here some time this week.

shazaam!

weekend of 03/03/07

2007-03-01T19:08:00.000-08:00

well, another week/weekend of no riding. weather is going to suck anyway. however, we are going snow mobile riding in eastern oregon for grahamski's bachelor party. should be a crazy fun weekend! hopefully weather get nice soon!

pickle

02/26/07

2007-02-26T20:54:00.000-08:00

No ride today. Long day at work and snow is probably coming in the morning.

Riding is going to start to look like this again.

Slow Day-Sunday

2007-02-25T18:36:00.000-08:00

Just spent the day shopping with the wife and my mom and being lazy around the house with the dogs. Screaming at people at the bus stops and on the sides of the road. Gotta get my energy out somehow when there is no riding going on. Got the new bike together here at home which just meant putting the wheels back on it after stuffing it into my small car. sucks to not have a truck anymore. hopefully will be able to get the van by this summer. can't wait to take this bike out for a spin. bottom bracket height doesn't feel that high, so she should ride nice!

02/24/07-No riding, just rain

2007-02-24T13:26:00.000-08:00

No rides planned for this weekend, just rain. hanging with the wife and going to go visit her grandma. later tonight it's dinner with the Causey's.

Starting of the blog

2007-02-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

The beginning -This blog was actually started yesterday, but it seems to have deleted itself.

Just setting up the blog. Its 8:51p.m. Friday the 23rd of Februry 2007. I've been up all night changing Robholio's avatar on the bulletin board. Trying to convince him that i'm not the one doing it. Hack is about ready to take off on his cross country adventure of mountain biking, the weather here sucks...lot's of rain and it's getting cold. It's too late in the season to be snowing. I think global cooling is going on. Just finished putting together my new Norco Shore I yesterday. It seems a bit small compared to what I am used to, but we'll give it a go and see how it works. The Demo also came back from Specialized two days ago and seems to have to problems with the rear linkage. We'll see how it works out. This was a picture of the old broken Norco and the New Norco.
Until next time...