A Note from Fatty: There are Friends of Fatty (FoF), and then there are Best Friends of Fatty Forever (BFoFF). Scot Nicol, aka Chuck Ibis, is definitely a BFoFF. Last year he donated an Ibis Silk SL to help us raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. A couple months ago he made it possible for us to shave Bob Roll’s head, raising yet more money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. And now he’s working to raise money for another worthy cause. I’ll let him explain.
Scot Nicol here, you might remember me from our little raffle from last June when many of you participated in a raffle of one of our Ibis SilkSL road bikes in Susan’s name to benefit the LAF. The result of your kindness and generosity was that the Foundation had $37,505 more in their coffers. Thank you all for that, it was a success beyond our wildest imagination.
I’m giving Fatty a day off today and will use my rickety soapbox to toot the horn of another very different and very worthy group of people out here who are fighting the good fight.
Most of us like trails, whether we’re mountain bike riders, hikers, equestrians or Australian Shepards. Somebody has to build these and maintain these trails, and more often than not that task is done by a local, state or federal government agency. There are national organizations out there that do it, the one we cyclists know best is IMBA, the International Mountain Bike Association. There are also smaller, more regional organizations too that are doing good, innovative work. The Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship is one of these.
Since 2003, the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship has been quietly building and maintaining a network of trails in and around a little mountain town called Downieville. It’s a place that’s close to my heart, as I spent a good chunk of every summer since 1959 there on the Yuba River, recreating on my grandpa’s mining claim. There were trails then, but no mountain bikes. Growing up on a river in the Sierra was absolute paradise for a kid from the ‘burbs.
The Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship (SBTS) has a unique approach to reaching their goals. They rely on a huge amount of volunteerism, and have honed their trailbuilding efforts to a science. Their efforts also include a tremendous amount of community outreach, including a youth program that involves the local schools. The longer-term goals of this group also include the development of trail systems around the thriving metropolises of Graeagle, Clio, Portola, Calpine, Loyalton, and Sierraville.
Actually, these are all destination resort areas whose economic livelihood will be greatly enhanced by the new trail networks. I’ve even heard mention of a hut system sometime in the future. You can read more about what they’re about here.
These guys also happen to put on what I consider to be the funnest mountain bike event on the calendar right now. It’s called the Downieville Classic, where the legendary Downieville Downhill was born (45 minutes of descending at warp speed for the winner, more for me). It all takes place in the tiny burg of Downieville, and events include a pixie cross (small bikes racing in a tight circuit) and the insanely popular river jump contest. They set up a huge ramp and jump bikes into the river, I got to be a judge last year, one of my proudest accomplishments ever. To give you an indication of its populariy, the race sold out in minutes this year (as it does every year).
Now, if you’ve persevered to this point, I have a little treat for you. This is the most incredible 5 minutes of bicycle related video I’ve seen today, and maybe forever. It starts out a bit slow, but is well worth five minutes of your day. Once you’re done, continue reading. This is totally unrelated to anything in this post or any that Fatty has ever done most likely. I simply thought it was incredible enough to share.
The SBTS is not shy about their lofty goals, and have spoken to me about taking their brand of advocacy and community involvement on the road, showing other communities how they do it.
One of my goals is to help them do it. And that’s where this post is headed.
We at Ibis have donated a pimpy fresh Ibis Mojo, totally decked out with all the latest gear that would be appropriate for a ride around Downieville. We are raffling this bike on April 27th, this coming Monday. Raffle tickets, like before, are five dollah. 100% of the proceeds go to building trails. The SBTS estimates that one dollar of donation to their non-profit equals about $1500 dollars of normal trail building effort if it was done by a big bureaucracy. And they say they’ve had 22,000 hours of volunteer labor dedicated to their projects since 2003. Those are compelling numbers. Figure a burrito costs 5 bucks, your raffle ticket will buy someone a burrito and they might be able to build 10 feet of trail. Or more if it’s a super carnitas with guac (hopefully you vegans will still ride the trail).
We had our uber racer Brian Lopes design the parts pick of the bike, and we thank all of his kind sponsors like Marzocchi, Shimano, Easton, KS shocks, Kenda, WTB for their generous support.
In short, why don’t you go buy a raffle ticket or twenty? You might win a very cool bike.
PS: if you liked the video above, check out this one of Brian on the very same Mojo (well, not the same Mojo, but another one exactly like it) you see pictured above. That could be you, man. Or at least it could be your bike.
After two or three false starts — last week there was a snowstorm that left six inches of snow on my lawn — I’m pretty sure Spring is here now, for real.
And I have promised myself that this is the Spring I get the twins to learn to ride bikes, without the training wheels.
But I am not having an easy time of it.
I think there are a number of factors at work that have made the whole “teaching the girls to ride” thing difficult. One part of it is that, well, they’re girls. And while I make a conscious effort not to, I know for sure that I am babying them more than I did the boys.
More than the “girls” thing (or more accurately, my chauvinist treatment of them because they’re girls), though, is the “twins” thing. Specifically:
They’ve got each others’ back. If I am stern or even mildly firm with them, they both cry. If one’s tired, they’re both tired. If one falls, they’re both in tears.
I don’t magically have twice as much time. One of the secrets parents of twins have is that once you get past age four or so, the net amount of work twins take is hardly more than a singleton. Sure, you have to spend a little more time doing some things, but those are balanced out by how much less time you have to spend dealing with the “I’m bored” syndrome. But learning to ride a bike is a strictly 1-to-1 activity. And, as it turns out, I currently have other fish to fry. So they’re each getting less help from me than I’d like to give.
All these reasons, though, are trivial. I have a theory that the real reason the twins are reluctant to ride their bikes in a cul-de-sac or parking lot is because I’ve already introduced them to the hard stuff.
Saturday, for example, I took them each for a 90-minute ride, pulling them on the tag-a-long bike up Spring and down Rodeo at Lambert park. Now, I’ve always been curious what the twins’ expressions are like when we’re downhilling, so this time I mounted the helmetcam so it faces them.
Here’s Katie’s ride, in what may in fact be the most adorable mountain biking video ever made.
Once you’d done this, how much appeal would riding unsteadily around in a parking lot have for you?
Lessons Learned
I learned several things while taking the girls on this ride.
Batteries are important. I’ve now definitively figured out why my helmetcam shut off during the downhill on Grove last week. The batteries wore out. I found this because I did not replace these batteries, and within moments of taking Carrie out to Lambert Park, the helmetcam had –yet again — shut down. So I got no usable video of Carrie, making this a “Katie” video instead of a “Twins” video. I think I can safely say that someday several years from now Carrie will use this as prima facie evidence that I am a terrible father and that I treated her unfairly. Unless, of course, I make another video exclusively about Carrie. Which I guarantee I will. Anyway, from now on I will always make sure the helmetcam’s batteries are fresh before heading out on a ride.
The twins need helmets that fit better. I could’ve sworn that the helmet on Katie’s head fit snugly and properly. Judging by the way it’s about to slip off the side of her head in this video, I was wrong.
Hauling 80 extra pounds for a 3-hour ride is a good workout. The girls each weigh sixty pounds (they have not yet reached the age where they don’t want their weight public knowledge). The tagalong bike weighs around twenty. The round trip from home up to the top of Rodeo and back home takes around ninety minutes — and the video shows exactly how much of a pedaling contribution the twins make (hint: about enough to make it very difficult for me to balance the bike). So, that’s about three hours of hard riding I got in on Saturday.
Multitasking rules. While I was taking the twins out on this ride, I was accomplishing all of the following:
Making Susan Happy by keeping the twins out of her hair so she could get some work done on her jewelry and her novel.
Being Dad of the Month by taking my kids out on an adventure on a beautiful Spring day.
Being Dad of the Year by recording this adventure on videotape.
Getting Fodder for a Blog Entry which you are reading right now.
Getting an Intense Workout: Hill intervals while pulling up an extra 80 pounds really work your legs
Learning to Use My Helmetcam: I’d hesitate to say I’m competent yet, but I took another step in that direction.
Feel Free to Skip the Rest of This Post
The rest of today’s post is really just me talking — pretty much humourlessly — about what I’ve learned about using the VIO-POV.1 recently, just in case anyone else is experimenting with helmetcams and is interested in what I’m learning.
I’m fully prepared to admit the likelihood that there is nobody interested in my very novice efforts toward capturing good video while mountain biking. So, feel free to skip down to the comments section and tell me how adorable Katie is in that video.
Still with me? I didn’t think so.
My biggest lesson — apart from using fresh batteries — learned this weekend in using a helmetcam is to keep the mount as simple as possible. See, when I bought the VIO-POV.1 I went a little nuts, buying all kinds of mounts, thinking this would facilitate interesting shots.
I started out this weekend with this monstrosity fastened to my seatpost:
The knob you see there tightens a vice-style clamp to the seatpost. Then there are several other joints and knobs, letting you pivot the mount on all three planes. Then there’s a gooseneck, to which is mounted the lens clamp.
In theory, it’s awesome. In practice, the constant jarring and vibrating of the trail kept loosening all those knobs and relaxing the gooseneck, so the lens wouldn’t stay where I positioned it for more than a minute or so. Even if I would have had fresh batteries during my ride with Carrie, she would have kept drifting out of the shot.
So, when I got back home and put fresh batteries in the helmetcam, I also switched to a different mount:
One of the rubber half-circles sits on top of the tagalong toptube, the other end holds the lipstick lens. And then velcro holds the whole thing down tight.
And as you can see in the video, the lens stays nicely in place the entire time — for about 90 minutes of video, which I mercifully trimmed down (currently using iFilm ‘09, though I hope to make the jump to Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects once I am less clueless about how they work) to under four minutes for you.
Of course, that mount is only useful for making the lens point in a direction parallel to the bar it’s mounted to. I have a similar mount, good for pointing the lens in a direction perpendicular to the bar it’s mounted to:
This is the mount I use when I want the camera on my handlebars or seatpost.
Putting the Helmet in Helmetcam
I have to admit, for a while I was puzzled about how I should mount the camera to my helmet. See, my helmet — a Giro Ionos — is so vented, there’s no easy place to mount anything.
The solution I came up with — and tested for the first time in Lambert Park just over a week ago — was simple: get a new helmet. I bought an inexpensive BMX / skater helmet with very few vents, and plenty of surface area for a helmetcam mount.
Reviewing that video, it seemed like the camera’s vantage point was too high, which made sense since I mounted the camera right on the top of the helmet.
And then I noticed that the adhesive holding the mount was starting to come off. That’s not a good thing when you’ve got the business end of a $600 camera on top of your head.
I solved both things at the same time:
Just in case you can’t tell, I took some sandpaper and roughed up the side of the helmet and the mount, then used plastic epoxy to bond them together pretty much permanently. I could have cleaned up the extra epoxy around the mount, but I like the sloppy look. Seriously, I do.
I really like the idea of having this permanent mount on a helmet, and it’s made me think: I should perma-bond my HID light mount to the top of this helmet (or maybe to the other side, to keep things balanced?) in a similar way, so the light doesn’t slip around all the time. And then I’d be all set for night ride filming. Which I think could look very cool indeed.
My current plan is to wear this helmet with the camera setup for RAWROD 2009 this weekend, though I worry about riding with this helmet all day; even riding for a couple hours with a heavy, non-vented helmet gets a little uncomfortable. Wearing this all day with the sun beating down on me in the desert might be a little more than I want to put up with.
Zipties Are Your Friend
Zipties make it so easy to keep the cable routed out of the way. And then they can be snipped off at the end of the ride. I am going through zipties at a prodigious rate right now. Good thing they’re practically free.
Excited for More
I’m almost embarrassed to put up the videos I’ve done so far (but am doing it anyways, of course). I realize that I’m not even to “beginner” level yet. And my editing skills are worse than weak. But I’m having so much fun capturing these videos and showing Susan where I’ve been riding all these years — she’s finally getting more than just an exaggerated description of the trail; she’s getting a reasonable visual facsimile of the ride itself.
And I’ve been thinking of all the other trails I want to film: Jacob’s Ladder, Tibble Fork, Leadville 100, Mount Nebo, Frank, Gooseberry Mesa, Goldbar Rim. And on and on and on.
PARIS (Fat Cyclist Fake News Service) – In a startling turn of events today, the French Anti-doping Agency (AFLD) announced it is proceeding with disciplinary action toward several key members of Team Astana, essentially eliminating any chance the Kazakhstan-based cycling team has of competing in the 2009 Tour de France.
The extraordinary sequence of events began approximately one month ago, when an agent of AFLD asked Lance Armstrong for blood, urine, and hair samples. According to Armstrong, the American cycling star — having just returned from a long training ride — then evidently requested and obtained permission to take a shower while the AFLD representative’s credentials were verified.
Today, however, AFLD president Pierre Bordry revealed that there is much more to the story.
“Yes, Armstrong did ask to take a shower,” stated Bordry, “But he did not follow up by saying, ‘Mother may I?’”
Continued the AFLD official, “If Armstrong had correctly followed the protocol clearly stated in the Mother May I (MMI) handbook, he would not be in the trouble he is in. Because we totally would not have said, ‘Yes you may.’”
Concluded Bordry, “Armstrong purports to be a professional cyclist. If he doesn’t know how [MMI] is played, that’s his own problem and he’ll have to deal with the consequences. As you recall, Mr. Armstrong himself recently said, ‘It’s their event, their country, and their rules, and we have to play by those.’ Well, Mr. Armstrong, here in France we play MMI. And until you hear ‘Yes you may,’ you most certainlymay not.”
Contador Out Too
In a press conference today, the AFLD announced that Armstrong is not the only Astana team member in hot water. Said a spokesman for the AFLD, “Today, in a routine out-of-competition collection, one of our representatives requested that Astana team member Alberto Contador fill up a sample bottle with urine.”
Continued the spokesman, “At this point, Contador immediately complied. However, the AFLD had not preceded the request by saying ‘Simon says.’”
“The rules are clear and unequivocal,” concluded the spokesman. “You don’t do anything until you hear ‘Simon says.’ Contador is banned from all professional cycling for two years, effective immediately.”
“It’s true. He totally got me,” said the Tour de France winner and former hopeful. “I had nailed each of the instructions leading up to this — roll up my sleeves, stand on one foot, shave my left armpit — but he got me on that last one.”
Said Contador ruefully, “Man, sometimes these French drug controls can be really tricky.”
More Problems for Astana
Armstrong and Contador — arguably two of the strongest podium contenders for the 2009 Tour de France — are not the only Astana members facing charges from the AFLD. According to the press release sent out today, other violations from the team include:
Levi Leipheimer: Refusingto provide a hair sample. “In my defense,” said Leipheimer, “I didn’t actually refuse to provide a hair sample. I simply don’t have any hair. What were my options?”
Andreas Kloden:Failure to acknowledge that Jerry Lewis is a comedic genius. Kloden defended himself, saying, “I have watched The Nutty Professor, the Patsy, and The Family Jewels. I tried to find the humor in them. I really did. But it’s all just mugging and variations on one silly voice. How is that funny?” “If you don’t get it, just say so,” retorted the AFLD spokesman.
Chris Horner:Eating Hot Pockets. “Those things are an abomination and we will not permit anyone who eats such things in our country,” said Bordry.
AFLD Not Done
Once in contention for an unprecedented podium sweep at the Tour de France, Astana is now unlikely to participate in the race at all. But the AFLD housecleaning is far from over. “Unfortunately,” said Bordry, “there are many more non-French teams who have exhibited suspect behavior.”
Concluded Bordry, “We will not rest until all these nefarious cyclists have been removed from contention, making way for a truly clean team — such as Ag2r-La Mondiale, Agritubel, Bouygues Télécom, Cofidis, Crédit Agricole, or Française des Jeux — to take its rightful place on the podium on the Champs-Élysées.”
It occurs to me that before long, people are going to stop answering when I call. Why? I call people I have only met online or on the phone and ask them to do strange things in the name of helping Team Fatty fighting cancer.
One of these people whom I have never actually met in person — and I am given to understand that nobody else has either, for he wears a mask and a flowing velvet cape that conceals his appearance — is Bike Snob NYC, who is best described as my evil, more famous blog twin.
Anyways, not really knowing BSNYC at all, I asked a large favor of him.
“I know you value your privacy,” I said. “So how about we run a contest where the winner gets to come over and totally violate that privacy. You know, hang out with you for a couple hours. Ride bikes with you. Stand too close to you and ask you personal questions you don’t want to answer.”
And so, beginning right this moment, you can enter the contest to fly out to NYC and meet, talk with, make lots and lots of blog entry suggestions to, and otherwise hang out with Bike Snob NYC.
What You Get
So what fabulous prizes do you get with this contest? Read on.
First and foremost, you get to meet BSNYC. In person and for real. No hijinx or anything. You’ll actually get to see what he looks like. Once you’ve met him, he gets to decide what you do next. Maybe you’ll go on a bike ride. Maybe you’ll go for lots of subway rides. Maybe he’ll spontaneously embrace you. Maybe he’ll hit you with a cudgel and take your money. As you know, New Yorkers are as volatile as they are unpredictable. I recommend bringing both chocolate and pepper spray. It’s best to be prepared.
Second and Secondmost, you get a ticket to NY and back, with US Air. Yep, the Co-Captain of the Philly Team Fatty — Jen Yuan — has arranged for a plane ticket with US Air for any day this year. Of course, this means you have to get yourself to an airport that US Air or one of its affiliates services. So you BSNYC fans in Sri Lanka may be out of luck.
Third and Thirdmost, you get a Bike Snob Seal of Disapproval t-shirt, lovingly (?) hand-delivered by BSNYC himself. It may be in your size. It may not. Do not ask if you can exchange it. As you can see here, Lance got one that is three sizes too large, and he didn’t ask for a different size. He’s wearing / swimming in it, and is happy about it.
Finally and Lastmost: In addition to the grand prize of a plane ticket and meeting BSNYC, there will be 4 second-prize t-shirts given away to random winners. I have one of these and I never wear anything else. But in all honesty, that has more to do with my proclivity to always wear a given clothing item exclusively until catastrophic failure. But hey, this isn’t about me. It’s about the hard-to-find, can’t-be-bought t-shirt you’re going to parade in front of your friends.
What You Don’t Get
Please note carefully that this is not an all-expenses-paid vacation. It is, frankly, much closer to a plane-ticket-and-nothing-else vacation. Meaning you’re on your own for hotel. And food. And cab fare.
And everything else, actually.
And don’t you go expecting BSNYC to foot the bill. In fact, maybe you should consider buying him lunch. Would it kill you, just once, to offer to buy?
Yes, all the money in this contest goes directly to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, to help them fight cancer. It’s that easy. Besides, we cannot be trusted with money.
This contest is open starting right now and will run through next Wednesday, April 22. The winner will be announced on Thursday, April 23.
General Rules and Restrictions
Here are some rules you must obey, so keep them in mind just in case you win this contest.
Timing: You need to do this on a day that works for BSNYC. He travels (to exotic and wonderful places you couldn’t even possibly imagine) frequently, so the two of you will need to work together to figure out a date that works for the two of you.
Be cool: Seriously, BSNYC wants to keep private, which I don’t understand at all but am trying to respect anyways. So: no photos of him, no smothering, and no poking. And keep what you learn about him to yourself.
Flight Restrictions: Here’s what you need to know about the ticket:
Even though there are no blackout dates, there must be “X”-class seats available on a given flight in order for someone to use the voucher (kind of like frequent flier miles). As the voucher says, “Seats are limited and may not be available on every flight.”
Also, the flight only needs to be *ticketed* by Dec 23, 2009. Travel can take place all the way up through late November 2010. Flights can be ticketed a maximum of 340 days in advance.
The voucher can be used for “open jaw” flights — fly into one city (say, NYC to meet Bike Snob) and out of another (say, Philly after cheering people at the Livestrong ride).
If the flight someone wants does not have an available “X” class seat, the voucher is good for $200 towards the total fare.
Good on US Airways, US Express, America West Airways, America West Express.
Frankly, that’s a lot less draconian than it could have been. Although the term “open jaw flights” scares me very much.
But What If I Already Live on the East coast, the Way 90% of Americans Do?
Well, then you can go visit Bike Snob and then use the plane ticket to go somewhere else. See, this ticket is actually a round-trip ticket to anywhere in the US that US Air and its affiliates service.
So, for example, you could go hang out with BSNYC for a couple hours, then fly over to Salt Lake City, and I’d take you on a ride. Road or mountain, your choice. I’ll take care of getting a bike for you. And then I’ll grill brats or burgers, your choice.
Seriously, I’m throwing that in the ring. Which may or may not be an enhancement to the contest. You’ll have to decide.
As it often happens, I wish I were eligible to enter this contest — from his blog and the several email conversations I’ve had with him, I can tell BSNYC is a very smart, funny, and good guy.
A Note from Fatty: Many of you have been asking whether the100 Miles of Nowhereis still on. Yes, it’s definitely still on. I’ll be giving more details and opening up registration next week. Meanwhile, I thought you’d like to get a sneak peek at the very cool design Twin Six has come up with for the event t-shirt. Seriously, could those guys get any more awesome?
Another Note from Fatty: Tomorrow I will be announcing a different contest. I will say no more about it now, other than that I think there’s going to be huge interest in winning, and not just from the readers of fatcyclist.com.
The core team is made up of nothing but married men, all of us with children still living at home. That’s not a requirement for admission; it’s just the way it is.
And of course, we all enjoy telling our respective wives about the rides we go on. Why wouldn’t we? They’re exciting, close, more-or-less in cell phone range, and no more unsafe than, say, driving a car or eating a corn dog with cheese. And mayo.
Here, for example, is a little video I just put together of Brad, Jamie and me riding Corner Canyon during an unseasonably warm couple of days in early March:
Who wouldn’t want to show that to one’s spouse?
This is likewise true of the other local MTB rides: Frank, Tibble, Timpooneke, Hog Hollow, the Zoo, Lambert, BST, and so on.
All good clean fun, and worth recounting.
But we tend to get a little vague when describing Grove Creek.
Grove
Grove Creek — which we just call “Grove,” because it’s just too darn much work to say that extra syllable, is the hardest-climbing uphill I know of. I don’t even dare hazard a guess as to how much climbing there is in its short three (or four? Maybe five?) miles to the bridge, but I would bet it’s closer to 2000 feet than 1000. And it feels like 5000.
Grove may also be the most beautiful of all the rides we do. Or more accurately, it may be the most beautiful of the rides we fail to do, because it’s so hard we mostly pretend it doesn’t exist — even though the trailhead is no more than five miles from my house.
My point is, though, that Grove is beautiful. But the nature of its beauty is its curse: Grove is a freakishly dangerous trail.
Oh the Pain
Oh, sure, Grove starts out harmlessly enough. You ride along on the nice, flat jeep road for a few minutes, dodging mud puddles (there are always mud puddles in the first section), chatting with your friends, trying to keep your mind off what is next.
And then the “what is next” part arrives. The jeep road turns sharply upward, and you know it’s not going to level off for a good long time. On a geared bike, I will try to ride most climbs in the second or even third gear, with the granny unused — an insurance policy.
On Grove, however, I just immediately go to the granny gear. No questions asked, because they’ve already been answered.
Until yesterday, I had never attempted Grove on a singlespeed. Which shows that until yesterday I had some common sense. Which is to say, I walked a lot of the trail yesterday, and have no plans to try Grove on a SS again until I have magically transformed into Brad or Kenny.
Then — in the one piece of mercy Grove shows to the rider — there’s a short piece of swoopy, buff, fun downhill singletrack, letting you recover for a moment.
Before the really hard part begins.
Stay on Target
While the first part of Grove is brutally difficult, I hardly ever think about it, because the insanity of the second part of Grove just blots the first part clean out of my mind.
Everyone regroups at the top of the first climb — there’s a nice little flat spot where people sometimes set up camp — and then everyone looks around at each other, hoping someone has a flat or another really good reason to delay.
In the absence of a good excuse to turn around, negotiations begin on the riding order. These negotiations are very important, because — and I may be tipping my hand about the trail a bit here — there aren’t a lot of great places to pass on the second part of the Grove clmb.
And then the clmbing begins.
Immediately, the transformation of the trail is as complete as it is terrifying. Suddenly you are not riding on buff singletrack. You are riding on rough, sharp shale, embedded into the ground in a technical trail with what I like to call a “significant penalty for failure.”
And by “significant penalty for failure,” I mean that you’ve got a cliff wall going up on your left — you can literally put your hand out to lean against it when you need to stop and rest — and another cliff wall going down on your right.
The good thing about this cliff — the one going down, I mean — is that if you do fall off it, you have time to consider your options. The bad thing about this cliff is that the time spent falling off a cliff is not really optimal for option-considering.
In short, if you’re going to fall, it’s a good idea to fall left. (This statement is only true on the way up.)
Of course, it’s not shear cliff on the right all the way up. Sometimes instead you’re riding on loose shale. And sometimes you’re deciding whether you’re up to trying a not-quite-a-ledge move. Usually I’m not.
And a lot of the time, you’re looking around, completely stunned at how beautiful it all is. That dangerous cliff off to the right gives you a view of the creek at the bottom. And the canyon made by that creek leads to a gorgeous waterfall. And on the other side of the canyon, you see Mt. Timpanogos, covered in fresh snow right now and blindingly white up top.
I have found it wise to stop from time to time and take it all in. This is wise for two reasons:
I need to stop anyway, because I have exceeded what I previously thought was my maximum heart rate.
I find that I’m less likely to veer off the trail when I’m paying strict attention to aforementioned trail. On most trails, that’s good. On this trail, it’s downright necessary.
Eventually, you get to a bench, just before the bridge that crosses Grove Creek (and on the other side of the bridge is more excellent riding of a completely different sort, but that trail’s still covered in snow this time of year). Someone built that bench as a monument to a cyclist family member / friend. I cannot think of a better, more fitting monument, anywhere.
Memories
The first time my friends brought me on this climb, I was astounded and outraged. I really thought it was some kind of mean-spirited prank: “Hey, let’s take Elden on a climb that goes on forever, hurts constantly, and is life-threatening if you screw up.” Very funny, guys.
Of course, once you’ve made the climb, you’ve got to turn around and ride down.
I remember the first time I came down Grove, I actually dismounted and walked about a third of it, muttering darkly the whole time.
Meanwhile, Dug and Rick M flew down the trail. As if nothing could happen. It just seemed insane, and part of me wished I could keep up with them, just to see up close what it was like to defy death.
Strangely, though, yesterday as Kenny and I descended, I noticed I was able to stay with him pretty easily. And I actually felt like I was in less danger, not more, as I flew down.
Slower does not necessarily equal greater control. I’m finally learning that.
Most Disappointing Video, Ever
One of the big reasons I wanted to ride Grove yesterday was because I now have the VIO-POV.1 helmet cam, and I was picturing what a glorious five minutes it would be to do a continuous shot of the descent down Grove.
Kenny and I agreed we’d drop to the camp spot, switch the camera to be rear-facing, then continue from there.
But when I got to that regroup spot, I saw something terrible: my helmet cam was switched off. Evidently, the zip tie I had around the camera unit had punched the off button or something — and I’d find out when I got home that I had only got the first — and least spectacular — half minute of that whole part of the descent.
“Oh well, we’ll get the second part, anyway,” I said, and turned the camera back on. And then, once again, it turned off just a few seconds into the descent.
So now, belatedly, I’ve learned how to use the “keylock” feature, so the camera will keep going regardless of what buttons inadvertently get punched due to jostling.
So I went ahead and made a video anyway, so you can see exactly how freaky the trail is. Just understand that it’s pretty much an uphill-only video.
I’ll get the downhill view as a separate video, the next time my legs will let me do that climb.
Provided, of course, that my wife ever lets me ride Grove again.
Most of us like trails, whether we’re mountain bike riders, hikers, equestrians or Australian Shepards. Somebody has to build these and maintain these trails, and more often than not that task is done by a local, state or federal government agency. There are national organizations out there that do it, the one we cyclists know best is IMBA, the International Mountain Bike Association. There are also smaller, more regional organizations too that are doing good, innovative work. The Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship is one of these.
We at Ibis have donated a pimpy fresh Ibis Mojo, totally decked out with all the latest gear that would be appropriate for a ride around Downieville. We are raffling this bike on April 27th, this coming Monday. Raffle tickets, like before, are five dollah. 100% of the proceeds go to building trails. The SBTS estimates that one dollar of donation to their non-profit equals about $1500 dollars of normal trail building effort if it was done by a big bureaucracy. And they say they’ve had 22,000 hours of volunteer labor dedicated to their projects since 2003. Those are compelling numbers. Figure a burrito costs 5 bucks, your raffle ticket will buy someone a burrito and they might be able to build 10 feet of trail. Or more if it’s a super carnitas with guac (hopefully you vegans will still ride the trail).
It occurs to me that before long, people are going to stop answering when I call. Why? I call people I have only met online or on the phone and ask them to do strange things in the name of helping Team Fatty fighting cancer.
