The Thursday Ride

Last Thursday I joined the Trailspinners for their Thursday night advanced ride out of the Fair Hill North Appleton lot.  I was a little apprehensive because I'd never ridden with a large group and I wasn't sure how fast these guys would be going.  Or whether I would be able to keep pace.  The Trailspinners post info about group rides on their Yahoo Groups message board and the post said nobody gets dropped so I figured why not. 

I got out of work 20 minutes later than I wanted and of course traffic was jammed up.  The Yahoo post also said rollout at 5:30, be prompt.  Well I rolled in at 5:15 and hustled to put my gear on.  I wasn't expecting to know anyone but I got to meet Fatmarc and Shane, a couple guys that I really only knew from their online posts on Strava.com.  Actually I met Shane last year at the one and only mountain bike race I have ever run at Bear Creek Resort.  So Fatmarc was leading and we rolled out at 5:30 sharp as promised.  I wasn't quite ready - my Strava app on my phone wasn't running so it took me a minute and suddenly I was pulling out last out of about 12 guys.

The 10 guys in front were just gone.  The guy in front of me wasn't quite that fast and when we got to a right turn, where the group ahead was just about long gone already, he let me by.  I didn't see him again.  I'm not sure if he was just there with someone else or realized these guys were flying and this was not for him.  As it turns out there was another guy behind me - I just didn't realize it until later - but he turned up at the top of the hill later and that was our group for the night.

I eventually got shuffled up towards the front and found myself following the lead 3 or 4 for most of the night.  I was doing okay holding my own and had a great time testing my legs and bike handling skills against these guys.  But these guys were riding fast.  Real fast.  In fact on two hill climb segments they were going fast enough to take the King of the Mountain honors on Strava.com.  But really these guys were just awesome all around riders.  Fatmarc showed us some cool trails that don't get ridden often and the new route for the Bike Line race over on the Little Egypt side.  It doesn't stay light out too late yet so Fatmarc brought us back to the lot by 7:00.  We had ridden, I mean hammered, 14 miles.  It was an awesome night weather-wise and the ride was equally awesome.

I'm already plotting my early exit from work for this Thursday...and the next.  Because the Thursday ride is truly, a gnarly ride dude.

Okay Maybe An Intevention is Required

When I heard there was going to be a bike parts swap meet in Newark, DE on March 17th for mountain bike riders I thought sure, I have 5 or 6 things to sell.  And they are big ticket items so it should justify the $20 vendor fee.  Count me in.

So I started cleaning out the garage.  And the basement.  And the shed.  And my closets in the house.  And tearing down one of my bikes that never gets used.  And there was some good news and some bad news.

First the good news:  In all likelihood I was going to have some serious cash in my hands after the swap meet.  But the bad news is...that I might just have a problem that only a mountain biker intervention can solve.  I don't just have 5 or 6 extra things to sell.  I have DOZENS of items.  And serious ticket items too.  Here are some photos of some of the just some of the items as I laid them out in preparation for pricing and transporting.  Mind you I've only been in this hobby for 23 months and there are still three full bikes hanging in the garage that are not being sold.  Yeah, maybe I have a problem.

• Fuji 19” Carbon Hardtail Frame w/ Headset – (For 26” Wheels)
• Trek 19” 4300 Series Hardtail Frame – (For 26” Wheels)
• Fox Transition Dirt Jump Helmet – Camo
• Countour HD 1080P Helmet Cam
• Fox Baseline MTB Shorts 2010 - Black
• Pearl Izumi Canyon Short - Black
• Yakima Raptor Aero Rooftop Upright Bike Mount
• Fox F29 RL G2 Fork
• Ergon GP1 Lock On Grips
• Lizard Skin Peaty Lock On Grips – Silver
• Lizard Skin Peaty Lock On Grips – Red
• Fox ’09 MX Ride Jersey
• Bontrager Race X Lite 26” Wheelset  1660g
• Shimano XTR FC-M970 Crankset 2010, 175mm,  44-32-24
• Shimano XTR RD-M972 Long Cage Rear Derailleur
• Shimano XTR FD-M971  Top Mount Bottom Swing Front Derailleur
• Shimano XTR FD-M971  Top Mount Bottom Swing Front Derailleur
• Shimano XTR ST-M975 / BR-M975 Integrated Shifter & Disc Brake Set
• Selle Italia SLR Flow Carbon Saddle, Vanox Rails, MTB, 181g
• Lynskey Titanium Carbon Seatpost 31.6 x 400mm, Zero Setback  225g
• Ritchey Pro Carbon Seatpost  31.6 x 400mm,  Setback
• Ritchey Pro Carbon Stem  90mm x 6deg
• Ritchey Pro Carbon Riser Bars  20mm rise, 31.8, cut to 610mm

Come on down to the Newak Fire Hall tomorrow and get some gear.  I'm sure you'll find the stuff you need to have a gnarly ride, dude.

Rode Hard and Put Away Wet

I've been riding my bikes a lot so they've been taking some abuse and needing a lot of maintenance.  Now, up until the past week I had enjoyed some pretty good luck in terms of equipment issues (or lack thereof).  In fact I went something like 4 or 5 months without any flat tire issues which is just about unheard of if you are laying down the kind of miles I have been, (60 to 80 mountain miles per week).  But alas, all good things must come to an end.  Here are the issues that have surfaced in just the last couple weeks with my two main bikes:

• cut the sidewalls on 2 tires in 2 consecutive rides
• drive side bottom bracket bearing went bad
• rear brake lever developed a leak and is pulling air into the hydraulic system
• headset developed an annoying creak
• geared bike developed a clanking noise in the drive train

Support Your LBS?
I will save the solution to all these problems for a future post but I would like to take a minute to talk about local bike shops.  I've mentioned in previous posts that I buy a lot of bike parts from online retailers and from eBay and every now and then I feel a twinge of guilt for not supporting the local bike shops more.  The problem is that I have had mixed results.  Some of these shops have employees that are simply incapable of picking up on the fact that I am not the average Joe, (okay, that's confusing since my screen name here is AverageJoe, but you get what I'm saying).  I'm saying that I have developed some decent bike mechanic skills and some of these guys get it and some do not.  So the guys that don't get it talk down to me or feed me BS and don't seem to understand that I see their BS.  But, in a moment of weakness I tried a different bike shop and decided to drop BOTH of my bikes off to service some of the above problems.  What the heck, I'm a busy guy and this could save me some time.  Well, for one bike the kid just argued with me that I didn't really have a problem until I wheeled the bike out and loaded it back on the Jeep.  Like a dummy I brought the other bike in and left it there with instructions for them to diagnose and fix the clanky drive train.  He told me to pick it up on Wednesday and I thought that was not bad.  Well, I called yesterday to see if it would be ready be 4PM in case I could get out of work early for a ride and he said, "no, we meant next Wednesday, check your ticket."  Sure enough the ticket showed a week and half.  I said, screw that, and went and picked up my bike.

Henry's Bicycle Shop

So I resigned to fix the drive train myself and worked on the bike that night.  And I thought I had it fixed.  But when I hit the trail after work today the clanking noise was still there.  I rode along thinking about this and it finally occurred to me that I had not checked the cassette.  I stopped abruptly, hopped off my bike and checked the cassette and, sure enough, it was loose.  Real loose.  And cassettes require a special tool.  Riding on too far could cause more damage to my rear hub.  I thought about this for a minute while I rode on through the trails amid the insufferable clanking.  Henry's Bike Shop!  I read recently read that Henry's Bike Shop had re-opened.  Henry's is right off the White Clay Creek trail system in the Polly Drummond Hill shopping center.  Matt, the new proprietor, was there and he fixed me up real quick.  I told him I didn't have any cash (I left my wallet in my truck at the trail head).  Matt said, "don't worry about it man, this one's on the house."  We talked shop for a minute and I discussed some of the other ailments from the list above.  Matt had sound advice, made a lot of sense to me and he's won my business for life.  I am totally psyched to have found a bike wrench that I like and feel good about dropping my bike off.  I mean, he fixed the problem in like 90 seconds that the other bike shop said would take 1 1/2 weeks.  Awesome.  Matt and Henry's Bicycle Shop are, yes, exactly....totally gnarly dude. 

Vanity Check

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm using the Strava app on my iPhone to track my rides and post the GPS data to the Strava website.  Strava has been a huge motivation for me from a training standpoint because it allows me to compare a few key things about my riding habits and ability:

1. How often and how many miles I ride compared to other riders.
2. How fast I am able to complete "segments" compared to other riders.

And this was really the main point of my Measuring Stick post on February 28, 2012 - trying to figure out how I measure up to other riders. 

But to expand on this a little more, segments are created by Strava users.  They are just "segments" of a longer overall ride that somone tracked with their GPS.  Most often they are tough climbing sections but they can really be anything - downhill runs, long segments of many miles, whatever.  Then, as other riders ride the segment as part of their ride one day - and post their GPS data to Strava - their name will be shown in a list for the segment with a numeric ranking based on their elapsed time.

So the other day I saw a friend of mine get a KOM, (King of the Mountain or fastest time), for a particular segment.  Hey, that's cool.  Go, Shane, go.  Well, I hadn't ridden that segment with my Strava app so I decided to get out there and give it a try - see if I could ride it faster than Shane.  I had the day off today so I did a 25 mile training ride and headed for the "David English Trail" segment early in the ride while my legs were relatively fresh.  I hammered it with all I had and then went on with my ride.  I wouldn't know how I did until I was done with the whole ride and uploaded.  I could have stopped on the trail, ended the ride, uploaded it, etc. but it wasn't that important to me.  Or so I thought.

When I got done with my ride and my bike was loaded on the Jeep I sat in the parking lot at the trail head doing the final edits on my iPhone to upload the ride.  When it was all done I noticed there were no "Achievements".  "That's impossible", I thought.  I had to have at least clocked a top 10 or something...I was hammering up that hill!  Well, to make a long story short, I had clocked the fastest time on the David English segment but Strava was not showing my achievment!  It was some kind of glitch.  Strava is like a Facebook News Feed...it shows your ride along with all the other rides posted by people you are "following" and people that are "following" you.  Well, there was my ride at the top of the feed but no achievements.  And I was a little surprised at how disappointed I was.  I guess I thought I loved the app because it allowed me to see how I measured up but apparently I also love the app because I get to show off my achievements.  Here's what I mean:

On these rides you can see that the Strava feed shares my "Achievements" with the world. 

But on my ride today....no achievements!  So sad. (With sarcasm.)

So, other than the few of you that read this blog, I Guess I will be the only one that ever knows about my KOM!  Oh well, one thing is for sure.  I had a totally gnarly ride today...dude.

Ramble On

Last night my wife Jenny and I went to see Van Halen at the Wells Fargo arena in Philadelphia.  This is the fourth (or fifth?) time I'm seen Van Halen over the past twenty some years and Eddie rocked this one better than ever.  Just awesome.  And with David Lee Roth fronting the band again...even better.  The opening act was Kool and the Gang.  Yeah, I know...."wha?"  But to me it makes sense.  Still odd, but makes sense.  Three other friends scored tickets as well and they all said the same thing, "my wife is totally excited about Kool and the Gang".  Kool and the Gang is pretty cool no matter what music you like so this was a win win.  Good night out.

Discovering Iron Hill
So what does this have to do with mountain biking?  Well, I used the late night out as an excuse to burn a vacation day on Tuesday and do a little mountain biking.  The plan was to learn the 2011 mountain bike race course at Iron Hill Park in Newark, DE in hopes that the 2012 race course would be similar and give me a little experience.  Problem is I had never ridden any of the trails so I would need to navigate myself around with a GPS map of the race course that I found on the internet.  The last few times I did something like this (learn a new trail system) it was a pain for a couple reasons.

1. I am using an iPhone as my GPS tracking device.  It's cold weather season so I am wearing long fingered gloves and every time I stop to check the map I have to take off one of my gloves to navigate the touch screen.
2. I don't have a handlebar mount for my iPhone so I have to stop and pull it out of my pocket.

Unfortunately I only solved for the first issue for the ride today and the ride today was yet another reminder that getting the GPS on the bars will be a huge help.

Here is the GPS course I was following for my ride today:

Iron Hill MASS Race Course 2011 at EveryTrail


Here's the course I plotted as I got lost every five minutes (need that bar mount!).  I ended up cutting a tire after 1 1/2 laps so I will need to finish this discovery another day - I had a few wrong turns on the first lap.
Discovering Iron Hill at EveryTrail


Hi Tech Gloves
When I was in the bike shop the other day I spied a pair of riding gloves that had a conductive patch sewn into the index finger of each hand - specifically for navigating touch screen mobile devices.  The pair I bought was made by Cannondale and the product name was simple "Classic Long Glove".  I paid $25.00 for the gloves.  They run small so I ended up buying a size XL and there still a bit small.  (I usually where size Large).  While the gloves worked great for navigating the touch screen I didn't like them from a comfort standpoint.  They had stitching on the top across the knuckles in just the wrong spot and it was very uncomfortable.  I think there may have been a defect in the left glove because the stitching looked bigger and it was only uncomfortable on the left hand.  These are also the first pair of biking gloves that didn't have a velcro strap to tighten at the wrist and, consequently, they kept riding up toward my palm.  Not good.  And finally, by the end of the ride the stitching that held the conductive fabric on the right finger had come undone and was flapping loose on one side.  So, in my opinion, epic fail on the Cannondale gloves.  Good idea poorly executed I guess.  Here's a graphic and link for the gloves from the Cannondale website.  I would post a photo of mine but they are getting washed.  They were on a gnarly ride...dude.

Cannondale Classic Long Gloves

Rock Stars

Eventually you might want to capture one of your gnarly rides on video so you can show your friends and family how rad you are.  Mostly they are going to think you are a total nerd but do it anyway - if nothing else your riding buddies will appreciate it.

One of the easiest ways to do this is using a POV (point of view) camera that is mounted on your helmet, chest or somewhere on your bike.  GoPro has emerged as the most well known maker of cameras for this purpose, mostly from advertising heavily in action sports magazines and during action sports TV shows.

Another option is to use a handheld video camera or the camera on your phone and get a bunch of shots of your friends as they ride by.  It's not really possible to use one of these cameras while you are riding - mountain biking is pretty much a two-hands-required sport.  If you do try it you will probably get some pretty cool POV footage of your wreck.

The following video was shot with an Oregon Scientific ATC9K helmet mounted HD video camera.  I was using a 16GB microSD card for data storage which holds something like 3 or 4 hours of 720P HD.  If I recall it will record around 2 hours at 1080P. We also took some footage with an older Cannon handheld video camera from the side of the trail.  After doing a little research on video editing software I went with Corel VideoStudio X4.  For $39 you get a ton of editing features and it was pretty easy to learn.  Adding music, particulary something that rocks, makes your video seem about ten times for awesome than it really is.  On youtube I had to fill out a form to acknowledge the copyrighted songs were only used for personal enjoyment and not for profit - I wouldn't be able to have these on this blog if it were a for-profit endeavor (it is not).   Feel free to jump to the 4 minute mark where I wreck trying to show off for the camera and my friends laugh hysterically at me.  No I was not hurt but I felt like a dork.



Another option is to take still shots of your trip and make them into a video montage.  Again, cool music makes it seem 10 times more awesome.



Here is a video of my friend Dave following his friend Rod in a cyclocross bike race.  A POV camera is mounted to the seatpost of the bike and facing backward.  


2011 Valmont CX 45+ from Rod Yoder on Vimeo.

Good luck...give it a try and have a gnarly ride dude.