Patapsco Thru Trail Ride

I advertised to my DCMTB teammates a Patapsco Thru Ride yesterday. I had one taker. Seibold.

We actually had Young Buck and Santacroce rsvp but bailed at the last minute. Oh well. Their loss. After hearing from Santacroce at 8:10am, we got on the trail. Riding from Rockburn Branch, we rode on Morning Choice to Cascade, over the bridge, up Nun's Run and proceeded North to connect up to Oella and the trail to the Rte 40 bridge. Socks/shoes off (Seibold forgot socks) and the wet walk across the Patapsco River at the old dam. Railroad tracks to Daniels to the Thru Trail, McKeldin loop and back south.

Typical.

It was a bit wet, we rode a bit fast, we only got lost once and we had AMAZING weather. It was July and I actually said 'Man, I could have worn a wooly. In July.' It was breezy, cool and wonderful. The trails down by the river (cue Chris Farley) were a bit steamy. The trails up on the ridges were much nicer.

We had a great day. There were a few wet spots and the crossings were pretty high. We did the ride in less than 8 hours (7:35) and only had one flat (me). We had a great time. I only checked the map once, I fell over into a small tree for a reason I cannot determine, Jonathan fell into a bush of nettles on the mill race right at the rock wall before the bridge. He was tired and bummed. He picked a piece of wood out of his heel this morning and I pulled one out of my leg from that tree that jumped out in front of me.

As usual, I got numerous Facebook notes and emails saying 'Man, I wish I could've made this one. I'll get on it next time for sure.' We'll see...

This is my 6th or 7th day with 50+ miles and third in three weeks. Is that good? Dunno. Giro di Coppi and 18hrs of Scout's honor coming up. Plus vacation. At least I'm taking the Summer off from school so that helps.

I think Seibold has some pics of the ride yesterday so I'll try to get those from him asap.

I Know It's Been Months But...

This is still too funny...

Bike? Car? Whatever I Want One.

I would LOVE to drive around in one of these suckers. I have to imagine that the kids would too. Of course, all I have to do is come up with $35k or so and figure out how to get a bike onto the back of it. I'm sure I have enough duct tape and bungees to make that happen...

Of course, they just filed for bankruptcy. The good news is that the underlying technology company that developed it is still around.

Car free German Town

Pretty cool stuff. Here's the background then Google or Bing yourself to more details and stories. There's tons out there. Here's the Wiki on the city. Vauban, here I come!

Humanity, Where Art Thou?

I just finished reading John Dickerson's Heartless in Slate about Gov. Sanford.

Please read the following without a hint of irony: poor guy.

I'm pretty liberal. I don't like a lot of this guy's ideas but I tell ya, I feel pretty bad for him. Of course, I know it's hard on his family, and I wish them the best through this hard time as well, but the vitriol that is being slammed onto this guy with such ardor seems a bit much.

Sure, I've made a few watercooler jokes (He wasn't hiking the Appalachian trail, he was hiked up on some Argentinian tail), but that was just me trying to be clever. Obviously, I'm not very clever, but I digress.

When did imperfect people become fair game for attack? This guy needs our symapthy, not our anger. I defended Clinton when he was having his fun and I think the same standard needs to be applied to Gov. Sanford.

As humans, we should be able to remove the actions from the person. Is he a bad guy because of this? Nope. He should be feeling horrible and we should acknowledge his feeling horrible by saying 'Yeah, you really screwed the pooch on this one' but we don't need to drill him into the ground by calling him names or portraying all Republicans or right-wingers this way. If anything, imperfection is the one thing that all politicians seem to have, and in fact, all humans.

Sure he's a hypocrit. He attacked Clinton and voted for his impeachment. BUT! The man will learn. I don't pity a man for mistakes, I pity him if he doesn't LEARN from them. I hope that Sanford keeps his marriage together and manages to get his life back together.

I hope more people can feel generous with their empathy. I know I need to work on it myself, but you don't have to kick me in the arse about it...

Good luck to the Sanford family. I hope that things work out for you. It's going to be harder than ever.

2009 24 Hours of Big Bear

Friday was great! Good ride in wet conditions with some good teammates, great dinner, plenty of off-color conversation, mostly at Darren's expense... We were ready to race! We had already looked at the caliber of the other teams and I had decided that fifth was likely our best outcome. Not to spoil the ending, but we got fifth. It was a good thing we pre-rode: there were numerous issues that needed to be addressed on various DCMTB bikes (more later). GrannyGear results here.

Kent jumped on the grenade for the run and went into the woods in reasonable position. The first of three flats contributed to a frustrating lap for Kent. We were solidly in sixth place out of six teams. After Wheaton and I tried to fix Darren's stripped shock mounting bolt, Darren was pushed from his hard-fought-for second slot into fourth. He managed to head into Morgantown and find a replacement before he was due for a lap. It's a good thing that Wheaton noticed that nut because it would have caused a HUGE problem, most likely at night, knowing Darren. And no, Darren, rubber cement will not keep a shock mount nut on a bolt...

(Reminder: PLEASE make sure your equipment is in good working order WELL BEFORE a race.)

The rest of the race was pretty uneventful from my viewpoint. I got pretty frustrated estimating Kent's lap times and ending up waiting in the start/finish for him to come in 10-20 minutes later than expected for the first three laps. Kent's three flats kept us from fourth place. Such is racing. I'm glad that somebody took a look at Kent's tire before his fourth lap so he could have one clean lap. I imagine that was a big relief for Kent.

On my fourth lap, I passed a guy with a double-flat on a tricky section before the super technical g-out/hike-a-bike section. I had my eyes on the wet, muddy, slippery rocks to keep it together so I didn't realize who it was, even after asking him if he was ok and hearing about his double-flats. I shouted words of encouragement and kept slogging it out. Wheaton asked me if I passed the fifth-placed Gripped Films expert team and I said 'I don't think so.' Wheaton pointed to the Gripped Films guy standing behind him so I shouted at him to 'GO! GO! GO!' I headed for the showers and ran into Dave Olsen from Gripped Films heading back to camp and he just smiled. I asked him how he was doing and he said 'Nice pass. That double-flat killed me' and related a story of borrowing CO2 and a tube from somebody. I realized that was him on the side of the trail. We both laughed it off. Such is racing...

In a perfect world, we could have made it to fourth. That assumes that we would have had no other mechanicals besides those flats (and Darren not breaking his bike!) I'm really glad nobody got seriously injured although the jury is still out on Wheaton's mid-shin puncture would. I think it re-opened something from 'Nam as his eyes glazed over and he started shouting 'Di di mau!' Laird put on a top-notch event once again.

The conditions were wet enough to frustrate many people and forced quite a few 2+ hour laps. The DCMTB co-ed open team seemed to have a great time and did well. I had a great time hanging out with everyone. HUGE thanks to Miss Communication for her swimsuit modeling and caged GoGo dancing! That really made the difference! She deserves that crown!

I don't have many pics but I'll get some up later and steal some from others...

Jon Stewart Pulls Through Again

Please, please, please watch this. Peter Schiff knows what he is talking about.

WV Friends: Thanks Kent!

We always take Kent up on his invitations to the house in WV. This year was no exception. It's always a great time and Kent and Paula have some fantastic taste when it comes to food, fun and people (me excluded, of course).

It was Kent's birthday weekend. Here's a few great shots of some great people. Jon, Maura, Robert, Kent, Paula and the fam are in here but we missed a few people who were on a hike during this shot.

As usual, we had a great time, met some great people and Foxy got to run around like a free dog all weekend. Boy, was she tired. And dirty. And covered in ticks.

Here's Emma's first bow and arrow shot. I didn't have my camera for Jeremy's.

Here's Mr Jon and Jeremy and some daytime light-up frisbee. We are big on light-up frisbee around these parts. Jeremy managed to snag all the discs so he could practice. Emma and Jeremy are both pretty good disc throwers. Like their momma, they pick stuff up pretty quickly. They are naturally coordinated, thankfully.

There's no way I could avoid posting a pic of the dog. When we went on a hike up around Kent's property, Foxy took off for a few minutes. After Susan calling the dog at length, she decided to show up while we walked along the ridge. At first, I thought it was a different dog. You can see from the pic, she's COVERED in mud.

As many of you know, Foxy is an off-white dog. She has a few brown spots but not from her paws up to her shoulders. She clearly found a solid mud puddle and decided to take a bath. Oh, to be a dog.

We rode over the mountain to hit Stokesville during the VA IMBA mtn bike festival hosted by your boyfriend and mine, Chris Scott. We did a ride up and over Hankey and down Dowell's. I was running out of time so I just rode around on the road. It was a solid 45 minutes although who remembers such things...

Thanks again Kent and friends. Hope to see you again soon.

Pope: Yeah, No Kidding

This post is also parenthetically titled: Reason number 927 why I'm going to Hell.

Beastie Boys

I managed to get tickets for the Beastie Boys show last night. Wow. I had a full unobstructed view from the floor about 30 feet from the stage on a little ramp next to the sound board. Punga tagged along.

Great show. Really fun. Biz Markie opened up. Love that guy. He sang Bennie and the Jets about half-way through the BBoys set. He seemed to be having the best time all night. It's between him and Mixmaster Mike. Btw, that guy is pretty talented... Like you didn't know.

More on the evening here. And here.

I haven't seen the Beastie Boys since I was just out of high school in 1992. The Boys are gettin' old. They still rock. The fame and fortune hasn't ruined them one bit.

DCMTB 2009 Team Photo

What a good looking bunch of people!

Big ups to JoFo for working through our comedy performances to get the shot.

The new kit looks pretty good. I forget who on the team designed it (Tris?) but I likey!

Sign Me Up!

I'll test it! I could've used it this past weekend...

Stokesville Douthat Stokesville

Two days. Many miles. Tired mind, body, soul.

I am not Superman.

Pat put up some pics here. Sure was pretty.

Two weeks off before riding that much didn't help me out much. Climbing out of the campground up Hankey, I knew it was going to be a long day. Not just because it was 5:30am and still dark but because my heartrate spiked to 175 or so and stayed there much of the climb. That's bad. Down Dowell's, up to mountain house and past Ramsey's then up to the Shenandoah Mtn Trail all the way down to the Southern Traverse of the SMT. Lunch. It gets pretty fuzzy after that. Little Mare (little, my arse) then into Douthat and the Creasy Lodge. Boy was I happy and spent. Shower, a ton of food and a little sleep.

Up at 6:30am with weird feelings all over my body. Out of bed by 7:30 for a ton of food and packing for the ride back to Stokesville. I felt a little better but knew things were going to be tough. The climb out the back of Creasy is up, up, up the switchback to the ridge trail then up a few times along the ridge to the descent to the bridge before the road ride to lunch. Beautiful lunch by the river then the 3 hour climb up Elliott's. Ouch. I bailed before the Five Hike-A-Bikes on the ridge and rode the road back 20+ miles with some other riders who had bailed earlier. We rode the small climbs and made it into Stokesville campground at 7:30, 40 minutes before the first riders got finished climbing Dowell's and Hankey and dropping into Stokesville.

17 hours total ride time, 23 hours of trip time. Carpenter's rules in effect. Amazing time. HUGE thanks to Chris and Carp for the route and our amazing support crew. I never eat so well as when I'm with the 'burg crew.

I was honored to be invited and I'm glad I went. I am mostly glad I made it back under my own power...

Poplar Island Trip

Last weekend, we went down Tilghman Island to check out the Poplar Island dredge materials facility. MES is working with the Army Corps of Engineers and the Maryland Port Administration to rebuild this historic island in the middle Chesapeake Bay. Of course, it was one of the windiest days on the Bay this year. Here's a link from US Fish and Wildlife.

This is the big-arse anchor I can only assume came up from the bottom of the Bay. And the requisite project sign. We're big on signs at MES.

The short, modern story of the island is that it had been whittled down by erosion to about 5 acres from over 1500. The state wanted to do something about it and the materials coming out of the bay channel for heavy shipping needed someplace to go. The Corps, the Port and MES got together and decided to create a new field of science and wetlands restoration. Through adaptive management, the project has thoughtfully fumbled its way to success.

Susan looking out from our Bay-side room at the Marina. The 40 knot winds made for an exciting day.

When the Chesapeake shipping channel gets dredged out, the material gets dumped into a barge. The barge gets pushed over to Poplar. They rig up a few feet of pipe and pump a slurry (90% water, 10% dredge material) into one of the wet cells. The cells are just multi-acre areas of hemmed-in water. After the material gets pumped in and the dirt settles out, they pump out the water and are left with dry land. After a good, hot Summer, the water evaporates and the Corps gets in there and starts testing and prepping the area for construction. It takes a few months to get it laid out, channels cut, grasses planted and open to the Bay for the natural tidal action to create a nice happy animal habitat. Kormorants, terrapins, egrets, blue heron, gulls, osprey, bald eagles, ducks... all the local fauna seem pretty stoked on the wetlands.

Nobody in the world is involved in this level of study and island creation. The 'adaptive management' process allows everyone to learn as they move forward, building on the success of each idea.

Here's another shot out of our West-facing deck at the Marina.

If you want to get involved, you can volunteer to plant grasses in the wetland areas in June through the Baltimore Aquarium. I highly recommend it. It's a great little vacation/day trip with the kids. We went down the night before and stayed at a local marina right on the water with a few restaurants within spitting distance. You could see Poplar from our room. Knapps Narrows was where we stayed and you can walk from the hotel over to the Poplar Island Land Base on Chicken Point Rd. MES operates the land base, the boat to get out to Poplar, all the administrative stuff and the testing. The Corps handles the actual engineering on the project and the Port pays the bills. As you can imagine, there's another dozen or so other agencies down there just to check stuff out including MDE, DNR, CBF for various reasons.

Our MES tour guide. Another important MES function on the island for all of the visitors the island sees.

This last picture gives you an idea of the scope of the work area. Basically, you have all these spits of water bordered by a series of roads. Each cell is its own area during fill but then is cut up into sub-cells after it's full. The foreground is water in the northwestern cell that will be 23 feet above mean low low tide and forested. Still a long way to go on that cell. The foreground road is the southern border of cell one to cell two. The third area of water from top to bottom with the pier is open water. It's part of a private island that used to be owned by the DNC. This is the curve in the kidney-bean-shape of Poplar Island. Center-right and center-top you can see the MES fuel tank complex on the island and an excavator chilling on a barge doing some shore stabilization work.

The St Michael's, Tilghman and Oxford areas of the Eastern Shore are so nice and relaxed. If you haven't made a day trip over there to just chill out and walk around, you should. And if you have a boat, it's an easy day-sail across the Bay. There's plenty of safe harbor and plenty to do. Cycling, kayaking, shopping, drinking... It's not bad!

Pics from the New Trails

Where are they? Hmmm... Seems like only a few people know were Viper, Pit, Iceberg and Little Salamander/Skink are. Hmm...

We'll, at least you get to see some of the trails including the actual pit (crashes) and Posner going over the bars. When you tell somebody that a step-up jump isn't ready, you think that stops them from trying to ride it?

Over and over again?

Nope. Boy that dirt looks yummy, eh Pos?

Here's some pics of the trails. You are looking for the ones with dudes in jackets, not shorts... Big ups to Nate for the pics. I was too busy getting everyone lost to take pics.

Let me know if you want to see the new trails. I call it the Disneyland ride cuz there's so much fun stuff to ride. It really is a playground.

650b Wheels and My Bike!

I don't know how much everyone knows about this new wheel size, but there's a lot of buzz around 650b. You've probably heard of the 29r (a 29" mtn bike wheel, same as 700c road) and the standard mtn bike size of 26".

Back in the day (late 1970s), the stony guys that 'invented' mountain bikes in NorCal knew that something big was gonna happen. But for a random Soviet move (damn Ruskies), we'd all be riding 650b bikes. Apparently, when the early boys of mtn biking were looking for good, strong, light wheel sizes, they looked at 650b first but the Soviet (army?) bought up everything from Nokian (I think). So, there were plenty of 26" stuff around and that's how the 26" thing started. A few Asian manufacturer's (Araya?) filled the need with 26" light, strong rims.

Here's more details from His Holiness, Sheldon Brown on the topic.

I wasn't into the 29r thing when it came out. I rode some bikes but there were ZERO full suspension bikes. And since that's what I ride, I wasn't into going back into riding singlespeeds and hardtails. BigDaddy is too old for that. Occasionally, sure, but me likey squishy. The bikes that I did ride didn't really turn my crank. The bikes felt slow, the wheels didn't turn really well and I just didn't think the bikes were responsive enough for my type of riding. I'm not alone in that opinion either.

So when people on the tuberwebs started talking about 650b, I took notice. I heard a few people trying it out, custom fitting bikes with 650b stuff. This guy Kirk Pacenti (a frame guy) got Panaracer to make a run of tires and the US got 650b 2.35 tires. That's what I got.

It would be good to step back and explain 650b. This tire/wheel size is very normal in Europe. It's mostly for touring bikes and a lot of people put 650b on 700c bikes to allow larger tires and fenders. So we aren't talking about building up an infrastructure like 29 required. Well, 29 required A BIT more for mtn biking...

So, we have 26", 650b (27.5") and 29". I went a bit nuts and bought spokes, rims and tires from Family Bike Shop last week and built up some wheels Saturday night. Breaking a cardinal rule of mtn biking, I put the wheels on for the Sunday morning ride at the Watershed. If you haven't ridden out there, it's rocky. Potentially the rockiest trails on the planet.

And I loved it. I've been riding a 6" travel, 2.3" tired, dual-crown fork bike with 26" wheels. It kicks arse, for sure. I rode the Stumpjumper (2008) FSR Pro Carbon with the 650b wheels thrown into the bike and WOW! It handled pretty well. I should mention that I just rode that bike on the same trails just two days prior and the bike was all over the place. The wheels (and tires, of course) really stabilized that bike. It really changed its manners.

So, I'm not turning into a 650b wheel zealot. It's just a bike. But the 650b thing is a real benefit. I think the fact that I can run 650b or 26" on my bike is pretty money. I can race my super-light 26" wheels on non-technical courses with narrow tires OR I can rock the 650b with narrow tires on kinda technical courses or run the 2.35 up front with the 2.0 in the rear on more technical stuff. And it's all the same bike. All that really changes is the height of the bottom bracket. And that only goes up about 18mm from 26" to 650b.

I know that SRAM/Rock Shox, Hayes/Manitou, Marzocchi and Fox are all ignoring 650b right now. Couple that with the fact that a lot of these smaller builders shouting about 650b are asking for custom offsets and new lowers that would cost Rock Shox or Fox a good chunk of change and the 650b thing seems stuck.

Haro has a 650b bike. Jamis is rumored to be coming out with a bike in '10 or '11. Specialized MIGHT be thinking about tires for next year. White Brothers has a $800 fork (which will leak or creak or just not work within a year of being ridden hard).

These pics aren't great. They do give you an idea of how much clearance there is when the bike is actually ridden. There's some dirt in there and nothing's hanging up. Fork, chainstays, seatstays... It's all good!

I'm just here saying that 650b is worth checking out. If you like throwing your bike around or are short and can't ride a 29r, 650b is probably a better choice than 26. And the GREATEST thing about 650b is that most bikes ALREADY WORK JUST FINE! Of course, you have to find a friend like my buddy Cargo Mike so you can borrow his wheels and see if they work before you spend money buying a set for yourself. Yes, you can borrow mine...

This last pic is kinda sideways: that's actually the seatstay bridge. There's more room than the pic shows but you get the point.

Trail Time - Skink

You tell me what you think...

Rocky enough?

Where's the trail?

Top left is entrance to the rocky section, heading E.

Top right is one option down, heading E.

Bottom left and right are the other option heading E. I _think_ this is the easy one. It's unridden (until tomorrow) and may remain so. It's not low-consequence but no more crazy that other stuff out there. We only had to rig up one rock. We'll see how it goes!

Slate.com Terrorism Articles

The articles start today. Good read. Bonus points if you can keep up the whole week. It's worth just reading the first if that's all you got.

http://www.slate.com/id/2208971/?from=rss

Great article. Me likes some Slate.