From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

I thought the media were supposed to present a complete picture, not a biased one.

In its Sept. 16 edition, the Tribune-Review, in a story titled “Pittsburgh becoming destination city for outdoors enthusiasts,” presents mountain biking as if it were a harmless activity.

Mountain biking is one of the most destructive activities ever allowed in natural areas and not something we should be promoting. It is especially inappropriate for city and local parks, which usually are small and have to serve a large population.

Mountain biking accelerates erosion, creates V-shaped ruts, kills small animals and plants on and next to the trail, drives wildlife and trail users out of the area and, worst of all, teaches kids that rough treatment of nature is OK. It’s not.

Quick google search turned up his website.

A little more digging found this site which spends time refuting the claims made by the author.

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A few years ago I bought a Gary Fisher X-Caliber. That year’s Orange was the color I really wanted, but they ran out of that bike in my size. This was a bit of a bummer but the following year’s bike, a bland silver, was already on the showroom floor and my LBS was willing to discount it to the price of the current year’s version.

Each year, a different color

Although it wasn’t the color I wanted, it was the bike I wanted and I proudly took home a brand new X-Caliber in silver. I rode that bike for many, many miles before I decided it was time to part it out and move on. One minor factor that went into this decision was the yearly color change that many major manufacturers go through in an effort to gain your business again.

Every year, the X-Caliber came out, it changed colors. One year it was blue, The next? Black, then orange, silver, off-white and now? Red. Changing colors is not only a way to date your bike accurately but it is also a marketing tool that MANY if not ALL bike manufacturers use to to make you interested in a new bike. Some people go for it while others couldn’t care less. But there is a way to avoid some of this color dating. Buy from the littler guys.

Niner RIP9, same color it’s always been offered

The littler guys are much less prone to change their colors. Niner bikes, which only builds 29er bikes, has been using the same colors for its bikes from the moment it opened its doors. The RIP 9, a 4.5-inch full suspension 29er, has been sold in the same two colors: Atomic Blue (which glows in the dark… way cool) and Hi-Ho Silver Anodized since its introduction. They sometimes add a color, but I haven’t seen them delete a color yet.

Other smaller builders will keep the same color for a couple of years before changing them over to a new color. I’m reminded of Turner & Titus which have kept their FS 29er colors, Blue or Gold & Red or Silver respectively, the same for a couple of years now. When they’ll change it is unknown, but at least you get a little bit of consistency and you don’t feeli like you have an old bike after just one year of ownership. This is definitely a +1 for the littler guys.

It’s nice to have a little bit of color stability. Turner Sultan in Blue

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Exposure also allows for some sweet views! In the middle of the valley, you can see the fireroad we climbed. The day before, we were on the other side of the mountain riding the slopes

Just a few lessons learned from this past weekend of riding, plus some more random pictures that didn’t make it into the previous posts. By the way, thank Khoa for all the sweet pictures. He lugged around his camera when I was too lazy to carry mine. Thanks Khoa.

Bikes parked in the kitchen

Guys who ride your style
It’s better to ride with guys who ride your style than ride with guys who don’t. It’s as simple as that. It takes a little while but if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll easily define what style it is that you like to ride. I, for instance, enjoy fast, continuous singletrack with technical sections that don’t require me to drop my seatpost. Exposure doesn’t bother me too much nor do jumps under one-foot tall. I would like to get better at riding fun stuff like teeter totters and logs, but that isn’t particularly important to me. I don’t like climbing but it’s a necessary evil in my book.

Redline Mono 9 taking the lift

I do not liking riding gnarly terrain that is optimized for bikes with more than 5 inches of suspension. I don’t mind occasionally doing the ”point and shoot” through small rock gardens or other ugly stuff but I want a bit of a run out afterwards to get things back under control. Riding with those that enjoy downhill stuff is not only frustrating to me but is also frustrating to the DH rider waiting for me to walk a ridiculously steep or traction-less slope. Riding with guys that have the same tastes in riding as you do makes it easy to have fun for everyone. Just find stuff that you like to ride and they’ll like it too.

Not busy on the slopes today. You can see Big Bear Lake too

Ask for Guidance
The riding on Saturday morning was not our style and since the trails were not marked, we knew the afternoon was probably going to be hit and miss to find trails we like. So we did what any desperate mountain biker does when their back is up against the wall. We asked for guidance. But you can’t just ask anybody. You have to watch for tell tale clues as to the rider’s ability and familiarity lever before asking for help.

Trek Fuel EX 9.0 resting on the porch

What made Tim ask Deb for help beats me, but what I gathered from some hindsight is that Deb exhibited characteristics of one able to help. She had a good bike (a Specialized Safire), proper riding attire (plain woman’s no sleeve jersey and lycra shorts), proper sunglasses (not aviators which we saw a lot of, but riding glasses with interchange-able lenses) and two strap riding shoes. She also, I noticed much later, did not have a hydration pack. Combine this with the other characteristics and this is obvious a knowledgeable rider who is familiar with local trails and her own riding limits. You don’t want to find the poseur or waste time asking the newb.

Not really a “river”… more of a Santa Ana Stream. Pretty though.

Hydration
If you don’t know what to do in regards to hydration, do as much as you can and then add another bottle. The long day of riding got me at the end when I started to cramp a little. The lesson here is to keep drinking. I decided not to fill up my water pack when we went out after lunch… a calculating decision that came back to haunt me at around 3:30pm. The cramping began in my legs and quickly spread, even hitting my triceps which have never cramped before. I ended up taking Khoa’s Accelerade filled bottle and drinking it all. Afterwards, I was ready for another run… maybe two if the lifts hadn’t stopped for the day. Drink, not just water, but stuff to replenish what your body loses and it’s always better to have a little extra than to not have enough. Thanks Khoa.

Jeremy cramping under a tree

HT vs. FS
If you can go with a full suspension bike, rock it. At the end of the first day, 7+ hours of riding mind you, my butt was feeling good. I was thinking “no problem” for tomorrow’s ride. But, I was wrong. My worst fear from the past two weeks sprang up and when I got on my saddle the next morning I could feel my sit bones aching. After riding up the fireroad I knew I’d appreciate a full suspension bike. For a guy not accustomed to spending so many hours on the saddle a little love from some full suspension would have gone a long way.

Tim at the SART trailhead

Not to say anything negative about my bike, though. The Redline Mono 9 with 29-inch wheels hung in there with the other full suspension bikes. The steel was great and I swapped back the White Brothers Magic 80mm 29er fork which worked excellently after I dialed it in. The Redline was never the limiting factor during the rides. The rider and his desire to live another day was.

A picture of the valley that the fireroad was in

SART Singletrack

Jeremy eavesdropping on Tim’s cell phone conversation

Khoa proudly finishes negotiating a switchback

Jeremy & Tim on SART

Thanks for all the comments & I hope you enjoyed our pictures and commentary.

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The bikes: ready to rock the SART… or is it ready to be rocked by the SART? We soon find out.

We jokingly considered buying lift tickets again for Sunday morning’s ride, but riding some of the best singletrack in So. Cal. was too tempting. After cleaning up the cabin and packing our stuff, we set off to visit the local bike shops in town… for umm… research. Then off to the trail.

Our trusty steed all loaded up waiting at the Visitor Info center

The Santa Ana River Trail is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 miles of trail, the vast majority of it being singletrack. Because of time, fatigue and lack of knowledge of the trail, we decided to ride just about 8 miles of it. Since the trail is really best done as a shuttle, and us with only one car, we had to ride a little over 4 miles of fireroad to get to the trailhead. 4 miles of fireroad with a return of almost 8 miles of singletrack is a deal I’ll take everytime.

Yes, a flowing river in the middle of summer in So. Cal. No cement side walls either

We parked at Angeles Oaks off of Glass and Hwy 38 then rode 4 miles to the South Fork campground. I never really thought about it before but SART actually parallels the Santa Ana River. The 4 mile fireroad also paralleled the Santa Ana River even crossing over it a few times. The gradually ascending fireroad was a relatively easy ride if we hadn’t juiced our legs the day before. But, we grunted it out and quickly got to the SART trailhead.

Tim & Jeremy riding the fireroad for four miles

WOW. It’s not often when something actually lives up to its billing, but the SART definitely did. Singletrack for 8 continuous miles, probably the longest stretch of uninterrupted singletrack I’ve ever done. SART, though, isn’t for the faint of heart though. During the 8 miles, we probably had some sort of exposure for at least 1/3rd of it. Exposure is both good and bad in that it makes the ride more technical, but has its dangerous aspect if we fell. It’s also great for getting some sweet vistas of the river and valley. Some of the exposure was VERY umm… exposed, like someone made the singletrack half as wide as normal and there was a sharp dropoff that left absolutely no room for error.

Eroding singletrack. Time to dab or walk… not time to do something stupid

Other times, the singletrack would drift away from the side of the mountain and we would find ourselves in a beautiful meadow dotted with trees. During these instances, we would open up the throttle and hammer along until we got into more exposed singletrack that required a bit more technical acumen and bike handling accuracy. Add in a few short climbs with baby head sized rocks thrown in for fun, some short descents going in and out of the forest, lots of blind turns and you basically had the 8 miles we rode. At the point where we turned off the trail I think all three of us stared longingly at more singletrack. This is definitely a trail we are going to hit up some more.

Khoa comes into the clearing

Part IV, some lessons learned and miscellaneous pictures that weren’t on the other posts.

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The morning trails were not what we were expecting when we decided to come up and do the lift-assisted riding. At least it was not what 3 of us were expecting. The two who had driven up for the morning are definitely on a different level of riding then us and prefer different types of riding… which is another lesson learned and one that will be examined in the last part of this series.

Trail leading up to Grand View point

During a subdued lunch, the three of us reviewed our morning. We especially were downtrodden when we recalled how little riding we did compared to how much walking we did. For all the walking I did, I even received a little prize in the form of a cut & bruised knee. Tim, the resourceful one, decided to change our course for the afternoon and took things into his own hand by walking up to a random gal riding a nice Specialized Safire and engaging her in conversation.

Tim resting at Grand View Point

After chatting up the gal, we find out that she is a local. Even better is that this gal, Deb, volunteers to lead us to the much sought after but not found XC style trails. Deb, and her husband John, whom she rounds up and explains the plan to, then proceed to spend the rest of the afternoon with us as we hit Pirate, Fern, Pineknot, Grand View and other linking trails. It got so good that we took very few pictures! As bad as the morning was for us was how good the afternoon turned out to be.

Khoa posing at Grand View Point

Singletrack, XC style

The afternoon was spent riding many, many miles of fast, swoopy, singletrack trails with a little bit of technical challenging sections that also happened to be accomplish-able. These XC style trails were fun in so many ways and were the exact trails the three of us, who had spent the night, were looking for and expecting. Riding the singletrack we darted among the trees, going up a little but down a lot, launching off of small rocks, using body english, ripping it all… sweet XC riding. After just riding one short section of trails with Deb & John we knew we had found a couple with penchant for the trails we liked. Even better was that I knew I could take off my elbow & knee armor.

John, leading us back to the bikes after our break. John, who was fighting a little cough, was still WAY faster then any of us out there.

By the way, Deb & John, who have kids that are just a couple years younger than us, are FAST out there on the trail. John led the majority of the time while the rest of us played catch up, without ever catching up. Familiarity always makes you faster on a trail but John wasn’t fast due to familiarity, he was fast because he was fast. Deb was skilled as well taking on pretty much everything the trail threw at her with aplomb. But not only were Deb & John fast and skilled, they were also great ambassadors of mountain biking. Deb, towards the end of the ride, said that she didn’t want us riders to head out of Big Bear thinking that the trails sucked when there were actually great trails to ride that fit our style. How cool is that?

We’ll be riding down there tomorrow on SART

Part III coming tomorrow as we ride part of what is widely considered to be one of the top trails in Southern California, the Santa Ana River Trail aka SART.

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Cabin sweet Cabin

This past weekend three of us went up to the local mountains for one day doing lift-assisted riding and the second day riding the Santa Ana River Trail (SART). We drove up on a Friday night and stayed at a cabin that had a front porch with full view of the lift we would be riding up on the next day. The bikes got a great spot in the kitchen. Every time I glanced at the bikes that first night I smiled. It’s just one of those things that bikes do to you.

The slopes & lift could be seen from our cabin porch!

Things had changed over the years in our local mountains. Just a few years ago the local mountain lift, Snow Summit, allowed you to bomb down the ski slopes with huge downhill/freeride bikes. But as the years have gone by, the local mountains have banned downhill/freeride bikes as well as riding down the slopes. In the meantime, great XC style & downhill trails developed as alternatives to the straight downhill slopes used by the winter skiers and snowboarders. The only difficulty? The XC and downhill trails are not marked, not on the trail and not on the map.

First ride up to the top: Khoa, Jeremy & JJ

We met up with two other friends when we got to the lifts. The other two guys decided to only join us for one day of riding… the wusses. j/k. 3 of us had never ridden the lifts before. 1 guy had but it was years ago and he spent most of that time on the now forbidden slopes. The last guy did the same lift-assisted riding last summer, so at least it wasn’t totally blind leading the blind. But still, we basically guessed wrong the whole morning.

A paragraph ago I mentioned that there were XC style & downhill trails? Well, all morning, except for maybe a short 1 mile section, we rode downhill style trails. “Rode” may be too generous a term here as you’ll see in the pictures below I did very little “riding” and lot more walking. And as always, the camera never makes the trails look as steep as they actually are.

Jeremy walking

Jeremy walking… some more

Jeremy walking… even more

OK, just so you know it wasn’t just me… Jeremy, Tim & JJ walking

Some random pictures:

Gotta love them lifts

The great thing about walking our bikes is that we get to see things we don’t normally see, like this caterpillar that Tim picked up. Tim nicknamed him the dinosaur caterpillar due to the horns and weird tail.

RL, you like the caterpillar?

Justin hitting the log jump

Justin, adding some flair to the jump

JJ, grinning like a mad man

Justin riding a log, no sweat

Redline Mono 9 & Trek 9.0 ready to hit the trails

Well utilized Honda Ridgeline

Part II, a HUGE lesson learned as things get much better.

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Don’t be stupid and pet mountain lion cubs…

PORTOLA HILLS, Calif. (KABC) — A hiker was injured by a mountain lion after allegedly petting one of three cubs near Portola Hills in Orange County.

It happened when the hiker was out for a walk and came across three mountain lion cubs. Allegedly, even though the man knew the mother mountain lion was nearby, he pet one of the cubs. That’s when the mountain lion lunged at the man and scratched him.

For the rest of the story click here.

And from what I hear, they’ve closed down Whiting Ranch to complete the search for the cougar.

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Priscilla and I were up late talking about the video I posted with the Vholdr. I was explaining to her that as a beginner, parts of Rockit and Lynx I was terrified. I had only really been mountain biking less than a year when we headed out to this trail and all I could remember was, I was scared. Much like this kid…

On Lynx(the last part of the video), I remember being the 3rd person in a line of riders. Somehow I got stuck in between some of the faster riders of our group. The group we were with were all decked out with expensive bikes and gear, while here I was along with a few of my buddies, including Moe had lower end bikes (except Moe-thus the Bling Bling name). Anyhow, as we’re rolling down the trail, my hands are burning from all the vibration and the death grip I had on my brakes. My legs were on fire too! I had a hard tail and I kept using my legs to absorb the punishment of the trail. About mid way through the trail, I lost all strength in my arms and legs. I remember just feeling like I just kinda let things go. You see I couldn’t pull of to the side since there really isn’t much room for me to do that and there was another guy right behind me…about 3 feet away.

At one point, I decided to let go of my brakes and sat down on my saddle. All I knew was, if I follow the guy in front of me, I’ll be ok. This gave my hands and arms to rest a bit. It felt like this trail went on forever, it actually does. Well not really, I read that Lynx is a mile long, so for a newbie going down hill, that is forever.

Once we got down, everybody in our group was hooting and hollering, and honestly I wasn’t sure if I really liked mountain biking at that point. I thought it was way too hard and dangerous.

When Priscilla heard me last night talking about these things, she was shocked. She’s always thought that I’ve always been riding the way I ride, I’m not a climber, but I’m a bomber. So when I told her I was scared, and was on the fence about mountain biking when I first started, she was actually pretty relieved to know that she isn’t the only one that sometimes feels that way when it comes to technical sections of the trail.

I think throughout the years, I’ve gained some skills that I was only able to learn from other riders that were better than me. I have to give credit to my buddy Scott Finch for most of that. He’s the one that essentially got me into mountain biking and has helped me with my bike handling. Oh and videos such as New World Disorder, Kranked, The Collective and of course ROAM has helped since I have seen those videos a million times.

So what’s the moral of the story? Well its simple really, its ok to be scared, ride with people that are better than you, it helps you understand how to handle your bike and the terrain. Oh one more thing, if you’re going down a technical section, don’t go too slow. You’ll crash. Just roll through it.

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The sign to Rolling M Ranch was obscured by weeds. A foreshadowing of the actual trail

3 of us woke up early on Saturday morning to ride some trails that I was unfamiliar with at Chino Hills State Park. CHSP stretches east to west from the City of Chino Hills to Brea. I ride in from the Brea side and seldomly ever tackle the Chino Hills side. By the way, if “Chino Hills” sounds familiar, it’s because the earthquake the struck California last week had its epicenter in Chino Hills. Banking on the fact that major earthquakes seldom hit the same location twice, we hit the new to me trail.

The funny thing about riding a new, to me, trail is that I am always more tired than I should be. I don’t know if its the unfamiliarity of the trail but I always seem to do much better the second time on the same trail. For example the first time I rode the Fullerton Loop, I was about ready to puke at about 4 mile. It was so bad that I seriously contemplated making the “call of shame” home to my wife to have her pick me up. The 2nd time, on the same trail though, I did much better. I was able to get through the whole ride without contemplating the call of shame.

This past Saturday’s ride had a little of the “more tired than I should be” in it. After a couple of climbs, I felt like I was really pushing myself and I felt that we had covered a lot more distance than we actually had covered. When my buddy Randall mentioned that we had only covered three miles I just about gasped. Just 3 miles? I thought for sure we had done up near 15 or 17 miles or so, but after Randall rechecked his bike computer he confirmed that yup, it was only three miles. Ugh.

Even though it was only a little past 8, the sun was already blazing.

The rest of the ride was relatively uneventful. We saw a downed tree on the trail that might have been caused by the earthquake. We picked some WAY overgrown singletrack to plow through. At times, I could not see more than 10 feet in front of me. For the pictures below, I I rode ahead about 25 feet stopped to take pictures and couldn’t locate my buddies behind me. They were totally obscured by the overgrowth. Fun times indeed.

There is some singletrack down there somewhere.

Still searching for the singletrack

No worries, though. We all made it out performing multiple tick checks along the way to make sure none of those critters burrowed into our skin. ick. We’ll be back to this side of CHSP but hopefully after some trail work has been down to cut back the overgrowth.

Quick break for a tick check then back to the trail

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Back at Sea Otter 2008 our good buddy Steve Richey from Promologic gave Moe the first ever ride on the Pronghorn PR6.

Pronghorn PR6 on the Sea Otter Demo Track

Moe enjoyed the short ride immensely and it seems, so did Bike Magic which had many praises for the Pronghorn. They have a more extensive review of the “quirky” looking Pronghorn. Here is just a bit of what they had to say:

Most bikes present some sort of first impression when you get on them. The PR6 goes with “fast”. Although the cockpit didn’t arrive with a particularly extreme setup, it’s still quite a forward-set position. It works a treat, though, and the frame isn’t so long that you can’t readily get your weight back should you need to.

Although the Pronghorn as tested wasn’t crazy-light, it still fair flew up hills. That’s thanks to the efficient riding position, taut suspension feel and fast-rolling tyres. It’s one of those bikes that manages to make you wish for flat bars and bar ends so you can get even more power down, and they’re a fairly rare breed. Tempting though the easy-access lockout lever is, we didn’t feel the need to reach for it.

Click here for the review by Bike Magic.

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