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For the past month or so, my daughter and I have been riding our tandem. You may have seen this machine used in a previous mountain bike race that Cousin Joe and I participated in back in the fall of 2010. It actually took quite a bit of convincing and bribery to get my daughter to agree to ride the tandem on dirt. At first she said she’ll only try it if we were on the streets. Then one day I asked her if she’d like to ride parts of the Fullerton Loop. To my surprise she said yes. But our agreed first time out didn’t happen due to the rain. She then kept asking me for days about riding once the rain had cleared up.

So now we’re in the month of May, we had actually been riding tandem since April. Our adventures have included other trails like Aliso Woods and Whiting Ranch. Both of those places can be challenging on a regular mountain bike, even more so with a tandem. Aleah actually learned pretty quick on how to handle the tandem. I call out commands and she responds. For example, if I say BUMP, that means I stop pedaling and she gets off the saddle and tries to get behind it as far as she can with her elbows out. PEDAL means, she sits back down to pedal. PUSH means to work hard especially up a tough climb.

Now that you know all about how our tandem adventures got started and how it works, let me explain how I’ve used it as a training tool for an upcoming downhill race. For the past month or so, I’ve rarely ridden my regular mountain bike for any riding. I’ve spent almost every weekend as well as our week day ride on the tandem. Heck my daughter and I even rode the Ride of Silence just the other night on the tandem. What I love about riding the tandem, well for one, I get to spend time with my daughter. 2, I get to become a stronger rider because of the added weight of a Stoker and the bigger bike.

Aleah loves to ride the tandem, in fact its what she looks forward to on the weekends and during the week. My bike handling skills have actually gotten better. Having to balance the two of us and maneuver through some tough trails can become a major work out. As I am typing this, I can feel my upper body’s soreness about to set in from the ride we finished a few hours ago.

My hope is that when it comes to race time, my legs and lungs are stronger this time around because of all the tandem time that I’ve experienced.

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A little picture post just because. This is from my afternoon ride at the Fullerton Loop. I have been riding the Famous Fully Loop for many years and there are still days when I am just in awe of spring’s beauty!

Ok…well if you can just look past the smog…it’s really nice out there!
Spring is definitely my favorite time of year to ride! Hope you get the chance to get out and ride today!

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I always find the first ride for a new mountain biker to be a bit of a conundrum: the trail I choose has to be easy enough for the newb but hard enough to be a challenge mentally and physically. Too easy for the newbie and the rider loses interest. Too hard and the newbie never comes back. WAY too hard and the newbie warns other potential newbs to not even try it. It is always a fine line determining which trail will illicit the right response, that being: I want to mountain bike again!

What I have figured out, through trial and error, is that the Fullerton Loop is not a good trail for the first timer. Over the past year I have taken two friends new to mountain biking to the loop as their first excursion on dirt and well, they have not ridden a mountain bike since then. Aerobically, they are both in good shape. The first enjoys half marathons and the second hits the gym and the basketball courts on a regular basis. They were challenged physically which is always a goal. Mentally though, the descents on the Fullerton Loop, intimidated them to the point of no return.

Personally, I think you should feel like puking on your first mountain bike ride

On my first mountain bike ride I went out on the Fullerton loop solo (no mountain biking friends when I started out) with little more than a print out of directions from the website efgh.com, thanks Mr. Erdelsky. I remember being tentative on the downhills but I did not find them to be overwhelming. I was never scared for my life but I did find myself gasping for air after just four miles. This assessment of my first ride has influenced my decision to bring new riders to the loop. My thought process is that if the newb is in decent shape they should be fine on the loop. However, I vastly underestimated the lasting mental effects of getting scared out of your mind on the loop’s descents.

OK, so after thinking about these issues for a while, I decided to take my friend Adam, new to mountain biking, on the most tame trail I could conceive of while still barely being a “mountain biking” trail. Telegraph Canyon in Chino Hills State Park is very mellow, so much that I have hiked a good portion of it with my 3 year old son. Adam and I met up with a couple of roadies posing as mountain bikers: Leo and Leo’s friend (yes, I suck with names) and we took the 12 mile out and back at a very newbie friendly pace. Adam even made it all the way to the turn around point and only once felt as if he wanted to hurl. Pretty good, huh?

Whats even better is that Adam is ready to hit the loop now. He said so both verbally right after the ride and in an email sent a few weeks later. He is waiting for his new helmet to arrive via brown Santa and we’ll be tackling the Fullerton loop next. Success!

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A few months ago The Moe took a dive during a DH practice run at Fontana. He took a jump, landed but his bike bucked him off and OTB he went. Little did he know that his fall actually resulted in a REALLY messed up shoulder. He knew it hurt but he didn’t know the extent of the injury since he kept DH racing. Months later the pain got to The Moe. He finally went in and the doctor said that he tore his labral or something like that. That meant surgery, a few screws and orders that he stay off the bike for months.

Well its been a long few months and the Doc gave him the ok to start riding again. When The Moe told me that he wanted to ride the Fullerton Loop, I assembled a Welcome Back Ride with a few Trail Thugs to help him ease back into the joy of riding.

The Moe

Randall Robinson. He has a nick name of “Full Squish.” But that was sooo 2008. I’m assigning him a new name. Randall “Radical” Robinson.

Priscilla “hawtness” Policar

The Dr. is in! Gabe “Dr. Thunda” Preda

I actually forgot his name, so for now, his name is “This Guy.”

Cameron “Mac” McMackin. That’s one cool last name! Can you imagine all the ways you can use that? “McLovin’”, “MacDaddy”, “Daddy Mac”, “Snackin On Da Mackin”, “Mac Attack”, “Mac Mac”…the possibilities are endless.

Andrew “GoGo” Gomez

The Moe felt pretty good during the ride. Though there were times he had to walk some of the hills, he was back in his groove on the descents.

Have you ever heard of that saying, “your bike will go where you’re looking?” Well sure enough, The Moe was trying to avoid the mud pit and look where he ended up.

hmm…I guess 29ers don’t really roll over everything.

By the end of it all, we had an awesome time. No injuries, no mechanicals, just pure fun. We’re glad to see The Moe Back on the trails. Who knows, you may see him at the next DH Race.

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For the past few years, we’ve been hosting an annual New Year’s Day Ride at the Fullerton Loop. We usually keep the pace at a very mild and easy tone in which we’ve dubbed it a “relaxed vibe.” We keep it mellow to be sensitive to the party goers from the night before.

Earlier this week I announced that we were having our ride through our Facebook Fan Page and through my weekend ride mailing list. This ride in particular is the hardest to get rsvp’s for. Not too many people want to wake up early to go riding. However, this year we started at 9am, which allowed riders to get some coffee to wake up from their hangovers.

At one point, we had about 11 riders in our group. Some of the folks with us just happen to tag along since they needed a tour guide. Being Filipino, it is in my blood to eat dogs and to bring a camera every where I go. Today was no exception, however, the Asian food store ran out of dog meat…but I did bring the camera today and took some pics of our ride.

The first climb of the Loop seems to always get a few people to dismount. It’s short and steep, and on some days its even sandy. But since we had some rain a few days ago, the ground was in perfect condition.

From left to right, Cameron, Andrew,Mike, Khoa(center),Priscilla, Robert and The Thunda (Gabe).

Towards the end of our ride, we came across this memorial. There was death a few weeks back of a young man who was found in the stream after a few days of hard rain. Pretty sad.

Weird thing was, there was another death at the Loop just this morning. As we were riding through the rail road tracks, Fullerton PD just started taking down the Police yellow tape. Word has it, there was an 18 year old male found dead on the tracks…creepy.

Khoa hasn’t been on the bike since the day light savings time change. He’s been focused entirely on snow boarding, so seeing him on the trail was pretty cool. He won’t admit it, but I think he likes biking better the boarding.

Cameron and Priscilla

Gabe was yelling at me, “I can’t believe its not butter!”

Here’s Mike before. I say before because he had a bit of an accident at the very end of the ride. He went OTB, got hurt pretty bad. Priscilla and I had to rush him to the ER. Turns out he had what they call a AC Separation. Kinda odd to see because part of his collar bone was protruding. But it wasn’t broken or anything. The good news, no surgery needed. They drugged up Mike with some heavy narcotics and was picked up by his family to rest at home. Get well soon Mike!

Before all that happened with Mike, we met up with David from Felt Bicycles. He was riding this ultra bad ass beast of a bike. It’s called the Felt Redemption 2, its not quite available in the US, but he let us take turns riding it.

Priscilla, Khoa, Andrew and I took turns riding it. Oh man this thing is amazing. It weighs nearly 40lbs, but it feels like you’re pedaling a XC bike. But the 40mm stanchions clearly gave an indication that this bike was meant for greater things than the Loop. David actually has plans on racing the Winter Series with this bike. I’m sure he’ll do really well, that thing is awesome!

In closing, our annual post party ride was great. The Fullerton Loop may not be the best, and most technical trail out there. But it sure has helped bring on some great memories over the years. For those of you that didn’t make it this year, just make sure you don’t party too hard next new year’s eve so you can make it to the 2011 ride.

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