MtnBikeRiders.com

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

San Juan Trail… We started at the bottom of the valley

Dan & I headed out to San Juan this past Saturday for some riding. Dan was on his new Niner SIR9. I was on my Voodoo Canzo 29. The ride was cool, but not cold for the most part.

Our version of San Juan on Saturday was a 12 mile out and back. 6 miles up, followed by 6 miles back down. The ride was pretty good but we did encounter a couple of mechanicals issues with my bike that had me tentative on the ride back to the car.

Dan really likes his SIR9. I swung a leg on it and the engagement is sick and the steel is smooooooth

After the first set of switchbacks, I was noticing that whenever I coasted, my rear hub was not spinning very smoothly. After I would coast, I would begin turning the cranks again and I found that I would have to spin the crank almost a full turn before the chain would engage the hub again. Being on the bike and not able to really see whats going on, I first thought that it might be a derailleur issue, then guessed the chain. Little would I know that it was a hub problem.

About a 1/4 mile away from the turn around point, my rear tire burped out all its air. Weird as I had just aired it up to my preferred tire pressure before leaving the car. As I was pulling the wheel off the tire, whaddya know, the hub and the alloy cassette barrel (Hope’s terminology) separated. That doesn’t seem right.

On the right, my cassette on the alloy cassette barrel. The inner most circle is a broken spindle which is supposed to remain with the hub, not come off like this

Dan and I quickly finish tubing the tire and proceed to fit the wheel back in place between the dropouts. Surprisingly, the wheel held all the way back down to the car! In fact, the hub was even coasting in the correct manner, it was quite amazing. I did avoid any jumps and took it easy for the most part though.

The Voodoo got me back down to the car in one piece with a rear hub issue and all

My local bike shop got a chance to look at the hub today and called me to let me know that the axle broke. Hope calls it a spindle. $13 shipped. Not too shabby. I’ll be back on the Voodoo by week’s end.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

On Sunday Jan 3rd, Tony, Kim and I from the Mtnbikeriders team along with a bunch of friends headed out to shuttle the San Juan Trail because Tony is allergic to pedaling up-hill.

Not really, Tony actually wants to ride up, but I always say I’d rather shuttle it twice than ride up and down!
The San Juan trail is one of the highlights of So Cal mountain biking and a key feature of the Clevland National Forest. The trail has a ton of fast singletrack, a little bit of exposure, rocky sections and just about everything you could want in a trail ride.

It’s a great trail for a 5″ trail bike or a 6″ all mountain bike. Check out the map on Geoladders. Also to add a few more miles of pedaling, we add in the Viejo tie, which is the upper loop on this Geoladder map.

I brought along the Vholdr Contour HD 1080p helmet camera and it was pretty awesome! I recorded with the settings at 720p and 60 frames per second.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

AV Dan hitting the turn at San Juan

Got out for a lollipop ride this weekend at San Juan. It’s a lollipop because that’s what the trail map would look like: 6 mile climb, loop at the top, back down the same way you came up. –O.

San Juan is definitely becoming one of my favorite trails. This past Saturday’s weather was excellent. Little cool to start which worked well with those infamous switchbacks, then warmed up just a tad, but never got hot. In fact the sun was blocked off by the clouds for the most part which made for a great, comfortable ride. On the way down, there was some slight drizzle which cooled us off even more but didn’t even last long enough to warrant wiping the sunglasses.

A brief respite before heading down some more singletrack

This marked a couple of firsts for me on the San Juan trail. The first time I did the loop after Cocktail rock, the first time I rode SJ while not sick and the first time I rode SJ without eating it. San Juan is really not an extremely techy trail. It’s just that after riding for a few hours, I usually get extremely tired and lose focus/concentration on the 40+ minute downhill ride back to the car. When I lose my focus is usually when body meets dirt.

Me on the Jet9. I’ve got to learn to stop staring at my front tire!

The riding group consisted of me, Tim Scissors, Marky Mark and AV Dan. We all brought our full suspension bikes to the party including my Niner Jet9 which did not disappoint. It definitely contributed to not eating it on this ride. San Juan was a blast and that back loop section had some great short techy climbs and rutted descents that are definitely calling us to come back and do it again.

Dan’s one-finger braking always cracks me up

Popularity: 3% [?]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Our bikes atop Cocktail Rock

A few friends and I went out to San Juan this past weekend to hit the out and back trail. I was and am still nursing a cough and sore throat, but since I really enjoy riding San Juan, I decided to go against my body, mind and wife and ride anyway. This was a bad choice as my ride ended up being a sufferfest for me.

Needed lots of fluids during the hot morning ride

San Juan is basically a 6 + mile out and back. If you have the time/legs, you can throw in an extra 4 mile loop at the top, but we didn’t have the legs this time around. The 6 mile climb was pretty bad the first time I rode it, but this time it took nearly double the time mainly even with the Kona Hei Hei’s granny gear. The sickness left me gasping for air for most of the climb and there was a good 4 miles stretch where I was unable to focus …. even when I was telling myself to focus. I was lightheaded and ready to quit but thankfully my friends kept encouraging me and we made it to the turnaround point in one piece.

Narrow trail + exposed rocks = lots of fun

Too bad, nearly all of us left a little some skin on the trail on the way back down. What is normally a challenging but fun downhill became a myriad of falls for 3 of the 4 of us. It was on this extended downhill section that I decided to test my Sette Strike elbow and knee/shin pads by overshooting an exposed turn and falling off the edge of the trail. I went down a good 10 – 15 feet before friction stopped me and the bike. I decided that since I was performing a review on the pads, I might as well throw in a test of my camelbak’s durability as well. I did this by flipping over mid crash and landing on the camelbak (subsequently, my digital slr).

Any shade we could find, we hid under

The results of the test are that my digital slr is still ok… the padding I put around it did its job… I’ll post a picture of the padding to show you what I do. The Sette Strike pads are continuing to do a great job protecting me from damage. I am SO glad I brought them along. They are totally worth the small monetary investment. Click here for info on the elbow guards and here for info on the knee/shin guards.

Kona Hei Hei climbing the 6 mile switchback

Popularity: 3% [?]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I’ve got a couple of quick impressions on some items I’m testing. Each one has been on the test bike for about a little over a month and I’ve been able to put in a lot of rides on them since there has been excellent weather here in Southern California.

eXotic Carbon 29er fork, light, stiff & strong

The first item I’m testing is the eXotic Carbon Rigid 29er fork. The bike I’m testing the carbon fork on originally came with a nice steel fork. I’ll always be thankful for that steel fork because it really turned me on to riding rigid, so much so that I did not want to go away from it to ride a squishy up front.

Now that I’m back on the rigid my love for riding rigid has returned. Not only that but because its carbon, the front end is now so much lighter and trail chatter has been reduced. I took it out to San Juan trail and had a great time riding it both up and down the singletrack. I enjoyed the climbs because the carbon fork dropped about 2 lbs off the bike and I could definitely feel the reduced weight at times. As we were resting at the top, I did think it’d be a sufferfest back to the car. Although I did suffer a little the precision & predictability of the fork more then made up for it.

twenty6 dualie levers, very purty, very effective

I’m also testing out a set of dualie levers from twenty6. These are fitted to my Juicy 7’s and they’ve been great over this first month’s testing period. I originally swapped out just one of them so I could compare the difference between the stock Avid lever and the dualie lever. After a few weeks I swapped out the second lever to make things feel the same for me because there is a difference.

I’ve even had a chance to do a crash test with this lever and they not only survived they still look great. I really appreciate that the brakes grab earlier in the lever’s pull and due to the shape, they don’t end up squeezing my fingers when I’m braking hard. With the stock levers I’ll occasionally brake so hard that I have to go from one finger to two finger braking otherwise Mr. Tall would get pinched underneath the lever. With the twenty6 levers I don’t have this problem. One finger braking, which I prefer to do, works fine.

I’ll be putting some more time on both the fork and the levers before I write up a final review. Keep checking back in for more.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Bookmark It

Hide Sites