™ Issue #5

SSO Archives

Acorns are like marbles on the trail  //

Wednesday - October 17, 2007

Verbage: Seems fall has arrived here, daytime temps have been mellow with a few spikes in the heat and night time temps are have been downright chilly some days. Still warm enough for shorts and a short sleeve jersey for today's ride, but those early AM rides definitely require a bit more coverage, it can be a 30 degree difference between the wake up temperature and what things wind up when you finish the ride. Been spending a good bit of doing the fixed gear off-road thing lately. Spent Thursday racing around the trails of Schaeffer on the Q-ball 29er with it's fast 1.9" Kenda Karma tires and the tall 34x16 gear. Fast conditions with the desert-like rain (or lack of) we have had here. Sunset is coming early these days, the lights are being mounted up for evening rides, mostly for a back up right now but it's going to be time to be running them full bore soon. Spent the weekend freewheeling on the Kelly 29er. As much fun as the fixed dirt riding is there are times when I just want to let loose on the long downhills and maximize speed. Saturday was a mellow day of tooling around and doing a little GPS work. Sunday some Baltimore boys came up so I could show them the local goods. Great day to ride, covered a lot of ground by doing the Shed south of Hamburg, hooking into the extended portion of yellow in Gambrill, then swinging back to the north and working our way up to Salamander followed by the Upper and Lower Ridge trails. Climb some more hills, rip Death March downhill (so nice to be launching airs instead of dragging tongue climbing that hill), then more climbing (including the second pass of Little Canaan for the day) to get us back to the start. I didn't have any fancy electronic gizmos with me but I'd put mileage at 35+ based on my knowledge. We kept a snappy pace although the legs felt a bit dead through the ride and I didn't feel like I was rolling silky smooth like Barry White. Hope it didn't show too much. No idea why, just some days feel better than others. No matter as it was a fine day to spend several hours in the woods. Don't forget, trail work at Avalon on Saturday. Then a work day coming up on October 28th at the Watershed. Get some good karma going by grabbing a shovel. It's almost a year away, but I just got a note that the America's Single Speed Championship will take place in New Hampshire in September of 2008. Steel is real: Looks like a Vassago Jabberwocky will be finding it's way over here for some testing. More on that as it unfolds. - riderx

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