So back in December I bought myself a new bike for my birthday, a 2010 Trek Fuel EX8. I figured I would try out mountain biking as it seemed fun. I ended up getting way more addicted then I planned and have turned it into a full time hobby over the last 9 months. With as much riding as I’ve been doing, I’ve broken some parts and upgraded, as well as just having “shiny new thing” syndrome on others. I finally broke the frame on the last ride of my recent Colorado trip. I got real lucky in that I found a new carbon EX9.9 frame for sale and jumped all over it. I built up this new bike with the mix of parts there were on my EX8, and it turned out perfect. The bike rides great, and has a pretty bombproof component set on it.
Archive for the ‘All’ Category
New Bike (sort of) Pictures
Monday, August 30th, 2010
Colorado Trip
Monday, August 30th, 2010I had a ridiculously awesome vacation/visit to Colorado. Lots of good times were had, and we did a little bit of everything. Camping, hiking, biking, drinking awesome beer, hanging out, etc. We started with a camping and 4 wheeling in Arapaho National forest. Hiked an awesome trail to Echo Lake. Cat *almost* got the Jeep stuck on a gravel road on the side of a mountain, but she got out of it with some sweet left foot braking and lots of throttle. We then followed this up with a visit to Rocky Mountain national forest and some more hiking/camping. Drove Trail Ridge road and visited Estes Park also.
Spent some time in Fort Collins after that. During the “work day” I did a bunch of awesome mountain biking around that area. Hit up Hall Ranch in Lyons, CO, which was pretty much the best bike trail I’ve ever done. Also did some local trails around Lory State Park. At night, we hung out around Fort Collins. Went to my first “bike in” at New Belgium brewery.
We then headed out to Crested Butte and Gunnison National Forest. Did some camping the first night and then settled in at Cristina’s Guesthaus in Crested Butte. Had a great hike to Maroon Pass, halfway to Aspen and saw some amazing views. Also did some epic mountain biking around Crested Butte including 401 Trail and Deer Creek. I can’t wait to go back 
Spend the rest of the vacation around Fort Collins. Broke my bike just a few days before I was leaving, so filled the rest of the time with a cool trail run and some great times around the town.
I took a ton of pictures and rather then my usual “pick out the best 10 or so” I figured I would post all of them.
4th of July fireworks
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010The parents were in town for the holiday weekend, and we decided to shoot off some of our own fireworks instead of going to one of the shows. Only 1 neighbor complained, so I feel that it was a success Got a couple of good shots, one of which I really like. I need to start doing more photography again! I haven’t touched the 40D in almost 6 months.
Dupont State Forest MTB Ride
Monday, April 26th, 2010Was heading up to VIR this past weekend, and on the way there I decided to do a stop just south of Asheville to hit the finest MTB that NC had to offer. After looking through some connect.garming.com logs from other riders, Dupont State Forest seemed to be the winner. I fired up a 28 mile ride onto my Garmin 705 and got going. Thursday night I camped out in the truck at the trailhead and got going early Friday AM.
The Garmin was an absolute awesome tool. I didn’t have to worry about getting lost in any way and any time I hit a fork in the trail, I just looked down at the map and went the right way. Awesome purchase, and I would highly recommend one to anyone doing any “unfamiliar” riding.
The ride that I ended up picking out was also awesome. Started off with some fire roads and rode next to some waterfalls. Then after some single and doubletrack climbing, had a long climb up to hard rock trail. This is Moab style riding on just rock. The uphill was difficult as it was hard singletrack, but the downhill was AMAZING. There was a bunch more awesome singletrack with super rocky descents and some of the most technical downhill stuff I’ve done including a challenging section that had a couple of trees down in the middle of rocks that I tried to go “under” and got my camback snagged on a tree. The ride ended with some very flowy downhill and jumps straight into the parking lot.
If you are in this area, I would very much recommend this ride! Here is the link to Garmin Connect http://connect.garmin.com/activity/31413904
Working on the race car again, finally
Monday, April 5th, 2010So after almost 5 months off from race cars, its time to get back into the swing of things. I decided to take the beginning part of the year completely off and then also have a light racing season. I’ve been slacking a bit on getting a roommate so the racing budget is going to be a tad tight this year. I also didn’t want to get out on track with the same setup I had last year, as I wanted to improve some things. I guess I could have run more events as is, but I don’t think I would have been happy and would have been less safe. I’ll be doing the May 9/10th weekend at VIR, July 17/18th at Road Atlanta, September 4/5th at Barber and the ARRC at Road Atlanta. Depending on what happens with the budget, I’ll add August 1/2/3rd at Mid Ohio, August 7/8th at Daytona and October 9/10th at Roebling, but those 3 are “if’s” at this point.
Having said that, there are a few things getting upgraded for this year. After much much much deliberation I decided to go with the final drive. I think the $$ outlay will be worth it. Definitely at tracks like Mid Ohio, CMP, VIR and Barber, and also hopefully Road Atlanta. If/when I go back to Daytona I’ll have to run a 225/50/15 on the front to not run out of gear, and I might be a tad worse off at Roebling, but I’ll take that trade off. I also got a new ASR rear swaybar. The 1″ solid bar I have now isn’t cutting it anymore, so putting a 1.25″ NASCAR style bar on the car. The softest setting on this bar is stiffer then the stiffest setting on my old bar, so I’m just going to slap it on the car and hold on. Also doing some things for power such as a crank scraper, thermal intake gasket, and also getting my header collector reworked. You can see in the pictures my “exhaust leak” and how bad it was. I bet that was mucking with things in the exhaust flow. Lastly, after watching a Porsche 944 on fire at Daytona last year, a fire system is ready to go in as well.
Along with those upgrades, I also did some off season maintenance. Wheel bearings, ball joints, fresh calipers, and a rebuild of my leaky power steering pump. I also noticed today that my front brake pad seperated from the backing plate, so that’s also on the list to swap out before my first race at VIR on May 9th/10th.
