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Did a ride at Blankets Creek a little north of my house this morning. Was a beautiful day, 30 degrees, nice and sunny, and half the trail was still covered with snow, the other with mud. Here is a video from the GoPro. Gotta fix the angle a bit for next time to show more in front of the bike, and also, gotta get the GoPro HD. Its amazing how spoiled I am in saying “man, this standard definition footage from a camera stuck to the side of my bike, kinda sucks in quality” But it totally does compared to the HD stuff that comes out of the in-car cam.

About 3 weeks ago I went for a cross country ride in the Chattahoochee National Forest along the Pinhoti trail. There was some awesome singletrack and it was a pretty challenging ride. Was great prep for the Snake Creek Gap Time Trial that I did last weekend. I’ll be going back one of the next two weekends to get more training. Zoey had a great time as well and rocked out for all 15 miles. She made fun of me the whole time for going so slow, running up and down the hills as I was pedaling my ass off. I only was able to outpace her on the fireroad descent on the way back to the car. I think her max speed is ~15mph and I was going 20+. Been uploading my rides to garmin connect. Pretty cool tool for mapping rides and especially useful to see how much of a better shape I’m in now. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/21292424

I’ve been wanting a bike repair stand since I’ve gotten more into mountain biking. Makes no sense to send the bike off to the bike shop each time it needs some adjustments done, or even if it needs some more in depth service. The thing that is annoying is that a decent repair stand is $150 or so. Anything cheaper then that, and the clamp is going to suck and its going to be very unstable. Its not that I’m too cheap to spend $150, quite the contrary but its just a few pieces of metal and a clamp, and I’ve been itching to play with my welder anyways.

I got inspiration and the clamp design from Jake Khuon and his DIY repair stand but decided to change the stand part of it, as I have a welder and have been itching to use it. Instead of using a mounting flange and a big piece of wood, I used 2 45 degree bends and a T to make the feet for my stand. Ends up functioning just like the expensive store bought stands. Since everything is screwed together, I needed to make sure the T fitting didn’t rotate with the 45 degree fittings, as that is the main base of my stand. Here is where the welder came in. If you don’t have access to a welder, I bet that gooping JB weld onto the threads and all over that fitting would do the trick as well. I used some old radiator hose I had laying around to make the cushion for the seat post (instead of inner tube like Jake), as well as on the bottom of the stand to cushion it off the floor for stability. All I have left is to spray some flat black paint all over it, but I’ll do that when its sunny and nice outside one weekend.

I practiced some welds on pieces of scrap metal and then got to work on my pipe fittings. The welds came out pretty good. I haven’t bought the gas setup yet, so I was using Flux wire, which usually makes pretty ugly welds, but I was able to get some decent beads layed down. I’m looking forward to getting the gas setup and using the regular wire to get cleaner welds. Then it will be on to project #2 and #3, the fire system install in the race car, and a tire rack for my trailer.

The bike in the pics below is my old one, the new Trek is all packed up in the car ready for its night ride tomorrow, so I didn’t feel like busting it out just to get pics. I didn’t want to have my new $2k bike hanging on the bike rack in the work parking lot, so I took the wheels off and put it in the hatch. I’ll take some later once I get it dirty

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• View the pictures using a Picasa slideshow instead

So I decided to pull the trigger on my new mountain bike. I went to the local bike shop, Free Flite, and demoed the Trek Fuel EX8. It is a real nice bike, and a bit pricey, so I figured I might as well try it out for real before putting my $$ in. Took the demo to Blankets Creek and had some fun. The bike is a whole new ballgame coming from my Giant hardtail. The rear shock absorbs all the imacts, roots, rocks, etc that used to hit my butt. With that, I was way less tired after my normal Dwelling loop. I then got on my hardtail and did another loop just to see what the back to back differences were. I was nowhere near as fast on the Giant and sections I just breezed through in the middle of the rear ring on the Trek, I had to almost use the granny gear to get through. Wow! The brakes on the Trek are also incredible. I always thought the mechanical Avid disks that came on the Giant were awesome, but these Elixir brakes blow them away. There is almost no lever pressure to get them to stop, and the are nice and progressive.

I headed right back to the bike shop and bought my new bike; Got the satin black paint instead of white. I did have the shop install my new SLX crank, as well as the rear cassette as they were both upgrades over what came on the Trek. Might as well use those on the nicer bike instead of on my Giant. After bringing the bike home, I set the shock air pressures, made all the cockpit adjustments and made sure all the bolts were tight.

This morning I headed out for the bike’s maiden voyage at Blankets. I wanted to get some trail miles on it before I headed up to Pinhoti on monday. The brakes needed to get bedded in and I wanted to make sure all the cables were stretched out. Instead of taking it on the Advanced trails, I just did a loop through the Dwelling trail. I wanted to take it easy and rest up for monday. As I figured, everything was perfect and it was a fun, easy ride. http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=429441 Can’t wait for monday!

So as I posted earlier, I’ve really been getting into biking recently. I found some awesome trails around here with miles of rocking singletrack. As my adrenaline rush self has ridden more and more, the natural progression was “I wonder if people around here race these things”. Well, sure as hell the answer is “YES”. Mountain bike racing happens starting in about Feb/March through Aug/Sept. These are 10-20 mile single/double track races. Should be pretty grouling considering that I get pretty tired about a 6-8 mile fast ride, but by the time Feb/March get here, I should be in better shape.

So for over the winter, “Cross Cycle” racing seems to take over. This is bike racing around a 7 or 8 minute lap course for 30 minutes. The catch is the course has some pavement, regular crass, as well as crazy mud or sand crossings, some SERIOUS uphills where you have to carry your bike, and also obstacles over which you can’t ride over. With that, you are getting on and off your bike a few times per lap and carrying it over or up the obstacles. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to try it. Unfortunately there is only 1 race left this year in the Georgia Cyclecross Racing series this year. Fortunately its on Dec 6th and according to some of the forums I’ve read its the “if you attend one cross race a year, attend this one.” I’ve tried one “training session” so far, and it kicked my butt. Did 30 minutes around the neighborhood and varied my terrain from mud to pavement, along with some getting on and off the bike. Whew! http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=424783 We’ll see if I get the balls to go to the race, but I think I’m going to try. I’m just worried about getting there and getting super embarassed as I’m still not in “go hard for 30 minutes” shape. Maybe I should wait?

This coming up weekend though, I’m going to do a little birthday partying, and then after head up to the Pinhoti mountain bike trails. There are 18 miles of great trails up in the mountains and should also be a great area to take Zoey for a great hike. I’ll take my iPhone along and do some GPS mapping as well. We’ll see how much/far I can go