Sol Vista

I went to Sol Vista on Friday with Jeremy and met up with CT and some other buddies. It was a great day of riding, no one was there because of the race at Crested Butte. Intense was there doing bike demos, so I took a few runs on their new 951 and an Uzzi. The 951 felt pretty crappy due to soft rear shock and stiff fork, terrible combination, not to mention the less than stellar Kenda tires on it. I wasn't impressed, but that was hardly the conditions to be evaluating a bike frame, but none the less, pretty lame of intense to not have any other setups available. But it was cool to get a few runs on someone else's bike. The Uzzi was a ripper. I felt like the bike was WAY faster than I was, it was ripping the berms and floating the doubles. Definitely a fun bike.

Me on the 951.
Jeremy on the 951, he said he didn't really like the suspension either, but he really liked the bike.

Here is what not to do...misload the bike rack and cause the chairs to stop and damage your bike and the one next to you.

CT on the ski jump.

Jeremy on Ski Jump.

Same dude that misloaded bailing on Ski Jump. (He is getting famous here.)

CT.

Jeremy.

Finally, had a chance to hit the jumps on Cougar, they were always there under the lift but I never made it there til Friday and CT helped me through them. Here is Jeremy on Stiletto.

Me.

CT, setting it down smooth.

Jeremy on Edgar.

Me on same.

CT, making the long double into left berm look so easy, but I still haven't sucked it up yet and tried it. Maybe when Loo and Ziska are here provoking me.

Jeremy clearing the table at bottom.

Shock Rebuild

I sent my 5th Element Shock off yesterday to get rebuilt and remove the SPV for a shim mod.

http://www.thebrokenbike.com/progressive_fifth_coil_rebuild.html

His sister site is pretty good too...

http://www.mtbshock.com/shock_info.html

...but still under some construction.

Pics of me

Well, I guess I need to hand off my camera more or get Pam to actually send me some of her pics that she takes. Everyone mentions it, I finally really saw it when I went back to look at my blog, there are not many pics of me in it all. But, I guess everyone reading this already knows what I look like and can figure that I am doing pretty much the same as everybody else in the pictures, except for crashing, I do it even more!

Laramie, WY

At the beginning of June, me and Pam headed up to Laramie for some biking and some skiing. We went to Curt Gowdey Park which built about 25 miles of new single track since I went to school there. The trails were all pretty fun and flowy and a few of them were pretty technical. The best of these for me was riding EL Alto counter-clockwise. There plenty of huge rock slabs to ride on as well.

Trying to ride one handed and take pictures, like I have seen Wayne do. Not a good idea when things get technical, but I managed to survive.

They even put cows on the trail for us to ride through, but they do leave a few obstacles behind. Pam yelled at me for chasing them so I had to turn around and leave them alone.

The corner assist.

Waterfalls.

The western way of keeping 29ers on the trail and from making go-arounds.

Wyoming Vultures.

Sweet car on the side of the road on the way to Christie's.

The next day we headed up to the Snowys and hiked on Meadicine Bow Peak. There were some crazy snowmobilers high marking on Old Main, which is pretty steep and they were up pretty high.

Then we got some hail on our way up.

We did two runs, one we had to hike the rocks a bit, the other was straight up the face in the snow.

Pam is in this picture hiking but hard to see, center leftish.

We were able to ski all the way back to the car which is on the road at the top of the picture below, but we had to do a lot of zigging and zagging and a few small climbs to stay on the snow.

The exit lead us thru a few bushy sections, but it was better than hiking out.

Super fun trip. I always look forward to these in Wyoming at the start of summer.

DH XC

I have been wanting to put Pam on a DH bike for a while now. I finally gave up looking for a good frame for here and decided to save some $$, so I built up my ASX for her. The frame might be a bit big for her, but the price was right. I put the Fox 40 on it with the light spring, ordered a new 350# for the rear and sent the 5th element out to get a rebuild, they are going to take out the SPV and put in a custom shim stack. Should be back next week, and get to test it all out. But before I sent it out, I took Pam out for a XC ride on it, one where I rode it up and she rode it down. Pretty fair right. I found it super fun on the downhill when I rode it. A super plush 7" fork for XC makes the rough stuff real nice. I felt like the pros look in the DH races, no brakes, just jump in the rock piles and let the fork do its work. I later put the fork into the 8" position, but it wasn't nearly as good for the XC stuff.

We also to it up to Sol Vista for a day of DH. At first she thought it felt funny and wanted to ride my Morewood, which she thought felt better. Then after a few runs she switched back to the ASX and thought they both felt similar and it was all in her head. I found that 8" of super soft fork isn't so good for me off the lips on the jumps. It would compress too much and pitch me funny into the air. We had a good day and she is looking for more DH when the shock comes back.

Pam with ASX at Three Sisters.
My favorite part of the ride, when I was on the ASX I came into a turn way too hot and started a two wheel drift, to a front wheel skid, to a rear wheel hop to washout with a foot down. I thought it was so fun I had to take a picture of my track.

Weekend Ride

Saturday we went down to Mt. Herman, between Denver and Colorado Springs. It was a great sunny day with cool temperatures, the trails were all pretty flowy with only moderate climbs for the most part. Deb and Pat and their friend Frenchie from the Springs, Jay and his son Nick, Me and Pam. Frenchie rode my Blur, so I got to ride 2.5 hours on my ASX with my Fox 40 on it. It made the downhills fun, but a little extra work on everything else, but it was still a great time.
Since they let me lead and I didn't know where we were going, I was sure to lead them up a few good hills.

Push, push.

But it all lead to several good twisty rocky downhills.
Deb and Pat.

Nick.

Pam and some dude going thin on top.

Deb and Pat.

Frenchie, I don't think I can pronounce his name right and for sure I can't spell it. He is here from the French Air Force for a few months working with Deb.

Supa Star.