Author: MTBBill

Anderson Truck Trail Sunday Action

Sunday, I went out to Anderson Truck Trail to do some playing on the rocks. Normally I only ride here during the week, but since I had not been here in a few weeks I was up for it. In addition to the usual suspects, I ran into some new peeps and well as some friends I had not expected to see today.

I ran into Allison at the bottom getting ready for a couple of shuttle runs.   Normally there would have some smack talk a fligging at this point, but since she had done some big run the day before she was cut some slack.  Take note that Allison has the St. Pattys day color scheme covered.

DustyBottoms on the climb.

MacRider and Jeff working the climb.

The view on the climb started getting pretty nice.

We are all the way up, time to put the saddle all the down. 😉 

This kicker is known as the Satan Jump.

Me hitting the “Diving Board”.   I was shooting some video so I did not take many photos.  Some of the photos here were shot by other folks in the group.

MacRider playing in the rocks.

Mark and Jeff cruising through the rocks.

Fun Granite Ahead!

We had a great run down the mountain after playing up top.  There was no carnage on the day, but my brake lever took a beating. Believe or not, this lever was able to be straightened out.

All Hail – Daylight Savings Time!

If there is ever a shortage of good times while riding in Bonita, I have note seen it yet. Yesterday, I hooked up with the Bonita Bikers crew for some South Bay riding. I actually recognized a few of the trails on this trip, but was still treated to trails I had not been on before.

It was an awesomely pretty day out and the greenery of spring is here.


(Don and Kimie strolling across a hillside)

Our route for the day?  Hell if I really know.   Bob and weave here.  Cross a street there.  Drop into culvert other way over there.   Oh yeah cool trails between all of that stuff.  

With all of the grow, some of the singletrack is tricky as it easily hides rocks that can give you a little trip up if you are not paving attention.  Hoserr working a climb. 


Gill gruntin’ over the top of a rise.

Ahhhhhhh  Singletrack!

Greg cruising up “Seven Bitches”

Kimee styling on a bridge.  Daryl was rather elusive for getting pictures on this ride as he was always out in front making us all look bad on his singlespeed.  I did manage to catch him off the bike here.

In addition to the seemingly never ending cool trails down here, it was awesome to that extra hour of daylight freedom with the time change.   There is nothing wrong with night rides, but having that late in the day sunshine to play in is just killer.    I have no idea how many miles we did, but it was sizable and felt more like a weekend ride than a midweek ride.     If you are interested in catching this ride during the week, it goes down every Tuesday and Thursday at 3:30pm from the the parking lot at the Performance Bike Shop in Bonita.

San Dieguito River Park Trailwork

Saturday I spent a good chunk of the day helping out with the construction of a new section of trail that will be part of the Coast-to-Crest trail.   This was a a short notice trailwork to get some things accomplished prior to March 15th when restrictions on access to the area take effect in an effort to give the threatened gnatcatcher bird a better breeding season.  

Before we could get started in earnest we had to relocate a couple of the “locals”.

I was pretty stoked with this shot above as I got this snake’s eye in focus and the light was good enough that you could see the flash of the camera.  While nobody but me can pick it out, there is a bit of my reflection in the it’s eyes.   I can’t help but wonder if I had one of those $5K 22MP cameras and some L-series glass would I have been able to pick that up better.

This was some exceptionally tough work done that involved almost exclusively rock work. This section of the trail is within the 20 year flood plan of the San Dieguito River so it will be a raised section of trail with periodic culverts. Our main jobe today was to frame in were the trail is going to go and start on the foundation of rocks that will eventually be filled with dirt.  

We used some sizable rock to make the frame of the trail. There was one rock large enough to be dubbed “The Asteroid”. When completed it will be cool to ride by that spot and say “Yeah, I help put that rock there”

This was the first time that SDMBA has worked with the SDRP folks and I think we left a good impression about the quality of work SDMBA can produce. One this was for certain, I was good and pooped.

Here are some additional photos.

A singlespeed doubleshot

I don’t ride my single speed much.  I like to think that I ride it just enough to remind myself how much I love my full suspension bikes.   When I went Lake Calvera on Saturday, I brought along the single speed for the post work ride.   Calvera does not beat you up too bad on a single speed, but it certainly adds to the effort per mile equation.  After the trailwork and the ride, I was good and pooped at the end of the day.

It did not take long Sunday morning to realize that I had not been liberal enough with the sunscreen yesterday.  I was not burnt, but a little toasty on the edges.  Just enough to really feel the sun on my face when I went outside.  It was an exceptionally gorgeous day and unseasonably warm in the 80s.  I got quite a bit of the house and family stuff taken care of and around 4pm, I decided to sneak in a quite ride before the day was gone.  So a quite 10 minute drive from the house and I was at La Costa for the second time this week.  I also grabbed the singlespeed on the way out as it was right by the garage door and not hung back up yet.  Ahh what the hell was the general thinking.

 The single speed put a bit of a beat down on me as I was just a little stiff from the day before. I ended up having a good ride and caught yet another good sunset to boot.

This photo was taken of me by my good friend “Ty Mer”.  He does some professional photography shoots on occasion.  You can reach him at

20D Canon Street
Circuit City, CA 92081 🙂

Lake Calavera Trailwork

Yesterday, around 60 people showed up to work on a troubled section of trail that was in need of erosion control. More importantly in was a chance for SDMBA to work the Department of Fish and Game. 


Gardner giving the safety brief prior to heading out to the work site.

Even though it has not rained in a couple of weeks there were still some wet areas due to poor drainage. Several crews built the neccessary drainage.

“Sparticus” in action. This is a really cool tool that is basically a spider web of chain that allows for really large rocks to be moved efficiently. SDMBA has built five of these so far and several were in use on this day.

In addition to some of the usual faces you see at these events there were also plenty of new faces including plenty youngsters and teenagers. These are the future stewards of these lands so it was great to see entire families involved.

This event included one of the largest water diversion projects I have seen at a trailwork event. The amount of rocks and dirt moved for this was truly impressive. I’m pretty sure everyone how had a hand in this section slept very well that night.

A special thanks is owed to Erik Trogden (The SDMBA’s Coastal North County Liason) for leading the effort to put this event together. Thanks to Bicycle Warehouse for supporting the event with the copious amounts of schwag. More importantly, thanks to Warren Wong from the Department of Fish and Game for allowing SDMBA to work with his agency to improve this trail. Hopefully this will be the start of a good working relationship to improve both the habitat and trail resources of Lake Calvera.

Here are some additional pictures.

After the trailwork a few of us went for a bike ride at Calvera.  While out in the “Back 40”, we got to see some “game” on the Fish and Game managed land.

La Costa Tuesday

Yesterday after work I got in a spin at La Costa with Rich.  As always Rich is pretty zippy on the climbs and he has a habit of getting quicker when smells weakness.  Such was the case this afternoon has I found myself having to push myself to keep up.  We check out out some recent damage caused by some idiot who has a key to the backgate of the property.  The bonehead tried to drive his truck up one of the singletracks.  He went up a good ways before he bottomed out his truck and had to turn back.   What a jerk.  Rich the astute steward that he is had already repaired what he could but it will be a while before the trailside sage grows back.   Please call the police if you see something stupid like this occuring. 

Besides the spot the rest of the trail is in great shape.  We went up Vista Del Mar and down Switchbacks.   We then did it going the other way.   The visibility was pretty good today considering when had the marine layer in most of the day.  You could see both San Clemente and Cantalina Islands.  San Clemente is over 50 miles away so it was quite a treat.   Rich was really on fire going down the trails today.  I’m going to give him the trail builder advantage today since he knows every nook and cranny of this place.   Not a bad way to speed sometime after work.

A skinny weekend

Tires not my waist 🙂   This weekend was pretty darn cool in a very uncharacteristic manner for me in that it did include any fat tire action.   Saturday a bunch of the LA bike messenger crowd were doing a century+ ride from downtown LA to the Stone Brewery in Escondido.  By buddy Jerry from the OC was going to do the ride with themas well and asked if I wanted to get in on the action.  Normally I would have balked at the idea of giving up a perfectly good  Saturday to skinny tires, but since there was a good friend and what would be my first trip to Stone, what the hell.

Saturday was really pretty and after a few phone calls to time thingsjust right, I left my house on a bit of a wandering route over to Oceanside to join up with the group.   It had been months since I was last on the road bike, but it did not take long to get the road reflexes reengaged.  It only took one pothole that nearly knocked by fillings out my teeth to drive home that I am was not on my 6″ travel plush-o-rama  mountainbike and I had to look where the tires were going.  It was about a 19 mile route over to Oceanside and I had plenty of time to kill before the rest of the group got there.  Jerry split a little early from the last rest stop and was the first one to roll in.   He needed hit the ATM and grab a snack.  It was not long, before the lead group was in sight.  We hopped on our bikes to join them.  This was a bit of a wake up call, as I had to put some effort into staying with this group.   I’m glad they already had 80 miles on thier legs at this point as I would have been struggling otherwise.

While it had been quite a few months since I had been on the road bike, it had been years since I had ridden in a group.  It was was a little scary at times being so close to other riders.   Over the course of the next 22 miles or so I got a lot more used to it.   We soon found ourselves at the brewing company and over the next 45 minutes we chilled while the rest of the group made it in.  This was a pretty entertaining and talented group of folks.   Soon we all piled into the Brewery which is freaking huge.  The Bistro/restaurant area we really cool and they had great food and brews to boot.   We had a good time there and I eventually gave the wife a call to come pick Jerry and I up.

Of course I could not leave empty handed.  A 2-liter growler of the Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale.  Yummy!   Jerry and I worked a little on this the rest of the evening.

Sunday we bummed around most of the morning and then heading out towards Palomar Mountain to watch the final stage of Tour De California.   The plan was to drive up and what the racers coming up the 5,200+ foot mountain and then let my youngest son (Jake) and Jerry bomb down Nate Harrision Grade while I followed in the truck.  Jake has not done this route yet so I was a little concerned, so I had him bring along all of his hockey arm and knee/shin guards.  My oldest son, Will had climbed the mountain back in April of last year.   

Conerns over Jake handling the ride ended up not being an issue as the road was already closed by the time we got there so we went for Plan B and setup to watch the race from Cole Grade Rd.  There were cars lined up all along the route through here and there was a festive mood on the mountainside.  Cowbells were bountiful as fans were cheering on the many amateurs who were riding along the route in the hours before the pros would come through.  There was a breakaway of four riders and there was a parade of cars, motorcycles with flashing lights and sirens that preceding them.  It was amazing to see the pace these guys were climbing at.

About a minute later the first group of chasers where in view and headed up the grade.  Lance Armstrong was right up in the front helping to push the pace and ensure that teammate Levi would maintain his 36 second lead in the tour.

I have watched many of the Tour De France stages on TV and always liked that look of determination on Lance’s face when he was “working”.  It was really cool to see that look in person, even if it was just for a few second or so.   Oh yeah, the chasers were ripping up this hill and they were looking so smooth in the process.

After the chase group, there was a long train of the support cars following with lots of expensive bikes on thier roofs.  I probably saw a quarter of a million dollars in bikes go by.

Some minutes back came the rest of the peloton

There was some suffering being done in this group. (They were still ripping!)

After the final folks went by we spent a long time in stop-and-go traffic out of the area.   We stopped at a near by taco shop for dinner but the traffic was still pretty screwed after that.   We did not mind the traffic too much as it was good to see so many people out supporting cycling.   This was the Tour’s visit time in San Diego County and judge from what I saw and the TV highlights, I think we represented well in the fans catergory.  We eventually made it back to the coast were I dropped Jerry off at the train station and headed home.  This was a pretty cool weekend even if it did not include any fat-tire time.

Good Ride and Old Friends

Now that we have had a little break in the rain enough to give the trails some dryout time, I went out to Alpine to ride Anderson Truck Trail which handles the moisture well.   I was joined by Cliff, Danny and Chip.  It was first time riding with Danny but Cliff and Chip are old friends.   I spent eight days down in Copper Canyon in Mexico back in 2005.  Cliff is not only one of my biking buds,  he is also my real estate agent who did mighty good by me a few years back when we stepped up to a larger home.    I have not seen too much of either of thes guys in a while so riding together was good for catching up.  Mother Nature has been doing some landscaping on the trail and there are some spots that are going to need some attention on the trail.    I only had my video camera today so no pictures from the day.   The ones here are from a week or so earlier.

The climb up went well really pretty scenery and and blue skies.   There was enough moisture in the ground that you could just feel a little more resistance on the climb.   We enventually made our way to the top and then enjoyed the fruit of our labor.   I did not hit some of the stuff I normally would since I had my XC helmet cam vice the full-face helmet.  If you are wondering why I use a full-face helmet when “playing” in and on serious rocks/chunk read this experience at Goat Camp nearly a year ago.

The return trip back down the main part of ATT was really freaking great with insanely perfect traction.  It was quite possibly my quite run to the bottom.   Afterwords I had a good chunk of time to kill before the monthly SDMBA meeting.  Lucky for me Chip invited me back to Casa Del “ChipandDale” for dinner.    While dinner was in the works, another one of the Copper Canyon crew,  Joey,  swung by for a bit.   For dinner they had some family friends come over so I added some folks in the friends column over a really yummy meal.  I was about to drop off into a food coma, when Chip informed I was about to be late for the meeting.  Luckily they live just a few minutes away from meeting so I got there just in time.   The rest of the night was spent at the SDMBA meeting where Michael Beck, the San Diego Director of the Endangered Habitats League was the quest speaker.  It was interesting to see a different perspective on the land usage debate in San Diego and get a better understanding of what organizations like his are trying to do.   I can’t say that I liked everything I heard but I understood it.   One thing is for certain mountain bikers have more in common with these groups than we have different and hopefully they can see that responsible trail users can be dedicated stewards of the lands.

New HelmetCam Setup

I have needed to retire the helmet portion of my old helmet cam setup for quite sometime now as I had simply worn it out. The adjustment mechanism on the back of the helmet was shot and overall the helmet looked pretty worse for wear. I have been tinkering with a new helmet camera mounting design that would allow me to get away from having a dedicated helmet for the camera system. Wearing the helmet camera on long climbs when you are not filming is a bummer so I would often carry a second helmet. I wanted carry a single helment and be able to quickly attach or remove the camera gear during the course of a ride. The new setup basically uses the quick-release mounts designed for professional/prosumer grade camera tripods. I find it much more versatile than before.

Here the main concept piece of the new setup, the quick release mounts. One piece (the plate) is on the helmet, the other (the latch) is on the camera housing. There was two main reasons I put the plate on the helmet vice the camera housing. The first was was because additional plates are inexpensive compaired to the latch. The other was the the plates weighed much less than the latch and I was looking to minimize the permenant weight on the helmet.

Here is a close up the mounting bracket for the plate. I needed to create a vertical surface for the plate. I ended up mixing up a small batch of fiberglass resin from a small repair kit that you can find at most automotive stores for under $20. I used the cap off of a can of spray paint as my mold and made up two small pucks. Once cured, I used a dremel tool with a sanding attachment to shape the puck until it contoured the side of the helmet and was vertical. I used a 1/4″ thick piece of neoprene as a vibration damper/gasket between the bracket and the helmet.

I used a single bolt through the plate, the bracket and helmet and secured with a recessed T-bolt on the inside of the helmet. I used a neoprene backed washer between the bolt and the plate as an added bit of vibration damping. I found these washers at a screw and bolt speciality surplus store in San Diego (They have like 5,000 of everything). Tightening the screw was enough to hold the camera angle inplace but once I had aligned the camera vertically , I drilled a recess in the bracket to allow the small alignment button used on the plate to ensure the plate stayed in alignment.

You may have noticed that the counterweight bracket is at a different angle than the other side. Since I can now switch the camera housing to the other side, I’m experimenting with some different shooting angles on that side.

Another thing I like about the setup is I can now move the camera gear from an XC helmet over to my full-face helmet easily. I actually made the full face rig first as it was much simpler. The extra padding of the full face helmet seem to have added a bunch of vibration damping that smoothed out the video some.  Now I just need to get out on the trail with XC setup.

Give the trails a break already!!!

With all of the rains we have been getting a good number of our trails have been soaked and need some time to dry out.   I see on a number of forums some selfish freaking idiots/don’t-give-a-shit-types going out on the trails right after the rains and rutting up the trails and going around puddles making our singletrack wider.  It amazing these jackasses are so hardcore they can go out during or right after a rain but have to go around ever puddle.   Anyone who does this crap is not hard core, rad or “gnar”.  They are a selfish jackass! 

Please give the trails thier due time to dry out and spread the word.  We only get to ride a mere 330+ days a year here in San Diego,  surely we can find something else to do for a few days after the rains.  

Here is a wet trail rating guideline that floats around every season.  It is just a guidline and after these current rains, the trails will need even more rain than suggested.