Man what a great trail system Philadephia has with the trails along the Wissahickon Valley.
This past week I got the oppurtunity to get a quick ride here while on a business trip. I really had a cool time here. Check out the story here.
Bye Bye Westside!
Oh not forever, just for the week. After a nice long siesta from work, I’m back to working for “The Man” as a Defense Contractor. I’m involved with some fancy smancy integrated navigation systems for use on Navy ships. I’m spending the week in Philadephia to meet all the players back on the east coast and getting in some training for the job. So I had a O-damn early commuter flight out of Carlsbad this morning and I got to see sunrise over SoCal from the air. The cool thing about this flight was that it was low enough that I was able to make out a bunch of trail systems that I enjoy. La Costa, San Clemente Singletracks, El Moro, LCWP, Aliso, The Santa Anas, and the San Gabs. Really Cool!
So just a few days ago the most recent issue of Bike Magazine showed up in my mailbox and I just threw it in my laptop bag for some reading material on the trip. It was a really killer surprise to find a bit on Philly Mountainbiking featured in the mag. I had even did some digging on this trail system last week. I’m still not sure if I’m gonna get in some riding this week, but I did bring the gear minus a bike. Hopefully I get my hands on a bit of time and a bike this week to check out the Wissahickon trails.
More Bonita Goodness
While Wednesdays are my normal weekday MTB day, I could not make it, but guess what? The Bonita Bikers also have Tuesday and Thursday afternoon rides so I decided to head over there. Know on Sunday they guys showed me about 20 miles of coolness. Today we rode a long 15 miles or so and only overlapped about a mile from the weekend. This place is freaking amazing. I was cameraless on this day so no pictures, but if you like the looks of the stuff from Sunday that I posted, you can get idea of the trail goodness I had today. In addition to see a good chunk of the Sunday crew, I meet a few knew folks as well as some folks I had not ridden with in quite sometime. The old pal in question was Don with whom I had last ridden with in Palm Canyon about a year and a half ago. I knew I knew him from somewhere until the conversation jogged my memory. You see Don, had gotten a new bike since then. I know I’m not the only one who does this but, helmet, bike, face and voice are my primary memory recall mechanisms for remembering my riders from the trail. Swap out one of those and I have a tough time putting the pieces together. Lame I know. Anyway great freaking time once again out on the South Bay trails and I am told there is still much to see.
I have been emailed by at least half a dozen folks on trail directions…. I’m not BSing when I say I could not tell you it is a big maze. I follow, I grind and I grin. Stay behind Hoserr when hook up with this group. That all you need to know.
Bonita “Locals” Tour
Today I had the pleasure of riding with the Sunday regulars down in Bonita in the south bay area of San Diego. Boy what a great time I had. I would be hard pressed to try and describe any kind of route. It was one of those just follow along and enjoy yourself kind of day. The trail network is pretty extensive with stuff everywhere. I could easily take a aerial shot of the area, hang it on a wall and then throw a saucy plate of spagetti on it and be pretty close to the actual trail layout.
There were some pretty interesting descents here and there over the course of the day
We got in a little bowl action as well. I was told the record is seven bikers in the bowl at once. This is pretty tricky when you are zipping around and another rider gets into the bowl. It is even more fun when one person goes opposite direction! I have to get back here with the video camera.
A little bridge action. I forget how many of these things we crossed.
There were some bushy spots on most of the trails. The branches are a lot stronger than they look. I tried to moose my way through one of them and it stopped me dead in my tracks and pushed me backwards. (I could hear it laughing at me)
There were a few G-Outs to contend with. This was the most interesting one.
This was not an uncommon exit of the G-Out (Myself included)
Nobody got hurt and snickers and laughs all-around was the result of any G-Out flubs.
Of course second time around was usually the charm.
There was some double teeter-tooter action to be had as well. The guys sure seemed eager to help when Karen wanted a spotter. 🙂
There was some single teeter action as well.
Even got to play around on a diving board (some creative trail-building material)
This was a hell of a fun group of folks to ride. I guess we did around 20 miles or so, but it sure feels like more. There is some nice as well as challenging trails in the area. I stopped counting my dabs early on and I even managed to take a soil sample or two to add to my collection. It had been at least a couple of years since I last caught the 8AM Sunday morning group ride out of the Bonita Performance Bike parking lot. I don’t think I will be waiting that long again.
Here are the rest of the pictures from the day.
Bill and Will Roadtrip Day 3 – Mount Pinos
Man, the things we do for our kids. I got up at around 7AM and loaded up all my gear in the truck while Will was still sound asleep in the tent. All of Will’s biking gear had been staged in the tent last night. I drove down to the bottom of the mountain at 6,400 feet and started a 6.5 mile pavement climb back up to the campsite at 8,200 feet. Will certainly has it in him to do this climb as he had tackled Palomar Mountain earlier in the year which encompassed 4,700-foot climb over 11.1 miles. I wanted this ride to be more about fun than fitness today so I cut out most of the climbing for him. The climb back to camp was not a steep one and I found it pretty easy to keep a pretty descent pace even with 2.6 Stick-E rubber tires. I thought about taking the McGill trail up but I wanted both Will and I to experience a “new” trail together. When I got back to camp, Will was already up and making himself some breakfast.
I had left a few things back at camp so I would not have to climb with them, mainly my camera. While I was getting that stuff in my camelbak, Will (who had already gotten geared up) commenced to start talking a little smack about Dad being a fiddle-fart. So, I set him up. I snippedly told him to “Go on ahead, you know I’m just going to catch you, even though I already climbed over six miles this morning”. Well that was all it took, Will took the bait. He casually said, “See you up the road” and pedaled off at a normal pace. I yelled at him as he rode off, “Don’t start off too fast or you’ll be sorry!” The hook was set. Just when he thought he was out of view (but not quite), I saw him drop the hammer. Nothing left to do now but reel him in a few minutes after the pace, grade and the thin air above 8,200 feet get done with him.
I finished up what I was doing and got rolling. After a couple of turns in the road and Will still being out of site, I was impressed. One turn later and I saw him, hunched over his handlebars on the side of the road. The voice of Phil Lidgett came through my head, “Oh my, the young rider has cracked! There will be no hopes for a mountain top win for him today.” Will got to rolling when I neared, but his pace was mighty slow and he complained of not feeling good. We took an extended break for him to recover and I could not help but get a devilish grin on my face, when I told him to come on and stop fiddle-farting. I wish I had my camera out to catch the look on his face when it dawned on him that he had fallen for a parental version of a Jedi Mindtrick.
After he recovered, we soon left the pavement to continue climbing on a fireroad up to the Mt Pinos summit at 8,830 feet. It was a fairly mellow climb and the views were pretty nice even with a bit of lingering haze from the NorCal wildfires.
From here it was a mostly downhill affair back to the top of the pavement where we hooked up with some pretty nice and mostly buff singletracks that included the Harvest and Southridge trails. These bits of goodness took us back by our camp and down to the McGill campground.
From the McGill campgroud, we picked up the amply named McGill trail which was an absolute heavenly bit of singletrack that worked its way down the mountain. The grade was never steep and it was virtually buff the entire distance. I rolled through hundreds of Kodiak moments and only captured a few.
This picture provides very little justice to the view.
Will had one of those moments of inattention that caused him to take a soil sample on a switchback. After the initial uggh following the thump, he chuckled and dusted himself. He then went back up the trail and nailed it the second time around.
The blissful descent was over far too quickly and we were soon back up at camp and packing up. Will has not learned much about repairing flats and other mechanicals yet so a solo descent down the McGill trail was not on the table. I did let him ride the road down. He thoroughly enjoyed the speed-fest coming down the mountain on the pavement. We spent the rest of the day getting home and chatting about what a cool week we just had. Once home it took all of about 15 minutes before Will was out the door to skate and hang with his friends and basically get back into his busy routine. I’m sure as the teenage years roll in and along the competition for his time will get tougher so I am really thankful to have the time with him now. ¦lt;/p>
Bill and Will Roadtrip Day 2 – The Central Coast
We woke up fairly early this morning to some nice sunshine over the Laguna Seca Recreation/Raceway Area. Will reluctantly said his legs were sore and he did not think he would be up for riding today. I’m glad he told me as I would not have wanted to push him into riding and then not enjoying himself. We were orginally thinking of going to Montana Del Oro State Park and get in some riding.
The nice thing about working off of an idea vice a schedule is that you can change things pretty darn easily. After a bit of breakfast, we broke camp and hit the road. It was just earlier in the week that the Pacific Coast Highway was reopened after being shutdown for nearly a week due to wildfires burning in the Big Sur and other areas of the Los Padres National Forest. It has been quite a few years since I had been on this highway and I had forgotten just how pretty this drive can be.
We stopped at many places along the way early on to take in the sights. This was a good thing as before long the coast became completely socked in with thick fog and we could not see much at all until we were near San Simeon about 90 miles south of Monterey.
One of the really cool stops we did was at vista lookout about five miles north of Hearst Castle right off of the Pacific Coast Highway. Here you can check out a large colony of Elephant Seals. These are some big critters and the males make some mighty deep and throaty noises when other males get around their babes.
This fellow reminded me of a disgruntled Walmart customer say a earlier in the week.
We continued down the coast until we neared San Luis Obispo. Instead of going to Montana Del Oro State Park we turned inland and made our way to Mt Pinos near the town of Labec. We ended up at the Mt Pinos campground that sits at 8,200 feet and we had the pick of the place as we were the only ones there. Later that evening two more groups would come in, but for the most part we had the great views virtually all to ourselves.
We had several hours of daylight left after we got everything setup and the next thing you know Will was bucking to get on the bike and mess around near camp. I joined in on the action and played around on a log.
The South Ridge trail starts right from the campground and goes down to the McGill Campground a couple of miles down the mountain. I had to see the camp host down there so when I drove down, Will took the trail. He was pretty darn excited when he came off the trail and proclaimed it was the coolest singletrack EVER! The trail is setup as a cross-country ski trail and has plenty of small rounded jumps that are just the perfect size to catch some XC sized air. Will really dug those and I was stoked to see him stoked.
Back at camp, we enjoyed the last night of being able to have a campfire as a ban on them would start the following morning, due to the dry conditions. We climbed into the tent an hour or so after sunset. When we are back at home, Will is always trying to fight off going to bed. It is like the world is moving too fast and he is going to miss out on something if he is sleeping. It was nice to have him so easily climb into his sleeping bag. I was reading a book and I had barely turned one page when I looked up to see him already down for the count. Tomorrow we would get in a good chunk of riding in.
Bill and Will Roadtrip Day 1 – Santa Cruz
Will and I spent the earlier part of this week in San Jose where Will’s hockey team was competing in the National Roller Hockey Championships (NARCH) in the San Jose. While the teams bid for the championship ended earlier than planned we had other things ready to go. We would take the slow route home to San Diego and get in some camping and riding. We did not have a set schedule just some general ideas.
Our first day was a ride in Wilder Ranch State Park in Santa Cruz. I have ridden here several time before and I knew Will could handle the place. We started off near the park headquarters off of Pacific Coast Highway and started working our way up to the top of the park using the Engelman Oak and Long Meadows trails (fireroads). Will has not been biking much lately so that and the recent hockey made for a good bit of effort on his part.
Once we got up to the top of the park we ventured over into the UC Santa Cruz area. Since this included some gravity-assisted riding, Will was having a heck of great time.
After the UCSC fun, we popped back into Wilder Ranch and worked our way over to the Old Cabin trail which is one of my favorites out here. I was pretty stoked to see that Will cleaned everything on this trail. While he might be getting pretty descent on a bike, he is a pretty horrible “model” in front of the camera. If given a chance he will make a silly face everytime. I pretty much have to sneak attack pictures of him.
While Will was starting to feel a little tired, after describing the Enchanted Loop to him, he was game. Once again the boy surprised me with how easily he picks up new skills. On a tricky switchback into a rooty ledge he got up one of the smaller ledges without even blinking. We then sessoned it for a bit and he cleaned one of the bigger ledges after a couple of tries.
After this we took the Baldwin Loop down to the ocean. Will complained that the trail was really bumpy and that is when I realized that Will had spent the entire ride with the rear shock locked out. This was his first real ride on a full-suspension rig and he did not realize it was locked out. Will is really tall for his age and has been growing like a weed lately. Having already gotten taller than his Mom, he can now fit on my medium Spider by swapping out the seatpost and stem.
Down along the ocean we followed the bluff trails back to the park headquarters. Will was getting pretty darn pooped by now so the breaks came a little more often.
I did manage to get in a “sneak attack” picture during the break
We finished off the rest of Ocean Bluff trails at a reasonable pace due to a strong tailwind which made it pretty darn easy to tick over a big gear. When we finished up we had logged in just over 20 miles and the boy was pooped. On our way through town we hit up a little hole-in-the-wall Falafel shop that I love and introduced Will to some new cuisine.
It was getting pretty late in the day and we knew we would not get too far down the coast this evening. I had a “Camping California” guidebook with me and while I drove south, Will would read out the description of spots down the road from us. The Laguna Seca Recreation Area ended up sounding pretty good so we swung by there and grabbed a spot. The Red Bull Moto Grand Prix was starting to ramp up for the weekend, but there were plenty of spots still open. I packed my smaller camping gear so that that it would not take long to setup and break camp each day so we had camp setup in no time flat. After some chillaxing, hot chocolate and a few snacks we hopped in the tent and were soon crashed out.
Finishing up hockey in San Jose
What a fun time we had in San Jose. The team played really well, but had one game were some team-wide hiccups cost them the game which ultimately ended their bid for the championship a little early. The good news is they beat all the Canadian teams they faced 🙂
Other really cool things happening were that both Will and his fellow teammate Dillon did exceptionally well in the “Sniper” skills competition against 44 of the top shooters in their age bracket. Will made it into the final seven and Dillon went on to win the competition by throwing down some sick moves and making six goals in seven shots against some of the best goalies in his division.
Now that we had some extra time in our schedule we took advantage of it and headed down to Santa Cruz for some fun on the boardwalk.
This ride, which we now refer to as the Barf-O-Matic 5000, was a heck of a lot of fun for the boys.
After the ride, things were not so much fun for Drew(left) and Will(right). Zach (middle) did what any kid who did not get sick would do, laugh like hell at the others. It was great!
We ended up making a long evening out of the boardwalk and did not get back to the hotel room until late. The orginal plan was to get up early tomorrow and head back to Santa Cruz to do some riding. We were both pooped so we decided to make a later start in the morning.
Hockey in San Jose
Okay here is a little non-MTB content for the blog. My oldest son (Will) and I are spending the better part of this week up in San Jose while Will’s hockey team, The San Diego Fear, compete in the North American Roller Hockey Championships (NARCH). The facility at the Silver Creek Sports complex is pretty impressive and is well suited to host the championships that includes over 400 teams in numerous age brackets from all over the Canada, the US and Central America. Will’s team is playing in the 12 and under Gold bracket against 22 other teams who made the cut through the regional qualifiers.
The boys played their first game today and won against the Golden Ridge team from British Columbia so they are off to a good start.
After the game we did some tourist stuff and went down to Monterey for some sightseeing that included the Monterey Aquarium.
There is a bit of the MTB tie-in here. Our plan is to take a couple – three days to get back home when we are all done with some camping and biking along the coast. We have not decided yet, but Santa Cruz, Montana Del Oro and Mt Pinos are high on our list of camp/mtb stops.
Poison Spider – Portal Video Online
Last night I finished up and published the Poison Spider Mesa – Portal Video. I ended up including some walking footage in the video. Considering how dangerous some of those exposed sections are I felt the walking bits needed to be represented along with the riding bits. Every veteran of the Portal trail with whom I have talked has all mentioned walking the exposed parts and how frightening that trail can be. The riding only version of the video just seemed to be missing something and the walking bits was it.
So anywho, right click here to download the 9 minute and 35 second video that will set your hard drive back 130MB.