Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

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.

Views in the morning

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.

View from Pinos

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.

Bill and Will

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.

Harvest Trail

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.

Will in the trees

This picture provides very little justice to the view.

Killer 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.

Dusting Off

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.  

Laguna Seca

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.

PCH

 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.

PCH

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.

Elephant Sea

This fellow reminded me of a disgruntled Walmart customer say a earlier in the week.

Elephant Seal

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.

Camp sweet camp

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.

Log Ride

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.

Will Air

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.

Camp fire