Ughhhhh

Wait.. what happened? Where did September go?

As you might have noticed, from our steady stream of announcements of not being open, this has been a whirlwind of a month for us.

But, we've gotten through the most of it, all the busy crazy-ness, and we're back to business as usual.

Danny's wedding was a treat for us all.


That's a pic of Danny, as dressed up as you will ever see him, and his father.

Then Dan was off on a honeymoon for a few days, and shortly after his return, I took off to participate in the mayhem that was the 2009 Single Speed World Championship in Durango.

I did a poor job of documenting the fun, as all my pictures are from the Friday night before the race.

We stayed at the Durango Hometown Hostel, which was far nicer than we anticipated, and I would completely suggest it for anybody looking for inexpensive accomodations in Durango.

After unloading our bikes and dumping our bags, we quickly rode into town to find registration, with just one stop at the liquor store in between.


It rained, and we hid out like hobos in the park drinking. That's a pic of Paul in front of Durango Cyclery, which is a cool shop definitely worth checking out while in town.

We went from visiting some friends of Rich's (and getting fed pizza) to the official kegger in the woods party organized for the race via the "Test Tracks" trails, that run along the west edge of town. These trails are a blast, and it's unbelievable that they are so close to town. If I lived in Durango I'd be finding excuses to head north/south across town on these every chance I got.

The pre-race party was huge.

There was partying.....


And food and beer was plentiful and cheap.......


And live music to rock your face off to....


It was definitely a fun event. So much fun was had on friday night, that I didn't manage to get my camera out for a single pic on Saturday. I was in rough shape, to say the least. I did manage to line up pretty far towards the front amongst the 1,000 plus other racers. And despite being incredibly hung over and wondering if I might throw up at any moment for the first half of the race, I actually raced well and held my position amongst the masses.
For the majority of the race I was working like hell to keep up with a local badass gal named Sarah ( I learned her name because absolutely every spectator knew her). She was battling with a couple other gals for 7th, 8th, 9th place or so, and I was caught in the middle of it. And it was sweet.

The race was 2 1/2 hours or so of punishment for me, and I loved every minute of it.

Besides all the beer stops, everybody seemed to enjoy the bacon and twinkies stop. Nobody seemed to enjoy the bacon and twinkies puke 20 yards down trail though.

Here's some links to some recaps of the race from people who didn't forget about their cameras:

Article from Mountain Flyer Magazine (best bike mag ever, and also noticed editor Brian Riepe listed as a top 20 finisher in the race, which is bad ass).

Bike Snob NYC's account of the event (Notice the guy in his pics with the blond hair wearing a "Bud" jersey? That's Greg Herbold. So if we can get HB to remember who was behind him for the hike-a-bike, the Snobs secret identity will be totally foiled! Also, I totally finished in front of HB, and therefore also beat the Snob, you know, just so you know, because clearly he took the race very seriously).

"official" SSWC09 Blog

After the race I was actually feeling pretty good, until I drank my finish line congratulatory beer, and then I felt absolutely miserable again. I needed to either not drink at all, or drink way more than one beer.

Being a married man with child, and accompanied by a married man with children and another man to be married within the next 24 hours, we split that evening and missed out on the after party. Which was okay with us at the time.

Then I was home for one day, and split again Monday morning for Interbike. We did two days of Dirt Demo, riding and abusing other peoples expensive bikes for a change, and one day at the show.

I'm not going to bore everybody with another "bike dorks trying to get their party on in vegas" story. Instead, I'm going to go ahead and pretend I am Stevil, and let you read his account of the event, because it's way cooler than mine, and can't actually get me in trouble....

All Hail the Black Market's Stevil goes to Interbike and gets it done.

And if you want to know who reinvented the wheel with some unbelievable new doo-dangle, inevitably made of carbon, there's plenty of places to go for that (because quite honestly, I didn't hardly see a thing at the show, somebody was a little bleary-eyed):

Velo News blah blah blah

Cycling News blah blah blah

Singletrack blah blah blah

and dont forget to check out Bikefix.net for coverage of the show, as Marc and Charlie will certainly have sifted through all the lameness and found something sweet to show you.

Okay, kiddo is bound to wake up soon, my lap is beginning to get warm from my new - used Macbook that I just picked up from Long (wicked photagrapher, but probably sold me a totally crap laptop, check out his site: http://longnguyenphotography.com , seriously, this thing is like lava), and also I have a special limited edition S.F. Brewing Yippee IPA bomber in the fridge that I've been working hard not to open since 12:01, but I think the time has come.

Thanks for reading. If you's got any photos from SSWC or Vegas that you'd like to share with our little Bikeworks brethren, I'd be appreciative.

Moab Pics

Here's a few pics from our trip:

Marc, Charlie and I somewhere along upper Porcupine, aka UPS trail.
















This is from the top of the Moab Rim trial, which we decided to ride up. In one mile you go from the elevation of the road seen in the pic. Probably the steepest, most relentless mile of climbing I've ever done.
You can't really see it, but Portal Trail is etched into the cliff in the picture, going from right to left downwards along the natural slope of the cliff. We would find out the next day how scary that trail is.







This is the best part of the Moab Rim trail. A sweet swoopy section of singletrack. Problem was, it only lasted for about 5 minutes.
















This is Charlie and Scott, from the top of the Gold Bar Rim trail, riding along the Blue Dot trail, which gets uncomfortably close to the edge on several occasions. The Blue Dot trail, linked up with Portal, our route on the third day, is an unbelievably technical section of trail. Very humbling, I can't remember the last time I've walked my bike over so many obstacles. Oh wait, yes I can, it was last year on the Blue Dot trail.






This is along Portal Trail. I've finished walking the deadly "Dont walk here 3 people have died" cliff section, and am looking back up at Scott working his way down. It's hard to even tell there is a trail in this pic, but if you look close you can see Scott and the trail.










Moab is good times.

A little place I like to call Moab.

It's been practically forever since I've put anything up on this site. I think the root cause of that is I haven't been biking.
Well, I've been kind of building up brownie points because I'm going to Moab this evening for three days, which hopefully will be most epic.
What originally was planned as a Bikeworks trip for the four of us (Danny, Tony, Charlie and I) now has transformed into just Charlie and I meeting our buddies Spangler and Marc.
It should be a great trip, with reasonable weather (barely getting up to 80 deg) and just a chance of rain one evening. It's a fast group we've assembled, and I can only assume every ride will be long and painful.

Last time I put anything up here I was getting ready for Dawn til Dusk. As most everybody has heard, that race didn't happen. It rained and snowed the night before, and 6am Saturday found us all standing around in several inches of very slippery mud, all wondering what to do. They postponed the race, then postponed it again, and then finally were forced to cancel all together. It was a bummer, but there really was nothing anybody could do about it. We can just hope next year has a little better weather.

Since then, we've just been working away at the shop. Dawn til Dusk kind of kicked off spring busy season for us, and we're definitely in full swing now. I've got a number of pics at the shop of cool bikes that have come and gone lately, but I don't have my camera with me at the moment so those will have to wait.
I have only managed to get a couple of rides in the past couple of weeks, nothing really worth writing about. Hopefully after monday I'll have a tale or two to share with everybody.
In the mean time, hope you all have a good weekend.

More Europe Pics: Day 4

I was just remembering the week of riding in France and Switzerland I did a couple of months ago. Mmmm, sunshine and the alps.



After riding up the most ridiculously steep dirt road I have ever seen, for what seemed an eternity, we were rewarded with views.


Views and unbelievable singletrack that snaked along the ridge for quite a ways. If you look closely in this pic, you can see some of the other riders on one of the ridges.



You just won't find anything like this in New Mexico.



You probably won't find anything quite like this either. This was just a small section of the many incredibly rooted trails we would ride during the week. Fortunately for me it was generally dry, because coming from the desert, wet roots like this would have destroyed me.


At the bottom of all that singletrack was a picturesque valley, with a refuge and a fantastic restaurant in it. I ate the biggest, heaviest, cheesiest, hammiest plate they had, along with some beer, against my better judgment, as I knew it was all up from there.


I wish every epic day had a gourmet meal and a grassy nap in the middle of it. The locals didn't even really ride with food, because if you got hungry there was always a little village and a restaurant close by.


When its time to climb in the Alps though, its really time to climb. This is the typical view from one of our many several thousand vertical foot slogs of the week.


This was a seriously steep road, the third major climb of such magnitude for the day if I remember correctly. At least there was plenty of scenery to keep my mind off my legs.

Thanks for reading.

Get your philanthropy on!

So I've got this cousin, see, and he's always like doing good things for the kids and stuff, you know, the kids that don't normally get to do much cool stuff, and stuff. And like, it's cool, you know.

The cousins name is Phil Lucero, and he's getting geared up to do some bike touring next summer, with a program hes involved with named Two Wheel View. Check it out:
Link to Two Wheel View's Website for your convenience.

That main picture on the home page, that is Phil on the bike, which used to be my bike, so now it's like you already know him.
The reason I bring all this up is because they are planning trips and there are some spots for interested parties. I know they have room on the adult trip to Argentina in June, which is fun for the adults and also serves as a fundraiser for the kid trips. I believe its around two weeks of riding, not particularly strenuous though. I've heard nothing but good things, Phil has done the same tour 3 times now I believe, and he's still excited to go back and do it again.
If this is something you think you might be interested in, drop us a line, or ask me about it while your in the shop, and I can put you in contact with him.

Also, donations are always welcome, especially in the old-bike-you-don't-want-anymore form. The best bikes for the job tend to be early nineties mountain bikes, without suspension, and 7 or 8 speed drivetrains, of all sizes. And it doesn't have to be in perfect working order, that's where Bikeworks steps in. And as it's a non-profit, tax deductible receipts are available, so it's probably a better deal than selling it for $10 at a garage sale.

I met a bunch of the kids that went on the trip to Argentina last year. It was pretty cool, the were mostly local Albuquerque kids, only a couple even owned bikes of their own, and they were all super excited to go on the trip, or even just to go to another country. It was definitely an opportunity many of them weren't going to have otherwise.

So if you have some time off this summer, and like riding bikes, get your philanthropy on!

More Europe Pics: Day 3 in Chamonix

Here's some more photos from our Euro trip. Funny, it seems like that trip was a lifetime ago, but I've been asked numerous times the past couple days how it went, and then I realize it was only a few weeks ago, and I haven't seen said person in a month.

Day three we took the hour or so drive to Chamonix. We were very excited to have a sunny forecast after our first two days being rather overcast and wet.

The drive gave some awesome views of Mont Blanc peaking out behind the clouds every little while.

We drove to a little area just outside of the town of Chamonix, which I forget the name of. From there, we hopped a gondola, then a chairlift, and made our way to the top of a mountain.

The views from the top were, how do you say, ah yes, very nice.

The biking was also very nice, as they say. The trails consisted of singletrack, the type dreams are made of, that generally pointed downward with a nice gradient, for thousands of feet at a time. Of course the whole time there were views of small towns, Mont Blanc, and a glacier to keep you distracted.


Although the trails were some of the most fun I have ridden in my life, we couldn't simply just rip down the mountain. The views were too overwhelming, and forced us all to stop regularly for photo ops.



We rode up the gondola and ski lift three times that day. Each time at the top there was a fairly mild climb to get you to the singletrack. We went down the face of the mountain which the lifts went up twice. The trail was fantastic and flowly, and ended with the most unbelievably fun set of switchbacks I have ever been on. We did that trail twice, and I think I became a better mountain biker because of it.

We also went up and over the back of the peak once. That gave us another unbelievably fun descent on a slightly off camber singletrack with views of a glacier, then dumped us into some steep and very techy stuff which led us all the way out into a valley. We had a short road ride back to the nearest town, and then hopped on a train and returned back to our starting point.
The train only technically allowed 4 passengers at a time, and there were seven of us. When the lady came by to give us trouble, Gareth our fearless guide explained to her, in French, that there were just five of us, and two were actually quite small, so it was okay. That was good enough for her. Then we didn't have to pay for the train ride some how, and that, my friend, is the benefit of hiring a tour guide.

We finished the day by riding back to Chamonix along a rolling, rooty, rocky cross country trail that followed a small river. The trail was a blast, with no shortage of things to jump over and off of. There were a couple of very loose and techy, steep climbs along that trail. Gareth was leading, with all four of us following on our Mavericks. At the top of each techy climb, I noticed Gareth looking back, and seeming a bit surprised to see us all there with him. He later told me that most people don't usually make those climbs, and that he was beginning to think that maybe there was something to these Mavericks after all (the guides were all Maverick skeptical when we arrived). To that I replied "yes, the bikes are, how do you say, ah yes, very nice."

We were all very thoroughly excited, and eventually agreed it was one of, if not the single best day of mountain biking we had ever had.
Such an occasion of course called for a beer.



We found a Canadian themed microbrew in Chamonix, and I was able to drink the closest thing to an IPA I was to find the entire trip. We then had nachos, and for nachos in France at a Canadian themed restraunt, I was quite impressed. The copious amounts of paprika was a bit odd, but I was starving and it didn't phase me one bit.

From there, we had more beers, and then an extremely loud drive back, overpowered with drunk and excited political conversations by the drunk Americans in the back, while our gracious guides undoubtedly wished they had brought ear plugs.

It was, how do you say, ah yes, bad to the bone.

More Trip Pics

Day two had us starting out at Avoriaz, an interesting little pre-planned ski community nestled up above Morzine against some cliffs. We drove the van up there to avoid having to climb the road for hours on our bikes. It was an overcast day from the start, with expected large amounts of rain in the afternoon. Even overcast, the views were impressive.



There happened to be a waterfall, which was awesome looking.



We rode up a trail, and at the top there were...amazing views!
On the left side of this picture, you can see the village of Avoriaz tucked up against the hill. I guess it was designed to blend in, and it really is not very noticable from Morzine.






There was some sweet singletrack to be found.

In the afternoon it started raining, but we still went out for two more trips up the gondola from Morzine. One time down we did an exploratory cross country ride that included a couple of long climbs, and some very wet and very slippery descents.
Second time down we rode the Pleney Downhill Course. I don't know what the history of this course is, if its ever been raced in a world cup or anything, but it sure was fun. It was a fully marked DH course with padded trees around every turn. It wasn't particularly technical, or steep, or difficult, just really swoopy and turney and fun. Didn't take any pictures of it, but there are tons of videos on you tube if youre interested:
Pleney DH You Tube

After that we had some lunch, and it started raining harder. Then it continued to rain, then rain, and then a little more rain, basically until bed time. Our afternoon looked like this:

The rainy afternoon was a bit of a bummer, but the next day completely made up for it.
We'll get to that soon.

Some Trip Pics

Okay, finally got the pictures off my camera and onto my computer. I know, it's a very difficult thing to do and I'm very impressive because it only took me three days.
I still haven't seen Charlie's photos, or gone through the photos that Sian from Endless Ride took while she was riding with us, so I'll probably be putting up tons of pics in the near future.

Although my story of our adventure starts with the airport, my pictures don't start until we reach Morzine, because honestly, who takes pictures in airports? I would actually be kind of scared to take pictures in an airport in the US, as I bet it would get me into some security black book and result in full cavity search next time through security.


So here is a pic of Morzine. The little town kind of sat on two sides of a valley, so here is one side of the town. It was quite rainy and overcast when we arrived, which was a little disappointing because we had seen forecasts that called for seven days straight of rain.

Here we are at Bar Robinson, all of us have been awake for over 24 hours, and we're just trying to stay up to force ourselves into local time. We're enjoying several full pints of Mutzig, a mistake we wouldn't make again.

After a few pints of curiously strong beer and an unreasonable amount of time without sleep, really stupid stuff becomes hilarious:

"Hehehehe, hey Dan, it looks like that dried meat is wearing panties, hehehehe."

"Hehehehe hey, it looks like that carving has a giant schlong, and I'm touching it. Do we have any more beer?"

Our first night concluded with an awesome dinner and too much wine and beer with a bunch of Brits whose names I never really learned.

The next morning started out with foggy skies and foggy heads, and we hopped in the nearest Pleney gondola, or "telecabine" and headed to the top of the mountain.

I think they scratched plexi glass adds a nice touch to this pic. This is looking down on Morzine. Our chalet was just a 2 minute bike ride from the base of this lift.

I call this one "blue steel".

From the top of the mountain, there was an view of....more mountains! I hope you enjoy pictures of people looking at mountains, because that's going to be a big part of this blog for the next little while.

On the other side of the mountain was... another quaint little mountain village! This is looking down at Les Gets.

The Portes du Soleil region, where we spent most our time riding, is something like 124 lifts spread out amongst a bunch of towns, which are all accessable from one another. Basically the mountains are just covered in chair lifts and gondolas going in every direction, with little villages in nearly every valley. The place gets absolutely slammed for the winter months, as you can imagine.
The bike tourist season only lasts for about eight weeks. We were there at the very tail end of it, so the majority of the regular lifts were running for just the first 2 days we were there, and the town was basically clearing out and shutting down by the end of our trip, everybody doing repairs and shops chainging over for the winter.

It seemed the majority of the biking tourists were doing more DH type riding. There were some awesome looking trails everywhere, like this one. Unfortunately it had been raining severly before we arrived, so a lot of things were very swampy the first couple of days.

We took advantage of riding the lifts quite a bit the first day, and basically just did various little trails, circling around the Morzine and Les Gets area.

We started to understand that riding in the area meant steep descents:

and long, grinding climbs on double track or dirt roads:

There was not much singletrack that was climbable, and mostly it was all either up or down. Occasionally, we'd have an "undulation", which according to Gareth our guide, would be anything from a 100 yard vertical grunter to a 20 minute slog.

Here's a pic of Sian showing the boys how its done, getting up a ridiculously loose, steep, and rocky "undulation" that none of the rest of us would.
This would be just one of dozens of times that she schooled us.

Our days inevitably ended with bike washing sessions to get ready for the next day. I quickly got over my fear of hosing my bike down, as it was quite necessary there to keep things running smooth.
I still haven't unpacked my bike from its box, which I'm sure is going to need quite a bit of bearing love to get back up and running after 6 days in the Alps.

And that was our first 2 days. Many more riding pics to come.

I'm Back!

We're all back from the Alps, amazingly all in one piece, and save for a little jet lag, feeling great.

The trip was phenomenal, going to be hard to put it down in words. Fortunately, we have a ton of pics, so that should help.

The trip out went fine, amazingly all our flights were basically on time, and no luggage was lost. Even though it went according to plan, it took a solid 24 hours of traveling. We flew to Chicago bright and early wednesday morning, then had a solid 5 hours to waste in the chicago airport before our next flight to Brussels. Turns out 5 hours is a long time in the Chicago airport, especially when you're all excited and anxious about going to the Allps to mountain bike that day.

We eventually made it to Brussells, and with the time change, it was Thursday morning local time. After navigating the incredible crappyness that is the Brussells airport, we had a little time to kill before our third and final flight to Geneva. Unlike my cohorts, I had not slept at all on the train, as I find that a very hard thing to do. So I got a coffee, sat down at a little table, and noticed the guy at the next table was an American chatting on his cell phone. Then I noticed that he had a fantastic porn 'stash, and kind of looked like Tom Ritchey, from what I could remember. Then I noticed that he had a T Shirt on that had to do with bikes and Rwanda. So I introduced myself when he got off the phone, and turns out it was Tom Ritchey, stuck in Brussells trying to get to Germany for Eurobike.
I thought it was really cool to be sitting there with him, but I very quickly couldn't come up with much to say, which made it a very awkward conversation, and I said by and left.
I know, it's an amazing story, try not to be too jealous.

So we got to Geneva, were amazed when our bikes finally showed up, and were picked up by Carl, one of the guys from Endless Ride. The drive to Morzine was about an hour through many little towns on incredibly twisty roads.
Once at the Chalet, we immediately set to work finding some beer and building our bikes. At this point it was early afternoon in Morzine, and I had been awake for approximately 24 straight hours.

We bolted the bikes together, fortunately nothing was damaged and the job was pretty easy. Then we wandered off to the favorite local watering hole of Endless Ride, bar Robinson, where they only serve one beer, Mutzig. Mutzig has quite a reputation for being an ass kicker in the region. All the folks from Endless Ride are convinced that at bar Robinson, it is stronger than normal as well. Their joke is that the little old french couple that own the bar spike the beer with local magic mushrooms to give it an extra kick.
We were the only ones in the bar, and ordered a couple of rounds of pints before anybody else arrived. Turns out that was a rookie move, and all those in the know only drink half pints, and those who aren't big drinkers go for a panache, a half pint that is half lemonade.

We left a couple hours and 3 or 4 pints later, feeling extemely tired, very excited, and now a little drunk. Wandered up to the chalet for dinner, which I remember being amazing but can't remember what it was. We had dinner cooked for us almost every night by Helen, the "chalet girl". Her cooking was fabulous. I drank some more beers, dranks some wine, tried to keep up with the conversation of the other guests in the chalet, who were all British, and soon I was very drunk, and very tired.
Eventually I managed to get up, make it upstairs, and get myself into bed without falling over. I slept like a log, and woke up the next morning hung over and ready to ride.

Thats it for now. Hopefully I can get some of my pics up later on today, and I'll continue with the adventure shortly. But for now, its off to work.

I'm Out!

I'm leaving bright and squirrely tomorrow morning for a little R and R, riding and riding.
Heading out with Charlie, Sihu and Mike for a week of epic mountain bike days in the French and Swiss Alps.

We will be guided and pampered by Endless Ride touring company out of Morzine.

Since there's four of us, I believe we'll have our own group with our own guide. The rides we are doing are most like their Transalpine Trip. But Charlie said they are doing a custom tour for us based on the conversations he had with them about the type of riding we'd like to do, and that the lift access will be closed by the end of our trip as it's past normal season. I believe Charlies' conversation went a little like this:

Endless Ride: Hello, Endless Ride
Charlie: Hi, I want to book a tour for me and three buddies.
ER: Okay, what kind of riding would you like to do?
Charlie: I like the look of the Transalpine.
ER: Oh yes, that's great, and very challenging.
Charlie: Is there much hike a bike on that?
ER: Just one nasty bit.
Charlie: Any way we can add a bit more long hike a bikes?
ER: I suppose.
Charlie: Can you guarantee that it will rain on us at least once while we're pushing our bikes?
ER: Umm, no.
Charlie: Bummer, oh well. Is there much chance of us getting lost for hours?
ER: Oh no sir, our guides are very thoroughly trained, you definitely will not get lost.
Charlie: Got any new guys that aren't trained yet?
ER: No.
Charlie: Bummer, oh well. Will there at least be copious amounts of beautiful European women for us to oggle while we're there.
ER: Well, it's off season so the resort is basically deserted. It'll just be you, your three dude friends, and a couple dude guides.
Charlie: Bummer. Well, mabe we can get Lucero to wear a skirt and shave his legs. He does have fantastic legs.
ER: That's very nice sir.

Okay, I think that conversation went on far too long. Charlie seriously can not stop talking about my sexy legs. It's starting to bother me.

Anyway, I was trying to make the trip sound not completely freaking amazing by talking about rain and hike a bike, but really, it's going to be completely amazing and there's nothing I can do about it.

So, I'm leaving in a few hours. Guess I should start packing. I'll try to update while I'm there if the interweb is easily accessable. Hmm, you can get passports at the airport, right? I think you need one of those for France now.

South Boundary Kicks My Head In

We spent yesterday riding. All day. The ride was Elliot Barker to South Boundary to Taos. We got shuttled by the local bike shop shuttle service, and were dropped off at Pablo Flashado (pretty sure I'm spelling that wrong) which is the high point between Angel Fire and Taos.
From there we hopped a fence, got onto Elliot Barker trail, and proceeded to ride for the next seven hours or so.




In this photo, you can see our favorite doc Dave explaining the proper way to put on medical gloves, in case we needed to operate on the trail.

We were riding with a big crew, 10 guys total. Shown in the pic above, we had Dave, Kip (open faced baloney sandwich) Malone (.com), Marc, Richaround, and of course Tony. Also riding were Charlie, my pops Lee, Kent, Sean, and myself. Ten guys total, which is a bit of a big group for such a long ride.

The ride was Charlie's idea, it's a route he's done several times. And as with any Charlie ride, it was long, and there was copious amounts of lung busting climbing.

Sometimes when you take pics of really hard sections of a trail, they just don't look that difficult. I assure you that the section of trail in the pic above was really quite steep, most of us didn't clean it.

Here's a pic of Tony. He's doing a little celebration after our first descent, because everybody was covered in cow shit, but Tony was in front, so nothing got flung on him and he managed not to hit any. Yayyyy Tony!


There was ten of us riding and seven Mavericks. There was an ML7, an ML7/5, four Durance's, and an ML8. Above you can see them all piled together, along with a very sleepy Sean, who reportedly got about 1.5 hours sleep the night before. He also hadn't been on a cross country ride in a year or two, and he was on a borrowed bike (the ML8 demo from the shop) that he'd never ridden before, and he powered through the whole ride. Good show Sean.



There were scenic meadows to be ridden through.


And scenic overlooks to pose in front of.


Four hours and seven miles later, we were officially finished with the "hard" part of the ride. With most of the climbing behind us, we stopped for lunch. At this point we were finally onto the legendary South Boundary trail, which I had never ridden before. Right after lunch was one of the most fun downhill sections I've ever done, starting with a loose high speed double track that led into a super buff, fast and narrow single track carved into the side of the hill. We were all hauling, enjoying some well deserved descending after several hours of brutal climbing.

Kent was riding with a sweet HD camcorder strapped to his helmet, taking footage for a website that he's going to put together that combines riding footage with GPS maps and navigation info. He got some good footage of me catching up to my dad on a high speed section, as Kent was standing off to the side of the trail, watching us come and go. Hopefully I'll get some of the video from him and put it up on the site soon.

Shortly after that first amazing downhill, it started to rain a little. Then it started to rain a lot, then it officially went from a rain to a downpour, and then a little hail was thrown in, probably because I was there and had just moments earlier been explaining to Tony that I dislike rain, but hail is my mortal enemy. The camera was buried safely inside of my pack, and all the wet & cold weather gear came out as we regrouped and huddled under some trees.

It was at this time that I became very proud of myself. For the first time in my entire mountain biking career, there was inclement weather and I was completely prepared. The night before, I picked up a new Endura Superlight rain jacket on my way out of the shop. Then I remembered to pack my Craft waterproof biking pants, which I've owned for a few years and never had the opportunity to use. I also had some water resistant Pearl Izumi heavyweight gloves with me, and I was wearing a Swobo wool short sleeve jersey and some sweet lightweight Swobo wool socks. The temperature dropped, everybody got soaked, people started shivering, and for once in my life, I was perfectly warm. I have never been so happy to own good gear. I expect to be seeing at least a couple of the guys on the ride in the shop this week to be stocking up on some legitimate rain gear. "Kind of" water proof jackets and hefty bags just don't get the job done when you have 20 miles and 5,000 feet of descending left between you and the truck.

Even in the rain, and the resulting puddles, and the complete inability to see out of my sunglasses, South Boundary is an unbelievable trail, as many of you know. I can't believe that I've been living in New Mexico for 12 years and have never ridden it. This is going to become a ride that I do at least once a year from now on. I'd definitely like to get back out again this year, hopefully without the rain this time.

The rain had stopped by the time we got to an amazing overlook of Taos, and it was safe to bring my camera out again.



At this point, I had gotten quite muddy.

In the end, we all made it out relatively unscathed. Some were colder than others, a small amount of blood was shed, but for a group of 10 doing a 30 mile mountain bike ride things went incredibly smooth. Furthermore, there wasn't a single mechanical on the entire ride, despite the incredible amounts of mud and abuse on the bikes, which I can only assume is a testament to Bikeworks' mechanic's skills, as we've built or worked on every bike on the trip.


We regrouped, cleaned up, and then feasted at Eskies. Numerous pitchers were consumed, and slowly you could see life creeping back into everybody's eyes.

Some weren't quite satisfied, and needed a little ice cream to help get them through the long and tired drive back to 'Burque. It was at Baskin Robbins that Tony found Jesus... in his ice cream cone, his face made out of chocolate chips.


After the ice cream, all that was left as truck full of filthy bikes and bags full of soaking wet gear.


Basically, it was a perfect Sunday.