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.

Pics

We've been having fun.
Sunday we went to Santa Fe and did a sweet mountain ride. Not sure exactly what the route was, Charlie is the tour guide, and as I've mentioned, I usually get hopelessly lost once in the woods. But I know we spent some time on Borrego, Rio en Nambe, and Rio en Medio trails. We finished by climbing up Rio en Medio, back to our cars, which were parked at Aspen Ranch on Pacheco Canyon road.
The ride was a whopping 13.7 miles long, and took us nearly five hours. I think it's safe to say that it is the most difficult 13.7 mile ride any of us have ever done. The climbs are excruciating to impossible, but the descents are epic and the scenery amazing. Here's a couple pics.






Julian got himself a bike too.


Yesterday was Danny's birthday. Turns out he's not 40 yet, but he's old none the less.


That's it, I'm out.

Blog Demotion

The International Blogging Federation (IBF) stopped by the shop yesterday to pay me a visit. They had to inform me of my Blogger status demotion, which is a result of the infrequency of my posting on this site. I am no longer a "blogger" but just "a guy who writes on a website on occasion." I think I'm cool with this, I've never been a big fan of the word "blog" in the first place, let alone "blogger." Also, I'm not sure being a "blogger" puts me in the best company. I think I'd like to associate myself with people that don't spend all their free time solo in front of the computer. I would be good, however, to keep the site updated more, as we've had all sorts of shenanigans going on lately.

But, now is not the time, as I've got to get ready for mountain biking in Santa Fe all day. We're parking at Aspen Ranch, riding Borrego and Rio en Medio and a couple other trails, to make one big painful loop. It's gonna be good, we got the whole shop (Charlie, Tony, Danny and I) as well as my pops and Marc joining us. It's gonna be sweet. I'll return with pictures shortly.

Dang! We got some new bikes.

We had a ton of new bikes arrive yesterday.



They included, a Rocky Mountain Flatline 3. Rocky's new DH bike for 08, it's not an easy bike to get your hands on. Actually, I think this is one of just a few to be in customers hands so far. It was a special order, has already left the shop, and will be getting broken in proper this weekend up at Angel Fire. So if your up at the races, and you see somebody flying by on one, give a cheer for Andy, as it'll probably be the only one at the race.



Next to show up was a Tomac Snyper 140. We're the exclusive Abq Tomac dealer, and this is the first production model we've put our hands on. I love the build, there isn't a cheap part on the bike, and it has the look of a custom build kit right out of the box. It's a sweet bike that rides as good as it looks. We've got a medium on hand, with a large arriving soon (which may or maynot become my personal bike).




Then the long anticipated Spot Longboard rolled in the door. It's sweet. I've got a 17.5 and a 20" in the shop right now, with a couple more already on order. I'm going to guess that these bikes don't sit in the shop for long, a lot of people are very anxious to see this thing, and it doesn't disappoint.

Then I started building Charlies' new Durance today. Here's a pic of it, almost finished. It is thoroughly tricked out, pretty much represents the answer to "what trail bike would I build if I owned a bike shop and cost wasn't important?" Some notable parts include Fulcrum Red Metal Zero wheelset, Formula The One brakes, an '09 Talas fork, FSA SLK hollow carbon cranks with ceramic bottom bracket, and a bunch of other nasty stuff. Looking like it'll weigh about 26 lbs, not bad for a 5.5" trail bike with completely rideable build kit. Charlie sure knows how to build a nice bike.



We also had a giant lizard in the shop yesterday. Turns out, I'm not a big fan of giant lizards. You can't see my face in the photo, but I wasn't amused, and I wasn't about to touch it. And this thing was just a baby, supposedly going to grow up to 9ft long and weigh 250 lbs, at which point it will terrorize Albuquerque and relieve us of our stray pet problems. I was kind of happy when it left.

That's it. Time to get out of the shop.

words words words

Haven't had too many words lately, so no posts in a while. Maybe too much baby talk has reduced my big-person speaking abilities.

What's new at the shop? We learned recently of another major corporate merger, one almost as big as our recent one, with Spot Bikes buying Maverick American. This came as a complete surprise, but at least explained why nobody was answering the phones at Maverick for about a week. There has been a few press releases about it, giving some details. It kind of works well for us, since we're a Spot dealer too. And Maverick's tech wizard Ethan is staying with the company, which we're happy about, as Ethan has been helping us out for years, and always has the answers for us. We love Maverick's bikes and hopefully this move will only make them better, help them grow and maybe expand their offerings.

Speaking of Spot, word has it that we will be getting our first shipment of bikes within the next week. I guess they said we're getting two bikes at first, I'm not sure which two, or exactly when, as the phone call was answered by Tony, or maybe Danny, the guys couldn't tell me exactly, which kind of seemed strange to me, but what can I say, things get crazy at the shop sometimes, and it can be very difficult if to remember if you did or did not answer the phone and have a conversation. And, it was new keg monday. Today is Thursday, which means we have a couple of days of keg left, so come by and say hi.

I rode lower Faulty, up to Tree Spring, and back down, with a few random extra loops thrown in, on Sunday. It was a fantastic ride, those trails are so nice it's amazing that we aren't more well known for our mountain biking in Albuquerque. That's ok with me though, as it only takes one super trafficky ride on a saturday in the front range area to know that we don't want to be the next Mtb. "mecca."
It was only my second time out on my Maverick since I put the DUC32 fork on it. I'm still fine tuning it, but I like that fork, a lot.

I recently sent our friend Salinas out on my Maverick for a test ride in Cedro. He was riding with a buddy on an Ibis, and they switched back and forth a couple of time during the ride to do some shop and compare action. Final verdict was that the Maverick climbs better, whereas the Ibis was more "flickable". Having ridden both bikes, I found this to be a pretty good summary. It also explains why I like the Maverick so much, because "flickable" for me usually means that I get "flicked" off the bike, most often over the bars.

At the end of our Faulty ride, I had the most amazingly painful leg cramp of my life. It resulted in me falling off the bike, my right leg completely locked out, and laying on the trail whimpering for what felt like several hours. My quad was just totally seized up, and it sucked.

We stopped by the new Marble Brewery tap room last night after work. The place was packed. It's a bit bigger than the other tap rooms we normally frequent in Albuquerque, which was nice. We were drinking IPA, as usual. It was good, a little milder than Il Vicino's. In fact, think I'll have a pint right now. The red was also very tasty.

Well, that's about what I got for today. I think I'll have some more pics and fun tomorrow. Tony is going to be up in Angel Fire all weekend, racing Super D and Downhill. There's also some 4 Cross and Cross Country action going on. Should be a nice fun long weekend if anybodies looking for something to do this Memorial Day. We'll be closed on Monday, by the way.

Thanks for reading.