Amasa Back 40th

Last weekend I made another trip to Grand Junction. I had three primary and not-entirely-distinct goals for this trip: One was to help Heather and her family celebrate her 40th birthday. Another was to go to Moab to pick up a used bicycle I found for Quinn. Another was to ride by own bicycle in Moab, which, despite calling myself a mountain biker, I'd never done.

After having a great time meeting and talking (bikes) with a bunch of Heather and Chris's friends at Heather's birthday party Friday night, we got up Saturday morning, loaded the bikes into the truck, and Heather, Chris, Cailan, Bobby, and I drove to Moab Cyclery in Moab where Quinn's new bike was awaiting us. Quinn had pretty much outgrown his little 20-inch wheel bike you've seen him on so often, and we've been watching for a replacement for the last year or so. This Santa Cruz Juliana, has 26" wheels and extra small 13.5-inch frame. The XS Juliana had been one of our preferred options for Quinn, but it took us a while to find the right one. Anyway, here it is, photographed back at Heather and Chris's house. With white paint and the same decal design, it looks very much like my Nickel, which is off to the right. The Juliana had a good first year of life in Moab, so it's a bit scuffed up, perhaps mostly from transport to and from the trail head, but it appears to be in excellent mechanical condition. And it sure looks nice here. Poor Quinn has a new bike and won't even get to touch it until he comes out to Colorado to visit me in a month. Even then, after the visit, he won't get to take it home! Maybe it will provide some incentive to make him want to move out here to Colorado with me.

While we were at Moab Cyclery buying the bike, we had a PBJ lunch at a table in front of the shop while we waited for friends Heidi and Marie who were joining us for the ride.

The Amasa Back trail climbs about 1000 ft mostly on sandstone in the middle of big meander of the Colorado River. It's supposed to be a jeep trail, but I'm betting that most of the year it seems more bicycles than jeeps. Of those bicycles, what portion are tandems?

Most of the trail is easy enough to ride. It is only moderately steep, climbing 1000 ft in about five miles, and much of the tread is smooth sandstone. Despite the name "slickrock," the sandstone is anything but slick. It's actually quite grippy. It feels somewhat like medium grit sandpaper and provides plenty of traction for pedaling up very steep inclines. Of course, that means you have to have strong enough legs and lungs to maintain power to the tires for those climbs.

The biggest challenge presented on the trail are the boulders and rock ledges. Some of them are just too big to climb, others are somewhere in between and present a fun challenge. Often the ledges and boulders come in rapid sequence making for some really tricky, technical riding. Going up those ledges was sort of like rock climbing; picking the best path with careful tire placement and balance, and then powering up at just the right moment. Going down required a different strategy; it was less like solving a puzzle than it was like flying - or even falling. Okay, on to the pics... 

Heather and Chris pedaling hard on sandstone:

Heather and Chris climbing on sandstone:

Heidi and Marie grinding up a long flat on sandstone:

In some places the trail was too close to the edge. We survived, but I was not comfortable pedaling close to a cliff!.

Heather and Chris on sandstone, pulling off an especially impressive climb:

Heather and Chris at the top with my Nickel:

It was definitely one of the most scenic rides -- if not the most scenic ride -- I have ever done. If only the rest of scaq could have come along (although then those sheer cliffs really would have scared me). It was challenging, too, but we moved at a reasonably gentle pace so it was not difficult or particularly dangerous. Even with five people and four bikes in our group, in the end we all were somewhat surprised that there had not been a single crash on the entire ride.

Click here to see the Garmin log for the ride. You'll notice it took us two hours to get up and only one to come down.

Horsethief, Mary's, Rustler's, and Rabbit Valley

Over the weekend I took a short trip even further west to do some mountain biking in the Grand Junction area with our western slope relatives. I left Friday after work and drove across the mountains on I-70 in the dark. The roads were a little icy in the high mountains, which made the drive a little stressful, but I didn't run into any problems. I got to Grand Junction late, unloaded my biking gear from the Nissan, and spent just a few minutes talking and winding down before getting to sleep.

I awoke to a hot breakfast of french toast and good coffee, as promised, and then we packed the gear into H&C's Nissan to hit the trails. It was quite cold that morning, a good bit below the freezing mark, so we dressed warmly and left Cailan with his grandma.

Looking for the driest trails we could find, we went northwest of I-70, past Fruita, to the Kokopelli parking lot where we could access several trails from a single starting point. We began by heading up a moderately steep and rocky trail, Mary's Trail, until we reached a rock shelf overlooking Horsethief Bench.

The descent from the shelf to the bench is quite steep. It may look like we're on the edge of a cliff (below), but it's actually the beginning of the descent. Most people don't ride it. Most people who try probably end up breaking something. Today it was especially treacherous because it was covered in ice. Of course, I didn't get any photos of the actual descent because I was too busy trying to descend without getting killed or dropping my bike off the boulders. Below, Heather holds my Nickel and talks to Utah while I take pictures before we descend.

Most of the Horsethief Loop was plenty dry, but some of the sections on north-facing slopes were not. This picture shows a snowy north-facing slope in the near background. Heather and Chris are climbing on the tandem.

After doing Horsethief, we carried the bikes back up to the shelf and continued around on Mary's Trail. The section below was undoubtedly the most exposed section of trail we rode. It actually looks worse in this picture than it really seemed, although one would not want to take a wrong turn here, or even look away at the scenery for a half second.

We stopped for a snack where Steve's Trail split off from Mary's, and then turned back to return to the parking area. Below is Steve's trail taking off toward the north and heading downward towards the Colorado River.

After heading back home for a quick lunch, we picked up Cailan, along with friends Maria and Max, did some bike swapping, and headed back to the same trail head. This time we rode Rustler's Loop, which has a few challenging hills and some rock shelves to climb, but is overall a fairly easy trail. Chris and Cailan are getting ready to climb up some of the most challenging shelves on the loop. They made it up, of course.

Marie and Max at the same spot. Max was probably shouting and laughing with the sheer joy of trail riding when I took this picture. He loved being out on the bike and wasn't afraid to let us all know!

Click here to see the GPS log for the day's rides.

Moving on to Sunday, we thought we'd try something a little more distant and a little more adventurous. We didn't know we were also trying something a little more snowy and a lot more muddy. The Rabbit Valley is a little further from Grand Junction; the trailhead is not far from the Utah border. We left Cailan at Grandma's house for this one. Utah stayed home too. He wanted to come, but after doing more than 20 miles on Saturday, he probably needed a break.

Since it was muddier than expected, we mostly stuck to the road for this ride instead of taking the somewhat parallel single-track. I suppose that means we were road biking, but it's good that we had fat tires with knobs. On this trail -- er, road -- it was easy to feel like we were out in the wilderness. Aside from the tracks in the mud and the snow made by jeeps and ATVs, and the trails in the sky made by airplanes, there was hardly a sign of man's influence anywhere.

Progress was slow and challenging. We often rode on the snow because it provided a firmer surface than the wet ground beside it. In some areas the sand or clay or earth was dry, but mostly it was not. Typically, as responsible conscientious mountain bikers, we avoid riding trails when they are muddy. On this four-wheel drive road where ATVs and 4x4s outnumber bikes, our shallow tire tracks seemed relatively benign. Below, Heather is descending with Chris up ahead taking the fork to the right.

We stopped for a rest at the time of a climb. Is Heather shaking her finger at Chris?

Stopping short of Heather and Chris's usual destination, we rested at the lookout before turning back toward the trail head.

The descent from the lookout was really fun, with large rocks obscured by snow. Taking it fast required a certain level of confidence, some trust that the suspension and tires would accommodate whatever lay underneath, and a good dose of adrenaline-induced stupidity.

We got through it. Here's Heather coming in near the end of the snowiest.

Check out this rock!

And click here to see the GPS log from Sunday's rides. I forgot to start watch until we'd gone a couple of miles, so the track is not complete.

And then I drove back to Denver. It was a really fun weekend. It would have been much much better with the whole of scaq. I miss them all so much (even though we talk every day).

The interesting thing about doing these rides without Cindy, Abbey, and Quinn, was that I really wasn't without them. The whole time we were riding, especially on Saturday, with the scary cliffs, I was thinking about what it would be like to do the ride with Quinn on the big black tandem. Which climbs and ledges would Cindy and Abbey be able to thrust the green Cannondale over? Would Quinn and Abbey be too scared to ride along the exposed ledges? Would I be too scared to let them? Cindy? Even though they weren't with me in person, they were in my mind.

Iceman

I've been thinking of posting a blog entry on our experience at the Iceman Cometh Challenge, a race that we did last fall, but I just haven't found time. It was a really fun experience. The Iceman is a huge big mountain bike race that takes place up north in Michigan's lower peninsula. We rode it on our two mountain tandems. This race is really the reason we ended up setting up the two mountain tandems. Little did we know this would be our last big bicycling event in Michigan. More on that another time.

There were 3757 finishers, so it was a crowded course. We were started in waves over a 2 1/2 hour time interval.  The Garmin indicates we ascended 1450 ft and descended 1540 ft, so it's not a huge amount of climbing, but just a constant up and down, with some climbs that were very steep -- as in tire-spinning steep. 

Quinn and I did pretty well, I think, finishing the 29 miles in about 2:43 (that's hours:minutes, of course). I had optimistically predicted we could finish in 2:30, but that was really more of a guess than anything. Quinn was a little racing machine; there were only two hills we were unable to climb, but we spent a lot more time than I'd expected in our lowest gear! Quinn didn't want to stop to rest or eat or drink, he just wanted to win. He rode really hard and I often had to ask him to take it easy so he didn't burn out. He was ready to do it again and do it even faster, and was wondering if he could do it on his own bike. We had so much positive feedback from other riders while we were riding, I think it really made Quinn feel proud. We passed a lot of other riders, often while climbing hills, and I'm sure 3/4 of them had some sort of encouraging comment. Many expressed some friendly disgust or resignation at being passed by tandem with a kid on the back. Those that passed us also found positive words for us. Once we stopped because Quinn really had to pee, but he was very concerned about losing ground at seeing all the riders flying past. He did his business quickly and then it was, "Come on, Dad, let's go, we're getting behind!" Soon, however, we caught up with the pack we'd been with before we stopped.  We passed a number of riders for the second time. Poor guys!  

The fastest times, by the pro riders, were around 1:33. The fastest tandem team was 1:56. There were 24 tandem teams and we came in 17th of 24. Cindy and Abbey came in 23rd. Because I rode with Quinn, it's difficult to find any benchmark against which to assess my performance. I did not see all the tandem teams, but all that I did see were paired adults. One guy that I know from the mid-state MMBA, and have ridden with somewhat competitively, with rode in about 2:20. Based on that, I think 2:40 with Quinn is good enough.  

Cindy and Abbey finished in 3:55. Cindy's goal was to beat 4 hours; also just a guess, but she did it. Cindy did not enjoy significant portions of the ride, particularly the narrow single track, which has over the years become a larger portion of the course (the rest being wider two-track logging roads and old gravel roads). All tandems with captains that had not ridden Iceman before started relatively close to the start (wave 27), so there were lots of faster riders that needed to pass Cindy and Abbey, which was problematic on the narrow tight single track where the girls needed to go slowly to squeeze through the trees. They felt like they were a bottleneck at times. If Cindy and Abbey had started in the wave with the 40-year-old women (as was originally planned), she would have been in a wave that started an hour and 15 minutes later. That would have been better, because all those fast old men would have started ahead of them instead of behind. Some portions of the ride were enjoyable for them, but by the end they were also extremely tired. The course was hilly and very challenging. I'm glad they did it, and I think eventually they will look back and also be glad they did it, but Cindy and Abbey said they would most likely not do it again next year. They have instead considered doing the Slush Cup on their singles, which is the shorter race course (8-miles) at the Iceman. The Slush Cup has no singletrack.

Overall, the weekend was fun.  We stayed at the host hotel, which is a really nice resort and spa.  Despite Cindy and Abby feeling a little overwhelmed during the race, I think that overall the weekend was a success.  

Click here to see my Garmin log.  Note that I started the log 10 minutes before we started riding just so I wouldn't forget to turn it on.

Click here to see a video of Quinn and me.

I've got a couple of pictures of the girls that we purchased from Action Sports Images LLC. On some other storage device, in some other state, I've got a couple of pictures of Quinn and me. I'll see if I can add them sometime.

Time Trial and Two Tandems

Sunday gave us a wonderful day of bicycling. It began with chilly temps not too far above freezing, but there was enough sunshine to make it feel great. I started the day's cycling by racing in a time trial at one of the local trails. It was a smallish event with about 80 riders on very twisty, tight, forested course, with plenty of roots, rocks, and narrow trees to make it challenging. There were some sections of new trail through mostly open fields, too, presenting a different suite of strength-sapping challenges.

For this time trial, we started one at a time with a 30 second delay between riders. It worked well. With the twistiest most technical section right at the beginning, there was plenty of space between riders. Although my race number was 9, I was the fourth or maybe fifth rider out of the start box. The ride started with a good climb and then some short ups and downs. Initially my legs felt stiff and tired. I feared my time spent on the dirt jumps the day before had taken too much toll on my leg muscles, but after half a mile or so, my muscles warmed and felt better. I passed one rider, also named "Shaun," within the first mile, and at the same time another rider, Steve, passed both of us. These guys both rode the Triple Trail event with me a couple weekends previously. That was last close-quarters riding or passing I saw until one speedy rider shot past me 11 miles later, about 100 meters from the finish line. I was almost lonely out on the course.

It was a fun ride on mostly familiar trail, although run in reverse in some sections. The tight and twisty trail and all the roots and rocks were perfect terrain for my Santa Cruz Nickel. The Nickel is more a "trail" bike and less a "race" bike for a variety of reasons, but it's marketed as a great do-it-all machine and I find that marketing accurate. This is good since I don't have the means or space to have a collection of multiple mountain bikes. I'll save the technical discussion of why I love the Nickel for another time. Given the relatively small amount of hard-packed trail relative to softer dirt and grass, both of which were a little slick, I probably would have felt more confident on a set of fatter and more aggressively knobbed tires, but my Maxxis Crossmarks did the job. I have enough sets of tires on the tire rack to experiment, but I didn't think to try something different. We do have an overstuffed bicycle tire rack. See the mud and sand packed into those tires? Thanks to DeadTreeRun for posting photos of the event.

I was happy enough with my performance. I finished the 11 miles or so in a little over 57 minutes. The fastest rider was one of the high school team riders who finished it in 48 minutes. A few riders finished in the 51 minute range. My perspective: nobody my age or older did it faster than me. Here's a link, at the moment, to the results: Click here. I forgot to wear Cindy's GPS watch, so I can't provide a link to my ride, but one of the other riders has posted a link to his: See it here.

After the ride, I hung around with some of the other guys from the Mid-State Mountain Biking Association (MMMBA), which is now an independent IMBA chapter. It's always fun to hear everyone review their ride and watch the other riders rolling across the finish. It's also a good time to check out other bikes and look at battle scars, too. One of the guys had lost control while cornering on roots and run straight into a tree, bending his fork. He finished the race in good time, but his bike wasn't steering very well after that. He'd been thinking about getting a new bike anyway. I didn't hang around talking too long because I was anxious to get back home and load up the tandems for the second half of the bicycling day.

I grabbed some sandwiches on the way home so we could eat a quick bite of lunch, swap the Nickel for the Fandango and Cannondale tandems, and make the 45 minute drive to the Island Lake trail head. Island Lake is another one of Michigan's State Recreation Areas that has a some good bicycle trails. Who would have thought we'd run into another couple on a black Fandango tandem? Not me, but we did. Maybe they were not actually a couple, since the stoker was the captain's friend's girlfriend, but whatever. We had a nice chat about tandem mountain bikes before hitting the trail. We'll be seeing the captain at the Iceman Cometh, but he'll racing with his brother on the Fandango. Actually, they'll probably be going much faster than us, so I suppose we won't see them. Once we were on the Island Lake Trail we leap-frogged with that tandem team and the other person riding with them for several miles. They must have been taking it easy.

The trails at Island Lake are generally smooth and fast. They are very well used, too, as was evident from the huge parking lot at the trailhead and the 50 or so other cyclists coming or going. The trail surface was firmly packed sand, slightly damp from recent rain. There were frequent holes where drainage had created a significant divot in the trail, the sort of obstruction one might easily wheelie or hop over on a single, but requiring a rapid deceleration on a hard-tail tandem to avoid stoker-launching. Despite the occasional hole and a few eroded climbs, the trails seem to be holding up well to heavy use.

We had a really nice ride at Island Lake. The sun was shining and the temperature was, I think, in the low 60s F. The trails were swoopy and fast, the bikes were working well, nobody was too hungry or cold or tired, and I don't think any one of us could find anything to complain about.

Abbey sports her usual racer form, with her hands dangling at her sides.

Quinn caught this last picture of C&A's lower extremities. Gotta love those socks!

Triple Double Weekend

It's late and I'm going to make this quick. On Saturday I rode the Triple Trail Challenge. I've wanted to do this ride for the last couple of years but my schedule hasn't allowed it. It starts in the same place as the Trail Half Marathon I've run a couple of times. The course covered three trails and just enough gravel road to connect them. It was a ride, not a race (although it seemed like we were racing), and was sponsored by Tree Fort Bikes and Arbor Brewing. After the ride, the beer and chili were free. Purchases of mugs, t-shirts, and other stuff support the Poto MMBA chapter. Anyway, it was a really tough ride, and it was a lot of fun. I rode with some of the guys I know through the MMBA. Here's the Garmin log.

Today, we did a two-tandem ride that covered some gravel roads not too far from us; close enough that we could ride from home without having to load the bikes into the car and drive to the trail head. It was a beautiful day for a ride. Here's the Garmin log for this one. Pictures below are focused on the MT800 with its new stuff, although you might also make note of Abbey's socks.

Once again I've stayed up too late doing this.

Traverse Weekend

We made a trip up to the Traverse City Area over Labor Day Weekend. It was really the only traveling we did this summer, despite having nice visits from both Grandpa and Grandma Nick and Bonnie and Grandma Sharon.

We camped at the Traverse City KOA in our big tent, and spent a good deal of time wishing the rain would end. Michigan is a very sandy place and wet sand sticks to everything. The rain was nice in that it kept the temperature down, and it packed the sand on the trails, making for nice riding conditions.

First we rode the Dry Hill Trail in the Arcadia Dunes west of Traverse City along the shore of Lake Michigan. The Dry Hill Trail is a loop of about 10 miles. It was built as a mountain bike trail and consequently was really fun. Really, really fun! It swooped around trees through a dense forest, occasionally popping out into open meadows like the one in the first picture below. It was among the best trails I've ridden. This was the first single-track riding Cindy and Abbey had done on the MT800 since we added a suspension fork and new brakes. Because the trail started out with a bunch of really tight switch backs, they had some trouble initially and took a few spills, but after the first mile or so, Cindy got pretty good at steering the 8-foot long beast through the switchbacks and around the trees. She wore her Garmin watch; here's a link to the Garmin Connect log where you can see the map and our ride statistics.

We also rode the VASA pathway, which is a 25 km loop near Traverse City, and is best known as a ski trail. A portion of the Iceman Cometh mountain bike race uses part of the VASA pathway. We'll be doing the Iceman later this fall, so this was a preview. The VASA pathway is wide, and except for the sand and some really steep hills, it is a pretty easy path. Cindy wore her Garmin -- here's a link to the Garmin log.

Back at the camp ground, Quinn had a blast tearing around on this three-wheeled pedal thing. Sorry, no Garmin log for this.

Back to Bicycling

You might have thought, when you read the title, that I'm commuting to work by bicycle again. Ah, well, no such luck for me. I hope that will happen some day, but not until I move or change jobs again.

No, this blog is just another bicycling blog. Not unlike many of those you've read before.

The story starts when I met Steve, one of Cindy's coworkers at Playmakers, at his house for distance-oriented training ride at 7 a.m. Saturday morning. You may recall reading a previous blog in which we rode with Steve and his girlfriend, Lizzie, for family ride. A guy named Bob went along, too, for that one. We've done that a couple of times now (although not the Bob part), but this particular Saturday ride represents the beginning of training for ODRAM 2011. Oh, yes, you remember that too, don't you! The One Day Ride Across Michigan. Because it's not sufficiently painful enough to do ordinary rides; it's important to seek out the worst; plan for nearly intolerable training schedules, undertake them bound to fail, and then suffer through miles of pain because, well, just because, I suppose. Ah, well, that's coming later.

OK, back to Saturday: Steve and I met at 7 a.m. planning to bust out a quick 60 miles before lunch. I needed to get home to the kids, and so couldn't spend time lolligagging down the road at a leisurely pace. We headed straight north for 30 miles with the wind at our backs. Our average speed must have been over 20 mph. We talked while we rode, occasionally discussing the fact that we riding at an unsustainable pace, and with a return trip into the wind, would really pay for our overzealous start. We did. I did.

I still felt quite strong when we stopped for a break at mile 30 beside a statue of a cow that was larger than any elephant I've ever seen. Pay a visit to Elsie, MI, if you'd like to see it. It's huge (the cow, not Elsie). There's not much else of interest in Elsie. Well, I guess I don't really know that. OK, after our short break we headed north a little further, and looped around back to the south. Yup, the headwind was a killer. By the time we hit mile 40 I was beginning to wonder where I'd find the juice for the 20 miles we had to cover to get home. I'd already used up two Gu packs and Clif bar. I felt hungry so I ate a Clif Mojo bar. Yummy, but dry, and my water bottles were running low. Not even at mile 50 and I'm starting to lose steam; slowing down; and where did these hills come from? Another Gu shot -- this one with a double shot of caffeine. along with a short break in the shade of a tree. Back on the road, feeling better but moving slower, with Steve dropping me on every hill, we made it home.

I crashed in the shade beside Steve and Lizzie's house. Lizzie brought me some ice water. She was probably wondering what she'd do with the body if I died right there in her grass. What would she tell Cindy?

OK, well, you already know that since I'm writing this, Lizzie didn't have to dispose of my body. But what the hell? Am I not strong? Maybe Steve held up better than me because he rides a Waterford. I was riding my Soma; still stripped of it's fenders and rack after the Barry-Roubaix Killer Gravel Road Race earlier this year. That Soma Double Cross is awesome, but I'm gonna call Soma and complain that it's not as fast as a Waterford. It's all about the bike, you know. No! Of course, I don't really believe that; just mocking.

After all those Gu shots, I was just about sick for the rest of the day. I could barely eat lunch. When I got home, I think the kids thought I was going to die on the sofa in the basement. They were probably wondering what they'd do with the body. What would they tell Cindy? But after an hour long nap, and some lunch, I lived. The we went down the street to an "open house" for a local graduating senior and ex-occasional baby sitter. I ate lunch again.

OK, so that was Saturday. Can you guess what we did on Sunday? Yup. We got the mountain bikes out and headed off to Brighton to ride the Murray Lake Trail. I know, you've read about that one before too. Like, right here. But this time we did it differently: Quinn and I took the Black Beast (our Fandango) while the girls rode their Santa Cruz singles. It was just way too much fun!

Quinn and I hammered through every tricky climb, every switchback, over every log. That tandem is awesome! I really enjoy negotiating it through switchbacks lined with trees, letting the front wheel swing a wide arc, under full power, right to the outside edge of every turn so there's plenty room to bring the rear around. It just adds to the swoopiness of the whole experience. Quinn didn't even seem afraid of the land speeder approach to zipping through the forest, although Murray Lake doesn't give quite the opportunity for speed that one finds at Yankee Springs.

I'm pretty sure we never got both wheels off the ground at once this time. We never crashed. We caught Quinn's crank while crossing a log pile -- that stopped us quickly, but we didn't crash. Worse yet, I whacked the stoker bar on a tree along the inside of a sharp 180-degree turn. Quinn got his fingers out of the way so they were not destroyed, but his shoulder, elbow, and knee hit the tree. No big deal, he's a tough kid, right? We just got out the tools and fixed him up. Loosened the seat post binder bolt and straightened out the seat and stoker bars. This is when Quinn came up with the idea for a retractable stoker bar. One that works just like my Gravity Dropper Turbo seat post. When forest is tight, hit the button and slide the bars in. Wide downhill? Snap those bars out wide. Quinn's gonna make millions -- or maybe just bike parts -- for me someday, if he gets over this fever.

The girls did really well, too. Abbey rode the full 9+ miles on her Chameleon with Cindy behind her. I hope Cindy was yelling at her to make her ride faster. You know I would have been. Cindy was trying to work with Abbey on shifting. Abbey understands how the shifters work and uses them well, but still has to think about which hand to use and which way to shift. It should become instinctive. Involuntary. Like breathing. You need to climb a hill, your brain tells your fingers what to do, but the thought never crosses your mind. Like a dog barking at a raccoon. Okay, a dog is a bad example; based on my observation of Amos, a thought never crosses a dog's mind. Anyway, Quinn and I could tell Abbey was having fun when we heard her screaming on short, steep downhills. I could tell Quinn was having fun because he kept telling me he was. And when we were done he wanted to do it all again.

Oh, you want to see pictures? Sure, I took a few, let me look...






Click here to see the Garmin data from our ride.

The next day, after work, I did it again, this time on my Nickel. Click here to see the Garmin data for that one.

It's interesting to note that the bike odometers read close to ten miles on this ride, while the GPS indicates only nine. This I assume must be becuase many of the twists and switchbacks are too small for the GPS to detect.

Easter Sunday on the Blue Burleys

Sunday morning; Easter candy; waffles for breakfast; more drywall mud. Sore butts from a long and bouncy ride the day before. Rain, rain, and more rain. Will it ever end?

Sunday afternoon, finally pulling the blue Burleys off the wall, we went on a road ride with some friends from Playmakers. The rain held off for us, and yesterday's strong westerly wind had blown itself out. The air was chilly, perhaps 50 F, but with a little sun and no wind, we weren't complaining. Well, not about the weather anyway, but after spending three hours in the saddle the day before on such a bumpy ride, we were all complaining about our bruised and tender butts!

We'd been playing around with our seating arrangement last fall, and the tandems were still configured for father/daughter and mother/son seating. To keep things simple, we left them this way for this 30-mile ride to Sleepy Hollow State Park. With Abbey's nearly full-sized body on the back of big Burley I had run 95 psi in the tires instead of the usual 75 psi I'd been using with Quinn. I probably could have backed off the pressure in the tire under Quinn on the little Burley, but I didn't think about it.

A couple of weeks ago, Steve, the guy in the orange jersey riding the Waterford, asked us if we'd be interested in doing an Easter Sunday ride. It was going to be Lizzie's first of the season so they were looking at something short and easy. Both working at Playmakers, Steve and Lizzie are very fit runners, so I guess they thought a 30-mile ride on some hills would be a good place to start the season. We were really glad to have someone ask us along for a ride, but we warned them that for a ride of that length this early in the season, 12 mph would be all we could expect to average. As evidenced by Cindy's garmin data, we averaged about 11 mph. The ride and the pace were nice. Plenty of time for chatting and checking out the scenery.

As a last-minute addition to the group, Bob, also a Playmakers staffer, also rode with us. Bob was clearly the strongest rider in the group, but if he minded the slow pace he didn't complain. Bob's getting ready to take his new touring bike, a Surly Long Haul Trucker, which has not yet arrived, on a 2-week unsupported expedition in the Canadian Rockies. Nice. Bob also has a new 29er mountain bike and we're hoping we can do a relay race with him this summer. Unless we move somewhere first.





We did really well on the ride, set up as we were. Cindy is strong right now, in the midst of her intensive marathon training program. Quinn and Abbey did a nice job of pulling their share of the load. I even popped my feet off the pedals and had Abbey push us up a long steep climb on her own. I didn't think she'd be able to do it. But she did. This should be a good year of cycling for us!

Lakelands Rail Trail

Oh, what a week it has been! Nerves in tatters. If I'd had the foresight to see the events of this week when I passed up a job opportunity with NOAA Fisheries a couple of weeks ago, this week would have been different, because we'd be packing! But I'll save that story for another day.

For now, let us back up just a few days to the weekend of 23 April:

Saturday morning, smearing mud on fresh drywall in the basement kept us busy. I do enjoy building walls, and the improvements to our laundry area will, I hope, be one more step towards getting us out this place. And, if we never do, it will at least make spending our lives here a little more tolerable.

Being a holiday weekend there were no soccer games, lacrosse tournaments, or bicycling events on the calendar, so we got to make our own fun. Cindy had the weekend off because we'd planned to go camping to make up for the weather-related cancellation of our spring break camping trip, but since the rain was still coming down like the tears of a half-giant who'd lost his baby dragon, we'd once again cancelled the camping, this time replacing it with a couple of shorter bicycling trips.

We had previeously noticed a rail trail passing through the small towns of Stockbridge and Gregory. We learned that it was the Lakelands Trail, one of Michigan's linear state parks, comprising about 13 miles of rail trail, surfaced with crushed-rock, and open to most types of non-motorized recreation. With our skinny-tired blue Burleys, we've avoided significant amounts of non-paved surface, but now that we have the two fat-tire tandems rolling, all of these soft surfaced trails are open to us.

It was a chilly and very windy Saturday, but the Lakelands Trail was quite nicely sheltered in most places by trees and hills or berms. We started at its western terminus, and rode eastward. The trail passed through a few suburban housing areas, but mostly through farmland, patches of fragmented second growth forest, and noisy wetlands. The frogs, spring peepers, I think, probably among others, were singing at their best, and it sounded just like the final track on Neko Cases's "Middle Cyclone."

The setting was quite nice, as I said, but the trail surface was not quite nice for bicycling. All sections of the trail were covered in a finely crushed rock, much of which had a particle size similar to course sand intermixed with some fine sand. In some sections, this material was compacted sufficiently to make a smooth and firm surface for our tires to roll across, although we had to pick a path through the horse prints.



In most sections of the trail, however, the surface was substantially churned by horse prints, and we could not find a firm enough or smooth enough surface for comfortable bicycling. Even with the big-hoop 29ers and suspension fork on the Fandango tandem, the constant pounding from riding on the rough surface fatigued my arms (and butt), and the skin on my arms began to itch from the constant vibration. It was probably even worse for the girls on the Cannondale tandem with its rigid fork.

When we set out, we thought we would cover the 13 miles of trail out and back pretty easily since it was a flat rail trail. We did not. We rode for at least and hour and a half, but did not complete 13 miles before we decided to turn back. The trail surface had continued to deteriorate as we rode eastward, and it soon began to feel like we were trying to cycle on a rough, dry, sandy beach: progress was very slow and difficult. We passed four horses on the trail, and I would have to say those big feet and long legs were better suited to the trail surface than were our wheels. This condition, of course, was the result of those feet.



It was a good day for seeing wildlife. Many waterfowl, shorebirds, and red-winged blackbirds were out in the marshes; we looked for the frogs we could hear, but they were hard to find. Not surprisingly, we saw a heard of at least 15 deer. We saw a wood chuck a couple of times as we passed his home, and we saw this water snake lounging in the sun on his island of grass.



We stopped to take some photos of this strange creature. At first we worried it might be dangerous, and Cindy and Abbey kept their distance while I took some photos, but after observing it for a while, we concluded it was in fact mostly harmless.



After returning to the car and loading up the bikes, we took the shortest route to the ice cream shop, where we stopped for a round of milkshakes for the drive home.

Yankee Springs Half Marathon and Fandango First Ride

Taking advantage of window between spring showers, we stole Friday afternoon for a trip to Yankee Spring Recreation Area. I've known about and wanted to ride the 13-mile bicycling trail at Yankee Springs, about 70 miles to our southwest, for quite some time. With the new tandems set up for Quinn and me, it seemed like the time had come. No, it wasn't actually a half-marathon of the running sort, it was a bicycle trail ride, but the distance matched.

The trail at Yankee Springs was really nice; many thanks to the Southwest MMBA Chapter and the MDNR for all the work to build and maintain the trail and the nice facilities (included a clothes changing station) at the Staging Area.

The trail conditions were great this weekend. The trail had only been thawed enough to ride for a couple of weeks, and recent rains had left much of the sandy trail damp and tacky, but there was almost no mud. There were a few areas of deep sand, which I understand will grow larger and deeper as the summer progresses, but none of the sandy spots gave us significant trouble.

The trail is generally smooth and flowing with gently bermed turns and a few rooted climbs and descents. The terrain is notably more contoured than most of what is closer to home for us. It climbs over forested ridges and descends passed lowlands and marshes as it loops around the Devils Soup Bowl, which the MDNR describes as "a glacially carved kettle formation." In some places the trail ran along the edge of the bowl, with steep forested hillsides sloping frighteningly downward; frightening, particularly if you're an 8-year-old on the back of a tandem weaving through the trees at break-neck speed.

Cindy and Abbey rode their single bikes, while Quinn and I shared the new tandem.





Most of the forest comprised deciduous trees, which had not yet sprouted leaves.



In some areas, pine trees dominated, giving the trail the look and feel of some of the trails we rode in Colorado.



Although most of the trail was smooth and easy, allowing the local racers to speed through on hardtails and rigid 29ers, there were a descents and climbs that gave our team pause. For this particular section, we'd had to stop and scout the trail to make sure there weren't any drop-offs that might cause someone to go over the bars. After a quick survey, Abbey tackled it with ease.



Abbey really did quite well on her Chameleon, handling obstacles and hills that I thought might have stopped her.



However, we did not bring enough (any) food with us on this trip, and with a late afternoon start, we were getting quite hungry and low on energy after a couple of hours of riding.



Abbey is making use of solar power, placing her face in the sun to soak up some calories, while the rest of us watch in awe at her abilities. Cindy probably wished she had solar cells in her face, too, since she'd run 16 miles the day before and consequently started this ride with leg muscles already sore and shaky.



This 13 mile trail ride, equivalent in length (but not difficulty) to a half-marathon run, was quite successful. We didn't hammer it out in record time, but that wasn't our goal. The trail was fun and scenery was nice, and we gave our legs a good first-ride-of-the-season workout.

The new (used) Fandango mountain tandem worked really well for Quinn and me. We only had two incidents in which the boy was launched from the bike. The first being a simple case of me stopping us quickly and attempting to lean against a tree, but losing control of the front wheel and tipping the bike over. It was a good laugh. The second was a little more painful for him. We were trying to wield the bike around a tight bend with a few big roots roots to climb, and lost our speed; I had to put a foot down and the bike tipped to the side, rolling Quinn off to the left on the roots and rocks. He survived, but in his eyes, just barely.

I found the biggest challenge to be just that: navigating around corners and simultaneously over roots and rocks. Although the captain of a tandem can un-weight the front end to some extent, it's not possible to 'wheely' over stuff as can be done on a single bike. For getting through those spots, the tandem requires momentum, balance, strength, and commitment. The squishy fork is very helpful, too. I wish I could get more progressive dampening out of this one for better small bump squish.



Here's the report from Cindy's Garmin:

Garmin Connect Link