Turd-smoker sighting!

It's been a cold and wet winter up here in Del Norte. Enough to drive a mountain biker to desperate measures in order to get some riding in. I mean really desperate. Enough to go to (gasp)..... Texas.

Yes, a couple of amigos and I headed down to El Paso in January in search of dry trails and fresh gnarliness. We found the Redd Road trails, which had a little something for everyone - lots of cross-country desert cruising, lots of ledgy, techy goodness, and for the truly brave, the Devil's Trail! (which, needless to say, I did not attempt - the consequences for failure would have included a trip to the ER)
The next day we rode at Franklin Mountains State Park. These trails started out pretty good, but at the half-way point it became clear that we rode the loop in the wrong direction. Besides riding into a headwind, the ride finished with a mile of extremely steep doubletrack. Not fun. But hey, at least we were riding, it wasn't snowing, and there were no flat tires.

We also saw this dude smoking a coyote turd on the side of the trail. Weird.


Thanks for looking!

Seven Rides in Seven Days

So this pathetic loser (me) wakes up alone on Christmas Day and considers his options: 1: Wallow in self-pity and depression. 2: Commit suicide. 3: Get the fuck out of town. Since the first option was already achieved, and I didn't have the balls to select option 2, I chose door number 3.

After taking the dogs out for a quick run, I packed up the car, and 7 hours later I was in sunny Phoenix! I stayed at my friend Kathleen's house with her two psycho dogs. And I rode every day. It was good to be back on the bike after 4 weeks of not riding. Here's what we did:

• Day 1: Hawes / Pass Mountain - 31 miles after a month off the bike!
• Day 2: an easy spin on Desert Classic - man was my ass tender!
• Day 3: the Milagrosa Trail in Tucson - easily the highlight of the trip. This trail ROCKS!
• Day 4: Goat Camp trail at White Tanks - way over my head expert level stuff
• Day 5: South Mountain - up National, down Geronimo, up Geronimo, down Corona Loma. Fantastic riding!
• Day 6: Trail 100 at North Mountain Preserve - easy cruising
• Day 7: 3 hours at the newly-completed Black Canyon Trail - very scenic desert riding

I demonstrated yet again my complete lack of any talent at mountain biking on the Goat Camp trail, where I walked everything of consequence and berated myself the whole time. Was there ever another mountain biker that sucks as bad as I do? Doubtful.

One more thing

Since the trails have been snowy and muddy, I took CDaddy's offer to try snowshoeing. I rented some shoes at Santa Fe Bike-n-Sport and borrowed some poles. We drove up to the Santa Fe ski area and hiked up Raven's Ridge to the overlook, then bushwacked down to the Winsor trail. Going uphill was great fun, but going downhill through deep powder was hard. I couldn't figure out how to do it right.

One more thing I suck at. Hopefully I'll be dead soon and it won't matter.

Maybe I was wrong...

OK, so maybe I don't completely suck at mountain biking. The weather was crappy last weekend so I went out in the back yard and built a drop on the hillside. It's about 40 inches at the lip, and maybe 4 feet or a little more down to the landing zone. Definitely bigger than anything I've dropped off before.

On Sunday my friend Andy drove up from Albuquerque and we raked in a trail leading up to the drop, and cleaned up the landing zone. Then, there was nothing to do but hit it. I ran up on it a couple times and bailed off to the side. Then I just decided I HAD to do it. I knew deep inside that I had the skills, that my body would know what to do if I could just convince my brain. So I just got some speed up and shot off it! Yeah, it was scary, but mostly fun. The main thing is that I didn't crash.

First Post EVAR!

Wow! I'm a blogger! How frikkin exciting is that! I'll bet I suck at it just as bad as I suck at everything else I do.

I play chess but I suck at it.
I'm into mountain biking and I suck at that too.
I like to paint with watercolors but I suck at it.
I play a little acoustic guitar and Guess What? I suck at that too!

I'm a complete fucking loser.