Dirt bike dog

This past weekend I was traveling, and was fortunate enough to fit in a couple of rides in Wyoming. Trails abound in the least populated state, and as might be expected, are often empty. Scout and I did our best to cover as much ground as we could. Just like when I was a kid on a ranch, the best compadre to have in such a setting is a dog who loves the dirt.

Our summit photo.

Cool shirt courtesy of Monkey Wrench Cycles.

Following a dip in the water near the end of the ride.

A little trail riding after a day of driving

I've been on the road all day on the way to a work-related conference. As it happens, it's being held in Salt Lake City, which is close enough to where my in-laws live in Wyoming that I stopped at their house for the night.

After a great burrito dinner with my father-in-law, Scout and I took a ride on the network of ATV trails criss-crossing the hills behind their house. While I would've ridden better without a big burrito on board, the system of trails was just the ticket after a day in the car. I'm not a big fan of noisy, dusty, overly powerful ATVs, but their activity does result in some pretty great double tracks.

The small town instant access to riding off road makes me really feel like moving out of the city. If I had trails like this in my back yard, I'd be on them all the time. I pretty sure Scout would, too.

Albuquerque off road

My brother's giant Surly Ogre, and my Stumpjumper FSR, perhaps slightly-too-small for its rider.

The weekend before last, we made a quick trip down to New Mexico for a niece's fifth birthday party. While there, my brother Chris and I snuck out to do a little riding in the foothills to the East of town. Needless to say, it was a lot of fun.

My bike for the trip was my 2006 Stumpjumper FSR. I still haven't decided whether I'll keep it, so I thought that it might be a good opportunity for further evaluation. Plus, it was a lot easier to fit in the van than the Pugsley. I made sure I was equipped with tools, tubes and water, but somehow overlooked until too late that there would likely be any number of things along the trail to make pincushions of the tires. The Stumpjumper has non-slimed, standard-tubed tires. I decided to tempt fate anyway.

The dam at the trailhead.

Cholla: beautiful but barbed. 

Prickly pear in bloom.

The day of the ride was uncharacteristically overcast, which was quite welcome to me as I wasn't ready to plunge into hardcore heat just yet. We started with a few miles worth of easy climbing, peppered with a few breaks to look at flora and fauna. As anticipated, there was no shortage of several kinds of cacti, but to my relief, none of the dreaded goat head thorns seemed to be around. Provided a rider pays attention, cactus is not too difficult to avoid, but an area strewn with goatheads is much more problematic.

Climbing...

Sweating...

Embedded rock gardens to keep things lively.

Lots of rollers, but trending unmistakably upward.

The trail surface was varied between gravelly, rocky, and sandy, and the views were great. There was also quite a bit of fauna to see among the flora, though some required a keen eye to see. The terrain rolled by and after an hour or so of climbing with a few small descents sprinkled in, we made it to the apex of our route.

A bull snake sunning itself on the trail. 

The area has a vast network of well-marked trails, some of which are part of the Albuquerque Parks system and others of the U.S. Forest Service.

I found these concrete waffles to be an ingenious tool to mitigate erosion and maintain trail integrity.  

My brother often runs these trails, though I can't help but think of knobby tires when I see views like this. 

On my Stumpjumper, the descent was fast and swoopy; pure dust in the teeth fun. I was halfway down before I remembered to switch the rear shock from the stiffer "ProPedal" setting to the luxurious "Open" setting. With the shock in "Open", the bike makes me feel nearly invincible, in a fun but potentially dangerous way. If I had a bike like this in my pre mortality-conscious days of 20 years ago, I would have really been able to get myself in a lot of trouble. As it is now, I get to glimpse blinding speed and superhero status with the foresight to pull back before it is too late.

One of the few places on the way back down that I had to stop and wait for Chris to tell me which way to go.

Difficult to see with my lousy phone cam pic, but there's a lizard in the lower right third of this photo.

A view of town below.

We took a few minutes to mess around on a concrete drainage ditch with slanted sides. 

As kids on BMX bikes 30 years ago, we would have been all over this thing. As 40-something old guys, we were a bit more measured, but still had some fun.

In the end, I made it through the ride without getting a flat, but I also became convinced that tubeless tires are the way to go. I would have spent a bit more time having fun and a bit less thinking about the needles everywhere. Overall, the Stumpjumper performed flawlessly, and has further muddied my opinion as to whether to keep it.

On the positive, it is a well-engineered superbike (at least for 7 years ago, which is new enough for me) that I picked up on the cheap; something of which I would/could never buy the full-priced new equivalent. As a full-suspension bike, it really can do some things that I have to acknowledge a rigid bike can't. It is incredibly fast and fun to ride.

On the negative, it's a size large, which is borderline too small for me, and I remain convinced that a 29er is better proportioned for my height. As a full-suspension bike, it also has the hassles of shock and pivot maintenance. Though I've owned suspension before, there's a reason I gravitate back toward rigid. But it is cheap and fun.

So, I remain undecided, and will probably keep it for further evaluation, for at least the time being. That is, unless some fervent (size large) reader out there wants to make an offer I can't refuse to take it off my hands. Perhaps its parts will someday make their way to a 29er frame, for which I'll sell the Stumpy and Fox fork to finance.

Ride to school

Last week we missed the official national bike to school day because of work-related obligations. So we rolled the clock forward to today. We don't really put much stock in a single annual bike to school day around here, so there will be many more bike to school days.

Waterton Canyon family ride

The girls at the Waterton Canyon trailhead.

We went out on a grand family outing today, lasting much of the day. This ride was originally slated to happen yesterday, but a few things cropped up to delay it until today. Apart from the fact that it takes roughly the same amount of preparation for a ride like this as it did for the D-Day invasion of Europe, we missed certain windows of opportunity associated with nap time.

In any case, we were all loaded for this morning, and got to the trailhead at a good time, for us that is. However, the little issue of one of my crank arms nearly falling off almost resulted in disaster. I had decided to ride my single-speed Surly Cross-Check, and in preparation the previous day I'd swapped some 130 BCD cranks with a 46 tooth ring for some 110/74 BCD cranks with a 34 tooth ring. This was something that I'd been meaning to do for some time, but the prospect of towing a trailer uphill for several miles spurred me to action. Yet, apparently I had insufficiently tightened the non-drive side crank arm bolt, and the damn thing decided to mutiny on me after a few hundred yards. After a hurried trip to a bike shop for a wrench and a crank arm bolt, while I left girls temporarily stranded on the trail to have lunch, everything was once again in order. Off we went.

The shades are for speed.

My bean green, single-speed Surly Cross-Check as the tractor towing the Burley trailer.
Note the custom cowboy shirt sun shade. 

During the heat of the day, the shade of the canyon was refreshingly cool. We took our time, which, as anyone with kids will know is the only really viable plan of action, and stopped whenever we felt it necessary. It's a slight, but consistently uphill ride all the way to Strontia Springs Dam, and I new that maintaining positive morale among the ranks was essential if we had any chance of going all the way. Luckily, spirits remained high and muscles held out. It didn't hurt that the scenery was terrific and a light, pleasant breeze was working in our favor. The miles rolled by under our tires.

Rolling past ancient rock.

The Cross-Check tugging the trailer under a full head of steam.

Waterton Canyon is idyllic this time of year.

We had a bit more extended break at the bridge, where we snacked some more (thanks for the gingerbread, Oma), threw a few rocks in the water, and took some photos. It's easy to get used to being out of town with some dirt beneath our feet.

The convoy taking a break.

A rare photo of the whole crew captured in one shot.

Me and the girls. I'm happily Semi-Rad today, and actually living up to it.
For what it's worth, I'm definitely in favor of doing over watching.

This can be taken at face value.

The girls. Yes, we're living the dream.

We made it to the top with everyone still smiling, with the exception of the baby who was happily snoozing away. It seems like she's always slept a bit better with a little bit of jostling, whether in a stroller or in the bike trailer. Big sister showed her climbing prowess by sprinting the last several hundred meters just before we stopped for a little rest at the turnaround spot near the dam. Then she got off her bike and climbed any rock she could find. This girl is a climbing fiend.

The whole crew assembled in the complimentary self-portrait mirror thoughtfully installed along the trail. 

A friendly little flying beetle of some sort. Can you I.D. it Tarik?

A couple of sisters having a good time.

Getting down the fundamentals of drinking out of a bike bottle.

Boulder, conquered.

The girls in front of the Strontia Springs Dam.

On the way back down, we got to enjoy the fruits of our labors, alternating between coasting and pedaling for miles. Initially, big sister sought out any ruts or washboards she could find, because as she noted, "I like the bumps." After a while, she concentrated on speed, finding the smoothest parts of the gravel road. She also discovered the 'aero' position by crouching behind her handlebars. I must say that she can scrunch down into a pretty small profile; not much of a target for the wind to hit.  She really cooked up some speed.

Coasting.

Speed demons.

Just when you're least expecting it... 

...she springs into attack mode.

The views along the canyon continued to be impressive, even more so into the late afternoon. A few clouds moved in and diffused the light in ways that neither my camera nor limited photographic talent could capture. When we were most of the way down, we encountered a small group of bighorn sheep grazing along the banks of the South Platte River. A little further down, we saw several mule deer crossing ahead of us.

It's hard to top views like this...

...or this.

This sheep was sporting a radio collar.

They seemed not to be concerned with the human users of the trail.

On the other hand, the deer remained more aloof.

By the time we got back to the trailhead, we had logged about 12 miles. This was a milestone ride for a lot of reasons. It was little sister's first trail ride and longest ride ever. It was her's longest ride while riding on her own bike. It was Julie's longest ride in probably about 10 years. In addition, she also acknowledged that it wouldn't be bad to have a bike with fatter tires for these types of rides, so I may have a to put together a mountain bike for her.

As for me, it was my first ride in which I packed up the whole family in the van to go to a trailhead, as opposed to just leaving our house on bikes. Ordinarily, I am not strongly in favor of driving somewhere to ride. However, in the end, driving was worth it. We've got great places to ride immediately adjacent to our neighborhood, but it wouldn't have been feasible to leave from our house on bikes and get to Waterton Canyon. Perhaps in a few years things will be different. In the mean time, I foresee quite a few more rides like this one, where we are able to explore more of the family friendly trails in our part of the world.

As a postscript, after we got home, we encountered another milestone. Lil' sis did a number of perfect, stiff as a board, Marine Corps pushups and seemingly tried to figure out how to coordinate her arms and legs in a locomotive motion. She is likely only a short time away from crawling. We're simultaneously excited and frantic about the prospect of a self-mobile baby in our not yet fully baby-proofed house.

This kid will be crawling in no time.