We got a pretty good crew together for a Ditch ride on May 22nd. Although the ride was at Chris’ instigation, he called the morning before the ride to say that he had gone up to his folks’ place, and discovered a big wet spot on the side of the house where a little pinhole leak in the water main had been spraying. He would be spending the rest of the day waiting for the plumber to come and splice in a new section of copper pipe. The rest of the crew met out at the Ditch, and we did the normal climb, side loop, rode out along the Ditch, doubled back on the inner loop, then repeated the outbound leg to the end. Jeff, Sara, JT, and Danny took the trail out to the street, but Root and I took advantage of the good weather and blasted back along the trail for some additional dirt time. The weather was warm and sunny, but a fairly constant breeze kept it cool, even under the tree cover. Continue reading ‘Through the Pinhole’
Archive for the 'bike' Category
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Got out for a ride on Saturday, 24 April with Chris and Root. This was the first ride since Akron was in town. The weather had been extremely uncooperative, with sunny weeks and rainy weekends for a while, and schedules just didn’t seem to work out either. Finally we were on the dirt once again. With mixed sun and clouds, we headed up Government Road, managing the ascent to the side loop entrance with a lot less pain and suffering than expected. We were actually jaw-jacking the whole way, albeit riding in a lower gear than normal, probably. The ground was perfectly moist and grippy where it wasn’t covered with leaves through disuse. Continue reading ‘Out of the Woodwork’
Weird. I was killing time before an appointment today, so spun by City Mill for some miscellaneous stuff I needed, amongst them, a replacement setscrew pedal pin for one of my sets of Atomlab pedals. Being an American BMX/FR company, I automatically assumed the pedal screws and pins would be SAE (I remember back to the days of being pissed to discover that Crupi stuff was not metric), but after digging through the various inch-measure setscrews and finding they didn’t match up to my sample setscrew, I checked the metric ones and discovered they were indeed M4! Hooray! Go metric!
Having dropped off the AE86 Corolla for alignment at Pacific Automotive in Mapunapuna, I found myself with time to kill with my bike. Dave had suggested an interesting idea, I should go check out the Moanalua Valley trail that had within the past couple years turned into an open public DLNR trail. What the heck, just as good a place as any to go riding! I did end up taking a bit of a road detour by going to Toyota parts in Mapunapuna for a part for the Corolla, and ending up riding to Sand Island to go get it. I’ll call it a warm up. On my little side trip, I ride past a white civic stranded jammed up on high sidewalk by the veteran park entrance, and later an unaturaly gleeful shoping cart pushing lady. Ah the adventures of riding on Nimitz.
Continue reading ‘Solo Recon, Moanalua Valley March 27, 2010′
This past wednesday I scooted out of work as soon as I could, but the drive to Sand Island took almost 40 minutes. I decided not enough time to make pulling the bike out and getting all my gear on worth it. Instead I spectated and snapped off a few shots. There were frequent passing showers, some heavy enough to get the track muddy, but soon after would be perfect. I can’t exactly say I’m reliving youth since I never was in the BMX scene “back in the day”, but I’ve signed up since I had fun last week busting a lung playing on the track. Just a few other pics here.
Dave tells me that the day after Valentine’s is Black Day in Korea. It supposed to be a day for singles, but I think its a total different meaning for the poor bloke we came across on the trail up St. Louis. Literally. Late this afternoon met up with Kevyn and Scat and shuttled up to the park. We were figuring on two runs, so cut to the right outside of mainline and took the nice little tight track. It was quite dry and conditions were getting a little sketchy, my back tire was getting quite skittish, but it was fun! We pop out in the middle of the jump zone, just before “Lawsuit”. Scat says something and then comes to a stop. I catch something white in my eye, then see it’s someone on the ground as I cruise by. I come to a stop as I hear the words “broken collar bone”. Uh oh. I see middle ageish caucasian dude is on the ground. I didn’t even realize that I had ridden between where his bike had stopped and where he landed. It’s a dually, he’s not set up for hardcore DH, he is with his young son. He’s quite coherent, knows what’s going on, and is quite calm. Which is good, for everyone, and I think really helps his young son, being all of seven years old. Continue reading ‘Black Day?’
Earlier last week, Chris let us know that Vince “Akron” was in town on a surfing trip with his friend, so we put together a ride this Sunday afternoon. The word went out, and surprisingly, everybody showed up. 10 riders! That’s the biggest turnout we’ve had in a while. After gearing up, we headed up Government Road and did the side loop. Ckucke and Akron immediately got into their classic banter as if no time had elapsed since the last time they had seen each other. Akron got to ride Chris’ long forgotten Planet X freeride hardtail. There were no problems as he adapted readily to it and kept the pace with the group. Continue reading ‘The Return of Akron’
JT’s frantic calls for a St. Louis ride were finally realized this past Thursday when we met at Kanewai Park to shuttle up to the top for a run. Kevyn had some neck pain, so he bowed out of the ride, but he graciously volunteered to shuttle us up. Twice! After he dropped us off at the top, we hit mainline to the concrete road and gave him a call. He met us at the park and gave us a ride back up. Cool! We took dumps on the second run, heading straight out the lowest trail at agave. I hadn’t been this way in a while, and was pleasantly surprised at the nice grooming at the beginning. This unfortunately got me up to a speed a little too high when the groomed dirt ran out and the frantic back-to-back rock jumps and drops began. I kept it together somehow and stayed with JT who was leading at dust-cloud-making speed. Ckucke and I traded bikes at the concrete road. He got a reminder of the true horror of riding a hardtail down St. Louis. His dual-squishy was sofa-comfortable, especially the Fox 36 up front which was way more supple than my Sherman even with 20mm less travel. Dammit! I need a new St. Louis bike!
Pictures here
D = 6.74 km (4.19-miles), Vavr = 16.4 km/h (10.2-mph), Vmax = 38.1 km/h (23.7-mph), T = 25-minutes
The blue-tinted grey sky stretched cloudless above the sprawling loose canopy of the albizia tree expanding above me. The muffled clicks of the DT hub grew slower and slower, drawing to a halting stop with one final delayed tick, like the heartbeat of a dying organism. Around me, the disturbed grass and shrubs settled back to their resting state as the dust settled. The sun cast dancing beams of light through the thickly hazy air below the swaying treetop like something out of a renaissance biblical painting. Was I dead? Had I passed into the next world and was being drawn toward the light?
Met up with Ckucke, Scat & Kevyn at St. Louis after work Thursday for a quickie downhill run. Weather was good, hit it while there’s a chance! By the time I met up with them at the jumps, the sun was getting low, so we headed down. Through Taco jumps, over to the twistys and down the ant hill drops, at the exit of agave, then out through the lower trail to exit at the water tank, where Ckucke promptly pinch flatted. Sun was setting, chased the sun out to the road, jumped in Ckucke’s ride and collected vehicles, then went for grub at Azteca. It was a quickie, but nice to be out!
More pics in gallery.