What's a Bicycle?
Been pretty swamped and thus haven't updated in slightly over a week, nor ridden a bike in about that same time frame. My schedule has altered from having so much time that I would have to create things to do to having so many things to do I don't have enough time to actually do them all. My "lite" days are ~12 hours straight at the office and the others are 15+ hours mixed between on campus and at the office. So it's been quite awesome and will only get even more awesome. Started running 2 - 3 times a week to make up for the lack of exercise and had planned long weekend rides but of course didn't err, do that this past weekend. Oops.
New Year Photos
Random slideshow of photos from my trip from Dec 31st-Jan04...
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Listening to: Jack Johnson - A Pirate Looks at Forty
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Listening to: Jack Johnson - A Pirate Looks at Forty
Snake Creek Gap #1
Snake Creek Gap definitely lived up to the hype surrounding it, I have to say that is probably one of the hardest courses I have ever ridden or walked and there was definitely some walking.
My day started at about 3AM when I woke up in Huntsville on my brother's couch; heated up some water for oatmeal, threw stuff in the truck, and hit the road. About 30 minutes on the road my stomach is starting to feel like it is having some "issues" which came and went until I got to Dalton. I get checked in and take forever trying to decide what I'm going to wear--knee warmers or tights, l/s or s/s base layer, jacket or vest, etc. much like a teenage girl. Finally get shuttled off to the start and get in on the 3rd or 4th wave I believe, which is good because I'm going to need as much daylight as possible! Err wait--there wasn't any daylight--just fog and overcast cloudy sky and more fog and a little rain thrown in there at random intervals.
Right away I realized the trail was going to be horri-bad, epic mud and general suck. I'm probably not really strong enough to push the 34x20 I had even in optimal conditions but the massive rutting and suck areas really owned me and I was regretting being too lazy in the weeks leading up to the Snake to change out my gearing. I managed to keep the stomach under control pretty well for the first half but it would rumble to the surface every time a sharp pitch came a long that required a burst of power (so basically all the time). At some point during the first half of the course a large train of us passed two guys standing beside a dirt bike who I asked if I could borrow their engine--one of them burst out laughing the other one just kind of blankly stared at me as if he were trying to work out how to affix the engine in his dirt bike to my single speed mountain bike. Good times. Aside from the massive amount of climbing compared to what I am used to down here in South Alabama the first half of the course was really a sweet piece of trail and the down hill sections were a blast which had me thinking such ludicrous thoughts as--"wow this isn't really that bad..of course the end is supposed to be worse".
The 10 miles or so after the half-way point was pretty fun as well, aside from another ridiculous climb out of the aid stop. At some point we opened up onto a bit more of double track that was so muddied up when you had a few bikes rolling through together it sounded like a greased up skillet frying some bacon. Coincidentally had I carried some bacon strips with me I probably could have fried them on my brake rotors after some of the brutal downhills that littered the course. It was also during the second half of the course I think I figured out why Alabama has a laughable amount of climbing and almost no rocks or technical trail--it all ended up in North Georgia. The last six miles or so was a total mind game for me that involved a whole lot of hiking and lots of four letter words in my mind as really that is the only possible way to describe the last five or six miles of the course. You could say it was "rocky" or "technical" or something like that but really that just doesn't sufficiently convey the horribleness. Let's just say hearing the guy I could barely see 60 yards in front of me (fog!) yell "Gravel!" was probably the single greatest utterance a human could produce at the time.
I was so happy to be on road rather thanriding pushing my bike through boulders and rocks I didn't even notice I was freaking freezing from bombing down the highway until I was at my truck. My time ended up being 6:19 which was a little worse than the 5:30 I was shooting for but eh don't wanna aim too high how else are you gonna improve! Not sure why, but I am looking forward to February provided I am able to work it in with school starting back. March is definitely a go though.
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Listening to: Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird
My day started at about 3AM when I woke up in Huntsville on my brother's couch; heated up some water for oatmeal, threw stuff in the truck, and hit the road. About 30 minutes on the road my stomach is starting to feel like it is having some "issues" which came and went until I got to Dalton. I get checked in and take forever trying to decide what I'm going to wear--knee warmers or tights, l/s or s/s base layer, jacket or vest, etc. much like a teenage girl. Finally get shuttled off to the start and get in on the 3rd or 4th wave I believe, which is good because I'm going to need as much daylight as possible! Err wait--there wasn't any daylight--just fog and overcast cloudy sky and more fog and a little rain thrown in there at random intervals.
Right away I realized the trail was going to be horri-bad, epic mud and general suck. I'm probably not really strong enough to push the 34x20 I had even in optimal conditions but the massive rutting and suck areas really owned me and I was regretting being too lazy in the weeks leading up to the Snake to change out my gearing. I managed to keep the stomach under control pretty well for the first half but it would rumble to the surface every time a sharp pitch came a long that required a burst of power (so basically all the time). At some point during the first half of the course a large train of us passed two guys standing beside a dirt bike who I asked if I could borrow their engine--one of them burst out laughing the other one just kind of blankly stared at me as if he were trying to work out how to affix the engine in his dirt bike to my single speed mountain bike. Good times. Aside from the massive amount of climbing compared to what I am used to down here in South Alabama the first half of the course was really a sweet piece of trail and the down hill sections were a blast which had me thinking such ludicrous thoughts as--"wow this isn't really that bad..of course the end is supposed to be worse".
The 10 miles or so after the half-way point was pretty fun as well, aside from another ridiculous climb out of the aid stop. At some point we opened up onto a bit more of double track that was so muddied up when you had a few bikes rolling through together it sounded like a greased up skillet frying some bacon. Coincidentally had I carried some bacon strips with me I probably could have fried them on my brake rotors after some of the brutal downhills that littered the course. It was also during the second half of the course I think I figured out why Alabama has a laughable amount of climbing and almost no rocks or technical trail--it all ended up in North Georgia. The last six miles or so was a total mind game for me that involved a whole lot of hiking and lots of four letter words in my mind as really that is the only possible way to describe the last five or six miles of the course. You could say it was "rocky" or "technical" or something like that but really that just doesn't sufficiently convey the horribleness. Let's just say hearing the guy I could barely see 60 yards in front of me (fog!) yell "Gravel!" was probably the single greatest utterance a human could produce at the time.
I was so happy to be on road rather than
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Listening to: Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird
Return to LA
Finally got back to Lower Alabama after some fun times in the woods; managed to hike/bike at Mount Cheaha as well as Oak Mountain plus the hellishly awesome Snake Creek Gap Time Trial. Aside from the flat I had on Oak Mountain which cut my ride short due to malfunctioning co2 was good times and a great way to break into the new year.
I've never taken the time to hike the many trails at Oak Mountain that are closed to bikes before but wow are they pretty. It had just rained a little bit as I was coming into the park and there was a long line of cars exiting so I ended up having the trails entirely to myself. Some parts were heavily shrouded in fog which added to mysterious beauty of mountains and trees. Towards the end of my hike I had a deer shadow me for a few minutes with a huge fluffy white tail, just on the edge of the fog until it decided to run off.
Cheaha was a lot more crowded than Oak Mountain, of course it was New Year's Day, so I guess there was a lot of people out starting their resolutions and such. I messed around on the Mountain Express and played with the Gorilla Pod, which is really hard to use to get pictures of stuff in motion, although really good if you just want to be able to take self portraits or have an extremely portable tripod. There wasn't another soul on the Mountain Express but the boardwalk and the Pinhoti connector were swarming with hikers.
Need to clean off the bike as well as clean out the truck after mostly living out of it for ~5 days and then summarize the awesomeness and the suckness of SCG #1.
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Listening to: Eddie Vedder - Guaranteed
I've never taken the time to hike the many trails at Oak Mountain that are closed to bikes before but wow are they pretty. It had just rained a little bit as I was coming into the park and there was a long line of cars exiting so I ended up having the trails entirely to myself. Some parts were heavily shrouded in fog which added to mysterious beauty of mountains and trees. Towards the end of my hike I had a deer shadow me for a few minutes with a huge fluffy white tail, just on the edge of the fog until it decided to run off.
Cheaha was a lot more crowded than Oak Mountain, of course it was New Year's Day, so I guess there was a lot of people out starting their resolutions and such. I messed around on the Mountain Express and played with the Gorilla Pod, which is really hard to use to get pictures of stuff in motion, although really good if you just want to be able to take self portraits or have an extremely portable tripod. There wasn't another soul on the Mountain Express but the boardwalk and the Pinhoti connector were swarming with hikers.
Need to clean off the bike as well as clean out the truck after mostly living out of it for ~5 days and then summarize the awesomeness and the suckness of SCG #1.
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Listening to: Eddie Vedder - Guaranteed
Half Day of Work, Full Day of Fun!
Had been 21 days since I rode a road bike on the road until yesterdays ride, been sticking to the epic weekends of dirt with a sprinkling of rollers during the week. The older brother and I put in 32 more miles or so today in the gloom of pending rain after Christmas festivities. We managed to beat the rain and see a snowman made of bails of hay, a fence that very obviously was crashed through by a drunk driver complete with epic tire marks leading up to it, and a little feefee dog climb a ~3.5 foot sheer vertical rock.
I also very nearly managed to taco my wheel on a rather large boxer that was intent on chasing me. Hope everyone had a good Christmas!
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