As most of you might know now, VT was hit by Irene. Hard. Several towns and communities are cut off from the rest of the world with no food or water. While this storm was downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm, it still had the power to dump 5-9″ of rain across the region. It takes as little as 4″ of rain to create flash flooding.

Waterbury took some pretty heavy casualties. By 10 o’clock Sunday night, 4 feet of water was flowing down Main St. Entire neighborhoods had been evacuated and were now under water. The damage was devastating.

Upon surveying the aftermath, I saw that the shop was spared, due to it’s location on the highest part of Main St. Other businesses did not do so well. Some very good friends of mine lost their PT clinic. I spent a good part of the day yesterday helping clean out the muddy, waterlogged debris from their first floor. This was going on in every house and business on S Main. The drone of sump pumps can still be heard across town this morning.

One of the places that got hit the hardest was the Alchemist Pub and Brewery. Water was up to the bar. And, as some of you may know, all the magic that happens there is brewed in the basement. All the beer that was brewed, all the ingredients, the equipment is ruined. This is a major problem, beer takes time to brew, the cleanup will take time too, putting them out of business for probably 2 or so months. They have a staff that is now out of work.

I count myself very lucky, having been inconvenienced only by a lack of electricity and internet. B29 will be open for limited business hours today, once I get my work done, I’ll be lending a hand to those that need it. Email is a good way to reach me, and phone messages will be returned. With the entire community rallying, it should only be a few days before things approach “normal” around here.

As I write this post, I am finishing off a decade of experience that I feel so very thankful for.

Tuesday August 23rd marked my last ride as a 39 year old, and what better way to cap off my thirties than to play hooky from work, and go ride some awesome trails with awesome people? It was a tight crew of friends old and new, and we set our sights on one of the best kept secrets in VT. So well kept, that this was our very first time riding there.

With a little beta from another friend, we made the necessary connections to go and ride the STAB trail network (Sport Trails of Ascutney Basin), a mere hour and a quarter drive from Waterbury. We had a route, procured a map, and set out for a ride that was filled with adventure and fun. Some of these trails are on the VT50, but most of what we rode were not.

I can go on and on about the minutia of the ride, but I’ll condense it down. The weather was perfect, trails dry. Big smiles. Several crashes. Minds blown. Big smiles. I’ve heard people refer to these trails as “primitive” or “old school”. This is not necessarily a negative thing, but I feel that they are much more than that. They are unspoiled. They are exactly the sort of trails I love to ride. Oh, and to top it all off, lunch and beers at the Harpoon Brewery in Windsor.



Thanks to my friends for sharing my last ride with me. It’s been a wild one so far, and there are many more stories to tell…

 

Well, it seemed as if all was going to go well on Sunday. The weather was great (during my race), and the course was excellent. There had been a few changes made since last week’s recon, but I felt they were definitely improvements. On Friday morning, I got a call from T-Hom telling me he was going to come up and hit the Grind as well. This was going to be fun!

T-Hom finally showed up around 8pm on Saturday night, needing a boatload of work done to his ailing bike. Luckily, I had everything that was needed in stock, brake pads, wheels, tires and a new rear cog. I did my very best pit stop style pro bleed on his old Juicy Ultimates and got them dialed right in for him. He was ready for racin’, as was I, so we then stayed up until 12:30 drinking beer and watching Swamp Shark on ScyFy (a truly awful movie).

My day started a little earlier than T-Hom’s. I had to make sure the dog had an opportunity to do all his dog things before I was gone all day, and ten headed out to the shop to load up the tent, tools, bikes and what other stuff we might have needed for the day. We headed out, and got there right after the rest of our large-esque crew. The tent came out, and we had our base camp all set up and ready for the day.

Our group was going to go at 10, and JayPro’s and T-Hom’s at noon. We were going to be there all day, and we had planned accordingly. R2D2 was there, filled with beer and brats. I picked up my race packet, and got ready, and then headed to the staging area for my start. Well wasn’t I surprised to see T-Vo standing there? Great, that was just one more place down from the top that I would be. He was a good sport about the “sandbagger” callouts, but his reasoning for doing the Cat 2 SS Open was legit. To do the Cat 1, he needed to buy a $60 USA Cycling license. USA Cycling is one of the most BS organizations in cycling, and this little issue is the only blemish on this otherwise well run event.

The starting whistle blew, and we were off. The start was up a grassy hill, which is not very much fun to ride. Nothing like going up an energy sapping hill to start a race, but it did stretch the group out a bit before descending and rolling into the woods. I could tell my gear 32/22 was spinny on the flats. I had a hard time keeping my placement out in the open, but once in the woods, all was well. The bike was performing flawlessly, despite my battle with breakfast I was having. I had a peanut butter bagel, but ate it too close to the start time, so my stomach was not happy with me. My sinuses were also clogged up thanks to allergies, ad I found breathing to be difficult. Yet I managed to power through it, and settled into a pace that was good for me. I found that I was able to click people off in the woods and leave them behind me. The gear was spinny enough so I didn’t have to work too hard, and the squishyness of the suspension allowed me to take what ever line I wanted. My plan was to take as many places as I could in the woods so that I would have a little breathing room out in the open where I would be at the mercy of those with gears and taller gears than I.

Some of the climbing was a little rough, but I knew that none of it lasted too long, and tried to maintain a constant, quick pace without blowing up. My strategy was paying off. I could handily bomb the descents, and was able to reel more and more folks in from the category that started ahead of me. I made sure to drink as often as I could. Joey was at the neutral feed zone out in the field, and had bottles and food for our group of racers. My plan was for a bottle per lap, and I knew I would need to stay hydrated, lest I get crampy on the second lap.

As I rounded the horn for lap 1, I saw Joey, who had my bottle. The swap was clean and fumble free, and the news was that Shaun (aka Shackleton) was right in front of me. There was my rabbit. Shaun is pretty darn quick, and his start was 2 mins ahead of mine. I knew I was riding well, the bike was money, and if I caught him, I might have a shot at actually placing well in my race, sandbaggers aside. I kicked the spurs in, gave it a little turbo once back in the woods, and set my sights on Shaun. I was slowly catching up to him, and almost got there, when CRRRACKKKPOWW!!!! My drivetrain locked up. WTF???!!

At first I thought I might have thrown the chain, but once I hopped off the bike to asses the damage, I knew it wasn’t going to be that simple. Or cheap. I had torn my chainring, and pulled a chainring bolt through the spider. Damn. I had been warned of Ti chainrings by a certain someone, and he was the first person I thought of. D’oh!!! Well, at least I wasn’t that far away from the feed zone, so I turned around and walked out, cheering on the other racers who were still in the game.

I went over to the timing tent, received my DNF and went about getting changed and opening that first beer.

A big thanks to Joe (aka Blue) for being the pit boss. He was there for all of us, and kept us riding.

“You’re my boy Blue!”

George 0, Millstone 2

We will most certainly find out won’t we?

I’m not going to tell you what I did to the bike drivetrain-wise (until after the race) but rest assured that I will be running what I brung. I managed to stomp Perry Hill with the newly reconfigured Shreddie, albeit in a truly ugly fashion. With two shake down rides in effect, Nat’s EMD SS which he has chosen to do battle with on Saturday’s Pittsfield 666 race, and my open SS attempt at the Millstone Grind on Sunday, we decided that we were going to do a nice easy ride. Nat’s comment was “just take it easy huh?” on the first climb, as I went into a hypoxic state getting up one of the steepest parts of the trail. I had one (1) skip, and that was all. My Force derailleur/tensioning solution did a fantastic job of keeping the chain on the cogs, it never once gave me a problem.

I also had ZERO brakes. I sheepishly admit that I am only just now getting Shreddie ready for battle. He has pretty much sat since Singlespeed-apalooza. New pads, and a full SRAM approved factory bleed had me grabbing the levers with 2 fingers and overshooting every turn until the last part of the ride. It made for some sketchy moments, but I’m confident they will be burnt in by race day. They felt better by the end of the ride for sure, but I think they will just have to be “broken in” on course.

So yes, I think Shreddie is ready. Am I ready? Um, no, not so much…

 

Over the last few weeks, I have been experimenting with tire pressure to overcome certain obstacles we encounter on any given local trail ride, like, slimy wet roots. Were I to obsess about it more, I might have found out more tangible data, but for now, I have discovered 2 things in regard to tire pressure.

1. Lower is better

2. Too low is not good at all

So how do you strike a balance? The answer is simple. Know your pressures fool! My new favorite toy is the Topeak Digital Smart Gauge. For what seems like a millennia, Dicky has gone on and on and on about tire pressure, and I was beginning to write him off as a crackpot with too much free time. Turns out his compulsive behavior is not completely without reason. There is a big difference between 16 psi and 14 psi in a 2.35 Nobby Nic. One is confidence inspiring, one is scary.



Now, I can’t ride without knowing what my pressures are. And truth be told, I am finding that I like lower pressures than I previously thought were possible. At Millstone, I was rocking 18 psi front and rear in my Rocket Ron tires. No shortage of grip there. Check out the video I made yesterday. During the fork cam portion of the video, you can actually see the tire balloon out. Kinda cool to see, and also to know that the tire was conforming to the ground, giving me sure footed traction, I had absolutely no problems with grip on Sunday.

Now, if it could tell you how many beers I’ve had…

I got some video footage from our trip. When I was putting it all together, I tried to find the smoothest shots. I’m not kidding when I say that it’s bumpy out there, but I guess having a bar mounted camera will pick up a few more shockwaves than a helmet cam.

I’m using a Contour HD camera. I find the helmet mount gives a pretty poor aspect of the trail, the camera is too high, and doesn’t really show what’s going on in the trail as the bar mount. While the bar mount gives the best aspect of the ride, it can get really bouncy. Also, it doesn’t really have that wide of a field of view, which can sometimes be annoying. Sure there are “lasers” that help you aim the camera, but if you are trying to aim at something further away, say 10 ft, it’s really hard to see the tiny beams. I give the Contour a B. I’d like to try out some other cameras, but I’m going to wait and see what comes out a little further down the road. Seems as if this technology makes big advancements pretty often. As with most consumer electronics, every time I commit to one, something much better comes out almost immediately.



Here is the map of our ride on Sunday. Good times.

This upcoming Sunday marks the return of the Millstone Grind. I did this race last year, and it was a lot of fun. Except for the DNF. The course was challenging, but not beyond my ability level. I had slacked on registering for the event until too late, and the class (SS Open) I wanted to run in was full. I gave the race my 2 laps, and then it was time for a beer.

This year, I planned ahead and got registered for the 2 lap Open Singlespeed race. The only real difference is that I am in far less racing shape. The way things have been so far, I have had very little time to prepare for any sort of race, so I have changed my approach to just going out there and having a good time. Shackleton, Shatner and Nat and myself went out to do a bit of fun riding and course recon. It had rained the night before, so we were expecting some treacherous conditions, but were pleased to find the trails nice and dry.

It has been a while since any of us had been to Millstone. We have the luxury of having some really awesome trails very close at hand, and we rarely have the time to get out of our “zone”. There is a much different feel here that our local stuff. It is rooty and punchy and very hard to ride quickly. Also, caution has to be taken to avoid hitting random old sharp bits of metal and quarrying equipment that litters the area. Compared to our flowy Perry Hill trails, these seem more hacked in, a little more primitive.

You do get some pretty spectacular views for your effort, the Grand Lookout is worth a visit, where you can overlook the old granite quarries. A bunch of new trails have been built up here over the last few seasons, and we decided we would check them out before “inspecting the race course”. The trails we’d heard the most about, were Roller Coaster and Screamin’ Demon, which were fortunately right off the Grand Lookout. There are some pretty big features on Demon, a suicide bridge loop that crosses over itself, and some pretty steep fall line descending. It will be interesting to see how well that trail holds up over time. It is definitely an “experts only” sort of a trail, there were a couple of boulder launches to flattish landings that could easily ruin your day if you went into them blindly.



The end of the trail puts you right at the old quarry, and it is very surreal coming out of the woods onto a moonscape.



We then headed out to the race course. I was riding the belt driven Gozarian. I wanted to see if I could turn the gear over before I committed to bringing it out there for battle. This has been the topic of discussion for the last week between Shatner and myself. What gear? Last year I ran 34/20, which is what I had run at the DH40 a few weeks previously. I was not able to get my leg speed up due to the traffic, and was always working way to hard to keep moving.

My belt gear is 46/28, which is the equivalent of 34/21, and I found that even that was too tall for me. I’m not in any great shape, and have no pride when it comes to admitting that I can’t push the gear I was able to most of last year and out west this winter. It’s simply too rough and hurkey jerkey on this course for that, and my brain began to start figuring out on what I was going to do. Shatner and I were discussing things like going to a 22 or even 23 on the back, just so we’d have the “pop” to get up and around the technical short climbs that would be wadded up with other riders. There is very little flat, and the course has very few wide open sections that aren’t climbing.

It was at this time that I began thinking about how choppy some of the downhill parts of the course are. I remember getting pretty jarred on the blocky chunder on my A9C, it’s super easy to get banged off course by something you didn’t see. And then it occurred to me, I have a bike that will handle this. Even though the steel frame of the SIR9 is nice and buttery smooth, and the Ti seatpost adds a little more comfort, full suspension might be even better. Especially a nice, efficient design that climbs well when out of the saddle.

You know I’m talking about Shreddie. More on this later…

The other morning, I found myself with a little bit of free time and some angst, so I decided I would take the RDO for a little ride up to the top of Perry Hill, just to see how long it takes.

According to Mr Garmin, it took me a smidge under 29 minutes to get to the top, 898 feet of elevation gain in 2.3 miles. Normally, on social rides, there are a couple of points where we stop to catch our breath, but I wanted to get a sense of what it takes at a steady pace.

Of course, the descent is the fun part, trail conditions were bone dry, and I flew down Burning Spear to Yellow. Perry Hill trails are fun! The Schwalbe Nobby Nics continue to provide confidence inspiring traction and grip at any speed on any terrain. It’s also really nice to have a really light bike that can handle our sometimes really rugged terrain. I only wish there were more hours in the day for riding.

So last week, I facilitated H.R.Dickness’ new squishy fjork. I know it was very difficult choice for him to make. Oh, the hemming and hawing, pros, cons, pro-cons were all heavily weighed, ruled upon, overturned and reconsidered. He wanted it for the upcoming Breck Epic, and I told him that having a squishy fjork on his bike would be a benefit over the 6 days of racing. What am I talking about?

The new Rock Shox SID 29er that’s what.

Niner had a small run of OE lever SID RLs available, which is a basic feature (Rebound, Lockout) version of the venerable race level fork that little wheelers have had available to them for years. It appealed to Dicky’s sensitivites, and steps were taken to get it to him ASAP.

The SID is Rock Shox no holds barred, weight loss at any cost kind of a fork. Well, wouldnt you know it, there are even a handful of XX versions out there as well. This one didn’t stay around long enough for me to get it in the photo booth, but rest assured, more are coming. That’s not to say that I didn’t get my paws on it for a closer look.

Visually, the fork is very similar to it’s sister the Reba, but with a few more refinements. The top caps are a nice shiny aluminum, the bushing bulges are a little more sculpted – hard to see in the photos, but are very evident when you hold a SID and a Reba side by side. Also the bushing journals are shallower.

There is a nice cable grabber that is a welcome update over the old groove and zip tie routine (about time), and there is a sag-o-meter printed right on the stanchion.



Mechanically, the forks are different too. The SID uses a new lighter updated damper over the standard motion control damper. Options will include, tapered or straight steerer tubes, a 15mm Maxle Lite, a World Cup model with a carbon steerer and crown. All in the name of loosing wight. This stock uncut straight 1,1/8″ steerer with lockout weighs in at 3.6 lbs, .2lbs lighter than a Reba XX with a tapered steerer tube.

I think the real weight savings will be realized with the lighter WC version, once it becomes available.

Sunday turned out to be one of those days that throws you a curve ball. I had made plans to ride out in Stowe, and the weather, although overcast, seemed as if it would cooperate. Joining me for eh two wheeled shenanigans was Keller and M2. It looked like it had rained a little the night before, so parts of the trail were pretty damp. As we turned onto the Tamarack trail, a light drizzle began to fall. Anyone that has ridden this trail knows that riding it when conditions are dry it’s challenging enough, make it wet, and it gets a whole lot different.

It didn’t seem like it was ever really serious about raining, so we kept riding, out Maple Run, at which point it got a little more serious. It went from a light drizzle to a heavy drizzle. The bridges on the Catamount Trail were treacherous. As were the roots. And the rocks, and by the time we got back to the Billings Rd, it was full on rain.

But we were out there, having fun. We felt no need to ride fast, and chose to ride smart instead. There was very little calamity on our ride, that took us up to Peak a View, Loren’s Loop, Godstreet, Seamus and the Spring Trail. The view at Peak a View was not very good, unless you like looking at the inside of a rain cloud.

This is where we had our biggest mishap of the day. Somehow, Keller and I got separated from M2. I followed Keller up this little trail to the tippy top of the hill we were on, but M2 didn’t follow, instead he stayed on the main course, and rode right on by. After Keller and I realized our mistake, we figured we’d catch right up to him. Except we didn’t. We also figured he knew the program, so we carefully headed down Loren’s Loop. Well, he wasn’t there either. We waited for a while at the Billings Rd end of Loren’s Loop, then decided that we’d better go find him. We split up, agreeing to call each other in 10 minutes to asses the situation. Luckily, I was on my way back up Loren’s Loop , and found M2 only a minute or so up the trail.



After we regrouped, it was on to Godstreet>Seamus>Spring Trail and back to the car on the road. Had it not been raining, we might have extended our ride to Kimmers>Haul Rd>Pipeline, but we were wet, and getting a little hungry.




All in all, a great day on the bike. I rode my RDO, thoroughly enjoying having gears and suspension. The Nobby Nics were fantastic tires, and got the job with minimal slipping on the wet bridges, roots and rock. Having a 25lb trail worthy singletrack eating beast is really nice.