Broken: Part 2

My luck has been up and down lately. The trails have been in great shape and I've been able to make time to ride them a lot in the last few weeks. There has even been enough good weather to get all of my household duties taken care of. Overall the weather, my free time and work time have all been working well together lately. That is the good part of my luck. But with that much good luck there has to be some bad luck. My bad luck lately is breaking stuff. It started a few weeks ago with the breaking of the rear wheel on my geared bike. Then the Rock Shox Reba on the same bike. With it off at SRAM hopefully getting fixed I am left with just one mountain bike. Which has been performing flawlessly. Until Sunday. Sunday I met Matt at Banner for some laps on the new trail. We hit the trail and right away I could tell I wasn't having an "on" day. I was missing lines and not carrying momentum, just generally riding poorly. Matt however was nailing everything.

After lap one we headed back to the cars for a little break. I wasn't running enough pressure in my rear tire and wanted to air it up. Before long we were off for lap #2. We started by riding the beginner loop in reverse. Things were getting better with lap #2. I was hitting my lines and was starting to feel better about my riding. That is until my front tire slid out from under me at a corner. I hit the ground with a thud. Luckily I wasn't going that fast and was already leaning into the corner so it wasn't much of a fall. I stood up and dusted myself off. Checked myself out and I was fine. The bike however was not. The corner was just too much for the front wheel and it was taco'd. Not just a little bent either, it was mangled. Matt managed to bend the wheel back enough to where it would at least fit in the fork. I limped back to the car and headed for home. Thanks for the help Matt. I hope you had a few more good laps. Here is the aftermath:



A tougher wheel is on order.

Broken

This has been a tough year for my mountain bike. I broke a chain on the womble trip and ended up replacing the chain and cassette. I tore a hole in my rear tire which then needed to be replaced. I pulled a spoke through the rim of my rear wheel and had to get a replacement. And now I just found out that I managed to separate the steerer tube from the fork crown on my suspension fork. So it is off to Rock Shox to see if it is a defect or if I get to replace that as well. Not a good year to be a part attached to my mountain bike. It's a good thing that I picked up a Karate Monkey last month, otherwise the next few weeks while the suspension fork is being looked at I would be without a mountain bike. I suppose these things happen.

On a brighter note the Karate Monkey is a great bike and a blast to ride. It is much more comfortable and compliant than the Monocog it replaced. Although the build out is so different it's not really a fair comparison. I will say that the surly fork is much more forgiving than the redline. The redline might be the stiffest fork ever. Add to that the voluminous Weirwolf 2.55 LT tire up front and the rigid bike has some decent cush to it. The steel frame also has a little more give to it compared to my aluminum hardtail. Overall it's a really nice ride and I'm very pleased with it. Now let's just hope that nothing on it brakes.

All about the trail

This weekend as all about the trails for me. It started off on Saturday morning at the Center Trail Love workday. We recovered some rogue trail sections, built a new bridge and moved an existing bridge. I could have done without the bridge march, but all in all a productive day. Check out the crew carrying the bridge down the Bill Riley trail. We still have one bridge to set and bed in, hopefully we can bang that out one of these days after work.

Sunday was all about riding the trail. It started off earlier (what time again?) than I was expecting. We were supposed to meet at 9:00 at the trail head, but my garmin says we didn't start riding until almost 10:00. Oh well, still plenty early for a Sunday. We rode all of the rideable sections at the Center which was pretty much everything but squirrels nest and rhythm. There were a few areas where a dismount and careful walk were necessary to avoid mud and ruining the trail, but very ridable otherwise. We parted ways at 12:30 with plans to meet at 4:00 for a loop around Easter Lake. After a short night and early morning I was mid-nap at 4:00 and I bailed. About an hour later when I was awake again I was feeling like a slacker(and bailer) so I headed into town again to hit a few more miles of trail. All in all I think I had about 30 miles for trail riding for my Sunday. Not too shabby.

With the weather holding, an after work ride will be in order. Things had firmed up a lot with just the few hours between my early and late ride yesterday. Things should be very good today.