Ya shoulda been here Wednesday
from Surfline

Hagerstown
in his high-zoot hand-me-down Fox threads

Hatterask

caught the first real wave I paddled for on Tuesday,

a nice clean longish left, it opened up a little for a nice little ride. but it was a left, so I didn't make much of it
I got a few more like that during our best go-out so far.

north swell & light winds in Buxton, no swell reaching around the corner at the house.
it was clean, like yesterday at the 1st groin, maybe cleaner, and less crowded,
I could grab some of the shoulders of the peak waves that the original riders had either kicked out of or closed out of. Leftovers were all I could muster. The 8-10 guys & gals dominating the peak were catching them at the groin and riding them 100-150 yds. I'd jump on when they were done or on those they skipped.

Next day was smaller and cleaner and we got there well after dead-low tide. All of the better surfers must've been on it earlier in the tide cycle as the peak was only about 5 or 6 mostly longboarders, and from a quick look at the lineup, I thought it looked mostly like a bunch of guys like me, plus one girl who was totally killing everyone. She caught anything she paddled for and rode most of them 100 yds. Thick strong body, blond hair, black bikini, symmetric art covering much of her tanned skin. She easily dominated the lineup, catching4-5 good waves to everyone else's one. I kept getting in her way the first few waves I paddled for, even though I had position on a couple of them. She gave no quarter and expected none as she paddled around us and caught whatever she desired. She kept staring at the beach while waiting on the sets, as if she's keeping her eye on her kids or something. After schooling us for a while, she paddled in and went to play with her friends in the shorebreak. They were an odd looking bunch on this beach. Pale, skinny, inked, learning how to bodysurf the shorebreak. Looked like it could be their first time to a beach. Then she dropped her longboard down and grabbed a cig. Not that I was staring at her or anything..... I was on the beach by then letting Andy have a paddle-out.

Barry arrived late in the week as the winds picked up out of the wrong direction,
Tom & Julie brought their Stand-Up Paddleboards, which were a lot different, and not easy.

the kids all got plenty of water time in, and often were literally and figuratively in way over their heads. they all got their scare on a few times, and were all thoroughly entertained by Tom on the SUP ocean tours. a lot of kids can fit on one of those things.

you could hardly say that we surfed our brains out all week. we had 2-3 marginally decent sessions at best. Andy did well for his first time and got himself into decent position at the 1st groin peak and paddled for a few waves. he took a board to the lip, but managed not to put anyone else in danger. Barry/Tom/Julie got skunked on surfing, but brought other water toys to use instead. It's a tough sport, and a tough place. Swell, wind, and tide all need to coincide to produce the great conditions. If there were no wind, you could at least have ridable surf every day of the year around Buxton. But, Hatteras Island without wind? There would not even be an island if there were no constantly opposing winds.

Todd's annual guys trip in October is a possibility if I still wanna get my surf on back there, and if I can motivate some driving partner(s). anyone?? It's a long way to go to drink beer at a campfire. If there's surf is the only way I'd decide at the last minute to go.

the Sound was pretty tame on an east winds day

Andy gets the fam ready for an epic lunch run, or, as Oliver called it, the Wild 100 of kayaking



oh yea, and the Wild 100 if anyone or I still care....
it was harder/longer than usual
rained for a few hours after checkpoint-1
it got cold, we took it easy, no show-off moves.
didn't know where 6 was going to be until we got to 5 at the top of Props. we knew all the non-Plus racers were heading straight down Props Run to the finish. we didn't know how far we'd get sent to find 6.
lots of comments at the post-race party about the length. Andy and I were out for 11:19 I think. We were about 20 minutes behind the winners of the 2-man Plus. Those 20 minutes could've been from my map reading failure, a failure to notice the extra pink-highlighted line indicating a legal stretch of pavement we could've taken. A stretch that's never been legal to use before, and when we got on the parallel singletrack, it was so overgrown, unused, and filled with blowdowns, we wondered what was going on. It pays to look closely at the map, even when you think you know everything already.
Even though we did an extra checkpoint, we still got in before most of the non-Plus racers. Most of them were well over 12 hours. Many finished in the dark. Many had rides of woe, of missed turns, extra climbs, bad choices. Looking at the map in the morning, I thought it again looked like a simple straightforward course like last year. That everyone would take essentially the same routes. I was certainly proved wrong on that, which is why many of them finished in the dark. Knowing Gil, we expect next year to be shorter again. Will I be there??

EWR v IF

have only rolled it around town so far
hops great
manuals great
wheelies easier than the IF
what else would I expect from a Jay da Hey designed frame
surely these attributes will translate into a shorter 100 time, right Jamie?

I remember a long ago Spring Maximus, probably cold and rainy, as we rolled down Bendersville Road to stage. I was in a tight pack, Jay is right in front of me and pulls a manual. I got nervous as I had nowhere to go if he went over or back. I had to keep telling myself there's no way in hell Jay deJesus is going to crash on a paved road. He sat down on the saddle, and wheelied the whole descent and cruised to a stop at Log Sled. Watched him feather the rear brake and keep the front afloat the whole way down.

these pics are for my benefit, I know most folks never liked geometry
I should be able to get at least one Michaux ride on it before the SM100.
have races the next 2 weekends and this new ride will probably be staying home. But Teaberry?? this bike is all over Teaberry. we'll see if the driver is though one week after Shenandoah

EWR OWB

ephemeral playthings dropped at the end of our alley thanks to some street improvements

cleaned a certain flat rock in Meeshow for the first time last night after watching Howard work it out. it's one I've half-tried before, and have watched 2 others nearly get it. hope I can still pull stuff like that on the new ride

OSG

I got to sit in with another band last night. Hooked up with the Frederick Five for a gig in the north Shed. Being early July, I'm well into my Old, Soft, Grumpy stage of the bike season. A week of 100 degree days had me dreading the thought of a slow rock crawl over trails with icy names. Driving up Route 15 towards Mountaindale, staring at the dark clouds west and north, hoping for a shower to knock the dust down on the gravel drive up the mountain. Turned out to be about a 45-minute most welcome downpour which dropped the temp about 25-30 degrees. Soooo nice. Wet rocks, yeah, whatever...

Riding Iceberg right off the gate, and right after a rain shower is like being handed an automatic Mulligan, a pass, an instant excuse. You're never gonna clean it when it's wet, so you may as well relax and not even try to kill yourself.

Ended up with several great runs, cleaned more spots than I usually do, and was even given a couple of solos by the frontman. This trail, and it's neighbor F2, are a lot like parts of Buzzard Rocks Trail, where if you can stay on your bike for 75 yards at a time, you're thrilled. I'm pretty sure I hit 80 yds on a few occasions last night. Some of the large angled rocks were grippy when wet, some of the flat ones weren't. Hard to know which rocks were gonna hold you. Hard to believe that that didn't stop us from trying the angles. It's cool that the skills can still grow while the fitness and body fades....

Soooo, I'm in need of some opinions/suggestions/links etc.
I need a fork. a 100mm one, preferably reallll simple, and cheep (though I've been told cheep and forks are not a good combo (like parachutes or something). How 'bout used? Old? Closeouts? I'm pretty sure any fork is gonna feel different for me, and I doubt I'd appreciate all the blingyness of the latest $1000 offerings from Fox. I know about as much about springy bike things as Ghana know about taking penalty kicks. And I don't really care to learn that much about them. I don't like taking forks apart, and I like putting them back together even less.
Help a rider out

an increase in the bear population in the north end of town
easier to follow than deer trails

top of Michaux Rd
is this operation finished? if this is what's left after a sale, it doesn't look too bad

getting reacquainted with the love
I'm on deck

got to ride this recently too

I heart the SGOakVaRattlePunch
hard to understand how riding something that looks like 5 buff miles on the map takes 3 hours

creek week

if Ch-burg were ground zero

http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/

NorSouChaux

It's been done before in various incarnations, and the idea of a Trans-Michaux ride continues to pique interest in the local factions. This kind of ride comes with many compromises and it seems that knowledge can be your enemy.

Brett's to Old Forge, 36 miles, 7 hours, with a lot of time not moving. The pic below shows one reason for downtime at our drop stop

enjoying some more non-moving time here after fixing a tire slice from possible trail sabotage?

when we hit the truck for the commute back north, we all felt a bit of unexplained underwhelming blah. None seemed sure why though. How can 7 hours in Michaux not be good?
Why do these point-to-points feel so different from loops?

so sooo nice to have this guy back in the woods,
and back as a Wild teamy

a southern gas kickin'

Holy Hell!
how can such a seemingly flat line be so grueling?
a Weds night killer on what was thought as a baby loop
I guess there aren't any baby trails in this vicinity
any mile of this stuff that gets added to the race needs to take 5 miles off somewhere else

Hunkerson Gap attempt

the view from the house

Oliver, dad & friend shuttle me up

long GW ridgetop underused love

Mike rode all day in chaps and earplugs
he cut a couple dozen trees out before I had to bail off the front and run for home
[....we got maybe 75 total, which was 3 chainsaw tanks of fuel...]

I never found Hunkerson Gap Trail. I didn't make it far enough along the ridge and thought I already passed it. Things weren't looking right, so I turned back toward Mike and Susan still sawing a mile or so behind me.
greatly enjoyed the fruit of the freshy cut ridge back to Orkney Springs Trail.
they were out for 8 hours sawing and riding the ridge
peeps oughta get some traffic on that trail now while it's primo.
put it in le Tour

genteel lap around Tomahawk Pond

preTTT

Perry County Boys Ray and Dave always deliver the grin

caught the pre-game for Ray's annual shindig in the Tuscarora

Overlap

work and play intersect,

mountain biking led me into maps in the first place
if anyone thinks there's any need to finish this map of the Rattling Creek trails, comment away

Trailbuilding School, PA

this place is so unlike any other place I've ridden
it's not like anything else,
not like Michaux, the GW, the Shed, Stokesville
not like Raystown, Marysville, Schaeffer, Fountainhead
not like Canaan, Slatyfork, or Douthat

Bike to Work Day

Limited exposure

was the idea

park at the top of Canada Hollow

a short gradual twisty downhill singletrack

to an easy fireroad climb back to the car

it didn't seem that easy following O

there was a long push section on the trail I didn't expect

and the fireroad climb wasn't a snap either

he didn't seem to mind the push in the woods, chatting the whole time about the inventions he'll make when he moves to Japan

there was a pretty high level Freestyle BMX contest at one of the town's skateparks today. damn impressive stuff. pretty funny seeing so many of the competitors filling up their extra-large Burger King and Long John Silver cups with the Natural Light that was under the emcee's table.