Long Live The King — Henrik Lunqvist?

OK so this is off topic but just a reminder, the King may have retired but BK is still the King. Looks kinda like Henrik Lundqvist to me, tho.

Frank is Back and Badder than Ever

If there are no photos, it didn't happen, but I saw this one on FB — think Steve Domjan took it — and it says it all. Frank is Back and Badder than Ever. Looks like his surgically repaired (?) arm appendage is working fine; even though he said it "hurt like hell" afterward.

Ran by him on the road the other day, and he was geared up and ready for action. Meanwhile Chuck and I were clubbed bup and ready for a lesson with our friendly local PGA pro.

I'm betting we both had great days. Well we know we did. All we need to know now is — did Frank find wind? Was he sailing more epic conditions? etc etc.

... and Back to the Trail

Decisions decisions.

After a solid hour and a half ice-skating yesterday, our legs were dragging a wee bit to start, but still energized enough to take on three laps — two via the second half of the blue trail and a lap of the green, about 50 minutes all in all.

As we arrived at the Stillwell lot, another rider just finishing for the day reported, "it's as perfect as it gets out there." Hard to believe there was ice in the puddles just a couple of weeks ago. This was not that far short of T-shirt weather. Put on a wind shell for good measure and opened up the sleeves halfway at the shoulder zippers to let the breeze in. A nylon t-shirt underneath was all that was needed.

And he was right, perfect weather — just the right temperature about 55, sunny, slight breeze, and almost ideal trail conditions, give or take a couple of soft/muddy spots in the usual boggy parts of the green, but the blue trail and the rest of the woods were rolling nicely.

This place is always a fun ride, with some very fun — almost pump track like — flow on parts of the blue. Lots of tree pairings to scootch the handlebars between; gravity-bending roller-coaster sections. It's good to be back in the saddle.

Gordo was highly motivated to redo any steep climb/root sections he biffed on the first attempt, and made them all on the second try.

This was definitely a longer, faster effort than last time. Lost a whole chunk of map data after a stop to chat with some other riders at the top of a hill section, and forgot to restart the GPS. One old timer gave Gordy a major boost of encouragement to ace a steep gravelly, section the two of them had just walked up. The kid is making major progress.

P.S. don't try this at home without goggles and a face shield: after pumping the rear shock to 205 psi last week it felt too stiff. So I decide to press on the schrader valve to let a few PSi out and get the sag right. Pwoosh -- high pressure air and vaporized oil shoot out. And sprits my forehead and glasses. OK. Shoulda read the manual,I guess.

Probably let a bit too much out, but the ride never felt to plush.

Back on the Road Again ... and maybe back off it.

After dog-sitting and dog walking all weekend, some serious bike-type exertion was in order come late Sunday afternoon. With limited daylight left (again), a test of the new, higher 45 degree road bike stem I installed was well overdue — 3 months overdue.

Basically, I'm trying to salvage my wonderful bike so I can ride it with my cranky neck. It was great for a while, until herniated cervical disks put me out of action for a year and a half.

A year and a half of pain and physical therapy. Now things are a lot better — not fully repaired say 90%. Good enough to ride MTB for 40 minutes. But Road bike is another thing altogether. The neck no longer tolerates looking up for more than _n?__ minutes. How long I don't know. Overdo it and I might be screwed for another year.

The road position is essentially one of "looking up." If your neck is good, you can do it for days and hours. If your neck is farged, it can be an incapacitating problem.

I've gotten the steepest rise stem I can find, and set it so I have the bar tops an inch higher than the saddle.

After riding MTB in August, and a good dose of golf, followed by some road riding, the neck balked on my last road ride in November. So I shut it down.

Got a lot better in January/February, felt good on the MTB in late Feb. Now it felt like time to test the road bike.

Carrying a Camelbak with too many tools, a wallet, phone tube, CO2s and cold weather extras, and a heavy NightRider battery and HID light. I set off with no target in mind until the first turn.

Where to? I went right: Longview. The big one. The Hill. The challenge to limbs heart, lings and maybe a little easter on the neck. Maybe.

The original plan had been a quick ride to Sands Point and back, but this route would keep me close to home and give me a real hard climb concentrated in a short period, and feweer cars to deal with.

I guess the MTB got me psyched for elevation gain.

Stopped on Jeanette/linda to pull the allen key and check the handlebar, stem and top cap. Definitely could use a little tightening all round. a 5-minute wrench check.

The home-side Northwest face. Made pretty good time for a while but the lungs were not quite ready for the workout. It's amazing, they struggle a bit until warmed up then they seem to do better. But, it was a hell of a grind all the same and I decided to left turn right at Ezring's house onto Hillcrest, good choice led to some interesting hill routes, and a detour from Hampton through the church, put me in a good spot to ride on down to Harbor Acres and tackle the East/Missle/South Rd climbs.

That got pretty heavy duty at the end and I u-turned out of caution, not wanting overcook it on the first time back.

As for the cervical neck. I got a nasty inner arm spasm twinge early on, then some generalized neck discomfort that said. This is tolerable but maybe not a great idea. Afterward, I was definitely feeling some added tingling in the index fingertip. A sure sign there was some nerve impingement. And during the evening a very little soreness and stiffness.

Verdict: great had-work hill ride, but due to the neck — Mustang Steve is right it seems — not something that can be repeated soon.

Stillwell w/ Gordo - A "Quick-er" Ride - Suspension Bottom-Out

Uh-Oh ... clack, clack, clack-clack.

What have we here?

"Hey Gordo can you see whether my suspension is bottoming out?"

"What's suspension?"

*Never mind* Maybe best to stop and take a looks. Rear shock is indeed 80-100 percent sagged through its travel, and whacking away at the linkage at every root, small hit or bump.

OK, I guess we will not be going round a third time today. Forty-five minutes time elapsed. Would have preferred another go-around but no need to compound whatever damage has already been done.

Good ride though. A lot quicker than last time; and a lot less lost. Lots of fun. There are parts of the blue trail that have great flow and just the right amount of challenges and exertion.

The MPH means little on this graph — except that in comparison with last week's "where-the-hell-are-we?" ... "we're lost" dismount-fest, it was plenty quicker.

What might have been an interesting comparison would be times of top speed. Last week we were trying to make time against available sunlight. For some of the longer sketchy downhills it was a case of "Do I let it go and let it skid and flow, or use the brakes. The dropping sun meeting rising horizon, favored the former.

Plenty of technical parts in this one, and some steep speed killing climbs, not to mention places where we lost flow — or stopped altogether.

If you care about overall times, I guess that's the trade off, technical and steep versus flatter, with more speed and flow.

BACK AT THE VAN
... I see that not only is the seattube pressing up against the bottomed-out shock, but the read-derailleur cable housing is getting crushed between the two.

The shock is not in the "stuck-in-down" position, it just has no air left in it.

Back at home putting the bies to be in the setting sun. I dig out the never-used-before shock pump...lost somewhere in the basement from when I last emptied the van out completely.

Pump it back to 205 psi. It's a Fox, one of the early ones from around 2000. 12 years old already. Test ride. It seems to be holding over kerbs. Guess we'll find out next week how far it can go.

Stillwell "Lost" Black and Blue Trails — "Oops!"

I don't know what hubris spurred this foray into sketchy territory so late in the day, but it got a little "interesting" that's for sure.

Oh yes, now I remember. First MTB ride of the season. Not enough prep.'

Backing out the driveway ...
helmets, check
water, check
Mini GPS, check
camelbak, check
cell phone, nope
spare tube, nope
lights, nope
time to go back and get them ...?

This is just going to be a short ride, right? But we were only going to try to do the Blue. Could do that in my sleep, or so I thought I remembered.

The Blue has a great second/third entry point with one of the best pair of skill switchbacks in the entire Woods. The first switchback is a precipitous drop with a "ledge" in the middle just to keep it interesting. The best thing is to go as fast as possible to build momentum to mount the almost vertical seeming skate park-like half pipe on the other side. Except this is a lot taller than a half pipe and on the way op the other side there are six inch roots and wooden pallet slats embedded in the gravel. Yes, you read that right, slippery grip-busting gravel

That was the intention, until we took a wrong fork at the top of the first blue hill, or was it the second blue hill?

It was one of those memory landmarks you think you know well, and then a minute or two later "Oops, This doesn't look quite right."

Problem was it looked kind of right, so I thought maybe my memory was playing tricks. But I decided to press on and when the ravine failed to materialize, it was soon apparent we were really on the wrong trail. The Black. So I asked Gordo, if he wanted to do the Black and he said yes.

At a certain point in the trail it can become very clear that you are going the wrong way. There were no other riders, but it was obvious these dirt faces were meant to be "gone down" not "climbed up."

So, we pressed on to another familiar point and on some more. Pretty soon I relized we'd just done a loop trail that demanded some really hard exertion. And all we achieved was a good ride, a lot of exercise and ... we'd gotten back to the same "lost" point we started at, but with less daylight left.

No cell phone. No lights, less time. No idea which way to go, but a gut feeling the setting sun was in the right general direction. 2 ATVs sped past through yonder bushes. We stopped and deliberated at a strategic point. This way? that way?

I've found my way out of these woods in an emergency before so, I'll have to do it again.

Almost forget the GPS in my cell phone pouch. No handlebar mount left on this bike - probably broke in a crash. Time to replace. Anyway, the Garmin Edge 305 does not provide much of a map, and the Nav is hard to figure as it seems to tell the wrong direction. but it can lead you to waypoints...if you know what they are. It also provides a "worm trail" and this time it showed we had trailed out, then performed a loop, and were near the beginning of the loop again.

Let's go this way. After a while we came to a large gravel chute and decided to climb it to see what we could see from the top. Houses fences -- the South East corner. An ATV trail. We followed it a short while, then reconnected with the bike trail. We got off the ATV trail back onto a bike trail and connected with a familiar route in reverse that led us to our breakout point!

We decided to forego the rest of the Green trail and double back the way we came, just in case the sun beat us to it, by sinking behind the trees before we no longer see our path to the lot.

The setting sun turned out to be a good instinct. (SW is a good direction home there.)

Gordo sped to the van and claimed victory. Kudos to him he did a great job, never panicked once.

Bikes, Barbecue, dog-walking, golf and spring-like weather in late January

Really can't complain about that. The neck feeling a little better the last two weeks I took advantage of the gorgeous weekend weather to do some maintenance on the bikes before the rust sets in. Winters' damp can wreak havoc on chains. They were dirtier than I'd imagined, courtesy of Gordon and his Uncle Frank's MTB fest in rainy Stillwell Woods' black diamond trails.

A workstand day like this but 40 degrees cooler and no foliage in sight.

And excellent weather for long walks and a quick London Broil on the BBQ.

A little sweet, tangy and spicy.
Olive oil, fresh Garlic, apple cider vinegar, bourbon, garlic & herb seasoning, ground coriander, holy jolokia hot sauce, red iguana cayenne sauce, montreal steak seasoning, honey, soy sauce, and charcoal to provide the smoke and flame grill. K-dog got his burger basted...no way he lets us not grill his nosh, too. The furr-hound has definite preferences.

Missed a lot of the NHL all-star game, but worth it.