Category: cycling

Tonight’s ride was just over 29 miles, because I parked a bit further out than other folks. The distance was fine, but the cold (~50°F) was making my knees hurt. I think if I’m going to keep riding in this weather I’ll be needing some cold weather gear. It’s been suggested that I look at the Pearl Izumi AmFIB tights and either some shoe covers or cycling boots. With it getting dark so early I think a bright colored cycling vest (with lots of reflective bits) is also in order. Oh, and also some full finger or maybe lobster-type cycling gloves.

With a few minutes to spare I pulled apart the rear hub on my bike and put it back together. Why, you ask? Well, as I was checking things over before Massive Fallout I noticed a gentle rolling/rattling sound coming from the rear hub. This got me realizing that I must have knocked a bearing out of a race when reassembling the hub the last time, not noticed it, and had it rolling around inside the hub body.

Being a bearing shy isn’t a horrible thing, but I did want to get it sorted out as quickly as possible, especially as I’d put 100-200 miles on the bike since noticing the bearing. Having a full set of cone wrenches (three dual-sized ones, doing the 13mm-18mm range) and a bench vise makes this job trivial.

Also, my lower GI has now realized that the rest of me is sick and begun following suit. Fun.

Yesterday I rode in the 2008 Massive Fallout, a very large group mountain bike ride which routes through four of the best mountain bike trails in the area. I did three of the parks: Stony Creek, Bald Mountain, and Addison Oaks, riding along for most of the route with three other guys, Jeff, Rob, and Jeremy.

Per my bike’s computer I rode just over 46 miles. While I’ve ridden a longer distance in one go before, this was a much more difficult ride because of all the single track, amazingly fun climbs, etc. Here is the original map of the available routes [PDF] and here is marked-up map showing the approximate route we rode.

I only fell once, and that was during a fairly quick downhill part in Bald Mountain, where when going around a sandy curve at the bottom my front wheel started to slide out and I just went down. The only damage was a slightly scraped elbow, knee, and calf, and a slight sore thigh. Nothing bad at all. Today I’m just a bit worn out feeling still, but not sore. Still, I think I’ll wait a day or three before getting back out on the trails.

(Also: I keep thinking of getting a Surly Cross Check for riding non-mountain bike stuff. It’d be perfect for rides to Metro Beach, up the trails, stuff like that. I keep talking myself into and out of getting one, with the price of ~$1k being the biggest reason holding me back.)

I wanted to post a few of my thoughts about riding single-track mountain bike trails in the dark, with a head lamp:

· While a decent head lamp (like the Nite Rider Digital Evolution I was loaned) works well, having the light helmet-mounted and thus in line with one’s eyes means that shadows aren’t visible in many situations. This is the same as using camera-mounted flash on detailed textured surface and losing the texture in the final image. The result was that I couldn’t tell the depth of many rocks, gravely areas, and roots and almost fell a couple times.

· It’s basically accepted that riding one-way trails opposite the posted direction is okay after dark when done with headlights. Part of tonight’s ride involved going through The Pines backwards. (Videos of this trail forwards are here: 1 & 2.) This wasn’t hard, seemed to flow nice, but felt like a bad dream. It was dark, my field of vision was relatively narrow, there were bright lights dancing around in the distance, and while recognizable the backwards riding made whole trail feel somehow wrong. A couple of times while riding I had the sort of deja vu which comes about when one flashes back to a nightmare where Things Just Aren’t Right.

· Riding in the dark is a lot of fun. It’s a completely different feeling than the normal everything-can-be-seen daylight riding, and I like it a lot.

· A heavy head lamp (like the one I was borrowing) mounted near the front of my helmet made it tip forward slightly on bumpier sections. This was a bit awkward. It might be nicer to use a lighter lamp with a light Li-ion battery mounted on the helmet for balance, although the battery-in-pack setup I used tonight worked great and wasn’t noticeable while riding.