A Morning Trail Run & Evening MTB Ride!
Yesterday was a great day! My wife and I did a trail run in the morning (Spencer Butte, Fox Hollow), in the nice cool weather. Then, in the evening, I got a great mountain bike ride in at Goodman-Eagles Rest. I think this is only my second or third mtb ride of the year, and boy was it nice to be back on the bike. I'd just posted complaining about lack of mtb, so it was great to get out there and ride, and have a great ride at that. Or so it was by the end, it didn't start out great...
Roland and I met up at the Goodman Creek parking area at 6pm, and headed out. Not even 5 minutes into the ride, and I can't seem to clip into my right pedal. I look down to realize all I've got there is a pedal spindle! I jump off and we track down my pedal. We find that the bolt that holds the pedal body onto the spindle has somehow come off, but manage to hand tighten it (didn't have a socket to really crank it down), and that seems to hold for the rest of the ride. This was not a good start, given the last time I rode here was when I broke my frame! Anyway, we continued riding...
About 10 minutes later, Roland feels his chain or hub slipping, and as a result, painfully slams his knee into his fork. Ouch. We start to diagnose. I then notice that there are a dozen or so teeth missing from his Gates belt drive belt/chain! No wonder it was slipping! Roland has been training for the Cascade Creampuff 100, and apparently he's just become so strong, so manly that he's now sheering teeth of belt drives! Badass. But also bad in that that ended his ride. I continued though.
It was a gorgeous night, temps maybe around 60 give or take. I made it up to the summit of Eagles Rest in 1 hour 12 minutes of ride time. It wasn't sunset yet, so the photos were a bit harsh:
Felt really good though, especially given I'd run in the morning. Had a Honey Stinger (wow, those are pretty much just a more liquidy honey (duh)!), and headed down. What a great descent! I'd forgotten that this was really quite a good ride. I was on my rigid Niner, and some of the descent was a bit harsh. Between this and a couple of other rides, I've been starting to wonder if I'm "over" the rigid, and want to put a fork on this bike. The main downside though would be that it'd add about 1.5-2 lbs (the Niner steel fork is 1100g/2.4lbs), and one thing I just love about this bike is how light it is. It's not even that light when compared to what folks consider really light bikes these days (mine weighs about 27lbs), but compared to my suspension bikes, etc., it's light and snappy. I'll think about it some more.
Overall, it was a great day out on the trails, and I was thrilled to be back on my mountain bike.
