Slippery When Wet...

After what seemed like an eternity, the Shawnee Mission Trails are finally open! After the Thursday night ride when temps were great and the soil was almost perfect, it was quite a change to wake-up to 4" of snow today. Andre and I headed over for a ride and enjoyed the heck out of the fresh powder. We saw a few other riders and they too seemed to be having a grand time. I had ridden in from my house and got in a total of about 2.5 hours on the fixed gear, which is just a blast in the snow! I am totally getting psyched to race the next two weekends straight!

Thursday Night Farm'n...

The rain yesterday didn't help in the long wait for rideable trail. The usual Thursday night crew was discouraged, busy, out-of-town or just plain too lazy to motivate and go riding. I don't blame them, but the rain had stopped and temps were perfect. Two of us, identified only by our humble steeds, made it out for a good two-hour mixed trail ride at 'the farm'.

Yeah, we know better than to ride maintained trail after a good rain, so we opted for a 'deer trail' style, single track adventure. I don't think the deer really gave a rat's-ass that we were slinging a bit of soil; I know we didn't. We had a hella good time as usual, and I have to say ... sorry you missed out!

Stumpy - The Newest of New

Stumpy, The newest addition to the mini-trail. Multiple angles, routes, really skinny or semi-skinny and of course...FUN!

And thanks to Matt, I have this GPS map of the mini-trail. How cool is that!

Monday Night Bliss...

This was my first Monday night ride since my schedule has been juggled with my wife teaching a night class and all...and though I was feeling the lethargy onset early in the day, I still managed to motivate a few bros (an myself) to get-r-done. Days ago we mounted-up Andres new bike rack system and this was the inaugural run, sweet rig!. We headed out to Swope for some out and back laps on the south facing, i.e. dry parts of the trail system. We only had an hour or so to ride but we made the best of it. It was nice to get back on my trusty SS for a change. Free-wheeling is a bit more relaxing then the unrelenting spin on the fixie. Swope is about the best place to get freaky-strong riding bikes, so an hour here is worth two somewhere else. Good times...

Time...never enough of it

I'm not going to try and sound like a negative looser just because I did zero riding over the weekend. That's just the way it goes when you have family, friends and responsibilities. Instead I will say that I had a great weekend and I did accomplish building a workbench for my sisters man ...

and got started on a new feature for the mini trail with the help of Brett and Mason (Thanks Fellas!)...

Bear Hug...

Brett and Mason were over spinning a few laps on the mini-trail yesterday. I of course had to work..deadlines. Brett got to get the first ride of the Lunker. I think he rode that log a half dozen times while he was over, and at least one time I saw him take a sweet dive, ending with him bear hugging the thing laughing his ass off...It's always great to see some bros having a good time on trail you've work so hard to build.

Jesse...Stone Master aka "Manimal"

Jesse, another one of the regular crew, is a manimal. Lately he has been doing a ton of trail work on the Swope Park Trails. His expertise..moving, arranging and building sweet trail out of large slabs of rock. I swear, this guy is like an ant, he can move a stone twenty times his own weight with one hand, and place it perfectly to make for some entertaining riding. Not only is Jesse a Stone Master in the sense of the aforementioned trail building, but he is a bad-ass rock climber and has many years of experience and hundreds of ascents around the country to show for it.

I was fortunate to have the Manimal himself over to my place for some mini-trail work. Here is his sole creation, a 10-12' long, 2' high skinny made out of what else but...STONES!

cOLD sPIN

Thursday night we had a great 3 hour night ride. We hit some local dirt and since the temps were below freezing, the trails were in prime shape. I am always super tore-up after these rides. Riding with the big dogs will make you stronger...at least that is what I'm counting on.

Mini-Trail Photo Request...

I had a request for a few more photos of the mini-trial, so here they are. Once this trail is complete I will most definitely post photos of all the obstacles.

This first one is of an older ramp-to-rock obstacle. the rocks are steeper (coming towards you as the viewer) than they appear and are quite challenging.

This too is older, a basic up-down skinny with a sally-line to the right, which can be hit as an up over the rock or a wheelie-drop coming towards you.

As I said, More photos as more is built. Stay tuned...

A Dust in Time...

Last post I described this lunker of a tree that I had brought down that was dead and leaning against another tree back at the mini-trail. Well, last night Travis D stopped by and we did a lap around the trail to get some ideas. Travis is one of the most motivated guys I know. If you are game, he is game, always. There are few things bettter than reliable friends and 'Pyro' as we some times call him is no exception. His enthusiasm made me psyched to get my chainsaw back in working order and out to do some more work on the 'Lunker' tree. Well, I won't go into too much detail until this project is complete, but I spent an hour or so working on it and I am now even more psyched than before. Witness before you now...the 'Lunker Skinny', in the works of course...

Before...

During... to be continued...