Rad ride today, but I am a ball of mush tonight. Another Ned-pic today with the boys. Bus up, climb in and up and traverse goodness at altitude. 5 hours, lots of miles covered and wasted legs.

We again hooked up some National Forest with some magical singletrack and used some ‘classics’, Sourdough and South St. Vrain, to connect even more.

The week was a bug’un for me with tons of early AM sessions on the fatty tires…even a session on the skinny tires. Riding today never felt good. No power, rhythm, flow. I attempted in vein to hike up my big girl panties but to no avail. Riding Sourdough is like this 6 mile slog over a gigarntic rock field. Rhythm is hard, constant power spurts to climb up and over small lips and riding clean…OK, I’m complaining again. It was sickeningly beautiful but you need to be on your A game which I wasn’t. The pay off is that you pop out at Brainard Lake at 10,000ft  at the end of Sourdough and it’s rad. I recommend that whole area as well for camping and hiking. Insanely beautiful.

From Sourdough we traversed through the Brainard Lake Park area on some great singletrack and you start losing altitude. We’d end up dropping about 5K of elevation by the time we’d get home. We hooked up with South St. Vrain and the trail was exactly the same as Sourdough, except it tilts downward. ‘A’ game was an absolute necessity to keep concentration over the rock fields and drop offs…else you will bury your mug in a large granite rock. It’s sick though and if you have some skills, I recommend you rail this trail at some point.

My body is taking a mad abuse it seems though. I love my hard tail, but I need to get back on FS at some point. These long rides are taking it’s toll on my carcass. I get somewhat  chub-ified over the WB’s S-Works. 22 lbs and a perfect amount of travel for the epics that we do week in and out. Oy. I need to save my pennies…sell some bikes (and a kidney) and maybe I’ll go hunt something like it down.

This buttercup is going to rest up. Git back  on ‘er when I feel all rested up.

Time to take stock and pan the head rearwards, to see what’s been done, and then pan forwards and plan for what’s ahead. It’s been a couple-of months since my Freedom Face was exposed and lots has been done and experienced during this period: My family and I circled wagons in Mexico to celebrate; Face time with prospective ‘next chapter’ gigs measured in XX numbers of hours invested meeting with boards, staff...building trust and opening channels; Setting up an LLC; Rides that have left me healthy and happy.

I’ve learned to structure my days into distinctive segments:

• Early AM is Social Networking Time. Peer into my graph’s doings and happenings and respond. Blog, think bikes for a bit and write about it.
• Early AM then blends into a ride to stimulate my senses, see our insane surroundings here in Boulder and commune. Recharge. As you all know, the mountain bike has called me and I am listening. The trees are speaking to me loudly these days.
• Mid day is all about technology projects. e.g. the stuff I am scheming over that I’d like to see built, working on projects with friends who need a trusted set of eyes on what they’re building and finally moving towards things that are exciting here in Boulder’s unbelievable technology community.
• Evening….before I know it, my boys are all up in my grill and we go and have some serious play before we need to cram some dinner in our gullets.

I’ll look back on this schedule and these days as something remarkable. The recession is very real. Many of you feel it. But hope and promise…and massive doses of patience…are what I need and my wife is constantly re-enforcing to me when the days seem pretty bleak. The work being put in in this period of massive transition is very real. The connections, the new technology landscapes, the networking on all levels. It’s fun…and the timing of the market correction will intersect with the groundwork I am laying.

Or so I lie in bed and construct scenarios to ensure this is realized.

I don’t know where many of you are at these days, but patience and the prospect of timing are all lessons being learned. That and the faith I’ve put into who I am and the relationships I’ve built. It truly is all that you have. Literally ALL that you have on this earth. Everything else is an accoutrement.

Patience grasshoppah.

Now HERE’S something to check out! My bud Mat Barlow assembled this fantastic short on the trail maintenance done up at Heil Ranch on June 6th. Boulder Mountainbike Alliance spearheaded the volunteer-driven activity with fantastic support from Oskar Blues, REI, GoLite and the Boulder County Horse Association. Can’t wait to try out these new re-routes!

Lastly, I’ll just say this: I get emails all the time from folks around the world (literally) asking about Valmont Bike Park, how to get started, etc etc. Well, it starts with people who give a _ _ _ _ and choose to organize and evangelize. Watch the vid. This happens often in Boulder. You need to organize.

“Ahhhhh ringk gingk gingk!” That was the sound of the ‘chant’ my buds and I used to make as we threw our paper, rock or scissor on the 3rd and last ‘gingk’. You ALWAYS throw on the 3rd gingk. So many rounds of beers, shotgun seats or general slave-like tasks were won and lost over rounds of Ro Sham Bo amongst my crew…so when I saw this little number for sale on the Pros Closet, and then focused-in on the name of the frame, she had to be mine. It was destiny.

The Kelly Roshambo is a steel singlespeed frame, made of True Temper OX Platinum Steel. She’s old school with V-Brakes, but irresistible nonetheless. I am selling my old 26” Dean singlespeed as I just can’t justify riding on 26” wheels any longer. My 2 years on my Ahrens Revolver 29’er has converted me to big wheels without a need to look back. Seeing what Specialized and Gary Fisher are doing with their full suspension 29’er bikes has also effectively blown up this image in my brain that 9’ers would simply not have a place in the FS market. All that has changed too…

So to the bike, I am building it slowly. Transferring parts from the old Dean including a (I think) 1st generation Chris King headset (bomber!!), 2007 XTR V-Brakes, Time ATAC pedals, Syncros seat post circa 96 and ultra-bomber and stiff Race Face DH cranks. New stuff will include a Thomson 110/0° rise stem, flat bars and bar ends. The wheels will be built up on a set of 1998 Chris King MTB hubs with new Stans ZTR 355’s (for rim brakes) and likely DT spokes. Not 100% sure on rubber yet but those Geax Saguaro’s tread pattern is delicious in their 2.2 and likely I’ll stick with those which I tested on the Edge Composites carbon wheels.

Anyways, the project is fun and being done on the super-cheap as a 1 x 1 should! I’ll report back once I get this thing to a completed state and have ridden around on it. And yes, this is what I’ll be rocking in Durango come September. 

Holy shnikees. The photography and angles filmaker Aaron LaRocque is unreal. Absolutely unreal. Follow this link on PinkBike.com for more info, but enjoy this trailer with an adult beverage.

Possibly one of the core-est group of folks I’ve ever met and had the pleasure of racing with are the folks from Moots Cycles in scenic Steamboat Springs Colorado.  I’m not sure if it’s the elevation, the scenery or water in Steamboat that gives that crew of folks their speed, sincerity and kindness….but by the sound of it, it looks like they’re inviting us all up to come have a taste!

Moots is presenting a road stage race, this Labor Day, September 4th-7th. Promoter, Corey Piscopo, sent out this information for the wires and all systems are go.

When will I learn? The sweetest things are silent. Unspoken. Observed. The irony is…me. I speak as fast as I can get the words to form; nearly instantaneously as the thoughts have materialized, synapses have fired and communication relayed through and out of my pie hole. But we’ll get to synapses yielding misfired words in a moment.

We got us done a nice epic yesterday. The W-J brought P-Dub and I up to the goodness…all on marked trails in National Forest. All on trails that are prototypically Colorado: crushed granite sediment, much of which was bar-width apart, perfectly tacky from the wetness we’ve had as of late, woven in and out of aspens and pines at 9-10,000ft. And all silent.

The W-J and P-Dub are something to watch. Two genetic freaks who’s mitochondria, like the surroundings, defy explanation. But what I witnessed was two old friends in their element. Hours and hours, miles and miles ridden together over the years. They both float over the singletrack like only those who’ve spent 20+ years on mountain bikes can. The most remarkable thing though was…the silence. I think the communion for these guys and what is most appreciated is hearing the sound of perfectly inflated tires float over terrain. You know that sound, right? They made it a point which I gleaned from them…without them having to say anything to punctuate that fact. It was just obvious. So while we broke out like schoolboys in laughter when someone cased something or blew a line, the long stretches of silence with only the sound of those tubeless tires making their beautiful hum as the three of us grooved in and out of the aspen groves was priceless.

While railing some of these stretches, many of which are just too hard to be accessed by hikers and bikers given their distances inland, we’d come upon fallen aspens and other brush. W-J, ever the Boy Scout, would whip out this ingenious tool…a chain saw blade connected on each end with nylon loops for your hands…and would hack away at these fallen timbers. He and P-Dub literally cut through a 8” aspen in 30 seconds. Unbelievable. We got the fallen stuff cleared so the next folks using the trail could have clean runs.

The ride was beautiful, all 5+ hours of it from and back to Boulder. We have so much epic National forest land it’s crazy to think about. Moreover the value of silence and its virtues has taught me a lot these last few weeks. It’s not due to a lack of appreciating silence. It’s knowing when to practice it. When to observe it. When to enjoy it and relish in it. And on the topic of silence: it should have played a role in weeks prior for me. And for that I am so sorry. It’s a very large lesson learned. Sleep cycles lost for lack of it and my unfiltered naïveté. You know who you are and I long to rail the woods with you at some point. I’ll bring the silence in tow.