Outdoor Travel Geek

Category: random riding

  • biking, burgers & bros

    The rain has been crazy this past week. Originally I had planned to go mountain biking with some friends at Santa Cruz but those plans got shelved because of the rain. The weather forecast said it would be sunny, but we figured that after a week of rain the trails wouldn’t be in great condition.…

  • merry mondays

    Today was my first Monday off. It’s nice waking up with absolutely no plans at all. My only goal was to fix this bike. It had been sitting on my workstand for almost a month. When I had bought the bike around a year and a half ago, it had a broken front shifter. Originally…

  • racked up

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    The weather has been incredibly nice lately– unusually warm for February. I’ve been taking advantage of the weather by going biking, if you couldn’t already tell from all the biking posts in February. This weekend I went biking out at the American River Parkway with Jiro and Ray. I’d forgotten how nice it was out…

  • cycling mix

    I knew Mix Canyon was a tough climb. I’ve attempted the climb three or four times, but still haven’t made it to the top. I made it almost to the top once, but that was on a motorcycle (http://outdoortravelgeek.com/2011/05/the-mix/). On a bicycle the farthest I’ve gotten is about three miles. So yea, I knew it…

  • mini triple crowns

    This weekend I went for what I guess was the first real training ride of the year. The weather was perfect for riding. The sun was out, but it was not hot. There was a bit of wind, but not too much, in fact it seemed like just enough to make the ride a bit…

  • lazy days

    It is cold. The trees are barren. Winter is here. It was especially apparent when I went biking on Saturday morning. What’s amazing is just three weeks ago I went biking on this same stretch of road with Jiro and one of his lab mates, back then the trees were still covered with autumn leaves.…

  • pickle juice

    A couple of years back, when I first started to get into mountain biking, and before I really had any friends who mountain biked, I joined a group called Bayside Adventure Sports. Despite being the youngest person in the group by like a dozen years, I was the slowest person in the group. After a couple…

  • back to the bike

    It’s hard to believe I’ve gone an entire year without hopping on my mountain bike. I actually enjoy mountain biking a lot more than road biking, but I end up on the road bike a lot more, mostly because it’s more practical. I can just hop on the road bike and ride out to Winters…

  • expensive rides

    expensive rides

    Today was an expensive day. It started off with a trip to the car dealer. My car was due for its 60k service. Sixty thousand miles. Gosh that’s a lot of miles for a three year old car. But I knew when I bought the car that I would be using it a lot. I…

  • out of hibernation

    If I could choose to be any animal, I think I would be a bear. They have such a cool lifestyle. First of all, they live in the mountains and forests, which I love. In California many of them live in the Tahoe basin and the Yosemite valley, both places that I love to visit.…

  • cyclotic commute

    This is crazy. That thought ran through my mind several times this morning. It’s 6:15 am. It’s cold. My high powered bike light barely cuts 15 feet through the thick fog. My glasses fog up almost instantaneously, reducing visibility to only a few feet. Even though I’m wearing all the cold weather gear I have–…

  • donner death ride

    I like works of art that evoke memories of the past– of places I’ve been or things I’ve done, or people I’ve met. I think that’s why I like the Crocker Museum a lot. There’s a room in the museum dedicated to California art, and in it there’s a lot of beautiful oil paintings of…

  • expensive hobbies

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    Today I spent about 600 dollars on my hobbies. I spent a little over $200 to repair a camera lens that I had dropped about a month ago. And then I spent almost $400 to overhaul my single speed bike to get it ready for bike commuting. The funny thing is I originally got into…

  • weekend warrior

    Some random thoughts from my weekend in the bay….. When I go back to the bay, I usually bring my road bike. One of the things I love doing is biking out on Canada road, which parallels the Crystal Springs reservoirs. Sundays are especially nice because they close the road to cars, so it’s just…

  • a cure for global warming

    One hundred and two degrees. That’s how hot it was Friday afternoon. Instead of sitting in my air conditioned cubicle, I was out mountain biking a dusty trail by Folsom lake. Probably not the smartest trade ever, but I will take that trade any day. The Dike 8 trail is supposedly the easiest trail in…