Family – Page 2 – The Ramblings of MTBBill

Back in Japan – Yoko Dirt Time

Due to my last work project running long in Sasebo, my time back at home was just a week long before I headed back to Japan for some work in Yokosuka. I flew back into Japan on a Saturday evening and decided to try and shake off some jet lag with ride on Sunday.

After grabbing a rental bike and setting it up with my pedals and some sizing tweaks I was through on the bike garb and on the road. Today was not an exploration ride but a return to the Fugato-yama area which is one of my regular stomping grounds when I am in this neck of the woods.

It was a beautiful sunny day with a touch fall briskness in the air. Despite only having about 6 hours of sleep after being up for 26 hours I felt really good on the street riding out to the trails. I think this was a combination of being a bit fitter than I have been in the last six months coupled with still be ing a bit on Japan time with only having a week on US time. Whatever the reason, I was digging having some energy in the tank and some iron in the legs while out in some nice nature.

The trails were in exceptionally good condition. Obviously it had not rained heavy for maybe a week as some of the sections that are hellishly slippery when moist were fairly managable which was another bonus.

It was a substantual act of being unselfish that I stopped to take this photo. This is a long section of awesome flowing gravity feed goodness that just makes you smile. Most times of the year the steep hillside is somewhat hidden by the vegitation. With winter on its way the mixed forest flora is thinning out some to reveal more of its often “stealth” exposure.

Yoko-Reflective Sign

I did not have a huge route planned out here on this day as I had plans for the evening. I had a handful of street miles to ride back to my hotel after popping out of the woods. So there I was “just riding along” on the sidewalk along highway 16. I managd to clip a sign like the one above while going about 20mph that jerked my handlebar pretty hard. I was able to correct enough to keep from going full on body surfing on the concrete but the bike went way off line and Iended checking a concrete wall with my shoulder. My head also smacked the wall, but my helmet completely earned its keep so the melon was no worse for wear.

For those who have been wondering, my test reveal that roadside Japanese concrete seems to have an average grit fact of somewhere between 30 and 45.

After a very stingy shower, I hopped back on the bike and rode a did a few more miles of street riding over to friends Ken and Emi house. We had nice evening of catching up things over tasty Japanese microbrews and a yummy homemade dinner. It was a mighty fine opening day back in the land of the rising sun!

Farewell to a friend and Quality Time

A wad of short blonde hair going in 27 different directionsu nearly buried under a pillow was all that could be seen of youngest son, Jake’s this past Sunday at 6:30AM when I went to wake him up. 13 year old boys are not fond of this time in the morning and he fully looked the part of a coma rattled teenager when I rousted him out of dreamland. We were headed out to Laguna Mountains for a different kind of bike ride.

A few week ago a good friend of mine Cliff Walker made an unscheduled dismount from the ride of life. I can’t use the word “close” and “dear” without feeling some sense of guilt. Cliff had lots of friends who were much more involved with his day-to-day life than I. Cliff was one of my “MTB Buds”. One of those friends that you primarily assoicate with while mountain biking. We have done a couple of road trips and races together as well as many rides and some epics together. A solid good person you just a joy to be around.

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Jake and I were headed to the Laguna Mountains to join some of Cliffs other friends for a memorial ride. Twenty-nine riders gathered up to take a spin around Big Laguna Meadow and honor Cliff’s Life.

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The ride was timed to end at about the same time that some of his family and no biking friends could gather up as well to celebrate Cliffs life. The gathering swelled to over 70 people who sit under the shade of the meadow’s pine trees to share and tell stories about how Cliff had touched each of thier lifes in some way. Cliff had a very diverse group of friends and the stories about Cliff I had never before really showed just how impressive a life he lived and how he had touched so many people’s life in a positve way.

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There was more than a couple of stories that included Cliff’s perpencity to be the first person up the hill. More than a few of us recalled getting up to the top of the hill to find Cliff walking around in circles looking under the various bushes and behind the trees. Once we questioned Cliff would look at you with this devilish smirk and reply “I dropped a hammer have you seen it?” It was always good for a laugh and the celebration of his life gathering was no different. A special thanks goes out to Chip Brent for making the celebration event happen.

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Afterwards, Jake was down for just a father/son ride. The memorial ride was just along the meadow and he had not down some of the other trails in the area before. We decided to add Wooded Hills and Los Gatos Ravine into the mix. A pretty significant event happened on the Wooded Hills climb. Jake was riding strong and then you decided to see how quick he could go. I saw him lift the pace and I was having a tough time matching it. It was not long before kicked up the pace enough more.

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I saw the half-sly turn his head to see how far back I was. That was his moment. The moment when a Son knows he is beating his Dad something. Not just something, but his Dad’s thing. He knew he had me and he was not letting up. I knew he had me too, I was not going to catch him, the best I could do give a good showing for second place. I was weird mix of pride in my Son and a relevation that I’m slacking. Sure I could make excuses and rationalize things like the fact I weigh about 90lbs more than he does and I did a respectable climb after a couple of beers at the celebration but no matter who you slice it my son kicked my ass up that hill. I got to the top about 45 seconds behind Jake and he was already off the bike with his helmet off and was hoofing and puffing. After a bunch of praise from me, he looked a me with a very smirky look on his face and calmly said, “Yeah, I dropped a hammer. Did you see it?”

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Rolling through the Dog Days of Summer

Man long time no post. The Dog Days of Summer have seemed to go on forever. I spent most of the summer either down by the coast or as high up in the mountains as I could get. La Costa, Lake Calavera, The San Clemente Singletracks and the Laguna Mountains have been the been most of my main riding haunts.

Pretty Cool Trail

Of course there have been some excursions outside of the local range as well as places not fit for public blabbage. Here is a Pretty Cool Trail off the beaten path that during the right kind of weather would be within sight of Palm Springs.

Homebase of my employeer is Philadephia and I am part of small contigent of folks who take care of things here on West Side. Quite a few of my co-workers back in Philly are mountain bikers as well so we when they are out here we try to squeeze in some “Off Site” time with me playing Julie the cruise director. Here is Jonathan out of the Laguna Mountains lugging around my UZZI.

Some good summer monsoon clouds rolling in.

Rocking a log ride

I have been up on the Big Laguna Trail more times this summer than I have in quite a few years combined. Here is Michael Paul riding the big log on the Los Gatos Trail.

From the top of the of Los Gatos trail near Mount Laguna you can get in some awesome views when it is clear out. In the center of the picture above is downtown San Diego and Point Loma, 49.5 miles away as a crow flys.

Here is a zoomed in shot. The downtown buildings are in the middle and Point Loma is on the left hand edge of the screen. For a number of years I worked out at Point Loma and I always marveled at the handful of days in the winter when you could look at downtwon with snow capped mountains as the backdrop. It was pretty cool to see the view from the opposite direction on this day.

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From another visit, here is my youngest son Jake making a run at the big log on the Los Gatos Trail.

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This was a successful “One and Done” run for the log ride. I’m going to have to watch out for this boy.

Guajome Park

So off and on I get asked where are good places to take kids riding. On my website to-do list for quite sometime has been to create a where to take a kid guide. Lake Hodges, Big Laguna Trails, Penaqsuitos Canyon are places on the list but I had been thinking about some of the smaller places that would be good for the MTBer with little wheels would be. Guajome Park is one of those places good for the grommet MTBers to get a taste of dirt.

Guajome Park (Or as my kids like to call it “Yo Hommie Park” is located on the east side of Oceanside right off of Highway 76. It is a county park that has a campground, a couple of small ponds and a series of trails that are no so overly engineered with split rail fencing and compacted non-native soil dirt sidewalks like are prevalent in many of the county parks near the urban environment. This place still allows for kids to interact with the environment instead of just look at it. When my kids where younger we used to hike out here often and go just out the little nooks and crannies of the place.

Last week I was talking to youngest son Jake about the park and that I wanted to get a webpage together so Jake decided to join me on the photo, map recon effort.

With about 4.5 miles of trail out here it can be quite fun for newbie kid. Even an a newbie adult who is willing to do a lot of hamster wheeling can find the place fun.

There are mainly fireroads here but there are also enough singletrack bits to keep a kid well engaged. There are two different playgrounds at the park as well as large population of resident ducks that quite fond of stale loaf bread. This would be a great place to take a little kid out for his first “big” MTB adventure as there are lots of opportunities to do other things besides ride the bike.

When I say “little” kids I’m generally thinking newbies on bikes with less than 26″ wheels as once they get to that big, this place can get rather small and you would have to get creative at this place at that point. Here is Jake working on riding this telephone pole skinny. It took him a while to get the technique down but he eventually was able to hop up on the log at the skinny end and ride the whole thing.

This was an after school ride for Jake and we played around here until we ran out of daylight and had to head back for things like dinner and homework. Good midweek stoke.

The Local Stuff — Week in Review

This past week was such that I could get out a little more often but for not as long. They were the kind of windows that you don’t want to burn up too much of your time driving far to get to, you know, maximize your time on the trail and minimize your time on the road.

Monday was a spin through the Black Mountain Open Space Preserve. I started off on the east side of the preserve and did some tough climbing and a bit of hike-a-biking to get up onto the East Ridge. From there I did a sizeable loop that had me pretty pooped by the end of the ride

The loop included the Miner’s Ridge and Liliac Canyon trails as well as the service road up to the peak and some more trails back over and down the East Ridge.

Wednesday evening was the monthly San Diego Mountain Biking Association (SDBMA) advocacy meeting so a group of us met up and did the La Costa trails prior to the meeting.

I was able to get out a couple of hours before the rest of the usual suspects so I did a couple of loops out there before the group ride. I was feeling pretty worked by the time I finished up the last loop.

Friday afternoon after work I squeaked in spin out in Santee near Mission Trails and Sycamore Canyon. Normally I am a stop and smell the flowers kind of guy but I have to admit that I somewhat enjoyed the pressure of having to be somewhere later and the “push” it forced me to do on the trail. Charge a hill here, push a harder gear there and general keep the engine rev’d higher than I normall would. It was a short ride that ended up feeling longer on fatique and quad burn at the end.

The weekend was pretty awesome as well, but it did include any biking. Hockey and quality time with boys were the story of the weekend. I took them to thier first concert Saturday night which was simply epic. Rush on thier Time Machine Tour. I have had a lifetime of missing Rush shows and this was my first time seeing them as well. They blew the place down and both the boys and I were completely stoked. It was a good way to finish off the week.

The MBB Mobile is Dead!

So this past Tuesday morning on my way to work some dumbass in a 1986 Chevy Astro Van decided the red-arrow was a suggestion and decided to make a left hand turn across three lanes of traffic that had the green light. Mr Dumbass left me with with no options and I clocked hit at about 30 degrees from head on at about 50 mph. My truck pivots along the front of the van and slides sideways out the intersection and into a large metal pole that holds up all the signals light and thens proceeds to come to a rest about 30 feet past the intersection in the bike lane.

There might be a few of the W

Hmmm the drive shaft looks a little out of place.

It might buff out 🙂

That rear wheel does not look to be pointing in the right directions.

The good news was that I had barely a scratch on me and got away with just a concussion. It could have been a lot worse. Damn that was good truck that I all tweaked out for road trips. I plan on getting another one pretty much just like it. Doctor’s orders are no mountain biking for two weeks. I might have enough to catch up on some things with the rest of the website.

Lake Calvera with Jake

With all of the competing interests pulling at my boys’ time such as friends, hockey practice, hockey games, etc…It was really cool that Jake wanted to join me on a ride at Lake Calvera this morning.

I took him on a different group of trails than what I have typically done in the past. Some of it was due to some of the trails being closed by the City of Carlsbad as they have started actively managing thier slice of the Calvera “Area”. Another reason for the trail change up is tha Jake has gotten strong and better on the bike so I thought it was time to take him on some of the more technical bits.

Jake did quite well on the technical bits. I was surprised that the squeeze type rock moves gave him more troubles than having to go up and over rocks.

Which he seemed to find easy to just pop up onto and roll off of. Makes me wish I had started riding a mountain bike when I was a little grommet.

This trail feature should have a sign “You can be no taller than this to got on this ride”. It would have been a face smasher if I would have tried it. All together we did about 12 miles or so.

On our pedal back to the house we started thinking about tasty brown cold beverages for post ride refreshments.

Ahh, Coke Slurpees!

A Big Bear Loop with Da Boyz

So this weekend the family spent a couple of days in Big Bear at my brother-in-law’s cabin. I brought along the bikes just in case we could carve some time out for some fun in the dirt.

Turns out we did grab some time one morning so the boys and I headed for the lazy boy chairs at Snow Summit for lift to the top of the mountain.

This was my first time doing the lift assisted riding on the mountain as well. I have done stuff in the area and on the back side of the mountain but had never taken any of the stuff into town. From the top of the lift we took 2N10 west along the ridgeline for a few miles and then took the short singletrack out to the Grand Viewpoint.

While I think the views from here are pretty cool (been here once before), the boys were like, “Yeah Yeah Yeah, is it time to go downhill yet?”

Lucky for them it was time to point the bikes down the hill. After a quick bit of backtracking to 2N10, we took the Pine Knot Trail (1E01) down the hill. We had discussed doing the traditional Grandview Point Loop that used the fireroad 2N08 to go down the mountain and the Towne Trail to cut back over to the Snow Summit parking lot. Taking the Pine Knot trail would have us needing to ride an additional three miles back through town. In a rare moment of sibling concurrence the boys asked “who would want to go down a fireroad? Let’s take the singletrack!” (Ahhhh, I was so proud, some of my parenting has been getting through. 🙂 ) After this point we did not see much of Will except for regroups. We wanted to blaze ahead and I wanted to keep Jake within earshot.

Jake is gettting quite a bit faster. On a couple of occasions when I zipped ahead to get setup for a shot of him coming by I was surprised how quickly he caught up. I was also surprised at how long it took me to catch back up to him after I put the camera away and got back on the bike. He is working that hardtail really well.

Once down at the bottom at the Glen Aspen Picnic area we worked our way down on the streets to Highway 18 and cruised back through town. To add a little more trail to the return leg, after going through the village, we hung a right on Knickerbocker Street and after a short bit we hung a left onto 2N08 and back onto the dirt. There was some steep fireroad climbing to be done for a bit and it wiped the smiles of the boys’ face. It was good for them. I don’t want them to get used to the whole chair-lift lizard thing. All was better once we got up to where the Town Trail comes off of 2N08 and contours it way back to the Snow Summit parking lot. The boys had a good time and I was glad to get some quality time out on the dirt with them. We celebrated we some post-ride sodas.

MIA Status

So man, long time no post for me. Truth be told, I have been enjoying other pursuits as of late. After spending plenty of time traveling and riding over the summer I have found life at home in the “slow” lane really freaking fun. I have been on the bike a bit, but first a little catchup.

The family (and a couple of friends) played hookie one day and enjoyed some mid-week fun at Knoxberry Farm. No lines was pretty freaking awesome.

Over Thanksgiving, we kicked up some dust in my Brother-In-Law’s yard with the go-carts.

Then there has been the weekly hockey practices and games. If it is not Jake on the ice at the Escondido Iceoplex,

It is Will at Tricity Inline rink. Always good times.

Early this week, a few friends and I did a little riding east of the Laguna Mountains. This is an area that I have not done much riding in so it was cool to check out some new stuff. Kitchen Creek, Fred Canyon, and Thing Valley were all on the menu.

It was not too long into our uphill exploration that some of the white stuff made an appearance. While just in the shadows at first, by the time we got up into the Lagunas proper there was more snow that not on the trails.

It is always a treat to get snow on your tires here in Southen California. Today’s dosage was just right, while enough to be a bit burdensome in spots it was for the most part fun to hear the crunch under your wheels.

After bit of play up top we worked our way back down to lower elevations and a welcomed bit of warmth. There looks to be some good scenic loops that can be put together out here. I have to go back a time or two to get everything figured out. One thing is for certain, I had a pretty cool time out there on the bike.

Back to Hitting the Local Stuff

I got back from Japan a couple of weeks ago and have been taking it easy for the most. Enjoying the “normal” things in my life like the kid’s hockey games, practice, honey-dos, etc…. Oh, and I managed to break my FN left big toe just strolling through the house. So not much in the way of blogging about mountain biking. But I been squeaking in some ride here here and there.

Before the toe breakage, I met up with one of the usual suspects at one of the usual suspect spots for some playtime on the rocks. After not riding here for over six months, the rocks and all the moves looked bigger. I’m going to have to repolish my game in this area.

Just a couple of days ago, I tested out the toe on ride through Calvera with my youngest son, Jake. While the toe was mildly a pain, it is okay to ride with.

What I was really stoked about was how well Jake was hanging. I rode at around 90% of my normal pass and he was right there the whole time. We did not do a whole lot of stopping either, just riding.

Kids never seem to amaze me at the rate at which they progress. We had a really good time out there and we got in around 12-14 miles all together. It was a good day to be a Dad and on a bike.