Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

Category: Travels

Harwood Mills Park

The last couple of days I have been hitting up Harwood Mills Parks in Newport News.   This is another fun area with a little over six miles of single track that flows really well and makes the most use of the natural terrain.  

trail

This place is pretty much flat, with the picture above being pretty much the most elevation change you will see at one time.

 trail

 This is the toughest obstacle in the trail system.  On the other side of this ramp there are two chunks of this log used as steps.

 

So while the trail is not tough at all, it was of little concern to me as it was just fun to get out and go on this trail.  The trails really scream at you to see how fast you can go.  The three loops out here are all one-way trails with the novice trail being closest to the trailhead and the expert the furthest away from the trailhead.   I have to say that the grading criteria for the “advanced” and “expert” are not what I am accustomed to seeing.   I’m guessing that the rating system is based how much skill it takes to maintain a fast pace on the trail.   The expert trail has much tighter turns than the novice trail.   None of the trails has much in the way technical drops, really large roots or challenges beyond the log roll pictured above.   Going fast seems to be the primary challenge.   I’m pretty sure a novice can get through all of these trails if they take thier time.

creek

When not trying to rip through this place, it is a cool woods just to take a look see around.  These woods here are good deer habitat and I saw about 20-25 deer over the course of two rides here.   I even got to see about half a dozen fawns will thier spots still.   It was a real treat, just like this trail system for a post-workday quick escape into the woods.

More Ipswich Fun

I managed to catch some more late afternoon riding fun out at Indian River Park AKA “Ipswich” late last week.   I managed to find a few more trails that I had missed in the other excursions out here.  

Through the trees 

I also ran into some fellow Mountain Bikers (Dave, Kevin and Doug) and chased them around the trail network.  It is amazing how by this point I had ridden pretty much all the trails here, but by following someone else the same trails take on a different feel.   There are lots of permutations to the way you stitch the trails together.  Once again this place may be small but you get more fun out of it than the mileage states.

A frame in the trees
Scoping things out

Doug
Doug showing how it is done.

Kevin
Kevin giving it a roll as well.

It is pretty darn cool to have this trail so close to my hotel.   Even with just an hour or so of daylight left I can zip over here and get in a bit of dirt time.   Last time time here, I used pretty much all of the daylight and I was glad there were plenty of streetlights on my way back to the hotel.

Indian River Park – Chesapeake VA

I was not expecting much of Indian River Park AKA “Ipswich”.  That name comes form the home development that boards about half of the park.  It is a rather small plot of land and the topography is pretty much flat.  Okay I must say that I was surprised with what was out here.  The trail builders have made some exceptional good use of what they have.   Just about every small contour is used and the place has been spiced up with some bridges and stunts to keep thing interesting.    Once again I am digging the greenery of the east coast trees.   All together there is a somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 miles of singletrack here.   

Ipswich       

This trail system is just a 2 mile street ride from my hotel so I have been here two days this week after work and riding right from the hotel.  The first time out here was getting to know the place by sticking to the  main trails.    It did not take long to feel like I could be hamster-wheeling out here.  This was a wrong assessment, because there is a maze of secondary trails that can be combined for quite a bit of fun.   I found myself trying to see just how fast I could get around this place.   The more forks you take the more you find and before long I found pretty technical to downright insane type stuff.

log ramp
A nice over a log feature 

Stunt 

This monster is crazy.  The raised platform is about seven or so feet off the ground.   The teeter-tooter is also pretty short so you will have to wait for the drop.  Props to the folks who built this thing as it is rock-solid.  

Ditch crossing

I’ll be hitting this place up at least a couple time a week after work when I don’t have time to explore some of the other trails further away.  Including the mileage to and from the hotel I can get in about 11-14 miles out here but doing a couple of loops through various maze options.¦lt;/p>

Bike Luggage Bingo

What a pain the butt, I had over the last couple of days getting by bike packed up and ready to go to the east coast with me on a business trip.  The original plan was to ship the bike ahead of me and have it waiting for me at my hotel when I arrived.   So I packed the bike into my Trico Sports Ironcase Bike Box.   I have used this thing in the past and it is great.  Through your bike as well as most of your other bike stuff in there as well.  Well the price checking this box in as luggage has gone up from sometimes free or $75  to $125.   UPS was quoting the weight as about $70 to ship it.  Great, I could save some money and not have to fuss with the bike box through an airport terminal.    I get to UPS and HOLY CRAP!   Seems that due to the size of the box it falls it falls into the irregular catergory and they want to ring me up for $153 each way.   No thanks, I’ll take check it on the flight.  

I live about 10 minutes from the Carlsbad commuter airport that I would be flying out of so I decided to swing by on my way home with the box and make sure I would not have any problems beyond dropping some coin to get it on the flight.  At first the guy was like, “sure no problem, a bike box is a bike box.  Pay your $125 and you will be good to go”.  At this point I questioned him because I read somewhere that I weight restriction had changed as well and I did not want any surprises the morning of my flight.   After a bit of keystroking, he confirmed that there is a 50lb weight limit is in addition to the special charge because it is a bike box.   This means that the airline wants $250 one-way to take my bike along for the ride.  I would need to get this bike box down to 50lbs to make it even worthwhile to bring.

So I took everything out of the box and weighed.   Ouch!, the box along weighs 27 lbs.   That does not leave much room for the bike.  Out goes everything but the bike.  Crap! Still over weight.   I finally take the tires and tubes off the wheels off.   Geez, just a fraction over.   Off goes the water bottle holder.  BOOM!   50 pounds 0 ounces.

50 pounder

Now I had the problem of dealing with all the crap I took out of the bike box.    Now I’m traveling for three weeks and I have to both some work presentable attire as well as chill out clothes, and I only want to do laundry once a week.  Then means I have a little more stuff than I would normally bring along.  So clothes, camelbak, helmet, shoes, pedals, tires and tubes all go into a chick-sized suitcase.  I weigh it, DAMN, 51 pounds!    So I transfer a pair of shoes into my carry on back and all is good.

crap to get in luggage

So time to travel.  When I checked in at Carlsbad, the ticket guy checks the weights, calls it all good and charges me as regular baggage, all total just $40 bucks.  Sweet!   We will have to see how the return flight works out.

The flight to LA was uneventful, but the rest of the trip was a different storry.   My flight out of LA is delayed because they are servicing the plane. I had a tight connector schedule so I hopped on the phone and had my connector into Virgina switched to a latter flight.  Two hours later, the call is made to switch us to a different plane and about an hour later we are shuffling onto another plane.  Once loaded on the plane, we are informed that the engine may have sucked up something into one of the engines while the plane was taxiing to the gate and the engine would need to be inspected.   After one hour of seating on the plane at the gate, we are shoved off.

Needless to say I did not even make my latter connector.   So I get a free stay at Hyatt O’hare.  I’m pretty sure noboby ever books a room at his hotel, it is all stranded  travelers.   The following day, I would finally get into Norfolk.  The rental car place would turn out to be a silver lining in this little storm cloud.  I get hooked up from an econobox speck to a respectable gas guzzling SUV.   Sweeet, big pimping and I get to help melt the polar icecaps…..I’m cool!   But hey lots of space for a bike with the seats folded down.   More to follow…..

Bye Bye Westside!

Oh  not forever, just for the week.     After a nice long siesta from work, I’m back to working for “The Man” as a Defense Contractor.   I’m involved with some fancy smancy integrated navigation systems for use on Navy ships.  I’m spending the week in Philadephia to meet all the players back on the east coast and getting in some training for the job.    So I had a O-damn early commuter flight out of Carlsbad this morning and I got to see sunrise over SoCal from the air.  The cool thing about this flight was that it was low enough that I was able to make out a bunch of trail systems that I enjoy.   La Costa, San Clemente Singletracks, El Moro, LCWP, Aliso, The Santa Anas, and the San Gabs.   Really Cool!

Sunrise in Socal

So just a few days ago the most recent issue of Bike Magazine showed up in my mailbox and I just threw it in my laptop bag for some reading material on the trip.   It was a really killer surprise to find a bit on Philly Mountainbiking featured in the mag.  I had even did some digging on this trail system last week.    I’m still not sure if I’m gonna get in some riding this week, but I did bring the gear minus a bike.   Hopefully I get my hands on a bit of time and a bike this week to check out the Wissahickon trails.

Bill and Will Roadtrip Day 3 – Mount Pinos

Man, the things we do for our kids.   I got up at around 7AM and loaded up all my gear in the truck while Will was still sound asleep in the tent.   All of Will’s biking gear had been staged in the tent last night.    I drove down to the bottom of the mountain at 6,400 feet and started a 6.5 mile pavement climb back up to the campsite at 8,200 feet.  Will certainly has it in him to do this climb as he had tackled Palomar Mountain earlier in the year which encompassed 4,700-foot climb over 11.1 miles.  I wanted this ride to be more about fun than fitness today so I cut out most of the climbing for him.  The climb back to camp was not a steep one and I found it pretty easy to keep a pretty descent pace even with 2.6 Stick-E rubber tires.   I thought about taking the McGill trail up but I wanted both Will and I to experience a “new” trail together.  When I got back to camp, Will was already up and making himself some breakfast.

Views in the morning

I had left a few things back at camp so I would not have to climb with them, mainly my camera.  While I was getting that stuff in my camelbak, Will (who had already gotten geared up) commenced to start talking a little smack about Dad being a fiddle-fart.  So, I set him up.  I snippedly told him to “Go on ahead, you know I’m just going to catch you, even though I already climbed over six miles this morning”.   Well that was all it took, Will took the bait.  He casually said, “See you up the road” and pedaled off at a normal pace.  I yelled at him as he rode off, “Don’t start off too fast or you’ll be sorry!”  The hook was set.  Just when he thought he was out of view (but not quite), I saw him drop the hammer.   Nothing left to do now but reel him in a few minutes after the pace, grade and the thin air above 8,200 feet get done with him.

I finished up what I was doing and got rolling.   After a couple of turns in the road and Will still being out of site, I was impressed.   One turn later and I saw him, hunched over his handlebars on the side of the road.   The voice of Phil Lidgett came through my head, “Oh my, the young rider has cracked! There will be no hopes for a mountain top win for him today.”    Will got to rolling when I neared, but his pace was mighty slow and he complained of not feeling good.   We took an extended break for him to recover and I could not help but get a devilish grin on my face, when I told him to come on and stop fiddle-farting.  I wish I had my camera out to catch the look on his face when it dawned on him that he had fallen for a parental version of a Jedi Mindtrick.

View from Pinos

After he recovered, we soon left the pavement to continue climbing on a fireroad up to the Mt Pinos summit at 8,830 feet.   It was a fairly mellow climb and the views were pretty nice even with a bit of lingering haze from the NorCal wildfires.

Bill and Will

From here it was a mostly downhill affair back to the top of the pavement where we hooked up with some pretty nice and mostly buff singletracks that included the Harvest and Southridge trails.  These bits of goodness took us back by our camp and down to the McGill campground.

Harvest Trail

From the McGill campgroud, we picked up the amply named McGill trail which was an absolute heavenly bit of singletrack that worked its way down the mountain.  The grade was never steep and it was virtually buff the entire distance.   I rolled through hundreds of Kodiak moments and only captured a few.

Will in the trees

This picture provides very little justice to the view.

Killer View

Will had one of those moments of inattention that caused him to take a soil sample on a switchback.   After the initial uggh following the thump, he chuckled and dusted himself.   He then went back up the trail and nailed it the second time around.

Dusting Off

The blissful descent was over far too quickly and we were soon back up at camp and packing up.   Will has not learned much about repairing flats and other mechanicals yet so a solo descent down the McGill trail was not on the table.  I did let him ride the road down.  He thoroughly enjoyed the speed-fest coming down the mountain on the pavement.  We spent the rest of the day getting home and chatting about what a cool week we just had.   Once home it took all of about 15 minutes before Will was out the door to skate and hang with his friends and basically get back into his busy routine.   I’m sure as the teenage years roll in and along the competition for his time will get tougher so I am really thankful to have the time with him now.  ¦lt;/p>

Bill and Will Roadtrip Day 2 – The Central Coast

We woke up fairly early this morning to some nice sunshine over the Laguna Seca Recreation/Raceway Area.   Will reluctantly said his legs were sore and he did not think he would be up for riding today.  I’m glad he told me as I would not have wanted to push him into riding and then not enjoying himself.  We were orginally thinking of going to Montana Del Oro State Park and get in some riding.  

Laguna Seca

The nice thing about working off of an idea vice a schedule is that you can change things pretty darn easily.  After a bit of breakfast, we broke camp and hit the road.   It was just earlier in the week that the Pacific Coast Highway was reopened after being shutdown for nearly a week due to wildfires burning in the Big Sur and other areas of the Los Padres National Forest.   It has been quite a few years since I had been on this highway and I had forgotten just how pretty this drive can be.

PCH

 We stopped at many places along the way early on to take in the sights.  This was a good thing as before long the coast became completely socked in with thick fog and we could not see much at all until we were near San Simeon about 90 miles south of Monterey.

PCH

One of the really cool stops we did was at vista lookout about five miles north of Hearst Castle right off of the Pacific Coast Highway.  Here you can check out a large colony of Elephant Seals.  These are some big critters and the males make some mighty deep and throaty noises when other males get around their babes.

Elephant Sea

This fellow reminded me of a disgruntled Walmart customer say a earlier in the week.

Elephant Seal

We continued down the coast until we neared San Luis Obispo.  Instead of going to Montana Del Oro State Park we turned inland and made our way to Mt Pinos near the town of Labec.    We ended up at the Mt Pinos campground that sits at 8,200 feet and we had the pick of the place as we were the only ones there.  Later that evening two more groups would come in, but for the most part we had the great views virtually all to ourselves.

Camp sweet camp

We had several hours of daylight left after we got everything setup and the next thing you know Will was bucking to get on the bike and mess around near camp.   I joined in on the action and played around on a log.

Log Ride

The South Ridge trail starts right from the campground and goes down to the McGill Campground a couple of miles down the mountain.   I had to see the camp host down there so when I drove down, Will took the trail.   He was pretty darn excited when he came off the trail and proclaimed it was the coolest singletrack EVER!   The trail is setup as a cross-country ski trail and has plenty of small rounded jumps that are just the perfect size to catch some XC sized air.  Will really dug those and I was stoked to see him stoked.

Will Air

Back at camp, we enjoyed the last night of being able to have a campfire as a ban on them would start the following morning, due to the dry conditions.   We climbed into the tent an hour or so after sunset.  When we are back at home, Will is always trying to fight off going to bed.  It is like the world is moving too fast and he is going to miss out on something if he is sleeping.  It was nice to have him so easily climb into his sleeping bag.  I was reading a book and I had barely turned one page when I looked up to see him already down for the count.    Tomorrow we would get in a good chunk of riding in.

Camp fire

Bill and Will Roadtrip Day 1 – Santa Cruz

Will and I spent the earlier part of this week in San Jose where Will’s hockey team was competing in the National Roller Hockey Championships (NARCH) in the San Jose. While the teams bid for the championship ended earlier than planned we had other things ready to go. We would take the slow route home to San Diego and get in some camping and riding. We did not have a set schedule just some general ideas.

Our first day was a ride in Wilder Ranch State Park in Santa Cruz. I have ridden here several time before and I knew Will could handle the place. We started off near the park headquarters off of Pacific Coast Highway and started working our way up to the top of the park using the Engelman Oak and Long Meadows trails (fireroads). Will has not been biking much lately so that and the recent hockey made for a good bit of effort on his part.

The Climb

Once we got up to the top of the park we ventured over into the UC Santa Cruz area. Since this included some gravity-assisted riding, Will was having a heck of great time.

UCSC Cruising

After the UCSC fun, we popped back into Wilder Ranch and worked our way over to the Old Cabin trail which is one of my favorites out here. I was pretty stoked to see that Will cleaned everything on this trail. While he might be getting pretty descent on a bike, he is a pretty horrible “model” in front of the camera. If given a chance he will make a silly face everytime. I pretty much have to sneak attack pictures of him.

Goofball

While Will was starting to feel a little tired, after describing the Enchanted Loop to him, he was game. Once again the boy surprised me with how easily he picks up new skills. On a tricky switchback into a rooty ledge he got up one of the smaller ledges without even blinking. We then sessoned it for a bit and he cleaned one of the bigger ledges after a couple of tries.

Ledge Up

After this we took the Baldwin Loop down to the ocean. Will complained that the trail was really bumpy and that is when I realized that Will had spent the entire ride with the rear shock locked out. This was his first real ride on a full-suspension rig and he did not realize it was locked out. Will is really tall for his age and has been growing like a weed lately. Having already gotten taller than his Mom, he can now fit on my medium Spider by swapping out the seatpost and stem.

Down to Ocean

Down along the ocean we followed the bluff trails back to the park headquarters. Will was getting pretty darn pooped by now so the breaks came a little more often.
Break time

I did manage to get in a “sneak attack” picture during the break
sneak picture

We finished off the rest of Ocean Bluff trails at a reasonable pace due to a strong tailwind which made it pretty darn easy to tick over a big gear. When we finished up we had logged in just over 20 miles and the boy was pooped. On our way through town we hit up a little hole-in-the-wall Falafel shop that I love and introduced Will to some new cuisine.

Will at beach

It was getting pretty late in the day and we knew we would not get too far down the coast this evening. I had a “Camping California” guidebook with me and while I drove south, Will would read out the description of spots down the road from us. The Laguna Seca Recreation Area ended up sounding pretty good so we swung by there and grabbed a spot. The Red Bull Moto Grand Prix was starting to ramp up for the weekend, but there were plenty of spots still open. I packed my smaller camping gear so that that it would not take long to setup and break camp each day so we had camp setup in no time flat. After some chillaxing, hot chocolate and a few snacks we hopped in the tent and were soon crashed out.

Camp at Laguna Seca

Finishing up hockey in San Jose

What a fun time we had in San Jose.    The team played really well, but had one game were some team-wide hiccups cost them the game which ultimately ended their bid for the championship a little early.   The good news is they beat all the Canadian teams they faced 🙂    

Other really cool things happening were that both Will and his fellow teammate Dillon did exceptionally well in the “Sniper” skills competition against 44 of the top shooters in their age bracket.   Will made it into the final seven and Dillon went on to win the competition by throwing down some sick moves and making six goals in seven shots against some of the best goalies in his division.

Now that we had some extra time in our schedule we took advantage of it and headed down to Santa Cruz for some fun on the boardwalk.  

barfotron
This ride, which we now refer to as the Barf-O-Matic 5000, was a heck of a lot of fun for the boys.

zach
After the ride, things were not so much fun for Drew(left) and Will(right).  Zach (middle) did what any kid who did not get sick would do, laugh like hell at the others.   It was great!

We ended up making a long evening out of the boardwalk and did not get back to the hotel room until late.   The orginal plan was to get up early tomorrow and head back to Santa Cruz to do some riding.   We were both pooped so we decided to make a later start in the morning.