Mountain Bike Bill, The Dirt on the Dirt

Category: Website Updates

Poison Spider – Portal Video Online

Portal 

Last night I finished up and published the Poison Spider Mesa – Portal Video.  I ended up including some walking footage in the video.  Considering how dangerous some of those exposed sections are I felt the walking bits needed to be represented along with the riding bits.  Every veteran of the Portal trail with whom I have talked has all mentioned walking the exposed parts and how frightening that trail can be.   The riding only version of the video just seemed to be missing something and the walking bits was it.   

 So anywho, right click here to download the 9 minute and 35 second video that will set your hard drive back 130MB.

Utah – Colorado Roadtrip Pages

I’m starting to get the Utah – Colorado Road trip report put together.   I’m going to roll it out as I get each of the days done vice waiting until I get all eight days completed.   Here is the main page that wil link to each day of the trip.  I hope to get a new day of the trip up every other day or so.

Utah -Colorado Roadtrip 2008

Amasa Back with La Sal Mountains in Background

-Bill

Arizona South Mountain Video

So I finally got around to getting the video together from our couple of days on South Mountain.   This video by far has more climbing scenes in it than any othe video I have done.  While Greg, Jerry and I all had our moments in the sun, Keven seemed to always be putting on a technical skills clinic.  I am always amazed at how well he can finesse stuff, particularly climbs.    This video was also the first time I had some inputs from Will on how to put it together which was a fun bit of Dad, Son time.

December 2020 Update:   Please check out this post for the remastered video up to more modern standards:

Anywho  RIGHT CLICK HERE to download the 9 minute video that will set your hardrive back 123MB.

-Bill

Spring in AZ08 Pages Up

I finally got around to getting all my pictures and stuff from my fun little jaunt out to Phoenix. We had some might fun playtime on South Mountain and in the White Tank Mountains. Some of this is not totally new, but it is the first time I have gotten it all together.

Day One on South Mountain – Telegraph Pass and Upper National

Day Two on South Mountain – Mormon Loop, National, Geronimo and Mormon.

Day Three – White Tanks Mountain Regional Park – Mesquite, Willow Canyon, Ford, Goat Camp and Glendale ER.

I would like to give a big thanks out to the tons of folks who gave me well-wishes and sent good vibes and thoughts my way after the crash on the Goat Camp trail. It really helped to keep my spirits up through a rather painful healing process. I have tried to get back to everyone but I am certain I have missed a plenty.

Thanks,
Bill

Rain… Rain… SPAM… SPAM…

Boy this last week has been a bit of a pisser.    Actually I’m just a spoiled SoCal weather weenie.  My riding days as of late have been pretty locked in over the last few weeks due to various commitments.    It just so happens that on all of my riding days ended up being rain days as well. 

Of course  I show up for work on Monday and the sun is out!

 ARRRRRGGGGGGH!

I whine on!

 On the BLOG side of the house, I have some Anti-SPAM filters in place that help to keep SPAM from getting on the blog.   Over the last couple of days the blog has been getting bombshelled with SPAM.  Now all of this SPAM is getting caught in moderation but it is becoming a pain in the arsh to weed through so I am making a configuration change that should cut down on that stuff.

As a bona-fide user you may find it  slightly annoying, but here it is:

To add a comment to the blog you must register (Only have to do it once)  and log-in to the blog first.

Registration is free and I am not going to be sharing your information with anyone.  This should cut down all of the bot-generated junk that currently hitting the blog. 

-Bill

Hole In The Ground – Truckee CA

Okay in keeping with my current trend of taking nearly half a year to get a video out here is the video of the “Hole In The Ground” trail near Truckee in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California.    The music might be a little cheeseball but I dig both the tune and the lyrics and it just seems to match the flow of the trail that day.  This group also has a special place in my heart.  On New Years Eve 1988 (Maybe 89), I went to a concert at the San Diego Sports Arena where I saw a group called the “Love Tractor” open up for “The Red Hot Chilli Peppers” who in turn opened up for these guys.  Great freaking show.

Hole in the Ground

Nostalgia aside,   Right Click on the image to download the 115MB video that runs 8 minutes and 25 seconds long.   You may also want to read up about my Summer Roadtrip in Norcal.

-Bill

Chilao Flats – Silver Moccasin and More…

I first talked about this area in my San Gabriel Mountains Teaser Pics post back in the middle of December.   I finally got around to putting the rest of the pictures, maps and descriptions together into a trail review.    The San Gabs are a haul for a day ride for me, but the more I venture up to there, the less the drive seems.   I’m sure some physics/math geek could incorporate the variables of space, time, trail conditions and blah blah blah into a theory of relative enjoyment.  Either way I have been digging my excursions into the San Gabriel Mountains, and I think you will as well.   

Silver Moccasin Trail  

-Bill

The Santa Ysabel Open Space Preserve

The 5,312 acre Santa Ysabel Open Space Preserve, located in the extremely scenic mountains between Santa Yasbel and Julian about 40 miles northeast of San Diego, is one of the prettiest preserves in the county I have seen to date. While fire roads exclusively make up the designated trail system here, you will most likely not mind at all as the beauty of the place makes up for the lack of singletrack options. The rolling open grasslands and oak groves remind me a great deal of Northern California. You can get in just under 20 miles of riding if you do all of the loops and out and back sections.    It is well worth a visit, but you will have to make it a weekend as the perserve is currently only open on Saturdays and Sundays from 8AM to Sunset.

See all the of the Review, Maps and Pictures.

Views from the climb to Kanata Flat

-Bill

The Golden Eagle Trail

Well this is not a real recent ride, but it is new page on the site.   With all the tinkering with getting the new version of the site put together, this ride just sort of got pushed to the side for awhile.  There was a bit of research I had to do with this ride as the trails were not well marked and various map sources had conflicting information.   Eitherway, I finally got around to putting this one together.   With all of the rains when have been having as fo late this trail would be really good when it has some moisture on it.  

Here is my whole take on this ride.  

The Climb Up the Golden Eagle Trail

-Bill

SocalTrailRiders help out a fellow MTBer

Yesterday I attended what was a very cool ride that showed just how awesome our community of knobby tired freaks can be.    This was by far the largest group ride I had every been on.

Here are some of my pictures from the ride along with a few words. To get a bunch of words, read about The Ride from the perspective of all that were there as well as the BBQ afterwards that I could not stick around for.

The reason I could not stick around was I had to do some cool “Hockey Dad” stuff.  My oldest boy has been really doing well with the Hockey as of late.  He was asked to practice (In preparation for tryouts after the first of the year) with one of the really good tournment teams here in San Diego.  The level of play was a big step up for Will.  He looked a little overwhelmed for the first five minutes or so but settled down before realizing he had to dig deep to keep up with the pace.  It was the classic Big Fish in a little pond, does not look so big in a bigger pond thing.  Between the ride and watching my kid, I was proud to be a Mountain Bikers as well as Dad today.

-Bill