Now that we have had a little break in the rain enough to give the trails some dryout time, I went out to Alpine to ride Anderson Truck Trail which handles the moisture well. I was joined by Cliff, Danny and Chip. It was first time riding with Danny but Cliff and Chip are old friends. I spent eight days down in Copper Canyon in Mexico back in 2005. Cliff is not only one of my biking buds, he is also my real estate agent who did mighty good by me a few years back when we stepped up to a larger home. I have not seen too much of either of thes guys in a while so riding together was good for catching up. Mother Nature has been doing some landscaping on the trail and there are some spots that are going to need some attention on the trail. I only had my video camera today so no pictures from the day. The ones here are from a week or so earlier.
The climb up went well really pretty scenery and and blue skies. There was enough moisture in the ground that you could just feel a little more resistance on the climb. We enventually made our way to the top and then enjoyed the fruit of our labor. I did not hit some of the stuff I normally would since I had my XC helmet cam vice the full-face helmet. If you are wondering why I use a full-face helmet when “playing” in and on serious rocks/chunk read this experience at Goat Camp nearly a year ago.
The return trip back down the main part of ATT was really freaking great with insanely perfect traction. It was quite possibly my quite run to the bottom. Afterwords I had a good chunk of time to kill before the monthly SDMBA meeting. Lucky for me Chip invited me back to Casa Del “ChipandDale” for dinner. While dinner was in the works, another one of the Copper Canyon crew, Joey, swung by for a bit. For dinner they had some family friends come over so I added some folks in the friends column over a really yummy meal. I was about to drop off into a food coma, when Chip informed I was about to be late for the meeting. Luckily they live just a few minutes away from meeting so I got there just in time. The rest of the night was spent at the SDMBA meeting where Michael Beck, the San Diego Director of the Endangered Habitats League was the quest speaker. It was interesting to see a different perspective on the land usage debate in San Diego and get a better understanding of what organizations like his are trying to do. I can’t say that I liked everything I heard but I understood it. One thing is for certain mountain bikers have more in common with these groups than we have different and hopefully they can see that responsible trail users can be dedicated stewards of the lands.
What make of bike is shown in the picture above?
That is a custom “Jones” bike by Jeff Jones. He is a builder in Oregon. He only makes a few of those ti bikes a year and I believe they are all custom. I think there is a 2-3 year wait right now. Steve had his bike built with a short wheelbase, slack headangle and other numbers that are tweaked for rock playing style. That bike is just as much a piece of art as it is fine tuned machine
I absolutely agree — that bike is an example of form following function beautifully.