Passion Trail Bikes, Belmont, CA - specialists in quality bike service and custom-built mountain bikes: Category Trails

SSWC

PeterD — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:05:00 +0000

The Single Speed World Championships are this weekend in Napa. I have been singlespeeding for some 10 years, and am even at the point that the only MTB I currently own is a singlespeed Santa Cruz Chamleon. So, today I sent my bike off to Napa…

...though I am not following it.

The back story is that a few months back, there was a post on MTBR from a Brit saying he was going to the SSWC, but was hoping to borrow a bike, as he didn’t want to ship his bike with him. There were a few responses from folks offering it up, but for some reason he chose mine. We passed a few messages back and forth and made sure everything would work.

So today, Simon C. of Sheffield, South Yorkshire showed up with his girlfriend and brother (in a Lincoln Continental or some boat like that – “petrol” prices are positively cheap here as compared to the UK). We stuck him on the trainer for a fitting, and then sent him off. I believe the winner of the race gets a custom tattoo, so hopefully we will see this on him when he brings the bike back.

If anyone is up there, give a holler for the guy in the blue Chameleon! And remind him that the left hand controls the front brake, which is opposite of what they do on the other side of the pond.

Ride Day 8, Oakridge Day 2

Charles — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:25:00 +0000

Our original plan was to use yesterday, Wednesday, as a rest day of sorts, so we would be plenty fresh for a long ride on Thursday. The long ride of choice was the Alpine Trail, just outside of Oakridge in Westfir, also known as the venue for the Cascade Cream Puff . After the prior day’s dubiously restful nature, we had a lot of trouble getting ourselves motivated and out the door early enough to load our Camelbaks with a days rations and hit the trail in time to catch the shuttled riders leaving the Trailhead Cafe at 10:00, so we slept in, and it was good. Real good, and easy to tacitly rationalize at this point in our trip, so instead we grumbled. Or at least I did, all the way up the hill in the shuttle van. It seemed a shame to waste a perfectly good ride day with just one short shuttle that would have us back in town by 1:00, especially now that we were so well rested.

Once up on the top of the hill, the decision was quickly made to repeat some version of a ride done by at Bill and Berry earlier in the week, before Sean and I got into Oakridge. We began the descent down the Alpine Trail as usual, but a third or so down our contingent of three, Bill, Sean, and myself, veered right onto the Tire Mountain Trail, and one ridge over. Tire Mountain was Bill’s highlight of the week, and this group enjoyed it enough to contemplate the Winberry Divide over lunch. The decision was made to drop into Winberry, and watch history repeat itself. Again we had a good enough time to bump over one more ridge and trail, and hit the Eugene Crest Trail on our way back down to lake level and town. This popped us out on the North shore of Lookout Point Lake, about a dozen or so mile downstream from town, so we hopped on the North Shore Road and burned on toward home.

Our total ride time was just shy of 7 hours, after about 37 miles, and we rolled back into the Trailhead like locusts. Lemonades, water, and coffee were all consumed at a disturbingly frantic pace. After showers and a quick change, a similar trail of waste was left at Mazatlan, the Mexican restaurant up the street.

Our plan tomorrow is pretty loose at this point, but includes the possibility of a couple different rides in the Bend area, or possibly not riding at all. We’ll have a better handle on our viable options when we try to walk to breakfast in the morning.

Ride Day 2, First Day at Baldface

Charles — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:12:00 +0000

We have completed our second day riding in the Nelson area, both in town, as well as from the Baldface Lodge 4000 feet above town. While we originally found Canada a smaller place than originally stated (metric conversion conspiracy. Every thing in Canada is about 1/3 closer than it sounds), we have found the 4000 foot drop into town is at least 5000 feet, and a “full day” of riding can be had by noon.

Our group started with 14 eager campers, and a 45 minute push from the Lodge up to Cherry Tops, because the aforementioned 4000 feet evidently wasn’t, by local standards, enough. Our guide today was some available local named Mike, and we followed him to the best of our ability down High Man to Swamp Donkey. The best of our ability turned out to be better than the ability of at least six of the riders in our group, and they got on a truck at mid mountain. Four were never seen again.

After leaving Swamp Donkey, we proceeded to climb Shannon Road and the descending resumed down the Shannon Trail. We popped out back in town to meet our shuttle van and about half of the remaining group had had enough. We all might have been happy to head back up to the lodge for massages, meals, and showers, but since it was raining, and we were in BC, we did as any local would do, and went for coffee, with just about every other person within 5 or so miles, er, kilometers.

After loading up on caffeine courage, we decided one more loop was in order, and we shuttled half way back up the mountain to drop Placenta Decenta, to Skiers Right. We had been experiencing a positive decline in the days activities, in that as we got more tired and hammered from rocks, drops, and ill timed tree huggings, the technical difficulty of the trails also subsided. These two last drops were no exception to that rule, so by the time we rolled off the last section of trail, we were riding something akin to a California double black diamond, or what here would be considered a blue trail. We also rolled off the trail completely stoked, with more energy than we had at the beginning of our rally and second loop. We did not, however, rally for a third, and instead stopped into the Sacred Ride bike shop in town to grab some shorter stems, and a crankset for one rider that had ridden his XC crank to its limit. While some shopped at Sacred, others grabbed a case of beer to sustain us for the at least 60 minutes of dirt road between us and the Lodge. Needless to say, we did not unload any beer at the Lodge, only empties.

The massages here at $110 per hour appear to be a good value, the meals plentiful and not too large for our eyes, and the couches, beds, chairs, and in one case floor, are very comfortable. We are looking forward to more of similar tomorrow.

Ride Day 1, The Nelson Town Trails

Charles — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 04:50:00 +0000

One the scale of people you know that really like to drive, Sean would rise to the top. He really, really likes to drive, and he’s excellent at it. He and I did a very fast road trip two years ago, a mad dash to central Oregon and back in four days, with three epic rides sandwiched in between. When he called a couple weeks ago to tell me Nelson was only 19 hours away by car, I knew what he was thinking, and what he was capable of. We put together a couple of roof racks and outfitted his Prius to carry our two bikes as well as the three bikes that belonged to Patrick, Rob, and Jim, who we were to meet in downtown Nelson on Thursday.

The two of us rolled out of Passion at 7:30 Wednesday morning, after checking and double checking the roof rack, our pack lists, and the content of our travel mugs. At some later point, the topic of directions came up, and I was introduced to Sean’s small surly Australian friend, the Garmin Personal Navigator. We programmed Spokane, Washington into the little device, it spat out a 16 hour drive time estimate, and began to correct us every time we attempted to add time to that figure.

A hundred or so miles into the trip, we stopped to recheck the things that mattered, and found our coffee cups empty, and the roof rack an inch or so further back from the windshield than where we had left it. Tightening the rack and getting good coffee seemed easy enough, so we pressed on, but did check both again in another hundred miles. This time we found the roof rack had moved back more than the coffee level dropped. A quick calculation factoring the length of the roof, miles completed, and remaining miles to go told us we needed to make a change, and it wasn’t to the coffee. We ran lengths of clothesline from the hood hinges up to the roof rack, then back under the hood, and marked both the windshield and rope so we could monitor progress in flight, and hit the road once again. We didn’t need to field check the roof rack until we were well into Oregon, and when we did we found no rearward progress. Press on again.

We hit the road one last time, and rolled into, and quickly through, Spokane to stop at the Howard Johnson’s just outside of town, just an hour from the Canadian border we found after reprogramming the GPS for Nelson. Fortunately, our Australian friend had prior knowledge of the Great White North, because we didn’t have more than a small, blurry printout for a map. The HoJo’s had everything we needed, free wireless, big comfortable beds, a self serve waffle maker, and my favorite thing about the Greater Northwest, three coffee shacks within three blocks. We were back on the road by 9:00 the following morning, passing on Brews Brothers in favor of Coffecopia. We were prepared at the border for the gatekeeper that morning, fully apprised of the velocity differences between the African and European swallows and were able to breeze through, and roll into Nelson around noon. By 1:00 we had met the proprietor of the Baldface Lodge, who introduced us to a local trailbuilder, who sold us a map, who then drew in his trail, and by 2:00 we were at the chip truck, ordering Thai chicken and falafel wraps, dressed for a ride and pointed toward the hills above town.

My initiation to Canadian riding was the Svoboda trail network, including the Svoboda Road climb, the Log Jam descent, to Svoboda Traverse, Long Svoboda, and then a final detour onto the new local goodness that was unnamed to us. We were able to get back into town by 4:30 for check in, met our three travel partners, and with the rest of the guests of Baldface, we began the hour long shuttle up a dirt road to the Lodge.

The Baldface Lodge offers an all inclusive mountain bike vacation starting 4000 feet about Kootenay Lake in Nelson, BC. The Lodge would be our home for the next three nights, and our days would be spent on guided tours down the mountain and around the Nelson town trails, with shuttles bringing us back up as many times as necessary.

National Trails Day June 7th at Waterdog

Patty — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:35:00 +0000

Hey all you trail lovin’ people!

National Trails Day is the one day every year where communities across America celebrate their trails! This year we are planning a (work)PARTY at Waterdog Park in Belmont on Saturday, June 7th. Won’t you please join us???

Our goal is to provide some care and trimming of the amazing singletrack trails in this multi-use park. The plan is to leave the digging tools out of the equation and just work on brushing out the trails, which despite our dry spring are getting rapidly overgrown! We’d like to make sure people can see around the turns, can ride or walk without getting scratched on the bushes, and can find places to pass safely and cordially.

One of our kind neighborhood volunteers sprayed the poison oak earlier this spring, so most of our work will be PO free! The work will be easy, fun and rewarding, and appropriate for well-behaved and well-supervised kids.

We will work on trimming back sagebrush, coyote brush, scotch broom, blackberries, etc, then gathering up the trimmings and pushing them over the edge and tucking them under the bushes to compost. Depending on the size of the turnout we may ask volunteers to bring tools from the garden shed to supplement our supplies of rakes, loppers, hedge trimmers and shears.

Details:

Date: Saturday June 7th, 2008
Start time: 9:30am
End time: 12:30pm
Volunteers needed: at least 20
Hospitality: Coffee and bagels in the morning, free BBQ and beers (hopped and rooty styles) afterwards
Swag: two $50 gift certificates to Passion Trail Bikes will be raffled off to volunteers during the BBQ
Ride or Hike: After the BBQ volunteers will be able to enjoy a fun ride or hike on the trails in Waterdog Park.
More info: call Patty Ciesla at Passion Trail Bikes 650-620-9798 or email her at patty AT passiontrailbikes.com if you have questions.

Download a printer friendly flyer here.

Hope to see you there!

Pacifica Ride Report

PeterD — Fri, 02 May 2008 00:39:00 +0000

Here is a ride report from Jay, who did a ride with Charles and some others this past Monday up in Pacifica.
(note – if you click on a picture, you will see a higher resolution version of that picture)

When you have no meetings, a boss out of town, some time off to burn, a new downhill bike, and a case of the Mondays, there’s only one thing to do – Go out to the coast and ride! The blooming spring colors, ocean views and quality of people couldn’t have been better today. Also, Tom and Charles had matching shoes, which somehow is less controversial than when Sterling and I show up in matching socks. Anyway…

We started off with a nice climb with what used to be the old Highway 1:

Looking back towards the town of Pacifica	Here’s a nice view. Ahem.
Enough of the breezy, rolling cliffside views, let’s find the quickest way down	Artsy shot of new bike. Ocean is on the other side
Oops, fog is rolling in, we’d better go	Daryl discovering
Charles in a technical section	Tom contemplating. (Tomtemplating?):

Down at the bottom, there’s a large stand of Eucalyptus. Lots of dirt jumps, step ups, drops and stunts.

Nica catching air	Daryl on a steep roll in
Hey look a teepee!	School was out at that point, so locals ~20 years my junior showed us how it’s done
I was subsequently inspired	Charles ‘made’ me go back and do it again, as I got a little too much air on that last one. Backing up a bit.

Bonus movie of me overshooting a stepup, and landing in the bushes above the landing:

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed the pictures and writeup as much as we enjoyed a well deserved day off.

Shop rides

PeterD — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:25:00 +0000

There was a recent post on MTBR that covers what the ride is supposed to be about:
I spend a lot of time training and riding with a focused goals. Racing is great but it’s good to recalibrate once in a while. I went to the Passion Trails Wednesday night ride tonight and remembered why I started riding in the first place. Good people, friendly vibes and just a damn good time on a bike.

It was great to hear this.

Did remind me of some things meant to say before the last ride I lead, which I thought I would post here:

Pace – One of the questions we are often asked is what pace the rides go at. That is hard to answer, as these are group rides, so we go the pace of the folks on the ride and have lots of regroups. If you have ridden with any of the others on the ride, you can get a feel from them what pace it will be. The ride description also sometimes gives some information related to the paces. Other than that, about the best we can recommend is come give it a try.
Socialize – These are meant to be social group rides, not training rides. Half the time, the ride leader is deciding on the route to use as he/she rides. And even if they do know their route, they may not say it so as to force everyone to stay as a group. If you go hammer off the front, the ride leader may decide to change the route on you (happened to 2 guys on a ride I lead a few weeks back).
Regroups – We generally regroup at both the El Camino/Ralston and Alameda/Ralston intersections. If you are up front, wait at these until everyone is together before crossing the road. On the trails, we regroup at most trail intersections. Not everyone knows the park, so we want to make sure we all stay together.
Good citizens – We need to ride safely and legally on the road up to the park. Follow the rules (stop at stop signs, etc.) and be careful of the cars. This will keep it safe for you, and will also keep others (drivers, pedestrians, etc.) from thinking cyclists are bad citizens. This also holds true on the trails, where we should yield to others when appropriate.
Control your own destiny – There are some lessons to be learned from the jumps behind Carlmont – just because a trail looks heavily ridden does not mean that you or I could ride it. If something looks difficult for you, feel free to get off and walk that stretch or ask about alternate routes around. There are some challenging parts to Waterdog (and, of course, at the jumps), and we have to leave it to you to decide what you and your gear can handle.

2nd Anniversary Demo Days

PeterD — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 04:41:00 +0000

The event went off well. The weather reporters were wrong when they said we would get rain on Saturday – we got just enough Friday night to make sure the trails were dust free, but not so much to make things muddy. Good set of photos and comments showing up on MTBR (though I am copying some of the better ones over to this post).

Thanks for everyone who showed up! And special thanks to folks like JohnH, Justine, TomR, MichaelP, and others who chipped in to help.

More photos below…

Tandem Drag Races?

PeterD — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:19:00 +0000

Ok, we like bikes. And we like beer. So any event that involves both has to be pretty cool! Below is listed one in the city for this Friday that sounds like a blast…

Google Maps for Bike Commuters?

PeterD — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:21:00 +0000

I have been using Google Maps for driving directions for a while, and find it to be quite useful. But it really doesn’t help when you want to bike commute.

I have also tried to fake it to work for biking, which they made easier by having a new selection allowing you to avoid highways. But this really doesn’t work well for biking, as it still uses assumptions appropriate for cars (maybe it was made for people riding Vespas or other vehicles not allowed on freeways?), but not bicycles. For example, if I was riding north from the shop, I would take Old County Road and go straight through the parking lot of the racetrack to Delaware, but cars are not allowed to do this (so it doesn’t show up on Google Maps).

They now have a public transport option, which still has some bugs (at least in SF – doesn’t have any Muni, just BART and CalTrain). But I think that this is a step in the right direction.

There are some non-Google sites that do bike routes for certain locations, like http://amarpai.com/bikemap/bikemap.html for San Francisco.

Now there is an online petition requesting that Google add a selection to find routes for bikers. If this is something you’d like to see, please click on http://www.petitiononline.com/bikether/petition.html