.:: DonnieNix.net ::.

All I have is the GPS data, which is kind of squirrelly. I think I just need to upgrade….

On its way!

In June 2005, I was riding at Hall Ranch in Lyons, CO, and came around a corner, lost my focus, and crash. I broke ribs on my right side and still wear scars on my leg from where the brush and rocks ripped it to shreds.

In June 2006, I was riding at Big Creek in Roswell, GA, and came around a corner, snagged my bar end on a briar which then proceeded to rip the handlebars out of my hand and sent me flying over the bars. This resulted in a broken hand and major reconstructive surgery on the bones. I still feel pain in that hand and have limited mobility.

In June 2007, I crashed in a rock garden at Blankets Creek and sliced my elbow open. I dumped about a pint of blood on the trail and received 8 stitches for it. I also had numerous bruises, bumps, and scraps that took forever to heal.

June 2008 rolls around. I have to break the curse.

On the 4th, I am at Blankets Creek. I didn’t feel good as it was and thought about staying home, but felt I needed the work.

About 3 miles in I rolled over a boulder and got out of line and ended up on a rock step down that was not something I wanted to be on. There’s an easy line around this mess to the left, but I missed it because I was so focused on rolling the boulder. The step down is a series of three ~1-2 foot drops that are so close togther, they could almost be considered one big ass drop. The landing spot is on a downhill curve, so if you go straight off the drops, you wind up in the bushes on the side of a hill. It’s tricky to say the least.

I landed the first drop by going off at an angle, but in trying to go around the second I ended up hitting a 3 footer that I was not in position to drop from. I panicked, hit too much brake, went straight off the drop, buried my front wheel in the landing and flew over the bar. I landed on my right side and smashed my head into a tree. It compressed my neck a bit, which hurt, and cracked my helmet. I assessed the damage and found that my ribs hurt (dammit!), my neck felt like shit, and both legs were scraped and banged up. The seat also caught me in a sensitive area, so I just sat down on a rock for about 15 minutes and caught up with myself. I was worried about a concussion for a second, but since I could remember everything about the wreck, I figured I was okay.

I’m not one of those people that wreck and the first thing they say is “is the bike okay?” Screw that. My bike doesn’t feel pain. The first thing I worry about is whether I’m okay. After assessing and cataloging all my damage, I checked the bike. The wheels still seemed to be true and the fork was okay, but I could see it had bottom out. Everything looked fine, so I rode out. Slowly.

Now I need a new helmet. Everything feels better now so I’ll probably start riding again this week with my spare helmet. My neck took the longest to feel better but I don’t think I did any permanent damage.
I think I need to stick to the Dwelling Loop in June from now on. Or maybe just ride an exercise bike in June.

The scariest part is that I was there a good 15 minutes before the next rider came through. If I’d really damaged myself……well, it’s not worth thinking about…

I’ve been learning some 70’s Tom Johnston era Doobie Brothers songs. One song that I always liked, going back to my preteen years, was China Grove. The guitar was just so hot in that song it was one of my favorite air-guitar songs. One of the first things I learned on guitar was the opening riff for China Grove.

While I was in Austin last week, I made it my mission to learn Long Train Runnin’ by the Doobie Bros. I first heard this song on a 45RPM record when my sister bought it back in ‘73 or ‘74. Both China Grove and Long Train Runnin were off the album “The Captain and Me”, which is an all-timer for me simply for those two songs.

Anyway, I used a guitar tab and worked on sections of the song, trying to memorize each different section before moving on. There are basically 4 different parts to this song, and they just repeat through the whole thing, so it was actually pretty easy. Last night I played the whole song along with the actual recording of Long Train Runnin’ and I have to admit, I did pretty well. My timing was a bit off in spots (too slow here, too fast there…) and I missed a chord change in the middle, but I liked the end result. Maybe I’ll youtube a video of me rocking out to some Doobs.

Next up is Listen to the Music and maybe some AC/DC so Jake and I can jam. He’s learning drums now (birthday present) and I think he’s a natural.

Rock on.

As you probably know from my other posts or from knowing me personally, I’m a gigantic over-planner. I love to bust out the Excel spreadsheets and work out a vacation plan. On our Grand Canyon trip, I started planning this thing in January and we pulled it off with only a few hitches, mostly caused by an unwillingness by certain people to stick to the plan. But we won’t go there.

For 2008, I am in the extremely early stages of planning a bike road-trip to Crested Butte, CO, around the 4th of July. This would be me and Casey doing basically what we did in Oct ‘06 when we went to Fruita. The Crested Butte trip is something he and I have been talking about since Sept 05 when we tried to ride there but were kicked around by the weather.

The plan now is to toss the bikes on the rack, load up the Hyundai Tucson and head west on June 30. We’ll spend 3.5 days riding around CB and Gunnison, CO, then come home on Saturday. Since this will be around the July 4 holiday, I’ll only have to take 2 days off from work. That will work out pretty good.

I think I’m going to make great efforts to NOT over-plan this road trip. For instance, we don’t really need to take so much food with us. The last time, we took enough to eat for a week, but ate out a lot more than I had planned or budgeted. We ended up tossing a lot of the food out because it either went bad or we needed the space. The same thing happened on the Grand Canyon trip.

The thoughts of a July 4 holiday in CB is very cool. It will be awesome seeing a fireworks show against the backdrop of the Rockies. We’re not going to do any side trips, like to Boulder or Moab, this time. We plan to focus all our efforts on Crested Butte. This should be fun.

Later in the Summer, Melanie and I are thinking of heading to either Hilton Head, Destin, or someplace in the Smokies like Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge. Maybe even Western NC. It’s still up in the air. We considered doing another massive vacation and flying to San Diego/LA, but after some consideration, we decided to delay that for another year and do a simple vacation in 2008. We’ve kind of had our fill of cross-country vacations for the time being and so we are taking a break. I am looking forward to going to Southern Cal, just not this coming year.

Other than that, I think we’ll do an early Spring trip to Louisiana to see relatives, a trip to NC to also see relatives…short weekenders here and there…It should be good. I’m looking forward to 2008.

Redesigned Santa Cruz Heckler. Mine will be liquid blue with gold headset, skewers, clamp. It will be super schweet.

The new Heckler is coming out around April. It’s been redesigned and looks great. Since I have to wait a bit longer, I will be able to put more cash into the bike so I am going to order from Colorado Cyclist and get the Fox 32 TALAS II RLC fork. This is a kick butt suspension fork and something that I have always wanted. This new fork is also a necessity for this bike because the geometry of the bike has changed and now needs a 140mm travel fork.

That leaves me with a Manitou Minute that is a really good fork, but just doesn’t have enough travel for the bike. I don’t know if I should keep it, sell it, or what. I think I’d rather have it on my hardtail than the Reba, and if I chose to resell either the Reba or the Minute, it’ll probably come out to be about the same price. The Minute is on-the-fly adjustable from 100mm to 130mm. The Reba is 100mm only unless you want to bust it open, and then it’s only adjustable to 80mm.

I’m going to keep the hardtail built, so I think I’ll keep the Minute. It looks bad ass, it’s lighter than the Reba, and has more travel.

Yeah.

I’ve been meaning to write something up about our road trip, and I finally got around to it today.

---

I have new-found respect for my planning skills.

We left work at about 12:30pm and hit the road. Casey drove the first leg, which would be to Paducah, KY, then I’d take over. We split the driving into 6 to 7 hour shifts until we hit Goodland, and I took over and drove all the way across the Rockies to Rifle, CO. I was so wasted then that I thought Casey could finish off the 2 hour drive to Fruita.

By the time we got there, we did the math and it took us 22 hours total to make the trip. That was amazing. It used to take 24 hours for me and the family to go from Longmont to Georgia, and that’s 250 miles less!

Once we got to Fruita, we tried to check in at the hotel but they wouldn’t let us because it was still before check-out time and they said the room was not ready yet. So we went into town, visited the bike shops, ate lunch, and farted around for a few hours. A little later we went out to Rd 18, broke out the bikes and gear, and rode Prime Cut up and Kessell Run down.

We were pretty stoked that we could do this after driving all night to get there. See? My drive/sleep schedule worked great!

Still, by the time we checked into the room and settled in, we were both pretty wiped out.

We decided the next day that we would go to Moab. We really hadn’t planned on it at the start, but figured we didn’t want to blow the opportunity. We got up early and hit the road for the 2 hr drive to Slickrock country. We went into town and hit a few bike shops then went out to the Monitor-Merrimac trail north of town. We spent a good three hours out on the slickrock, messing around and having a great time. Slickrock trails are like a big giant playground. You can pretty much go where you want and try anything that comes to mind.

We took a break and ate some lunch afterward, then headed over to the Klondike Bluffs trail. This was a cool trail, but you had to bounce over about 3 miles of washed out dirt road to get to the trailhead. It wasn’t bad, and the Hyundai did a great job.

This trail was nothing but climbing. I guess we climbed for a solid hour and a half before we reached the “end” of the trail. From there, you are supposed to get off and hike another mile to the Delicate Arch, but we only had bike shoes, and Casey was squirrelly about leaving his bike there without a lock. I don’t blame him. I didn’t want to walk the rest of the way either because the climb there was pretty friggin’ brutal.

The ride back was fun though, but we were both so wasted that it was difficult to enjoy it, and by the time we got to the bottom of the steep slickrock mountain, we were just happy it was over.

We drove back to Fruita, saw some antelope on the way, and called it a day.

The next day, we went out to the Kokopelli area and rode Rustlers and Marys’ Loop. The scenery was gorgeous and the weather was pretty decent. The trail had some mud on it, and the bikes got covered. At the end of Mary’s you have to hook back on this dirt road to get back to the trail head, and the road was so muddy and sloppy that it killed all the fun.

Mary’s was a really cool trail, because your ass is hanging off the side of 300 foot cliffs most of the time. The Colorado River has ripped canyons and gulleys all through this land and created some awesome scenery. The trail worked us over though, and by the time we were near where the singletrack ended and the dirtroad began, we were done and ready to be out of there.

We had lunch, changed clothes and then headed over to Rd 18 for one more go-around. We rode Prime Cut up and decided to stop being Nancys and ride Chutes and Ladders.

That was a HUGE mistake. That trail was WAY more advanced than I was led to believe and so far above my skill level that it wasn’t even funny. Me and Casey both hike-a-biked about 3/4’s of the trail. I think that if we had ridden more over the summer (riding time was way down because I had broken my thumb), Casey could have ridden about half the stuff we walked. I wasn’t even going to try. A broken neck wouldn’t have been a fun thing to have on my vacation.

The rain came in and caught us about 3 miles from the trailhead. We decided to take a little-used bail-out trail (not even mapped, but there was an old dirt road that headed back in the right direction) and get the hell out of there. We got pretty wet and the temperature dropped and we were miserable by the time we got back to the car.

We got our gear broken down in record time, loaded the car and headed over to the big rest stop in Fruita. We changed into driving clothes, unloaded and reloaded everything in the car so it fit right, and hit the road to Boulder County. We made it to Longmont around 11:00, I think, and checked into the hotel. We were planning on hitting Hall Ranch early, doing 2 loops of Nelson, and then heading out. When we got to the trailhead, we looked at all the bike stuff packed in the car, all the gear packed in there, and the thought of unpacking all that stuff, setting up the bikes, and then repacking it again was too much to deal with.

So we skipped out on Hall Ranch. I still regret that decision but it was the best one. Looking back, our heads really weren’t into it. We’d logged a buttload of saddle time and miles over the previous 3 days and When you ride Hall Ranch, you need your wits about you and your head has to be in the game 100%.

We screwed around Boulder for a few hours then went over and had lunch with my old McKesson buddies. That was cool to see them. I miss those people alot even though I really hated that job.

After lunch we drove to Colorado Springs and went to Colorado Cyclist. We drooled over the Santa Cruz bikes and Casey rode a Blur LT and declared that it wasn’t much different from his Specialized Stumpy Expert.

We left CO Springs at about 2:30 and hit the road. It seemed like the trip back took almost no time, or maybe we were so blitzed that it was just a blur. We split the driving time based on what we could take, no set schedule, and we made it back pretty quick.

All in all, it was a very good trip, and we really didn’t spend a lot of money either. I think I am over the “Fruita is the best” thing, because the trails weren’t as WOW as the first time we rode them. This time I didn’t think they were as good as advertised. Prime Cut is just another climb with some rocks, Chutes and Ladders almost killed us. We enjoyed the Kokopelli trails alot, but mostly because of the scenery. The trail itself didn’t leave me as awestruck as the first time I was there. I still love Rustlers though.

I had more fun in Moab. Riding slickrock is an experience unto itself. If I ever do a roadtrip like this again, I’d like it to be focused in Moab instead of Fruita. There wasn’t a lot to do in Fruita once the rains came and after the riding day was over. Grand Junction was pretty blah too. We discussed what we’d do next, and decided that we are going to try to do a Front Range road trip either this coming fall or spring 2008.

I love the Rockies and always will. I will always value the time I lived out there and what I saw and did in that beautiful state. I look forward to my vacation this year as I plan on traveling west, maybe to Arizona or Colorado. Maybe next fall we can do another road trip, me and Casey. If his new wife lets him, that is.

This trip was planned so well, it was a piece of cake. Most people said, “You’re driving 3200 miles, out and back, just to ride bikes?” Hell yeah. The way we worked it, neither of us was totalled like I used to get driving that route. I used to be wrecked for a week after making that journey, but I was fine after it was all said and done. We spent a minimum of $$$ too, since we took our food and didn’t stop on the road for meals. It all worked out like a charm.

I got some cool bike stuff this Christmas. I’m planning on buying a new full suspension bike next month, and this is the gear I’ll be putting on it.

Shimano XTR M960 front Derailleur – top of the line when it comes to front derailleurs, at least until they re-designed them for this year. This is last year’s model but is still a slick piece of equipment.

Manitou Minute 3:00 – this fork is a 2005 model that I found on the extreme cheap. It’s loaded with 100 – 130 mm of on-the-fly adjustable travel, SPV damping, rebound control, and integrated graphics. Plus it’s a damn good looking fork.

I bought this fork back in November when I found it on-sale at Greenfish Sports. It was a pre-Christmas present to myself, but I’m including it here because it’s such a cool fork.

Chris King NoThreadSet headset – the ultimate in bicycle bling. This is bling that works though. Considered the finest headset made, this little beauty will be the centerpiece of my new rig.

Hope stainless steel skewers and QR seat clamp – these pieces are very functional, but I have to admit I bought them on looks alone. They round out the color scheme I’m shooting for.

To round things out, I bought an Ascent magnetic trainer to work off some weight and get my legs back after a few months off the bike. This was an inexpensive model because I have a history with exercise equipment. It tends to wind up in the basement gathering cobwebs.

The bike I’m building is going to be an All-Mountain beast. I’m getting a medium Santa Cruz Heckler in liquid blue with a Fox Racing Shox DHX coil shock. I’m moving most of the parts from my current hardtail to the new bike. The only other parts I plan on getting are new cables, new handlebar, new 180mm front rotor, new cassette and chain, and a new seatpost. I’m going for a sub-32 lb bike that will climb as well as descend. I don’t want a shuttle bike, because around here you climb a hell of a lot more than descend.

Options after that are to take the old HardRock Sport and move the parts over to the Access with a few exceptions, rebuild the Access into a hybrid road/lite-trail bike with new or currently unused parts, or sell the Reba fork and forget about the Access for the time being.

I won’t decide that until I get the Heckler built though.

Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been busy, and this blogging thing is kind of silly anyways.