Today, I transitted to Fromme Mountain in North Vancouver and did my first real Shore ride.
Simply put, I got my ass kicked. Kicked hard.
I managed to get lost three times, ended up backtracking at various points for at least a mile or two, carried my bike over obstacles as much as riding over them, and, by the two hour mark (not including the initial one hour climb), was totally disoriented and lost, had used up all of my water, and was feeling light-headed and about to pass out. Fortunately, I did eventually make it off of Fromme Mountain alive.
Next time, I’m planning my trip better.
Today, I made a trip to south Burnaby to check out the new Taylor Park Bicycle Facility—what an adventure it turned out to be.
The plan was simple: bike to Lougheed station, sky train to Edmond station, find the park, then session for an hour or two. As luck would have it, what should have been a 40 minute trip turned out to be more like 2 hours.
For those that haven’t heard already, I’m currently part of an effort by SFPIRG to set up a bicycle workshop coop at SFU. Incidentally, I’ve also recently been implicitely promoted to project leader as the person originally spearheading the project is taking the summer off, vacationing(?) in some relatively far away land.
Of course, being involved in a coop workshop means that I now have a much increased inventory of bike tools at my disposal. Today, I decided to take advantage of these resources, and tried my hand at truing my rear wheel.
Although I was ultimately unsuccessful in actually truing the wheel, as I was afraid of breaking something, I did manage to get a good feel for it after some initial confusion over which way I’m supposed to twist the spoke nipples—yes, nipples: it’s not just for laptops and boobies. I’m fairly confident I am able to at least true my front wheel which is in a much better shape.
Ironically enough, the most difficulty I’ve had during my time in the workshop was actually figuring out the pumps. Yes, the air pump: one of the single most basic bicycle tools that even the most neophyte of riders can figure out. After almost 10 minutes of struggling to figure out why air was escaping from the pump as opposed to entering my tire, I finally came to the realization that the automagical valve-type selector only kicks in when the tube reaches a certain pressure.
Sufficient to say, it was a rather embarassing as I can usually figure these kind of things out fairly quickly, especially since it was a bloody bike pump. Nevertheless, it was a productive hour-and-a-half in the workshop, and I’m sure there will be many more hours to come.
Since the weather was going to be nice today, I brought my bike to work so that I could ride afterwards. There was a quick run down Upper Gearjammer then Mel’s, after which I went home to drop off the extra weight from my back pack (riding with a change of shoes and shorts is annoying).
Having done that, headed to the dirt jump park at Pinetree Park. I still suck at jumping my bike, but it was good times.
I love spring.
This past Thursday, the SFU Outdoor Resource Club held a bike maintenance workshop. Courtesey of BMBA, we borrowed three wooden ladders
for the purpose of riding around on. Due to the lack of time, instead of going back to where the were stored, we temporarily stashed them in the SFPIRG meeting room instead.
Today, I tried putting them back, by myself…
Long story short, I managed to haul back the smallest, after trying and failing to get the medium-sized one even out of the building. The medium sized ladder is roughly 10 feet high standing on end, and just barely clears the ceilling. The biggest one is roughly 4 feet longer than that. All these structures are also built with heavy-duty cedar.
Yeah, ain’t gonna happen by myself.
Although I didn’t actually get a chance to ride a Norco Six during Saturday’s demo day, as rentals were in high-demand and I didn’t make it in time, I still managed to do three runs down the mountain. Although three is the usual number for me, this is despite spending much of the morning waiting around for a Ryan Leech show, waiting for people that were renting bikes, and waiting for repair on a rear brake that had to be bled and tuned.
This past Friday, instead of the usual common room hangouts, Missy and I took a trip to B.C. Place Stadium for the annual Outdoor Adventure Show. Swag were obtained, gear were ogled at, and even a little bit of test riding. Oh yeah, and we left with significantly lighter wallets and many more bags than we went with.
As good of a break as it was, it was a little dissapointing overall as there definitely wasn’t as much energy as I remember. There weren’t any exhibition by factory riders, the bike track set-ups weren’t very elaborate, and far too few bike manufacturers actually attended. Word on the internet is that, well, people agree that this has been a sucky year.
On the plus side, I did pick up a pair of these crazy Shaka Shoes, a water proof shell jacket at 20% off (although I had to pay tax on top of it), plus some eye-candy in dead-tree format, as well as a deck of cards that’s both educational and can be used to make horrible puns. Knotty cards are awesome.
What’s more, I also got the chance to try out some of the new 2006 bikes from Norco. It’s amazing how good 6″ of suspension feels, even when it hasn’t been properly tuned to your weight.
After the show, it was off to dinner, then back to school for some non-LAN gaming goodness.
All in all, it was a good friday.
SFU Outdoor Resource Club Photo Gallery — check out the mountain biking albums.