Ok my excuse was ostensibly to get some skeelz back before the mtbr ride I was leading to Saguaro Lake. but this is becoming suspiciously more serious for myself personally and amongst the mtbr crowd potentially pandemic. We did another “MTBR’s on Skinny Tires” ride today to Bartlett Lake, people are discussing rides for cooler weather, regular occurrences, invitations for training partners. WTF?

In reviewing my riding log, I’ve done 16 road rides this year but 7 in just the past month. 1.5 a month to 7 a month. WTF?

Something is afoot! My theories are wide-ranging.

First, the Tour De France is always good for a few extra road rides. Sure, TV coverage sucks, and I’m sick of people saying “just get OLN”. fuck you and your OLN, its the biggest event in the sport and the best CBS could do was 1 hr a week when Lance was riding and its the middle of baseball season? ESPN’s coverage has gotten better this year. The Bobby Julich Blog and Jim Caple’s articles are good, and and they now have a regular Tour columnist in Bonnie DeSimone. Austin Murphy on cnnsi is good, but he is very irregular (This by the way is one of my favorite bike articles ever). So there is stoke to be had, without resorting to going euro for Velonews.

Second theory: Its hot! Goddamn its hot and not only is it hot but it stops being cool very very quickly. Its so much easier to just get on the damn bike in a hurry and ride during the quick cool window of morning, with no gear or straps or dangling armor. and once you get going you at least think its cool until you stop and boil over. I find the heat is such a burden to overcome its just joyous not to have to always be cleaning and fixing and fixing and cleaning stuff.

Theory 3: The roadie is much easier on most injuries. People go up and ride the lifts at Sunrise, break stuff, and decide road biking isn’t so bad after all.

My Personal Doomsday Theory #4: The Heckler Effect. I’m really sick of mountain bikes since the Heckler shopping experience was so exhausting, and likely there are hoops to be gone through yet. And now that I’ve ordered the Heckler, and got my ass handed to me last week riding Alta, I really want to wait wait wait to ride much of anything technical, and I really don’t want to break anything new on the Blur.  And in some small way, this whole Heckler-obsession project seems like cheating on the Blur, and riding the Blur while thinking of another bike I would rather be with seems hurtful to the Blur. The Blur has carried me to the corners of the world and back, if I’m not willing to give it complete devotion when I’m with it, what kind of selfish partner would that make me?

was how it was billed on mtbr. the impetus came out of a somewhat lengthy thread offering advice to Dirtrodr on a purchase, wherein the course of it was revealed the DurtGurl has a fabulous trophy bike from an insurance settlement that she never never rode. after much chiding, she guilted me into setting up a roadie. Billed as any of “DurtGurl’s Intervention Ride,” “Dirtrodr’s Debut” for the thread that started it all, or my personal favoritre “Closet Roadie Pride Day.” Postings leading up indicated towards a decent crowd. Between mapping the route the week before, and hitting the roadie a few times out of disgust with my slowness, I was feeling decent for the ride. I bought a bunch of water to drop at the bridge 10 miles into the route, and some vittles and mimosas for an after-gathering. We also managed to get Gina to come babysit at 5am for us, so Beckie was coming along woohoo!

We wound up getting 15 or 16 at 5am at the Hawes Walgreen’s. It was fun rolling up the hill and seeing a bunch of cars and riders and knowing that was the ride I was jumping into. Beckie came along 15 min later after getting Gina setup, woohoo! Notably absent were Jeff and Su Ling. This was too bad, since Su Ling desperately needs a group ride to get a fair taste of roadieing, and this route with what would prove to be a inclusive vibe would have been perfect. But yknow, serves her right for flaking. FLAKER!

We were rolling by 5:20. I really had no idea what to expect with so many different riders not used to riding with each other or others in general on bikes they didn’t ride on roads they were not used too in summer. In the end, it all worked out great. Between the water breaks and a bit of doubling back, it never felt much like we were waiting around. This makes the fast and the slow riders all feel so much better about things. I wound up enjoying doubling back and having some casual spin breaks with Beckie or to talk to others I wasn’t much riding with, and as long as she is moving and not idle Beckie is much funner to ride with woohoo! It was fun passing my friends on the climbs, moving up the line to different people really breaks up the horribleness of climbing. In theory, this should be just as much fun if you are slow and getting passed, but its not.   Duh.

Some of the memorable moments of the ride… coming up to the hill on Power, I accelerated a bit off our line’s 18 mph pace to get into the downhill. Maybe 5 seconds over the crest 3 guys come zooming by me. Well that was cool if they could do it so could I, and soon enough I felt myself going faster higher up the hill than I’m used to. Dirtrodr had sailed in front of me, and honestly I was not sure how he’d react to going so fast, not to mention I was a little scared to be behind him in said situation.. We both hung in there and topped out at 43, my fastest time on that hill. Found out later Beckie was just as fast, she said she was caught up in the moment too, woohoo!     The other highlight came making my way up Usery, and really not closing in very fast on Beckie coming up the hill.   Twas surprising that she would be so solid with so little riding, but there ya have it woohoo!

About 10 people came back to our place for apres-ski, but left us with a disgusting amount of mimosas, fruit salads, and donuts.   These were put to good use over the course of the rest of the day.

Last week I rode Alta and Bajada, trails around “the other mountain” in the north west part of the South Mountain park. This was an mtbr ride, and while normally I dread going back down to Phoenix on a weekend this was looking to be a big ole group fun thing. Indeed, we had maybe 15 odd riders rolling by 5:30 am, from 2 miles into the Central Ave entrance. Not bad.

Alta did not fuck around, immediately up a staircase up up some more up and more up up up. Many tight switchbacks, lots of looseness, I might have gotten 3 of them. But I can push, and thusly I was as usual among the lead group to the top. Big views, but alas pre-monsoon not a goddamn bit of cool wind even at 6:30 in the morning. I padded up and we rode the very narrow, loose and jagged ridgeline for a few miles. The exposure and off-camber was pretty intense, and there were a number of scary trials. I was not really feeling in a good flow, maybe it was the newness of the trail or all the on-again\off-again, maybe it was genuinely hard and the Blur was bouncing around as bad as I thought…whatever, I kept it pretty conservative and didn’t hit a lot. Somewhere amongst a nasty shoot DurtGurl flopped over the side and boinged her way down like 15 feet. Its funny now that It was no big deal but a fractured butt bone, but wow it was scary in retrospect, as a little more flopping and she would have fallen a long way. Props to the girl she showed up at the end of the ridge like “la-di-dah no big deal, where is my peanut butter samich?”.

We rested at the top of the DH for a good while waiting for everyone to arrive in one piece; good times. I knew a lot of the people on this ride already, and so it was easy to get to know everyone else. Lots of fun hanging out and looking out over the big descent we were about to hit as it dropped to the green flat expanse of the West Valley. It looked steep! The day before, I dropped $500 on the deposit for a new 2007 Santa Cruz Heckler. That will, rest assured, merit several of its own entries, but this ride was so cool to remind me of exactly why I bought the new bike. Or at least what I hoped to get out of the new bike. I had been riding safely, but definitely felt that the stability of the thru axel and the bigger suspension would have been a good call today. Any shred of buyer’s remorse dropped off the cliff soon after we dropped into the gnar on the Alta downhill. The Heckler is going to become my friend. Meanwhile, the Blur and I were riding chilly at the back of the pack, certainly not my best ride but no blood and no damage, and worked my way down slowly to the bottom where it meets with the very west end of National.

We took off our pads and it felt like the temp dropped 10 degrees. wow that stuff is hot, but worth it for sure if you are gonna ride anything nasty. we then rode National for an xc stretch of a mile or 2, until it crossed San Juan road and linked up w. Bajada. A couple of the group bowed out and opted for the road back at this point. They said the trail was fun and rolling tech, but loose rocky and tiring. It was maybe 4 miles back around the mountain, so I figured I was in for an hour more and rolled on w. 4 others. 3 of those 4 others happened to be fast as shit, and I was quickly alone, without my music (antisocial) or my computer (put it away in the gnar), and suddenly wanting this ride to end. I guess the trail was good, but it was hard rolling and hot, so for me the trail was Blowjada. After riding most of it, we jumped out on the road maybe a mile before the end. none of us were having much fun at this point, it was hot, for one of the first times ever I really felt like I was heating up to a point that could be bad. And I probably was not even close to in trouble. We later heard that this same day a 15 year old kid from New York rented a bike from Cactus and went out alone, with one bottle, no partner parents stayed at the hotel, in pads and full face, and got lost somewhere on National — they found him just in time, almost naked half covered in sand in the wash near Fat Man’s Pass.

Back at the cars, some quick goodbyes before it was time to tag back in for baby-duty. On the ride home I concluded I will go with an air shock instead of coil — even on a nasty ride I am not doing big hits, so the Heckler can save a pound next time we hit this beast.

Some good videos and photos, and some different writeup, found here on my new bud Sam’s blog.