Sweet rides

So far, we've been on the bike every day this week. Some days weren't long rides, but yesterday made up for that. We started at Monica and Rich's house, and Grace, Rich, and I rode the road out to Country Park. We did a loop in Country Park, then rode the greenway.

Bikes in Greensboro

Ah, vacation in Greensboro. Might have seemed a little excessive to bring five bikes, but so far all but one have been ridden. Five bikes for two people, you say? Here's the breakdown:

• Grace's Santa Cruz Juliana Superlight MTB
  
• Grace's Giant XTC hardtail MTB
  
• My Santa Cruz Superlight MTB
• My Giant TCR roadie
• Schwinn Fastback Comp roadie for Rich, borrowed from BVL's girlfriend Lisa

Rich has been talking about getting a road bike for a while, so I borrowed the Schwinn from Lisa and Rich and I went for a ride. Surprisingly enough, I didn't even have to adjust the seat height for Rich. We got out and did a 23 mile ride on yet another totally beautiful day.

So far, only the Giant hardtail hasn't been ridden, but that was because it wasn't completed. I finished putting it together the other day, and now it's ready to rock. Set up as a 1x9, it will weigh just slightly over 20lbs! Pretty darn light for a mountain bike.

I could get used to this.

Today, for the second day in a row, everyone left and I was at the house. I set up shop in the garage, enjoyed the beautiful weather, and worked on bikes. Dug into Rich's music collection and fired up the Grateful Dead. Buddy sat outside with me and kept me company. Nothing I had to do, no responsibilities, just hanging out, listening to music, and working on bikes. Good times!

Yeah, I can live like this.

I spent today more or less like yesterday. Everyone got scarce, going shopping or something like that, leaving me back at the house with the dogs and the bikes. I set up shop in the garage, and worked on the bikes. Today I added some music, and all was well. Sunny and warm, and plenty of time to just sit and work with the bikes.

When Rich finally got back, I informed him that whenever he's ready for a live-in bike mechanic, I was ready.

Riding holiday in North Carolina

Grace and I are visiting her sister and family for the Thanksgiving holiday, and we're getting to ride some of the great trails in Greensboro. While there isn't anything epic or incredibly technical in the immediate area, the trails in Greensboro have wonderful flow and are just a hoot to ride. Major kudos to the Greensboro Velo Fat Tire Society for all the work they've put into these trails. Some of the trails are only a short ride on the road from Monica and Rich's house!

Of course I've got to bring a camera, so I'll be posting the best of those pics to my gallery:

http://www.db94.net/gallery/Bike/Rides/TDayNC/


Yesterday we got out and rode Country Park, which is swoopy and fast. Today we rode the jewel of the Greensboro trail crown... Owl's Roost. Owl's Roost is an 8 mile long trail which can be ridden in an out-and-back fashion, and is just tremendously fun. Mostly hardpack with frequent roots, it's got flow out the wazoo. We had hoped to meet up with a local group for a group ride, but it looks like nobody showed up. No worries, we rode on our own.

The trails were pretty crowded, but everyone was really cool. Maybe it was the weather, sunny and in the mid 60s. Back at home there's a severe weather advisory for rain and snow. Yuk.

Check out Dmitri's Blog

If you want to check out a good bike blog, check out Dmitri's "The road to SS hundies". He's gotten into riding in a big way and is chronicling his efforts to step it up and ride several hundred-mile mountain bike races (hundies) on his singlespeed. (SS) He's also very active with the Philadelphia Mountain Bike club, organizing and working on trail maintenance days, which is something all mountain bikers should strive to get involved with.

New general purpose blog

Originally, I had created a blog for updates on our house project. I never did update it as much as I wanted, and when I started using Google mail, it became even more difficult to update. Turns out blogspot is affiliated with google, and to log into my old blog, I had to log out of gmail, log into blogspot, then log back into gmail. Not terribly difficult, but just difficult enough to give me yet another excuse not to update the house blog.

So, I decided to just create a new one that's associated with my gmail account. It'll just be easier, and maybe just maybe I'll update it more.

I looked into transferring the blog over to this account, but there's no easy way to do that. I might try to copy over individual posts.

I've thought about expanding the blog, to include stuff other than house updates, like bike stuff. We'll see how that goes.

Thanks for reading...