Thursday, April 27, 2006

Tubeless Burp


My tire pressure was getting low in both the front and rear. Given that I am running tubeless now I thought I would just go with it and see if it helped during the climbing. I didn't seem to, however I think the low tire pressure contributed to the burp I got part way up the canyon. Fortunately I only lost most of my air but the bead resealed. It was a lot easier to just add more air to the tire than a pinch flat would have been.

I was going to get a nice picture of my bike under a tree with the blossoms falling all around like snow, but I didn't have a memory card in the camera so you get this picture from my office instead. You can see Slate Canyon on the right, then Slide Canyon and Left of center is Timp.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

White Rim trip

My brother-in-law said he read about the ranger truck getting stuck. I guess if people are actually going to read this blog then I better tell the rest of the story.

During the first week of April we were planning on riding the White Rim again. The plan was to do it as a three day trip but because of a death in the family some of the bikers would need to finish in two days. So we decided I would go out with the two day group and then drive the sag wagon back to the camp and go out with the remaining group the third day. The first day three of us got to camp about 2 hours before the other riders and the truck. It was a cold wet and WINDY day. At one point we were hit by a gust that must have been over 60 mph. It was so strong that it was nearly impossible to stand in. Anyway since we were at camp before the truck we didn't have anything warm to wear. With the wind and rain it was just too cold so a couple of us took shelter in the outhouse. It was quite embarrassing when we heard a couple of voices coming towards the outhouse. This guy and his girl-friend from England thought it was quite funny to see two men exiting the outhouse together. He took a picture of us standing there while his girl-friend was in the "loo". I'm worried it is out here on the internet somewhere.

The second day we were suppose to have the fast group go to Potato Bottom camp ground, drop all of the stuff the rest of the group would need there then continue out. But our sag driver got a bit behind us and in his panic to catch up with us went flying past and didn't hear us yelling or see us jumping up and down. So then we had to race to try and catch him. I guess you had to be there but it was quite funny and we had a good laugh at the "old geezer". He had what he called an "old geezer" pass that he had lost earlier and so we had good time joking about the being and "old geezer" and loosing the old geezer pass.

OK now the part you have been waiting for. When I got back to camp this ranger drives up and starts to talk to us. I don't have much experience with drinking so did not recognize that he seemed drunk, but the others did. However as he backed out of the campground and had a hard time getting on the road it was quite obvious he was in no condition to drive. But it was to late to do anything about it, and he headed up Hardscrabble hill. As you can see in the pictures the road is barely wide enough for one truck, with cliffs of the side. I was scared that he was going to go off the road and kill himself.

The next morning he comes walking into camp asking if we had a rope that we could use to pull him back onto the road. We didn't, however even if we had I don't think there is any way we could have got his truck back on the road. So I was sitting there waiting for a tow truck to come and get him so I could get past. After awhile I asked him if it was against the law to widen the road. He said it would be OK so I started digging the road wider. Then another truck came along and they helped me dig. This was fortunate because when I finally got it almost wide enough to get past and made the attempt I ended up almost rolling my truck. Luckily the other guy jumped on the front corner of the truck to keep me from rolling. I sat there for a couple of minutes trying to figure out the best way out of this. I could just see doing it wrong, my truck rolls over, smashes my bike, hits the rangers truck and sends it a thousand feet down the cliff and into the river below.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Cold but sunny


It has been snowing the last couple of days but finally yesterday afternoon the sun came out. Our trail was covered in snow until late in the afternoon yesterday and so we were thinking it would be too muddy to ride today. However it warmed up a bit today so we decided to check it out. Turns out the trail was in great shape today, no mud. activity

This picture is from on top of Hardscrabble hill on the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands. I was stuck here for awhile because of a ranger got his truck stuck and we couldn't get past him. I'll give the full story later.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Relocating images


The server I was using to host my images and videos is no longer available. I finally started working on moving all the images to the blogger site. So most of the images are working again. I hope to finish it tonight.

Here is the data from yesterday's ride. Now that the gate at Slate Canyon is being left open the challenge is to climb from the parking lot all the way past the gate until it levels off. I tried twice yesterday and failed both times. I have made it a couple of times before. Yesterday's attempt gave me the highest heart rate I have recorded to date at 185 bpm.

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