2009-07-03 Hollenbeck Canyon

I met Gardner at the parking lot and we waited a considerable amount of time for Bryan to show up. In the mean time, we watched a couple of moderately out-of-shape riders get on their bikes and ride away. Within about 10 minutes they were back, and approached us asking us for help. It seems the woman had fallen and done something to her thumb. I took a look at the thumb, which didn't look broken or bruised, but the woman started to puke. I let her finish, then we got out the phones and tried to find the nearest medical facility. I called 411, but of course they are absolutely no help if you don't know the address. The couple went on their way to find the medical facility at Palm and I-805 and Gardner and I continued to wait.

Bryan finally showed up about 45 minutes late and we got ourselves ready. Bryan was riding his new bike for the first time, a Pivot. We took off and rode the singletrack until we came to the road at which point we continued upward. We finally got to a spot where I suggested we turn around because the road was taking us away from where we wanted to go.

We then found another turn off on the road and continued to follow that as it approached some houses. These houses had BIG dogs and the dogs weren't on leashes or penned in, and Bryan got a little scared. I don't think we would have had any problems, but we chose to go back down the way we came. The funny thing is that the way back was so fast and furious and yet, I didn't recall climbing so much.

We explored a bit more and then finally headed back to the cars. Gardner and I went to dinner at the nasty sushi place. Afterwards, I bid him fairwell and headed off to Skydive San Diego to set up my tent and start drinking.

Glaciers

 

It sure would be nice to see some thaw happening in the gears of county and city management with respect to the San Diego Mountain Biking Association/National Mountain Bike Patrol. But, we might see the end to several glaciers around the world before anything in government happens.

I spoke with a representative from the county before I went to Moab in the beginning of October and she claimed that she was unable to get the ear of her boss to talk about the NMBP and the coordination required to make a viable alternative across county and city governments for us to volunteer without needing background checks and orientations for each park and city and the county itself. Now, almost 5 weeks later, she still hasn't been able to meet with him. It's no wonder so little happens.

I have also tried to contact the trails coordinator for the city of San Diego about 10 times. He returned my call once and left me a message. I've left my cell and home phone number and email, but I'm getting frustrated. On top of that, he's not even the person I need to deal with, but is supposed to be able to point me in the right direction.

On a more positive note, CNLM, which manages La Costa, Flightline and Calaveras is very interested in having us patrol, but I'm caught in that loop of the person I am talking to has to talk to someone else who probably has to talk to someone else and then the chain flows back. I'm waiting for a call back right now...

Maybe we'll have a patrol going by 2099 :(

Little Creek

I met up with Russel, Steve and John, members of the Color Country NMBP, at Over the Edge Sports in Hurricane. We were soon moving down the road to Little Creek. After approximately 15 miles on a paved road, we turned onto a dirt road which lead us gradually upward onto the Little Creek mesa.

This was my first introduction to slickrock and I must say I enjoyed it. We were riding for about four hours over expansive oceans of super grippy rock and sweet singletrack patches of gritty soil weaving through small trees that unlike similar sized trees in San Diego don't bend. In fact, I managed at one point to run into what i thought was a 30cm high shrub that stopped me dead in my tracks. Fortunately, I was able to unclip fast enough to save my body from a hard landing.

Steve, originally from Ramona and then Julian, lead the pack for most of the ride. He was clearly a good rider with a lot of skill and practice in this terrain.

John was usually second and was most often in the gaze of my helmet cam. I shot video of the whole ride and have started to edit it. I'm going to make another music video out of it.

And generally bringing up the rear (and thankfully sweeping me back onto the trail the few times I lost it in the scrabble of rocks.

We rode out to the "North Point", snaking our way along the rim of the mesa, with incredible views, although it was generally recommended to keep eyes focused on the trail and not look out over the cliff. One medium sized error would be all it would have taken at some points to have found flight.

We stopped at a few spots along the rim to gnosh and talk. The conversation was pleasant and it was clear that this group of guys was not of the political and social pursuasion one is told to expect in Southern Utah.

From one of the places we stopped, it was possible to see Gooseberry Mesa in the distance. I'm told that Gooseberry Mesa is much more technical than the ride at Little Creek.

There wasn't a whole lot that was too technical, but it was still necessary to be on for the whole time. We rode waves of stone that had gaps and drops and steps. There were creek beds, and waterfalls and a whole host of great riding.

When the ride was finished, Russel passed around beers and gatoraide. I must say, a cold beer after a ride was very pleasant. I was slow packing up, but I didn't want to hold up the other guys who still needed to drive to Ceder City. So I bid them fair well, and continued packing and changing.

The drive back to the paved road seemed too take much longer than the drive in, maybe because I was able to focus on the scenery rather than the bumpy road.

I took several pictures that I want to stich together into a panarama, but I uninstalled the application a few weeks ago and I forgot to bring the disc with me.

Sitting in the middle of Hurricane

By the time I got up and got myself going, and then going here and there to buy the few little things that I wanted for the trip, I finally made it out the door and onto the freeway at 10:47am. I set the cruise control at 90km/h and settled into the right hand lane for the long haul to Hurricane, UT.

The trip would have been much better to do in the dead of night because at least that way I wouldn't be able to see that there was nothing to see.

Vast expanses of monotonous desert landscape stretched around me without even the suggestion of hidden treasures. The only interesting thing that I noticed were the areas on the freeway tarmac that had multiple skid marks going in every-which direction. There seemed to be too many skid marks to suggest that it had been a multi-car pileup, but on the other hand, the regularity with which patches of cement were dotted with black skid marks made me wonder.

I'm sold on the benefit of driving at 55 mph now more than ever. I left Encinitas with a half tank of gas. When I filled up again, I had gone 80 extra miles on a tank of gas from what I would have used had I been driving at 65. The first full tank of gas had gotten me to 225 miles on a half-tank. When I drove at 65 I would only have gotten to 150 miles on a half tank. It's also a lot less stressful than driving faster because I'm out of that "I'm trying to be first" mentality.

Anyway, I woke up this morning looking forward to riding and enjoying conversation with the Russel from the Color Country NMBP. Then, I rushed though a shower so I could grab something from the free breakfast before it ended. When I opened the door I was greeted with a San Diego winter day. It was cold and raining. Not a great way to start a vacation!

I grabbed some fruit and coffee, headed back to the room and called Russel and we agreed to meet up tomorrow for a ride. Hopefully this storm will blow over by then. Now, at around 1:30 in the afternoon, the rain has mostly ended and the sky is starting to lighten up.

Ready for Moab

It's 2:58am on the 3rd of October. I've got everything packed into the car except the batteries that are still charging, the charger itself, my toothbrush and a few odds and ends that are already in a bag. I was thinking about just leaving now, but I still have a little bit of cleaning and some dishes to do before I can walk out the door. Plus, I'm very tired. So, I'm going to bed, and I'll just hit the road when I wake up.

Next stop: Hurricane, UT for two days of riding. I'll try Gooseberry Mesa and perhaps Thunder Mountain. I'll be meeting up with two of the patrol directors for the Color Country NMBP to learn about their patrol and see them in action as I shadow them as they teach a new patroller.

NMBP and the County

Today I spoke with Cheryl Wegner from the County of San Diego about the SDMBA/NMBP and the ideas that I had for how we could work together. I was encouraged that the county is currently in discussions with the cities of San Diego and Chula Vista regarding how to synchronize their volunteer requirements for areas they jointly administer. I thought that they would have had to work out something like this long ago, after all, it's not like any one of them just came into existance.

In any event, I had a great conversation with Cheryl, and she liked the idea of creating a unified training program that included the appropriate information from each of the rangers and land managers concerning their parks.

I was not excited about her statement that some rangers would want patrollers to notify them a day in advance, but I suppose there's nothing wrong with it, after all, I generally know that I'm going to ride some place a day or two before I ride there. I guess my days of truly spontaneous riding are over (or maybe it just seemed like spontaneous riding and it was really just a weekly routine of multiple days riding in the same park). In any event, I guess we can notify the ranger ahead of time if there is going to be a patrol.

The major issue at this point is to get all of the agencies to agree on the same background check rather than requiring a background check for the county as well as each city. That could be costly and time consuming. I offered her the idea of a form which specified where the results were to be sent and that could include all of the appropriate cities, county, state and federal land agencies. Alternatively, we discussed the idea that whatever background check was the most stringent could be adopted and then make the county the source of the information. The county would then notify the viarious cities of the result. This, of course, would put a serious delay in the procedure as agreements were ironed out between the county and each city. I doubt that there will be a fight over which agency gets to claim the volunteer hours, but many things could bog this down.

2008-09-20 Sycamore Canyon Group Ride

I know Ron. I know that Ron is always late. I'm usually late because I know Ron will be late. But for this ride, I got to Ron's house at 7:15 even though I told him I'd pick him up at 7:30, because it wasn't just the two of us who were involved in this ride. Bill R, Jake and Chris were also going to show up to ride, and a last minute addition, which I didn't know about until we got to Santee, was Gardner.

With a fire under Ron's cute little ass, I drank a nice cup of coffee and waited for him to finish all the stuff he needed to accomplish before we could leave. When all was finished, we were only 10 minutes late leaving his house. We jumped on the freeway and I did my usual of staying in the right hand lane and setting the cruise control at 90 km/h, and we chitted and chatted all the way to Santee.

When we arrived at 8:15, Jake and Gardner were already there, and comments were made about posts I had made about getting there at 8:00 sharp so we could be on the trail by 8:30. Yeah, yeah, at least we weren't getting there at 8:45...

We quickly went about getting bikes put back together and I changed my clothes and we were actually ready to go at 8:30. But Chris still hadn't arrived. Apparently he had called Jake when he woke up at 8, but was on his way.

When Chris arrived, he was quick to get moving since everything on his bike was ready to go after getting fixed up and tuned up over the past week. Well, everything except for the cleats on his shoes hadn't been swapped out after getting the new pedals. So, with a little bit of help, he was expeditiously clipping in to his new pedals and we were on our way.

Since I seem to often ride by myself, or ride with one other person, I'm not used to all the conversation that takes place on the trail. With six people, all at different skill, speed, fitness, endourance, and awakeness levels, there is a lot more time spent waiting at turns and at tops of hills to regroup (and to allow the tail of the group to recover) than I'm used to. It's not bad to socialize, but it does eat up a lot more time. But, since Ron's husband had been told he'd be back by noon and he carpooled with me, there was a certain level of unease on my part of knowing he'd be very late but not wanting to make it any later than necessary. After listening to all of my married riding partners 'complain' about how they can't just go off riding whenever and wherever they want to, or for as long as they want to, I'm starting to feel a lot better about being single.

This area is Gardner's back yard, so it was good to have someone to ask when I zigged us instead of zagging us. We quickly (although at the expense of energy reserves) returned to the correct trail and proceeded onward. After the power lines and the creekbed, we made the correct left turn and found ourselves climbing on the switchbacks up to the top of the ridge.

At the top of our first climb, I waited by myself for only a short time before 28 year old Jake summited. It's good that he showed up second, being the baby in this group of 40-50-somethings. I watched as the rest of the guys made their way up the switchbacks.

As soon as everyone had made it to the top of the climb, it became obvious to me that we were not going to do the ride in the 2 hour range that I'm used to doing it. But the conversation was pleasant, so I was enjoying myself with this very nice and growing group of guys. I must say, it's also nice to ride with a group of gay men because there isn't the expectation that I either "leave my sexuality at the trailhead and just ride" or that I make the guys feel uncomfortable by making statements about some cute guy.

Gardner, being the only straight guy in the group, may have felt out of place, but he certainly didn't show it and it felt very comfortable. On the other hand, he has a very fun-loving personality, so I hope he enjoyed himself as much as I was enjoying myself.

After continuing along the ridge road, we hit the singletrack that jogs around the side of the hill rather than requiring what looks like a less than exciting rocky climb up the fire road. From there, zipping around the hill we finally came to the singletrack that goes back down into the canyon via a large number of switchbacks. It was a lot of fun, and given that I'm now much more familiar with the trail, I'm able to do it a bit faster than the first couple of times.

At the bottom of the hill, I had the opportunity to look up and see the herd of riders slashing back and forth along the side of the hill. As the last riders in our group were approaching the bottom I spotted a rider at the top who was descending very quickly. He made it down the entire hill in the time that it took some of our riders to do two or three switchbacks. As he zoomed past our chit-chatty clan, I noticed it was Claus. He was engrossed in his music and almost didn't notice me. But, when he picked me out of the croud, he came to a screeching stop, pulled an earbud from his head and we talked briefly. Then, like a married man who needed to be home in a very short time, he zoomed off.

We took off, following Claus, but he was gone before we all got around the first turn. We stayed on singletrack until we got to the gate that marks the entry into Sycamore Canyon Preserve. At that spot we met up with three guys who knew Gardner from SDMBA, and also ended up losing Chris and Bill R. Bill had to get to the lumber store (we all know what kind of wood he was looking for) and Chris was complaining about having arrived on a plane at 1am (instead of 10:30pm). So, now our little group of seven took off past the old ranch and ranger station until we got to the road we'd take up to the east ridge of the park.

When we got there, Gardner was nowhere to be found, but someone had heard he was stopping over at the ranger station. I wasn't sure if that meant he'd be coming soon or if it was a cue to leave him behind, but I assumed the former, so we waited. Just as we were getting impatient, he ambled up and we continued on our way up "cardiac" hill.

Ron was the speed demon on the hill, followed by Doug, one of the guys we picked up at the gate. I came in third, and the rest followed at various speeds. When we were all finally at the top of the hill, we took off northward down the big dirt road. I zoomed ahead until I tried to change gears and something wasn't working right. I looked down and it was immediately obvious that my P-Spring tension had been lost.

Jake stayed there with me while the rest of the guys raced ahead. I have one of those SRAM chains with the nifty quick link, but to be completely honest, I've never been able to get them to come undone. Putting the link on is easy, but the other way around just doesn't seem to work. If there's a trick, I don't know it. So after fussing for a while, I got out the chain tool, broke the chain and fixed the P-Spring tension.

I put everything back together (fortunately, the right way the first time out!) just as Gardner and Ron came flying down the hill towards us. I packed the tools away and we all started the climb back to the trail that leads us to Martha's Grove.

The descent to Martha's Grove is always a fast, fun flying experience with a few ruts and sand traps added in to keep a rider's focus. Doug, Jack and their friend apparently had gotten lost and found us just as we were coming into the parking lot at the north end of the park.

We continued on from there, with me in the lead again, doing the fun that is Martha's Grove.

At one point I looked back and didn't see anyone behind me, so I pulled out the camera and waited until riders started to come around the corner. I snapped several pictures until I found myself near the end of the group. I then jumped on my bike. I saw Jake at the top of the left-hand branch of the trail--the one that goes to the ridable but eminently scary rock drop off. I called out to say I was coming through as it is definately not a place you want to stop and look. So I vaulted down the rock face, giving Jake an idea of how to handle this particular messy spot. Seeing me do it made him realize it could be done, and as he told it, he backed up quite a ways and took a run at it, but didn't stay far enough to the left of the face and had to jump off the bike. The only casualty on Martha's downhill was Gardner who had a nice looking scrape on his knee.

We jetted out of Martha's and made our way back to the gate that lets us out of the preserve and back onto the Marine Corps land. At the gate we encountered the park ranger and trail maintenance worker. I introduced myself and explained the patrol to them. They were both very enthusiastic about the idea which was nice. It was also rather nice that this really cute guy with blond hair spiking through his helmet came along giving us all a nice trailside fantasy for the way back.

Gardner bid us farewell at that point, leaving just Ron, Jake and myself to pedal back to the cars. Ron was worried that Oscar wouldn't talk to him for a week as a result of him not being on time, so we had to bypass the switchback climb and descent, instead rushing back by the easier route. Just about the time we got onto the fire road, past the jumps, my chain broke. But rather than deal with fixing it on the spot, I just ran and coasted until we got back to Mast Blvd. at which point I told ron to come along side of me, and I grabbed ahold of his seat and he pulled me down the road.

We loaded up, and drove back to Cardiff, Jake following in his Jeep. I dropped Ron off and Jake and I headed to Mozy's for lunch. The conversation was fun and the food hit the spot. We then went back to my place to chat, drink some ale, pray to the virgin Mary and just relax. I had so much fun that I can't wait to do it all over again.

National Mountain Bike Patrol in the works

I'm working under the auspices of the San Diego Mountain Biking Association now to develop a unit of the National Mountain Bike Patrol.

This program, modeled on the National Ski Patrol, provides valuable services to the land mangers and trail users by being the eyes and ears and stewards of the land and providing information, as well as medical and mechanical assistance to trail users.

There is a lot to do before this gets off the ground, but I've got a good start and the support of SDMBA and especially from it's Vice President, Gardner.