Millerfest Etc.

It was a fun weekend, reattach riding near Danville PA. Started with a couple hours at Geisinger trails, which is a super network. Not many rocks, truth be told, but plenty of hills to climb and bomb down WITH a liberal sprinkling of technical features to keep it honest. Sat was a big group ride celebrating Millerfest – named for one of the locals and put on by his love wife. Very cool. At noon the group broke and went to Hess Fields where there was too much softball going on, and too muh beer handy. Some of the group rayed and ate and played bike games until late in the afternoon, but a few of us less social types jut had to get more biking! So, for the second week in a row I found myself doubling up a hilly ride with another hilly ride at Roaring Creek, in Weisser State forest. This time I wasn’t alone though, I had my friend Chris along. We rolled out from the park entrance area, climbed the steady but steep Old Natalie road, and proceeded to work out way up the ridgeline all the way to he Aristes side over the space of a few hours. Once on the other side we bombed down the doubletrack back to the access road, basically having completely spent ourselves. I was notably stronger climbing this week than last and that was very gratifying. If I can manage to keepthis up I think I may just be able to put together my goal of finishing the W101 in July, won’t that be nice?

Small Moves

So I sit here, almost two weeks into March and my game for getting ride ready is going slow but acceptable. Mostly for winter going into spring I have only wanted to keep biking fun and get healthier. Since I have managed to lose almost 12 pounds and only need to drop another 10-ish I think health is coming. Now that spring is starting to pop I think my biking will be able to start getting more reliable and longer in duration. The only question remains is to which bike to stay focused upon – Niner or Titus?

Marching Right Along

Hey there March, nice to see you. Hopefully this will be the month of Transition. The transition from biking weekly to almost daily, and to the start of getting into form to enable finishing the W101.

Winter has been challenging, and the riding is at a ten year low and this is very frustrating and somewhat demotivating.

During my ride yesterday it took almost an hour for me to fight through the “aww, just f&&$&k it” and get to feeling okay on the bike. Hopefully it will not be as challenging next time. I did end up getting around sixteen cold and difficult snow-bike miles logged and for that I am grateful.

This is the start of my habit to be to show up early for rides to get more miles in, just as I did in TX, when meeting for Social Biking. Who knows, maybe I can find some more crazies to ride long with me?

But M and I will definitely need XC-BC snow gear next year.

2010 Under Way?

The hard part of most journeys is the start and this one of mine to the W101 is no different. It has taken me literally weeks to begin to get a riding rhythm going, but I feel it starting to tick over.

Slowly, every so slowly.

Nice long rides on the weekend with Danville Crew, a couple trips during the week on the Expresso Bike, and now the complete rebuild of my main bike are all working to re-ignite my Bike Passion.

Phew, for a while there I was getting concerned it would not come.

Now, I just need to get more real riding in during the week ( in the cold, wet, PA winter, argh ) and I feel like things will come together.

AZSF 2010?

So I found out over the weekend when my favorite MTB gathering is this year ( 10-14 March ) which raises the question of whether to try to go or not. Discussions in progress, cost estimates ongoing.

Hello world!

Who is this Bear and why has he gone Wild?

Will there be “flashing?”

Well, many people know me under various names, but mostly they know me as an avid cyclist. From Texas.

In July my family moved to north-east Pennsylvania, and here I sit in the middle of my first winter. I find myself searching for my Passion.

So I have decided to try a new focus, and recover my Passion.

To provide a focal point I have created this blog. To keep these things separate from Our things.

So here I am going to write about my riding.

I am going to make my cycling “tech” available here.

I am going to make my map-creation habits available here.

I hope someone enjoys it.

And yes, there will probably, somewhere, be flashing involved.