Thule Road Trip

East Coast Envoy Check in

2008-10-13T09:41:00.001-04:00

Break’er 1-9 This here’s Ted Cituk checking in from the road.

September has been a month full of showing Thule products to the most diverse crowds of people I have seen on my Envoy adventure.

We started September by being the top sponsor of the 1^st annual NECKS “north east canoe and kayak symposium” the event had an excellent location and fairly good weather even though there was a guest visit by the remnants of hurricane IKE. IKE even hung out long enough to take a good look at the Hullavator and Hullaport-Pro and was very impressed with there functionality and quality.

Next it was off to the Hershey RV show in Hershey PA. This week long show had a good turnout of interesting people and there were plenty of exhibitors to keep them busy. The SMART RV system was a great hit with everyone, the Sink and Trash Bin were by far the most popular, but the LCD TV Post was not far behind with its growing following of Race fans, now happy they could now watch the races while outside.

As the September heat kept me thinking it was summer, I figured I might as well head south and prolong the summer as long as possible. I met up with Shawn Keenan in Orlando and we got to attend a Chrysler dealer conference where we introduced the Thule brand to the Chrysler dealers in attendance. The response was well received, as most of the dealers already knew the Thule name and were now excited that they could offer Thule branded racks and boxes directly to their customers as they get their new cars.

Finishing out this trip, the trusty Dodge and I stopped by Perry, FL to visit UWS. We were welcomed with wonderful southern hospitality and the aroma of what I can only describe as the best Thanksgiving dinner ever. After an informative tour of the UWS facilities, I said my goodbyes and pointed the Dodge north, before I gave into the temptation of a second lunch that day.

I’m off to Atlanta to wait in line for Gas, until next time

Ted

AC End of Season What-Not

2008-10-13T09:15:00.001-04:00

For being the alleged end of the season I’ve been pretty busy the last couple weeks. Working on the Rally Car, racing a bit of Cyclocross, some gravity racing, some fun bike rides, riding motorized bikes, kicking it at the White House, you know, usual stuff…

First off I suppose bike racing is our main interest so I’ll make some comments on Cyclocross. It’s fun. It’s also another couple months of racing. The fun to extra travel ratio seems a bit off this fall so I’ve set up a very simple rule to govern my ‘Cross racing exploits. I only race under the lights. That’s right, if your ‘Cross race happens during the day I can’t be bothered to partake in 2008. This rule was strictly adhered to a couple weekends ago in Seattle when I raced the Star Crossed event Saturday night, then, instead of racing under “the sun” in Tacoma the next day at another UCI event (which I’ve won in the past) I drove past on my way to some proper baggy short mountain biking at Post Canyon. Doing shuttle runs with old friends and hitting a bunch of sweet jumps was way more fun than a 100-meter run-up… Although we did take some time out for a quick, sketchy, hike-a-bike to Mitchell point for a doughnut and scenery break. And, as a double bonus, I ran into the Penningtons in Hood River, which may not mean much to my average reader, but know that, as legends in my own mind, IT SHOULD! Ah, but back to Star Crossed. It rained. And I took the scenic route to get there. Friday evening cruise on the MacKenzie River Trail on the way to a N.E.R.D and Common show in Eugene. Not quite content with my ADD, I then rode 2 hours of rad singletrack on the Souixon Creek trail as a pit stop during my drive up to Seattle Saturday afternoon. That trail is all time. As opposed to a bunch of other trails in the NW, or anywhere for that matter… Right, Star Crossed. We raced. It was SLICK. There was a beer garden. I rode kind of fast, even tried to win a little bit. Then fell down on the (not surprisingly) slick Velodrome and got dropped. Oh well, I jumped the barriers on the last lap, much to the delight of the adjacent Beer Garden, on my way to fourth place and one of the most comprehensive Chamgagne dousings in recent memory…

Three Days later I found myself at the start line of the only other Twilight ‘Cross event in the Country. CrossVegas. After two days of Interbike wandering around and not exactly taking care of my body it felt kind of good to be racing around in front of approximately a Brazillian well-lubricated fans. Thanks, Dale’s Pale Ale (as handed off by ‘Cross Crusade promoter Brad Ross, who didn’t have much luck getting Lance’s attention for the same prep) for the refreshing start line beverage and turning the fans up to Eleven… Man, it pains me to describe this race other than two parts. One, I penned a new race tactic. It’s called the “Attack and Stack”. For those situations where it’s obviously a waste of energy to try and solo away from arguably the strongest lead group assembled in an American ‘Cross race, the AnS is the perfect option. To keep from looking like a sissy for just sitting in, you drill it for about 20 seconds and a few corners, getting a workable gap. Then, as a direct result of coming into the (totally cleanable) barriers about 10 mph faster than the previous laps on account of “attacking”, you mistime the second bunnyhop and case barrier #2. This puts you on course for a spectacular nose wheelie and slow-motion over the bars excursion that allows you to just be picking yourself up when the lead group catches you. Perfect, now go back to sitting on the back of the group saving energy for the last lap, when it counts. Which is boring, yet effective. The other highlight, which could be considered a low point depending on your view of “smart” racing, was riding out of said lead group on the last lap in an attempt to bridge across to Tim Johnson and Ryan Trebron, who were in the process of winning. I almost made it, third to Ryan’s convincingly powerful win. So, smart racing yields good results. Lame. Ending a beer-sponsored race at 10:30pm is a great springboard for a night of Vegas-style debauchery though…

So, every year I come up with some kind of excuse to leave Vegas ASAP. This year it was that I needed to get home in time to prep my Downhill Bike for the last event in the Fluidride Cup series at Mount Hood Ski Bowl. And have a culturally diverse Friday evening including a theatrical performance of “Driving Miss Daisy” and a Sweatshop Union Concert. The bike got prepped (thanks, Fitzy, for the Fox 40) and we made it to the shows on time. Unfortunately, this led to a late morning and just enough time for two DH practice runs before Slalom started at 3 on Saturday afternoon. Two runs was enough for me to determine I ride downhill like a small child and have similar arm strength as when I was 11 and jumping the flower garden in our yard. Good proper old school slalom was right up my alley though. About a dozen pros and twice that many amateurs ended DH practice early in favor of a little good old-fashioned gated racing. The track was mostly flat turns with a few teeny little jumps for good measure. I qualified middle of the pack and had my first round up against Phil, a burly looking Downhiller from Portland. Somehow I kept ahead of him in both runs which put me up against Lars Sternberg in the round of four. In addition to writing how-to articles in Decline, Lars rides for the Fluidride Skills School and definitely has some. He housed me in the first run by a 1.0 second margin. There are two runs to each round though, one each on the red and blue courses and I had the faster red in run two. I pushed hard and Lars made a few mistakes over the course of 30 seconds. I ended up winning the second run but only by 0.6 sec so Lars, undefeated thus far in Fluidride slalom, was able to advance. He won the finals and I won the consolation round for third. $20. Sweet.

If only a night of camping down by the creek had turned me into a badass downhiller I might not have gotten smoked by fifteen or so Northwesterners who are way less scared of rock gardens. And might have stood a tiny chance of making Luke Strobel nervous about our gentlemanly bet in Australia a few weeks back… The race was run in best of two runs format. I was cleanish on the first one and did a 2:36. 44 year old Bart McDaniel did a 2:17. What’s that, 10% faster? Dang. Second run I actually jumped a few things, but probably blew a few others to turn a 2:35. Bart’s time stood for the win. Dowhnill racing is fun. We need some rocks in Bend or I need to remember my teenage years of east coast DH charging so I can start riding kind of fast. I met up with the boys from Hutch’s Bike Shop in Bend who were up shuttling from Timberline for a super fun bomb run down the Glade Trail in the afternoon and generally re-confirmed that regardless of all this Olympic World Cup seriousness, riding bikes is a damn good time.

We’re getting a bit long-winded here, so a few more anecdotes and I’m going to go for a ride or do something outside here in Maine where it’s a beautiful fall day. I’m here because the US Olympic Committee invited us to the White House for a little meet and greet with the President and it seemed like a Maine stopover was in order. That’s right, Mary Mcconnelaug, about 300 other Olympians and I got to stand on the back porch and south lawn while Bush gave a speech about our Great Olympic Team and the future of American Physical Fitness. Somehow Mary and I ended up about one row behind the Prez while he spoke which set her up perfectly for her plan to hand him a signed copy of a Seven Cycles catalog. He was visibly stoked to talk to us MTB’ers. Turns out our leader had ridden the Olympic Course and was impressed that we were able to ride it all without stopping, let alone race. So, regardless of our current international and economic situation, W likes bikes. Hopefully this means some eleventh hour appointments in favor of IMBA and Forest Service support for trails. Bikes are fun after all… Then we got the White House tour. Nice place.

Our buddy of Offroad to Athens production fame, Jason Berry, rescued us from a ride on the puke-bus and five hours of sitting at Dulles Airport after the White House. Instead he picked us up at the east gate and took us for a mountain bike ride at Great Falls park. That’s my idea of a travel day afternoon. Singletrack and waterfall scouting. Perfect. Thanks, Jason.

What else? Um, we’ve been riding dirt bikes on perfect dirt. That’s fun. I rode bikes in the first snow of the year in the Cascades on Saturday. Cold, but fun and exciting. Carl and whoever he can get to help have been working on the Rally Car in earnest. We dropped the new (300hp) STI engine in on Sunday at about midnight. That’s the last heavy job in our quest for a FAST Open Class car to race at the Mt. Hood Rally next weekend in Oregon. Now Carl just has to figure out where a few thousand wires go, get some driveshafts made and solve a bunch of other unforeseen problems so we can go racing. I get home on Monday so that leaves approximately 180 man hours before we have to head up to the Gorge for Recce on Friday. I think we’ve got it.

It being the end of the season and all, I don’t have many interesting photos from the last couple weeks, but you can go to these fine websites to find video footage from the Fluidride Cup Slalom and Vegas Cyclocross…

http://bonesovermetal.com/

http://velonews.com/

But before you go looking at racing movies, head over to PinnedMTB and buy a raffle ticket to the Tara Llanes Fundraiser! I just sent them a signed 2008 Olympic Jersey and the pair of Smith Serpicos that I wore for that race in Beijing. You can bid on that business in their Ebay auction… Tara is amazingly tough, but she’s not rich. Help a sista’ out!

http://www.pinnedmtb.com/tarallanes_raffle08.htm

Team Giant Report, Beijing Olympic Games

2008-08-28T13:38:00.003-04:00

The Olympic Games. A big deal. Once every four years random little sports like the one I have such a good time partaking in get a chance to explode onto our World’s Grand Stage. But, in order to explode properly, you need a medal. I’d spent the last eight months preparing for just that. I figured I had it in me if all the chips fell correctly. Which they rarely do. And they didn’t. It’s not important how or why they fell the way they did, we’ll just say I made a rookie mistake that was compounded by not having magic legs anyway.

For me personally, if the worst thing that ever happens to me is that I get 29th place the Olympic Games (one lap down on our consummate champion, Julien Absalon), things have worked out pretty well… For American Mountain Biking though, I was really hoping to pull one out on this grand stage and get everyone fired up on riding in the woods. Seems like some hardware and a Today Show bonanza like the one BMX Bronze Medalist Jill Kitner is embarking on would have gone a long way to getting people down to their local bike shop and out riding all the rad trails IMBA and local clubs have been putting together over the years. Ah, what the hell, I guess people will just have to figure it out themselves. Or start racing BMX so they can eventually figure out how to ride trails as beautifully as Ross Schnell.

The overall “Games Experience” was pretty awesome though… If a bit hard to soak in during the four short days we spent in the village. We agreed, as the US Mountain Bike Team, to train in Korea to avoid the possibility of challenging training conditions and poor air quality in Beijing. Turns out that, through a combination of aggressive pollutant control and natural rainfall, the air was fine. And Mike Broderick found some good riding in the “Fragrant Hills” just west of the city, so we could realistically have just come to the Olympic Village a week out and done our prep here. It would have been hard to avoid going to a bunch of events, hanging out in the dining hall and International Zone and generally doing a bunch of random cool stuff at the biggest sporting event in the universe. So, our plan was good, if a bit short on culture…

Trek’s Chinese front-man, Todd McKean, came through huge for the Americans without even being asked. He had the foresight to open a Trek Shop on the corner just outside Laoshan park. He also had the foresight to make a work area available for our Mechanics and set up a lounge with showers and couches in addition to a downstairs mingling lounge where we could invite our Families in for a cool beverage and take a load of. It was perfect. We can’t thank Todd enough for this service, it made the weekend so much easier and more pleanant.

So, we had all the pieces, all we had to do was put the puzzle together. The Ladies rode smart races and ended up with solid results to show for it. 7th and 8th for Mary and Georgia. Putting the pieces together is where us guys came up short. It just wasn’t Todd’s day, or mine. Too bad the Olympics weren’t in Bromont or Mont St. Anne. And I think that’s just it, I’ll always race better in a relaxed, fun environment, without the hopes of Americans riding bikes in the woods on my shoulders. Sorry for that…

Thanks for all the help along the way though, maybe I’ll figure out a few things in the next four years and get some inspiration together in Longon…

Oh, and a bit more homework, if you like reading about our Rally exploits…

http://www.subaru.net/newsletter/ojibwe08/story4.html

2008-08-20T16:23:00.004-04:00

Break’er 1-9... This here’s East Envoy, Ted Cituk checkin’ in from the road.

The July heat has been doin it’s best to slow the Thule rig down, but a little heat can’t stop the trusty Dodge from spreading the Thule name, and getting to events up and down the East coast.

After a long weekend over the 4^th of July I got rolling “luckily with all my fingers still attached” north on 95 back to CT where I again attended the Griskus Tri at Quassy Amusement park, but this time it was even bigger than the last time, and we had many folks from Thule racing in the Tri as part of a team or solo for the more die hard racers. The tri got under way around 6pm giving the racers a break from the heat of the day, and the looming thunderstorms passed to the south avoiding the race all together. After the last racer crossed the line and every one finished their after race recovery brew, I turned the Thule rig west and headed towards Windham, NY for the East Coast NORBA nationals at Windham Mountain Ski Area.

This was the first time a NORBA race was held at Windham Mountain, and not only was the weather cooperating, but everyone was raving about the race courses and how wonderful the race courses were designed. I spent the long weekend making small parts available to all the Thule racks that had parts go missing over their years of service hauling bikes.

Turning south out of the Northern Catskills and the town of Windham, I headed back to CT to attend the Thule Sales Meeting, which many of you attended, so I will not bore you with any of my “witty” commentary and get right to the highlight event of the month “Kenda Bikefest”.

To finish off July, I kidnapped Chris Moor “Left Coast Envoy” after the sales meeting and headed the trusty Dodge to Jiminy Peak, Home of the Kenda Bikefest. This mountain biking weekend, was full of adventure for Chris and I, from 4 wheelin the truck and trailer to get into the event to watching a car with a SARIS rack have its bikes removed by a low hanging Kenda banner on the last day of the event. But even with all the other excitement the highlight of Kenda Bikefest had to be the Thule Mud Bog, where daring souls tried to make it the farthest though the shoe eating mud pit “from my count at least two pair of flip-flops and a pair of Croc’s were devoured by the mud” trying to get farther than anyone else and claim the grand prize “a complete Thule rack for their car”. There was some fierce competition in the heads up final, but every competitor played to the crowds wishes and ended their runs with some kind of improv mud bog belly-flop at the end. There was even a kid’s category, so all the little bikers had a chance to play in the mud as well.

Well I’m off to clean the mud from the Thule truck, and head north to visit out northern neighbors in Canada.

10-4 Over and out

Deer Valley to Downieville

2008-08-20T16:17:00.002-04:00

After Deer Valley Utah JJ and I headed to one of the best events we have ever been to, the Downieville Classic. Wow, this town has a great story behind it. First of all, Downieville is in the middle of no-where California. It is nestled in the heart of the Sierra Mountains. Hard to believe Downieville was once the capital of CA during the gold rush and also had a population of over 10,000 people. It’s stunning how the event can bring 10 times the population of the town in a single day. The three restaurants and one small grocery store make a killing I am sure. This event is very important to the folks of this small town.

Thule had prime real estate at this event. I was the only trailer allowed on Main Street. Wayno, the event coordinator, placed me in front of the fire station and used the trailer for the sound stage and lighting for the band that played Saturday night. I never have seen more T2’s in one place than Downieville. It will be a must for the schedule for next year.

Oh, the trails were some of the best I have ever ridden too!!

Check it out!! www.downievilleclassic.com

Next, I hopped on a plane and headed East for the office………..it was great to see everyone!!

Trucker Ted and I kept pretty busy with the sales meeting all week. Then Ted and I headed to northwest Mass to another very worth while event for the weekend, Kenda Bike Fest.

Over three thousand people showed up even after it rained three to five inches the day before the event started.

EAST COAST ENVOY - Ted Cituk

2008-07-01T13:41:00.002-04:00

Breaker 1-9 This is Ted Cituk checking in from the road.

Month number two out here was again full of miles for the Thule truck and I. We rolled along the highways of the north east traveling from event to event tryin to keep the Smokey’s off our tail along the way.

We started off by heading the truck towards Boston to attend a regional REI kayak event at Cochituate State Park. The weather in Boston that weekend was agreeing with us a little too much, we had beautiful sunny weather with temps in the mid 90’s and humidity about the same so it was anybody’s guess how the turnout would be. Luckily the paddlers were not afraid of a little heat and the event had quite a large turnout.

After the heat wave was over we rolled back to CT to attend the Pat Griskus Olympic distance Triathlon at Quassy Amusement Park. With the starting time for the race early in the morning the 400 or so athletes that competed and an equal number of spectators beat the heat of the day during most of the event.

It was then time to roll the truck north again, this time heading to a place that is “the way life should be” Maine to attend LL Beans annual kayak sale. Much cooler temperatures and rain showers plagued the LL Bean Kayak sale, but it didn’t keep record numbers of paddlers from attending the event. They kept us busy all three days of the sale turning plastic wing nuts and then adding their empty Thule boxes to the pile that grew in the parking lot each day. Scott Finlayson “of the Stoner-Andrews rep group” even showed us his talents with a cordless drill, helping two fellow Mainers out with his handy work installing TK14’s on their cars so they could get their boats home. LL Bean also offered a free concert Friday night featuring Big Bad Voodoo Daddy to keep the crowds entertained.

That’s all for this haul 10-4 over and out.

WEST COAST ENVOY – Chris Moon Tales from the west coast asphalt.

2008-07-01T13:32:00.004-04:00

This months road trip has been a full on dealer assault. I started out visiting shops in Bend, OR (home) and continued east visiting all the shops in Boise, Ketchum, Twin falls and Pocatella, Idaho. JJ and I then headed south to visit Utah for the Deer Valley National Mountain bike race. Before the weekend of the race I headed toward Logan, Utah to help Al's Sporting goods with a huge sale they had. Then off to my buddy Dave Klopp's (Utah/Wyoming rep) house near Park City to plan dealer visits for the week.

JJ and I toured all over the greater Salt Lake City area. Didn't matter how small a dealer Thule gave them all some love. We went to SLC, Ogden, Kaysville, Wood cross, Murray, Midvale, Sandy, and Draper just to name a few.

The Nationals are coming up this weekend should be a good race.

I would like to let you all know that a one of our Thule Athlete's- Adam Craig who races cross-country for Giant bicycles has made the Olympic team and will race in Beijing this August. Good luck to Adam!!

Right Coast Road Trip, Part Deux...

2007-11-28T12:09:00.001-05:00

Things back here on the correct side of the country started off with a bit of a drive… From Greenville, SC to Manhattan, NY for a last minute Giant Media event at the Hudson Hotel. Mapquest said 12 hours for the 760 miles. I would have made it eleven with the help of a large fuel tank on the Thule van and an enlarged bladder from all the refusing to stop when I didn’t need gas if it weren’t for a couple of rookie move wrong turns once I was in New York city proper. A wrong turn, caused by a general lack of absolutely precise route, in a van is something you want to avoid at all costs in Manhattan… Nightmare.

Buy, hey, the media event was worthwhile and we got to stay in a swanky hotel…

After some catching up on sleep at the Hudson, my esteemed Giant teammate Kelli Emmett and I picked up our buddy Ross Schnell at my cousin Jen’s place on 28th street and pointed it out of the city for the weekend. Our destination was the US Gran Prix of Cyclccross race just outside Trenton, NJ. Our host housing provider for the weekend, Tom Mains on the New Jersey cycling club, was impressed with the stature of our vehicle, and even more impressed with my feeble grind of the curb in front of his house… Some cold weather bike riding around the twisty, turny, sandy, but dry, course got the city out of our legs and minds, it was nice to be back out in the countryside where we usually live and work…

Saturday morning we took advantage of the peace and quiet on Pasadena street in Hamilton Township by sleeping till about ten… Racing cross would be a whole lot less fun if it took place at 10am instead of 3pm. But, as always, before we knew it we were standing on the start line, Ross and I united by our “bodybag” (one piece legs, arms, etc.) skinsuits but divided in our commitment to bunnyhop the (18” tall) double barriers on the first lap. Ross was fired up and I was scared. After the usual 147% effort at the start, I actually said “I’m scared” as we raced up to the barriers somewhere in the pack. For good reason, it was so cold (about 35) that Ross’ right hand pulled off the bars instead of up on them as he emarked on the flight path of an emu… I felt kind of bad laughing and pointing as I (and 70 other guys) dismounted and ran past/over Ross. I guess I should have upheld my part of the bargain instead of running them every lap like a sissy…

The rest of the race was average for me, as I’m usually winding my fitness down by this time of the year and starting to think about the Mountain Bike season to come. This translates roughly into riding around in the top 10 having fun with the corners and sand pit whilst waiting for the more motivated guys to crack. A few did, I got 8th place. Fair enough. Kelli was 11th in her race with an identical approach…

The USGP series is cleverly built around two days of racing in the same area, often at the same venue. So, after a huge spaghetti and meatballs dinner, topped off with the best snickerdoodle cookies in the universe while watching a movie on a gigantor TV, we slept it off, knowing tomorrow would be another day at the office. This time the janitor must have skipped work, because it was raining at the office (Mercer County Park) and everything was a bit of a mess. Not too bad, the grass wasn’t quite churned into a six inch deep trough of mud, but it was slick and snotty. Perfect actually. Some crashing is always fun, as are powerslides on ten-speeds… These entertaining conditions moved Kelli and I up a spot each in our respective races, we’ll take it.

Anyway, enough of that bike racing stuff. I write about that all the time. On to some hanging out in Mahnattan, which I never, ever, do. It’s pretty entertaining when you have your favorite cousin transplanted (willfully) there. JC knows all the places we we didn’t even know we wanted to go amongst the ever so tall buildings. The local coffee shop owned by a nice man and his partner, where you can get a mean greek breakfast wrap and cup of tea at one in the afteroon. The series of thrift stores we definitely couldn’t have completed our visit without checking out, and, subsequently, buying a bunch of cheap random stuff, including, but not limited to, some rad square toed shoes for Emmett and a hilarious old school black leather four-season motorcycling jacket, complete with neon orange bands… A piece of the “World’s Best Pizza” completed our walking around during the day and nicely pre-empted watching the (cloudy and dark) sunset from the roof deck atop Jen’s building. Later in the evening, after some “cozy” studio apartment napping, we were flipping through the weeklies looking for something to do for the night. It seemed like a Broadway Show would be appropriate, if a bit spendy… The idea of finding an independent Hip-Hop show was tossed around. Then Kelli brought up Comedy. Genius. After a good local pub dinner we strolled on over to the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre for a (free) Stand-Up show, accompanied by JC’s buddy Rich, who happens to be taking Improv classes at the UCB, and also happens to be absolutely hilarious in a creative, dry, born and raised in Brooklyn, kind of way. Our amazing host comic intro’d half a dozen acts over the next two hours, some headliners from far away lands and some random drunk locals, all of whom were trying out new stuff and finding a way to be anything from awkward to straight up funny. It was great. Unlike the UCB theatre, which is a bit of a pit… An appropriate pit, though.

Anywho, after 36 hours in The City, I was ready to head north and get back out in the woods. Maine was the next destination. A pit stop in Seymour, CT, for lunch with the Thule Crew, and a dinner pit stop in Portland, Maine to catch up with an old friend from elementary school had me home in time to say hi to Grandma before she hit the sack.

It was a wikked nice day for a drive on 95…

Whenever I get to Maine I have one goal in mind. A run through Gulf Hagas. My first proper creek run as a budding kayaker in the fall of 1999, it’s kept me coming back with classic north maine woods scenery and classic whitewater between the slate gorge walls. Hagas might just be my favorite kayaking experience in the world. Everything about it is great, it’s only an hour from Grandma’s house in Corinth, with the obligatory pit stop at the Brownville Mobil station for a slice or two of pizza, and maybe a piece of fudge.

Then, to get into the run you get to drive some classic northern Maine logging roads past the historic Katahdin Iron Works and majestic Silver Lake (which was frozen…). These days I can never find anyone to join me at Hagas, I’ve pretty much given up trying, I just bring a bike and stash it at the Hermitage take-out before driving myself to the put-in at the Head of the Gulf. This drive was complicated a bit by the four inches of fresh snow atop an old ice layer on the road… You see, Hagas has quite a bit of gradient, I think, in the meat of the run, it drops about 650 feet in a couple miles. This means you have to drive up a bit of a hill to get there. The hill up onto the plateau is only about a half mile long, so, you do the math… Two wheel drive van, steep hill, snow, ice. But, don’t forget to factor momentum into the equation… I certainly did’. Which got me about this far, twice…

After a second, very tense, a bit out of control, session of tucking tail and backing down the hill, this time with som guys in a 4WD truck in New Hampshire (live free or die) plates watched amusedly, I figured I’d give it one more go… Hitting the bottom at about 50 definitely helped, but it was staying out of the packed down lemming line and being easy on the wheelspin that made the third time the charm. Sweet, I would get to float through Hagas today, before the weather turned even worse.

Gulf Hagas was the first place I was exposed to what I’ve come to call the “international standard bridge footing gauge” You see, an uncanny number of runs around the world seem to be on the low side when the water is just lapping at the footing (such as on this day at the Gulf, although the footing was covered in ice) then medium from four inches to about a foot over, then on the high side from a foot to about twenty inches. Above 20 is taking matters into your own (flooded) hands…

Even the paddle in to the Gulf is perfect, at about fifteen minutes of flat, meandering mountain stream, it’s just enough time to stretch your muscles before it splits around an island and begins to drop.

The first few drops in the Gulf are classic waterfalls with names like Billings and Faceplant before it drops through the overhanging chasm of Wedge and into the inner gorge.

Once in the gorge it’s classic rapids and waterfalls separated by short pools, just enough to take in the surroundings. Which were quite spectacular on this day, huge overhanging icicles decorating every surface for the duration. After making your way through Buttermilk, Turnstile, Jaws, Shark’s tooth and a variety of other rapids, the run mellows perfectly as you float the two miles out of the gorge, which still offers up some classic moves, and the best rock spins in northern Maine as you wind down. Like I said, I love it here. Enough to ride my bike, wearing my drysuit, covered in ice, back to the put-in under the “moonlight”… The moon wasn’t so visible, since it was dense fog up on the plateau. Good thing I know the road…

Ah, Thanksgiving. Always a good time with the Craig Family. This year we all got together at Grandma’s, loaded up some turkey and a bunch of desserts, then went up to town to crash the Dunham and Patterson’s group dinner. It was great to meet some other folks who’d lived in the same town as us, and, of course, eat a bunch of tasty stuff. Lots of people mean lots of dishes… Mmmmm. And, to top it all off, when we got back to Grandma’s house there were a flock of turkeys in the garden. Good thing we were full, and the pellet gun was broken…

Any trip to Maine for me wouldn’t be complete without riding Mount Waldo with the boys. Matt and Justin Qualey are probably the most hilarious brothers you will ever meet. Ever. It’s amazing. And it never changes. We, accompanied by Sparky and Bruce, spent a brisk afternoon riding at our original stomping grounds. Which Sparky has handily improved (by roughly a shit-ton) by cutting a bunch of absolutely classic east coast singletrack to justly reward those who suffer through the 25% pitch grainite slickrock (which, when covered in ice, is extra slick) climb to the peak. Sparky demonstrates the slickness…

Of course, at the top there happens to be a pretty nice view of the Penobscot Bay stretching out to the Atlantic. And, to the north, of White Cap, which happens to stand watch over Gulf Hagas. But we’re here to ride, and laugh...

The Qualey boys...

The quarry trail is awesome. If you can get someone to show you where it is, check it out. It puts the Mountain back in Mountain Biking. And you’d better be from around here if you expect it to flow well, but flow well it does, all the way down to the Quarry… Which happens to be a rad summer swimmin' hole. It used to be better, but they took down the tower (on the right) which held the king of all rope swings...

The last destination on the list for a typical Maine visit is Vermont. For some reason I’ve been doing the “Route 2 screw” over to Burlington, VT since I got my driver’s license. Friends, bike races, skiing, kayaking, whatever it was, it was always happening in Burlington.

I usually try to make the drive “worthwhile” by stopping somewhere to do something along the way. Usually it’s boating, as there are roughly a shit-ton of awesome runs sort of along Route 2. This time, it was a bit cold for boating, and by that I mean the rivers were frozen and too low. Ironically, they weren’t quite frozen, or low enough for the activity I bumbled into… I stopped at the confluence of the Wild and Androscoggin rivers, thinking I’d ride up with Wild and over Evan’s notch, a road I’d never been on before, a mini-adventure of sorts. I made it about two miles up the road before getting sidetracked by a snowsled bridge leading to some trails. The first to catch my eye was the Highwater trail, which appeared to run up the opposite bank of the Wild. I figured I could ride it’s riverside sweetness up to another bridge and loop back on the road.

Every mile I went I got a bit more committed to the loop. And every mile I went was another mile with no bridge. I eventually reached a junction with signs pointing to “Wild River Road- 0.2”. Sweet. Wait, no bridge. An out and back it is… Good thing the trail was perfect river grade and perfect ‘cross bike terrain. Good times in the crunchy snow. And I still got out of the woods with enough time to ride up to the top of Evans Notch and back on the iciest road I’ve seen in a while… Nice sunset.

On this particular trip I had a “meeting” with a fellow by the name of Ken Sowles, and his new assistant, Erica MacConnell, who are looking around for creative, out of the box, sponsorship angles on my account. By meeting I meant we went skiing at Stowe and sort of talked business on the chairlift, when we weren’t talking about how much fun skiing is. Even on man-made snow in a thick fog/mist combo. As the icing on the Vermont cake, one of my favorite people, a member of one of my favorite families, Lea Davison, tagged along. Let’s have a conversation with Ms. Davison, shall we?

“Lea, what do you think about the skiing conditions at Stowe on November 26th?”

“Hey, Lea, can you see the chairlift in front of us? You know, the one with the four snowboarders wearing awesome (if a bit overdone) neon suits?”

“Wait a minute, how do they get all that snowmaking equipment up on the hill?”

“But, Lea, why aren’t there any photos of you actually skiing?”

“Well, Adam, we’re clearly too busy skiing by Braille on the top half of the mountain for photos, and we’re clearly not going to stop on the bottom half, where we’re focused on using our newfound power of sight to bomb GS turns back to the lift.”

On that note, after some amazing Thai food at Tiny Thai in Burlington, VT and a really awesome drive to Bradley Airport in Connecticut through a solid rain/wind storm, I’m on my back to my alleged home of Bend, Oregon for the last time this year. I’m not going anywhere for a while… Or at least till next week when I’m bored and it’s snowing somewhere within a day’s drive…

Utah trail of tears

2007-11-12T15:02:00.001-05:00

The phrase “Road Trip” always evokes visions of wide open skies, scenic vistas and long stretches of open highway. When the opportunity to plan one after this year’s Interbike Show presented itself ten of of us jumped at the chance. The plan was simple, do an epic two-day mountain bike ride on the Virgin River Rim Trail in southern Utah and experience breath-taking views, twisty singletrack and some high altitude camping. We would employ the expert services of Red (Editor in Chief of Outdoor Utah Magazine) to arrange our lodging, shuttle services to the start and finish of the trail and be our trail master.

Three vehicles departed Las Vegas after the close of the show on Friday afternoon in route to Brian Head, Utah. The members of the Thule Crew consisted of Fred, TJ, Mark, Tripp, Christine, Martin, Schuyler, Bob and me, Karl.

After arriving in Brian Head it was evident that the base altitude of 9600 feet was going to be an issue. Climbing to the third floor of the condo with our bags over our shoulders completely winded us. This should have been our first sign of things to come. After an all-star dinner by the Medium Rare Chefs it was time to get some sleep for the days to come.

Sleeping at close to 10,000 feet is not a fun or easy thing to do. The air is so thin and dry that it makes getting a solid night of shut-eye virtually impossible. I know I was not the only one who couldn’t sleep as I heard Martin and Tripp tossing and turning in the bunk room all night.

Day 1 – 22 miles of singletrack
As the morning came around everyone started getting their gear together for the two-day adventure that was forthcoming. We went to Brian Head Mountain Bike Park to pick up our bikes and meet Bob, our shuttle driver. I was very happy to see that my trusty Santa Cruz arrived without a scratch thanks to my Thule Round Trip Bike Case . With all the bikes loaded, Bob drove us the 30 minutes to the trail head of the Virgin River Rim Trail. After unloading our bikes, Camel Backs, Clif Bars, Bear Naked Granola, Princeton Tec Head Lamps and Pedro’s Tools he drove off with a cloud of dust. We were now on our own.

As we started the initial climb we knew this was going to be a long day in the saddle. Within the first half-mile both Mark and TJ were off their bikes with chain issues. Somehow Mark managed to twist his chain 90 degrees to how it is supposed to be and TJ was holding his chain in his hand. We managed to get Mark’s chain straight thanks to the pliers from a Leatherman and we got TJ back up and running thanks to Martin’s supply of Shimano HG pins.

The first 2.5 miles were straight up. I mean, STRAIGHT UP! Let me quickly remind you that none of us are professional mountain bikers and that this trail is well over 9,500 feet. Even though we all ride road bikes at lunch over very hilly terrain it didn’t do much to prepare us for this. At the top of the 2.5 mile climb we stopped to regroup, get out of the cold wind and eat some lunch. At that point we made the hard decision that due to the low temperatures (43 degrees and scattered flurries) and lack of air that it would be safer for some to head back to the start rather than continue on for the remaining 20 miles of unknown singletrack. With that decision we lost three riders who elected to back track to the start and await one of us with a truck to pick them up.

Being down to seven riders we decided to break into two groups; each with a mechanic. Tripp and myself would be group one and Martin, Fred, TJ, Bob and Schuler would take up group two.
Tripp and I rode off at a steady pace passing some of the most beautiful views in the South West. As the day (and the climbs) continued we decided that I was to ride ahead in order to get to the camp site and pick up the crew that elected to turn around.

Riding alone in rural Utah can be an exciting and freakish experience. I experienced groups of mule-deer, elk and a fox. It is a bit unsettling to see a herd of 300 pound mule-deer running across the trail in front of you. I was just hoping that the last one in the herd was actually the last one and that I wasn’t going to get clipped by a straggler.

As I arrived at our first night camp I was met by our backwoods cooks from Medium Rare Chefs, Amy and KJ. Dutch ovens were busy cooking our dinner over hot coals. After catching my breath, I told them that I needed to borrow a vehicle to go after the three that had turned around after lunch. After a quick check of the map to getting my bearings I set out in the truck to find them. I was pleasantly surprise that they were more than ½ ways to the camp via the road when we met up. We loaded their bikes on the Thule hitch rack (LINK) and drove back to camp.

Within five minutes of arriving back to camp we started to see the rest of our group finishing their epic day of riding. Two-by-two they showed up from with the strain of the day visible on their faces.

Stories around the campfire.

As we gathered around the campfire it was evident that this was truly an epic day of riding. The crashes, near crashes, mechanicals and views were ones worthy of mountain bike magazines or adventure guide books.

After all those miles, dinner that night truly hit the spot. Inside one Dutch oven was home made corn bread which we ate with clam chowder and a fresh salad. For desert was another Dutch oven creation, pineapple upside-down cake. Yum! One unfortunate story came that came back from the trail was one of a mishap with a log at mile two. It seems that TJ was going over a log when a slight miscalculation led to his ejection from the bike. After trying to break his fall with his hand he managed to hurt his elbow. Suffering through the next 20 miles he knew that something was more seriously wrong than he originally had thought.

When the decision was made to get TJ to a hospital in the morning it opened the door for some others to get a ride back to the condo for a warm shower and a soft bed. We couldn’t blame them for heading back. It was an extremely hard day in the saddle and by just finishing day one was an accomplishment into itself.

That night the remaining group that braved the sub-20 degree night consisted of Fred, Tripp, Red, Bob, Schuyler, our chefs Amy and KJ and me.

Day 2 – 12 miles

As we awoke on day two it was evident how cold it actually got over the night. Frost was on my hat and covering my tent. As I opened the rain fly on my tent I could see that Fred was already up getting the fire started. A quick check of my cycling computer revealed that it was currently 21.4 degrees.
As we got our gear ready for today’s ride (and thaw out our Camelbacks next to the fire) Tripp told us about how he could not get warm up at all during the night and that no matter how many layers he put on couldn’t lose the chill he got from the day before. Never being one to quit half-way through a challenge Tripp decided to mount his bike for day two.

Since we were on the western edge of the time zone the sun took a bit longer to rise. However, as it did we knew the cold temperatures of the day before were long gone and today we were going to enjoy some comfortable riding weather.

Bob and Schuyler decided to swap places with Amy and KJ and let them ride the 12 miles out with us. At around 10:30am our group set out for the final leg of the trip.

The day was pretty uneventful in terms of crashes and mechanicals. A quick fix of Red’s flat tire reveled that his rim strip was shot. Being a good Boy Scout Fred had some duct tape with him that we used to fabricate a new one. We mostly stayed together as we rode though groves of aspens, high meadows and washed out jeep trails.

We stopped for a quick snack and Tripp mentioned that he didn’t have much energy left in the tank and was just going to ride at a slow steady pace. Since the day before was so tough we brushed it off as just fatigue.

The final three miles of the ride were all down hill. The first mile was a series of twisty turns through trees and fields. The other two miles were a full-on downhill over a washed out jeep trail. This was a great way to end the ride.

At the bottom of the jeep trail we met Bob the shuttle driver. We loaded the bikes onto the trailer and Bob drove us back to our condo.
When we arrived at the condo we finally got word about TJ’s condition. It seems that he suffered a radial fracture of the elbow. He was in a half-cast and was advised to see an orthopedic doctor on Monday morning.

Most of the group had early flights out the next morning so there were only four of us left in the condo. The next day we were planning to ride a 12 mile downhill off the back side of a Brian Head. Going to bed that night we were all pretty trashed but excited that we didn’t have to do any climbing the next day.

The adventure continues...

That night Tripp was up all night coughing. He couldn’t lie down and when he did it sounded like he was making espresso in his lungs. As he continued to cough he started to spit up blood. This was clearly more than a case of altitude sickness or fatigue.

Since Red was heading down to Cedar City to bring TJ to the orthopedic doctor, we felt that it would be good to get Tripp down out of the altitude and get checked out by some doctors.

Needless to say, we canceled the ride for the day. Fred and I went over the Brian Head Mountain Bike Park (LINK) to pack up our bikes and gear for the shipment home and drove down to Cedar City to check in on Tripp and TJ.

As we pulled into the hospital we were greeted by Red and TJ. The orthopedic doctor told TJ that he would be fine in a few weeks and to just take it easy. That was a relief.

Tripp’s condition was still unknown but we knew that they wanted to keep him overnight for observation. After a quick stop at the hospital gift shop to pick up some flowers and a cheesy card we wandered down to his room where his male nurse was checking him out.
It seems that with the cold conditions combined with the altitude Tripp managed to get a case of H.A.P.E (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema). Now we knew why he didn’t have any energy the day before. Tripp was released from the hospital the next day and is now on his way back home.

Since all members of the Thule Road Trip are now all accounted for and are either back home or off to other business engagements it is time to reflect on how truly epic our road trip to the Virgin River Rim Trail was. We are all looking forward for our next road trip and the adventure it brings.

East Coast Road Trip, Part 1

2007-11-05T12:04:00.000-05:00

A while back I casually asked my buddies over at Thule if they had a vehicle they wanted me to drive around the eastern time zone for a month or so. Instead of not responding like the couple of other people I asked this same question, Steve got back to me with a prompt “yes.” Evidently there was a Chevy Express van parked out back that I was welcome to use in whatever way I saw fit. After some planning and struggling, I had a rough plan for a fall spent on the right coast doing a bunch of random stuff.

The outline went something like this, starting October 19 and ending November 27, try to follow…

Step 1- Fly to Connecticut and pick up the van.

Step 2- Drive to Diablo Freeride Park in New Jersey to attend a Giant Ride Maestro Demo and jump some stuff.

Step 3- Drive to Philadelphia and race skinny tired bikes on some grass.

Step 4- Drive to Asheville, North Carolina and do some kayaking.

Step 5- Drive to Athens, Georgia for another Maestro Demo

Step 6- Back to Asheville for more kayaking, maybe some Pisgah MTB’n.

Step 7- Drive to Louisville, KY for some more cyclocross racing, round one of the USGP.

Step 8- Drive back to Asheville, more boating and singletrack.

Step 9- Race in the Green River Narrows kayak race.

(this is where I’ve gotten to so far, I’m now flying to the opposite of western NC, that being Los Angeles…)

Step 10- Fly back from the west coast and drive, over the course of two days of screwing around in the woods or on the water, up to Manhattan for some Media shenanigans.

Step 11- Race Cross Bikes once again, this time in New Jersey. USGP #2.

Step 12- Hang out in Manhattan getting all cultured up with my cousin Jennifer.

Step 13- Drive to Maine for Thanksgiving and some hanging out with the family and friends.

Step 14- Over to Burlington, VT for singletrack and adult stuff, meetings and such.

Step 15- Back down to Thule HQ in CT to return the van, meet some people and be on my last airplane ride of the year back to Oregon. Whew.

There it is, the fifteen step plan to driving a bunch of miles and doing a bunch of random stuff, just like in the good ole’ days…

Step one went smoothly once I got done with my usual shellacking at the Chicago Airport, my flight was only delayed 3 hours, no big deal. Thanks to the ingenuity of Steve over at Thule, instead of dealing with getting the van up to the Airport or having me take a cab, when I arrived at the airport there was a guy in a suit and a nice hat holding a sign with my name on it. Turns out he was driving the “White Stretch” parked in front of baggage claim and would be chauffeuring me the van, stashed at a Park n’ Ride with the keys under the bumper. Sweet.

A solid drive through a solid rainstorm listening to surprisingly unstimulating (for greater NYC) local radio found me at Mountain Creek Resort in Vernon, NJ. The Diablo Freeride Park guys lease this little (1000 vertical feet) ski resort in the Jersey Highlands each summer so they can transform it into the east coast’s best place to ride a lift up and charge back down over and

over. Good business plan. Giant had cleverly chosen this location for one of the Ride Maestro Demo Tour events. It having a lift and being in the hometown of Giant Street/Freeride star Jeff Lenosky made it a ringer. We did a presentation on our (awesome) Maestro suspension design to about 50 dealers in the morning, had lunch, then rode the hell out of some bikes under sunny skies all afternoon. Wallrides, jumps everywhere, drops, berms, scary rock gardens, slippery singletrack, etc. We had a real good time. People were fired up on the bikes. It was a success for sure. I’m glad I “volunteered” for this one…

That night I drove down to Philly, stayed with and old friend and slept a ton. We made a huge breakfast and set off for the Wissahickon Cyclocross race. Turns out a huge breakfast is just what you need to make it back through the entire field after rolling a tubular on the first lap… Yup, I was pretending the ‘Cross bike was the Reign X I had been riding irresponsibly the day before. Turns out you can’t back it in on a light racing setup like on a freeride bike… Whoops. Fortunately, I had a spare bike, and I like passing people anyway, it’s entertaining and way less pressure than actually riding at the front of the race trying to “win” or whatever… I made it up to 5^th, then Barry Wicks waxed me on the last lap. 6^th place, an envelope with cash in it and some of those valuable “UCI Points” to secure me a reasonable start position at the Gran Prix coming up in Kentucky. Oh, and another sunny day, two down, forty to go…

The Green River narrows is a funny place. It is a classic Class V river tumbling off the Western North Carolina Escarpment through a vein of beautiful Granite. Yet it’s got a dam on it, the Tuxedo Hydro Station. Usually this would mean certain de-watered stream channel death for a small, steep river. But no, the Green runs more than just about any other Steep Creek in North America due to daily releases from Tuxedo. You simply wake up and call the flow phone to see what time it turns on and viola, warm water creekin’.

My problem was that I was in Philly at sunset and wanted nothing more than to get on the green the next day, 600 miles south. I called the phone, which was still relaying last week’s message, in an awesome southern drawl.

“Tuxedo Hydro Station will be running one unit at 100% load from 7am to 11am Monday, October the fifteenth, Tuesday and Wednesday, Tuxedo will be shut down. Thursday the 18^th through Sunday the 21^st Tuxedo will be running one unit at 100% load from 7am to 11am”

What this meant to me is that if I didn’t bust down there through the night I wouldn’t get on the Green until Thursday. Unacceptable. I bore down, taking advantage of the Red Bull and racing combo that seems to give endless energy despite incredible fatigue… This boost took me well south of Roanoake, Virginia, just a few hours north of the Green, by 2am. Fortunately, the Express has a robometronic back seat that turns into the narrowest bed you’ve ever seen. It was awesome, long, firm and perfect for a few hours of sleep until that pesky sunrise reminded me of my quest for the Green.

Once again, I called the flow phone. Once again it was last week’s news. I figured I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway so I might as well drive down to Asheville and see if the locals knew the story. My first stop in town was Jessie Rice’s place, which happens to be about as non-dirtbag-kayaker as you can get. On the 4^th floor of the Kress Condo building right downtown, her studio was probably the nicest apartment I’ve ever been in… Her friend Lizzy English was in town and keen to go kayaking, she figured that the Green would be running this Monday as it had been for the last month. Unfortunately, the frequency of class five kayaking that happens in Asheville had caught up with young Lizzy in the name of landing on her head off from Gorilla two days before. She hooked me up with the infamous Billy Jones, an old buddy of mine from Oregon who had recently moved to Asheville and we made it to the Narrows in the nick of time, actually running down the put-in trail to catch the last of the release. And catch it we did. A run down a river like this with a buddy who happens to know every nook and cranny is well worth driving through the night. We had a real good time.

A late lunch at Burgermeister with Lizzy and Billy was a hilariously entertaining segway to an afternoon ride with legendary local Sam Koerber in the Pisgah National Forest. The morning’s light rain had turned to a steady downpour as we headed up Yellow Gap to Laurel Mountain Trail. Sam kept me honest about the fact that I’d just eaten a huge Feta Burger by keeping a high tempo for the entirety of our hour-long climb up perfectly techy singletrack. I casual “I recommend you drop your seat now” meant we were about to shred a couple thousand feet of the east coast’s finest singletrack. Which we promptly did despite looming darkness and heavy, warm rain. It was an awesome end to an awesome day.

The next day the boys went kayaking on the Toxaway river while I rode sweet singletrack in Athens, GA at the next stop of the Giant tour. It was held at a farm out in the country that happened to have about ten miles of twisty, rooty, red clay trails in and out of the hollows. Fun trails with fun people, but I was still glad to be ignorant of the “running of the shit” that went on up north while I was “working” down in the flatlands…

I fortunately made it back to Asheville that night in time to have dinner with my host for the week, Willow Koerber. We went to a nice Spainish restaurant downtown and I got my first taste of Asheville’s culinary and cultural diversity. Cool town, especially when you have a van full of toys and a good friend’s house to stay at…

The next morning, after listening to it rain all night, I called Billy Jones to see about the prospect of kayaking. He mentioned the Raven’s Fork and I immediately jumped out of bed and proclaimed that I’d be ready to go in two minutes. Fortunately, the southern boating community operates on a slightly more casual schedule, I had plenty of time… We met at Greenlife, one of A-ville’s many organic healthfood stores, for breakfast and flow checking. Then it was time to gather the rest of the crew and head west into the Smokies. Eventually. We actually left town at the crack of noon, five strong. Drew Duval drove Old Blackie, Billy Jones called shotgun before we even decided who’s car to take, “The Professor” Toby McDermott, young ripper Adrian and myself squeezed into the back and the discussion of our perspective flow on the Raven’s Fork commenced. Maybe it was too low? What was our cutoff? Should we turn around? Stop and check the online flow again? Or just keep driving, which is what we did. We were rewarded with this:

Perfect flow. An impressively steep uphill drive in Blackie delivered us to a forty-five minute hike up an old railroad bed to the put-in. We drove up about fifteen hundred vertical feet, then walked in dead flat to a river that rose steadily through it’s canyon to meet us. We would drop all 1500ft in about two miles. That’s STEEP! Fortunately, the put in had a tiny pool to warm up in before dropping into the teacups right off the bat. Perfect.

The first big rapid of the day was Anaconda, the boys fired it up while Adrian and I exchanged concerned glances… We could run it if we HAD to, but chose the high right line instead, opting to save ourselves for downstream challenges.

Looking back up at Anaconda- Steep and tight…

Like the next rapid, Headless Horseman. A classic slot boof entry to a big slide under an even bigger undercut ledge. Very aesthetically pleasing.

Below there the rapids stacked up right on top of each other. It’s pretty amazing how steep and how runnable this river is. Even when you do have to portage, such as the entrance to Razorback at this level, it seems totally reasonable that you might not be able to run 100% of this creek, 90% is plenty…

We eventually made it down to Big Boy, the waterfall everyone would ask if we ran once we got back to town… Our answer would be no. 35 feet of curling perfection, except for the four foot wide green landing pool guarded by a pile of rocks on the right. Beautiful yet quite ugly…

A reasonable portage brought us down to Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, another huge complex slide that we simply scouted from above and fired up out of necessity and enthusiasm. Like all rapids on this river, the photo from above makes it look tiny, even with the tiny kayaker (Toby) in the frame…

A good handful of bonus classic rapids like Caveman eventually led us out of the gorge, basically intact and quite stoked to have gotten on the Rave’s in the middle of the worst drought the southeast has seen in a few years. We hung out with Emmanuel the elderly Cherokee Indian who is kind enough to let kayakers park as his place at the takeout. He was clearly excited to see his river running again and share that appreciation with the kayakers who were so excited to be there.

The next day we got greedy. Linville Gorge is the longest, deepest, most committing kayak run in the southeast. It was still raining up in the Grandfather Mountain area and Linville was in, probably on the “high side of good”… We met Uncle Jeb Hall and his crew at the lake takeout, planning on taking advantage of reasonable daylight and high water to run the whole gorge. Our optimism was commendable even when the river rose two inches while we loaded the Thule van with nine boats and paddlers…

The road to the put in is fifteen miles of washboard gravel. I drove it as fast as the van would take, heeding the advice of “five or fifty” that came from the peanut gallery in back. They quieted down once we got rolling… Linville requires a forty-five minute hike down into the gorge before you even see the river. We descended into the mist wondering what our flow was. Just as we got to the first overlook on the Babel Tower trail some guys hiking uphill carrying kayaks and looking scared. They said it was a bit high… It was. We deliberated for a while and eventually decided it was too high, but Billy and I agreed to go to river level and give it one last look, just in case. Seeing Toby and Brad Kee (who had run Linville as high as it ever had been run) walking up was the last thing I needed to bag it. It was a nice hike into and out of the gorge even with the ungainly 45-pound kayak on my shoulder…

Instead of driving to Cincinatti and being early to pick up Kelli, who was flying in to race in Louisville, I decided a twilight run on the nearby Wilson Creek would keep the day from being a total Skunk. It was just what the doctor ordered, fun class IV boating, rock spins, hole surfs and some fun impromptu racing with Lizzy and Billy had me relaxed and ready to drive another seven hours…

Once again, I’ve been racing bikes all summer and taking photos of it sometimes. This weekend I didn’t take a single one. Sorry. We did have a good time though, staying at our mechanic Tom’s parents place eating good home cooking was a bonus on top of fun racing and nice weather. Kelli and I each won the “Most Aggressive Rider” award on one of the two days, basically the river who gets the crappiest start and makes the most of it. In my case it was doing wheelies up to fifth place, in hers it was cornering fast to tenth. Good times with the big check.

Monday we did some cyclocross mountain biking at some random park in Frankfort, KY before I dropped Kelli at the airport. It was pretty entertaining, riding tight local trails on sketchy bikes.

Another five hour drive had me back in Asheville Monday night ready for more action. I even saw some good southern culture on the way… NASCAR evidently has some fans in the world…

The next two days were “rest days” for green river paddlers, being Tuesday and Wednesday. I decided to rest by doing some huge rides in Pisgah, one with Sam and (badass) dad Bob Koerber. We rode fast up barely makeable climbs and even faster down classic Pisgah descents. Rocky, rooty, fast and covered in leaves. The next day I set off alone to explore the Fish Hatchery zone outside Brevard. Five hours later I’d ridden every trail in the drainage, including the infamous Furlow Gap. Good stuff.

Thursday and it was time for business. Racing kayaks down class V isn’t something to be taken lightly. I figured the best way to get ready was to go kayaking on the Green River Narrows a whole bunch. Which happens to be what I would have decided to do even if there wasn’t a big race coming up. Two runs Thursday and two more on Friday had me a bit sore but completely entertained… I did have a bit of a scare on my last run of Gorilla, the classic blast through the notch but not quite into the eddy above the launchpad. This common occurance (especially for non-locals) usually results in a backwards run off the pad immediately followed by stern-pitoning and falling on one’s head down the rest of the ramp. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would. Which is amazing. And lucky. Fortunately, John Grace (of Lunch Video Magazine) was filming the whole incident. He assured Sam that it would make the cut for the carnage section… Which is something I really, seriously, genuinely, try to avoid doing out on the river. We’re not fish, nor are we made of rubber, so I always try to respect the environment we’re so fortunate to travel through by kayak. In this case, I’d respect it by just catching the eddy in the race, eddies being the cornerstone of river-running and all… I’d also respect it by repairing the backband and seat I’d broken in the Shiny new Remix 69 that Woody and Obie at Liquidlogic Kayaks had loaned me for the race. Sorry guys…

I fell for a mean trick on race morning. I should have learned over the last two weeks in Asheville that the boating crew isn’t exactly prompt. When race oranizer Jason Hale told me to be at the takeout at 8:30 for a race meeting I figured he was serious. Really, this was just a rumor to get everyone moving within an hour or two. The real meeting was at the put-in at 10:30… So I met up with local bike race promoter and racer Janet Trubey for breakfast at Waffle House. Not so bad, although the coffee was… Hale climbed on top of a truck at 10:45 for the “meeting” which basically consisted of these few points:

Be Safe.

Are you qualified?

There’s only one winner.

Don’t ask your time when you finish.

Don’t be late.

There would be a party at Woody’s house after the race.

He had official green race panties for all the swimmers.

Our next stop was the field for the traditional photo of everyone with their kayaks standing up in a row, in this case, it was three rows, as there were 130 racers. That’s a lot of “qualified” boaters…

Next stop was Frankenstein rapid, which the race started just above. It was warm and sunny at Frankenstein, perfect for watching people smooth it through, or not… We saw some creative, ingenious lines, some average lines, and some pretty questionable ones… Complex rapid right off the bat.

Toby shows us how it’s done in the new Liquidlogic “Hun-gee” race boat.

Before I knew it my start time had arrived. Since I’m kind of a sissy, and was quite respectful of Gorilla at this point, I decided to go for a brisk paddle down the green all by myself. It just happened that I would be timed. I smoothed some rapids, like “Go left and die.” It was good that I wasn’t distracted by the hundred or so people at Go Left when I came blasting out of Boof or Consequences… The green race is quite the party even at the river… (this is some other guy smoothin’ it…)

And I fumbled some, like Frankenstein, right off the bat. By the time I got to Gorilla I had things under control, even with the rabid crowd, and the rapid was smooth and direct, after which I breathed a sigh of relief before exiting the speed trap and charging down the final slides to the finish rock, upright, intact, and not very tired… Unless you count mental fatigue. That’s a lot of information to process… Kayaking at speed down big hard rapids is an interesting challenge. I have even more respect for those who do it well, like local boy Andrew Holcombe who won this year’s race in 4:26, 76 paddlers ahead of me at 5:37… I think it’s something I could get into someday though, similar approach to a Super Downhill event, smooth line selection complemented by fitness, the reward being speed at all costs. Hmmm.

The party at Woody’s was a thing to see. Southern boaters don’t mess about with the drinking… Or the being absolutely hilarious… I like it down here. And I’ll be back someday, hopefully with my A game…

Thanks for reading.

Cispus Camp-out

2007-10-24T14:48:00.000-04:00

A while ago we talked about the ubiquitous one-day trip. Let’s take a bit of time now to talk about the big brother of the onesie, the overnighter. A good way to maximize your driving around time is to do at least two separate activities, connected by spending the night somewhere. In this particular instance, the two activities are going to be kayaking on the Green Truss section of the White Salmon River and the Upper -Upper Cispus River, both in Southern Washington State. Somewhere along the (extremely) scenic route between the two will be the location of the night spent.

The only other Class V kayaker in Bend, Oregon who seems motivated and available to travel at a moment’s notice is Kim Russell. She’s always down for an adventure, even a midweek one, and can always be counted on to stomp the lines and landings on whatever run we happen to be floating down. Although she’s an aspiring professional paddler, at the impressionable age of eighteen I can still convince her that low water boating is worth doing in the name of good fun… This would be key on the Green Truss Section of the White Salmon in southern Washington State…

As with most overnight trips, this one started out on a whim. Kim had been interested in checking out the Upper-Upper Cispus run for quite a while, continuing her progression as an explorer of the river environment. I’d been on the Cispus once, alone, with borrowed gear, (thanks, Cooch) six or so years ago, making me an expert on the topic. One evening, while discussing said run after an evening run on the Deschutes in Bend, we bucked up and agreed to leave the next afternoon for the region surrounding Mount Adams. Done.

Now, a brief interlude to discuss photography. I’m a professional athlete. I ride bikes for a living, usually in the woods. People often like to photograph this pursuit. While I’m happy to oblige, this isn’t really why I do what I do. I like to ride, not stop and screw around with photos. Again, when it’s my job, I’m more than happy to. But when it’s not my job, such as when I’m on a kayaking trip. I don’t exactly make time for documentation, other than that of the “one’s own memory” variety… Kim, as a budding pro kayaker, is always taking photos. I use my seniority and blunt manner of speaking to squash most photo attempts, at least those that will intrude whatsoever on the purity of our river experience. So, we don’t have many photos. The ones we have were snapped before I could tell Kim to put that shit away. Sorry.

Since we don’t have any photos whatsoever of the Green Truss run, and we’d done it a bunch of times already, I’ll just say that it was really fun. We ran some waterfalls, raced through some rapids (it was a tie, two-two), watched the sun set, bummed a shuttle from some local guys, and generally enjoyed our pit stop on the way north (by west).

Here’s where the quality, if low-consequence, adventure started. With forest road 23 over the western flank of Mount Adams closed because of a (probably burly) wash-out, we had to find another route. Some consultation with the Washington Gazeteer (pronounced Ga-zee-ter) and cross referencing with a Forest Service Map Kiosk determined that our best route would be west toward the Lewis River drainage then north past Mount Saint Helens and over Elk Pass before dropping into the Cowlitz Drainage and heading back up the Cispus River to the takeout. This route consisted of, near as we could figure, mostly paved, twisty, two-lane, awesome roads. Good thing we’d packed light, summer gear only, to keep the WRX as close to it’s optimal performance level as possible. With darkness descending rapidly on Mount Adams, we set about charging seemingly endless dreamy tarmac, hoping our route would pan out. I love the challenge of reading virgin road and putting things together as they unfold in front of you, whether it’s that perfect on-camber compression right into a cresting left, leaving the grocery-getter tail happy and singing a high note or getting the perfect late brake/downshift/handbrake combo that leaves you roosting out of yet another switchback. Driving is fun. As a means to get somewhere, of course…

After a bonus ten-mile section of buttery smooth gravel drifting, and the drop into the Lewis Drainage, with a stop to admire the moonrise and subsequent reflection on Mount Saint Helens, our adrenal glands were starting to reach their limit. We decided to find a place to throw a sleeping bag on the ground ASAP. Our first opportunity came at a random turnoff on the top of Elk Pass. Turns out it led to a beautiful meadow with a whole lot of welcoming grass for sleeping. Done. About nine minutes of “camp” setup and a few of stargazing set us up for a good cold, dewy, night’s sleep. Although the pesky full moon did wake us up a few times as it poked above the ridgeline…

Morning came early, but was welcomed on account of warm sunshine, granola and the fact that car camping only takes about 12 minutes to completely pack up for departure.

A brief hour of (slightly more responsible due to daylight conditions and possible oncoming massive log trucks) driving on more awesome roads found us at the takeout for the Cispus. Flow looked good and there was, surprisingly for 9am on a Wednesday, another kayaker vehicle parked there. We quickly stashed our shuttle vehicle (my trusty ten-speed) and rallied up to the put-in, hoping to find the owners of the ‘Yota and paddle with them. Turns out we missed them, no bother, the two-person team is always a good way to travel too (unless you want to set up a legitimate rescue…).

Now, I’d remembered the Cispus starting off with a bang, some kind of entry waterfall guarding the miles of classic boulder gardens lying downstream. I seemed to think it was good to go and a good time, but a scouting/personal morning ritual mission determined otherwise. There were a whole bunch of logs in the runout gorge section. Whoops, no happy-go-lucky fifteen-footer to start the day off right. Instead we got a portage to seal-launch combo, which was fine with me, I like sliding off a rock and into the water anyway…

Once we were on the water a good groove was immediately established. Whoever was leading would roll up to the lip of a boulder garden, peer downstream, make a quick call whether to run or scout, or hop to a lower eddy, and we’d proceed. Scouting sometimes to ensure we were on the most fun line, running on a whim and a feeling sometimes, taking some questionable lines, and generally having a great time getting in the groove with the river. Oh, and I did the best rock spin of my life somewhere in there. Better than any New Hampshire Granite spin I’ve ever done. It was amazing…

Now, the Upper-Upper Cispus has two big rapids nestled between all the sweet boulder gardens. Island and Behemoth. We arrived at Island and decided to scout from the island proper. Right channel was a pinched eight-footer into a boily hole mess followed by a fairly stout pourover hole. Hmmm. Left channel was a techie sliding boof that would land you right next to the big pourover, sideways and at a dead stop. Hmmm. We elected to appreciate the sunshine and good juju so far by going for the high left line and bonus fun seal launch below the maelstrom.

Now we just had Behemoth to sort out. Approaching what was clearly the gorge leading to the falls, identified by treetops downstream and an obvious mist, we spotted an unmanned kayak and paddle on the right bank. Thinking the folks before us might have some issues, we clambored out of our boats and across the scree slope. Nobody to be found. Hmmm. At least the search for the abandoned craft’s captain gave us a unique scout of the Behemoth lead-in rapid and falls proper, in addition to some good scrambling on narrow ledges above eddyless, unportagable, grade 5 whitewater… The falls looked sweet, in kind of intimidating, “you’re here so you’ve got to run me” way. Sloping off the ledge and plunging 25 feet into a caved-out, boil-filled punchbowl where it sprayed mist up out of the gorge and into the sunlight, it was quite a sight to see. We probably should have taken a photo… But, we were much more interested in getting back to our boats and downstream as planned. The lead-in rapid holes were bigger than we thought, but we pulled through. I won a quick reaux-cham-beaux in the pool at the lip, meaning I got to go first. Hmmmm, did I win or lose? I fired a boof off the ramp and set it town flat and forward in the pillowy boils below, then snuck around the massive hole guarding the exit to the punchbowl. When I looked back upstream I saw Kim launch a similary sweet boof into the sunshine, but she got kicked into the cavern at the base of the falls. Some maneuvering with a giant old-growth log and a couple proud ferry attempts, while I stood next to the exit hole with a rope, and Kim earned the privilege of exit. Another mile of decreasing difficulty classic boulder garden boating had us out of the canyon and floating to the takeout.

Turns out we almost caught the other crew at the put-in, they were lunching and lounging at the takeout, getting gear dried out for their drive on to British Columbia for some high water summer creekin’. It turned out one of the guys was from New York and had a bunch of the same New England buddies as me. Another was from Corvallis and keen to hook up for some Oregon rainfall boating this winter. The girl who gave me a ride up to our trusty Subaru was from Hood River and keen to have some more chick creekin’ partners. The circle of whitewater love is small but continually amazes me with it’s depth.

We got some jeep road shortcut beta from our new acquaintances on how to get back to Hood River without the massive detour and set out on the trip home. Ten miles of dreamy tarmac led into ten miles of buttery gravel which led us to our marginal shortcut, but, thanks to the skidplate and some clever angles of approach, we made it through just fine. Lunch in Hood River and a swimming stop at Clear Lake on the flanks of Mount Hood kept us fed and refreshed.

I had decided to be ambitious and get dropped off in Warm Springs,, about 70 miles north of Bend, and ride my trusty Ten-Speed home, gently pushed by the perpetual north wind. I figured three hours of daylight to ride 70 miles was plenty. Regardless of starting at 1500 feet elevation and eventually finishing at 3800… The tailwind would make it possible to average 22mph or so, getting me home just after 9pm… Well, in august it gets dark at 8:30. I got home at 9:30 after an awesome ride into an awesome sunset. Gotta get in shape for Worlds, after all…

Rally Colorado 2007

2007-09-27T10:06:00.000-04:00

It was a great return to the rally scene at Rally Colorado this past weekend.

3rd place in the national G2 class,

2 first place wins in the regional class,

& one second overall and a third overall in the regional events.

As with any rally I usually have the first stage nerves...

however this time was a bit different as I had not been in a rally for almost two years.

as the timer counted down the seconds my heart pounded harder.

3,2,1,.. before I knew it we were flying down the Wolf Mountain stage,

a fast flowing road with blind crests and loose corners.

Brian McGuire was calling the turns next to me but I really did not hear much of what he said, It was a bit surreal.

We finished the stage with a respectable time, ahh what a pleasant surprise.

Warm up over... time for business.

The next 3 stages are some of my favorites, rough and technical.

I got into my groove and actually started to hear what Brian was telling me.

Elkhead flats was one of those stages which no matter how much I enjoy it I cant help but remember "my corner" on this stage.

Or maybe it should be called Corrado corner, the place where I had my worst crash to date ( 9-03 ) with my old VW Corrado. I believe it was a double front flip with a twist ending in a tidy mess.

Some of my best times of the day were on this stage, it was time to move on.

The rest of the day went well till the Stokes Gulch stage where communication problems hampered my ability to keep on the gas over 100 mph blind crests.

We lost time but pressed on.

By the end of day one we were in 3rd place in the national and had won 1st in class in the regional, 3rd overall.

The next morning I awoke to see LOTS of rain had fallen overnight and it was still coming down.

Uhh Oh... mud fest!

I scrambled to get the crew together so we could get to grooving tires to shed the mud we would soon encounter.

(something I should have done last week... Dooh! )

We were able to get only 2 tires done before the race started, but it was better than nothing.

The first stage of the day was Sage Creek, fast, technical, and slicker than snot.

I passed a subaru in the first few miles and nearly went off many times but made it to the end in one piece.

Stage 2 "Salt Creek" was new for this year and very fast and flowing.

Thankfully it had a very solid base of well packed gravel so mud was almost non existent, at first.

The organizers decided all of the other roads were so rained out and muddy that we were to run Salt Creek 4 times in a row to finish the day.

The rain continued to fall as we started our first run on Salt Creek and was not a big deal until the drivers side windshield wiper broke in the middle of the stage.

Let me tell you, driving a rally car in the rain without wipers and trying to keep it at full tilt is pretty exciting and very challenging.

We finsihed the stage and tried to fix the wiper. It turns out the internal mechanism had broken in half so the drivers side was finished but the passenger side still worked.

We tried Rain X on the next stage which was not so good, however we managed to drop 14 seconds off our previous time.

Then Brian suggested the euro look for the wiper, so we adjusted the passenger side wiper to clean a V shape in the middle of the window,...

Mmm much better, we drop another 5 seconds.

Then my inner "MacGyver" decided to move the wiper even further to the drivers side, tape and zip-ty the other wiper arm to it, Viola! a new twin / single wiper!

It worked great.

As we rolled up to the start of the final stage the rain stopped.

I was almost disappointed I would not get to use my new invention.

We dropped another 7 seconds but it was not enough to capture 2nd place in the national, we were 3rd.

I did manage to stomp the regional competitors with a 1st in class and second overall. ( watch out boys, Im back )

All in all we were happy to have finished, and even happier to have placed well.

I would like to thank my sponsors,

Thule Car Rack Systems, Salta Motorsports, & Go Fast Sports.

My totally amazing service crew, Andy, Erik, Brian & Erica from Salta, Mom & Dad, Kurt, Matt for his tire groover, and my lovely wife Jen who took all these great photos.

& of course Brian McGuire for riding shot gun & calling the turns.

I also must thank the event organizers and volunteers for an excellent event.

I could not have done it so well without everyone's help, Thank you all so much.

Best regards,

Brooks

Euro Road Trip

2007-08-31T12:08:00.000-04:00

The gateway to summer for me has been the same the last few years. It always involves hopping on a plane and flying to Europe sometime in the month of May to chase the Mountain Bike World Cup series around for a while. This chase has involved various forms of transportation over the years. Everything from hitching rides with random race people to being forced to purchase a last minute flight within Europe has been employed to get where I need to be. Where I really need to be is owning a villa on the Italian coast somewhere with an Italian car (complete with racks) awaiting my arrival to drive at gratuitous speeds to whatever event the Continent can cook up for us. Until then, we at the Giant Mountain Bike Team will resort to planes, trains and, in this case, overloaded Mercedes rental vans…

Before we get into this latest trip around Central Europe, let’s reminisce for a few minutes. You see, back in the day, I loved the challenge of getting myself around on a shoestring budget, flying by the seat of my pants. It was a nice change of pace from having things “planned” out all the time. I’d arrive in Frankfurt, Germany, sometimes alone, sometimes with someone I’d tricked into coming along for the adventure and some racing (these poor suckers include my current teammates Carl Decker and Kelli Emmett). The first step would always be to purchase a EuroRail pass and figure out how close to whatever town you needed to actually end up in you could get on the train. This was usually pretty easy, and you usually got pretty close. Sometimes you’d have to hitch a ride, take a taxi, or possibly a tram up a mountain. It always worked out though. Once settled, usually in some random tiny hotel room, your bike was your lifeline to the outside world. Need groceries? Ride to the market. Gotta make it to the team manager’s (which you are) meeting? Yup, another bike ride. Hopefully all that riding was good for the legs… The beauty of the low-budg travel was all of the bumps in the road and the satisfaction and education of smoothing them out. I loved it. But, it did make actually racing a bit more of a struggle. Oh well, you’ve got to cut your teeth sometime…

Fortunately, after a few World Cup Cross Country podium performances on my own support system, Giant has been gracious enough to start supporting my racing effort on the Continent a bit more thoroughly. This support has grown in stages. Initially I still had to get to the races on my own, but once there someone from the Euro Giant Team was there to help out a bit, from bike washing to handing up bottles during the races, it was great support to have. From there I grew into an honorary member of the Euro team, even getting the occasional massage.

Unfortunately, the Giant Racing Team in Europe is no more. This forced us on the US team to set up our own support once again. Fortunately, with the 2008 Olympics looming on the horizon, Giant USA was happy to send Kelli and I over with a mechanic, Tom Neb, and soignieur, Elke Brutsaert. We’d pick up the aforementioned Mercedes Vito van and spend three weekends racing around Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. While it seemed like a plan low on adventure, I was sure we could entertain ourselves along the way, keeping the spirit of the initial Euro struggling alive and morale high for the group.

This time we flew into Zurich, Switzerland, which is a pretty darn central jump-off point for most racing excursions. This means that both Kelli and I were familiar with how to get out of the airport and headed in the general direction of Germany, where the Black Forest town of Offenburg hosted the second round of the UCI Nissan Mountain Bike World Cup Series. Under threatening skies, we made our auspicious arrival in Offenburg.

Now, one of the central hurdles to overcome while traveling as an athlete in Europe is finding an apartment to rent instead of Hotelling it. This gives you access to a kitchen and, usually, laundry, immediately solving the two biggest problems in day-to-day existence. Food and Sanitation. Fortunately, our soigny, Elke, is of Belgian descent and studied in Germany. So she speaks the lingo. This gave us (by us I mean her) the option of calling all of the random Freinwoerners (guest houses) in the area until we found a suitable booking for the week. And suitable it was, nestled in a steep valley just above the wine production village of Dorbach, across the valley from an ancient castle and surrounded by vineyards, it might just have been the sweetest place I’ve ever cooked dinner while watching the sunset in Europe. Awesome. Well, not as awesome as the fact that we were only lost for about 10 minutes before we found the one lane road leading to the place, nor as awesome as the nap we took, with shutters closed, as soon as we dropped our bags…

We later unpacked our bags and, while filling up some grocery bags at the Activ Markt, ran into some fell bike riders whom we invitied over to take advantage of our cooking facilities.

Usually German mountain bike race courses involve healthy dollops of dirt roads, riding across bumpy virgin fields and not much else. We were stoked to blunder onto the Offenburg course and immediately be riding nice flowing singltrack in the forest surrounding a vineyard. Nicely worn in, it had the feel of a trail that had been ridden thousands of times, not hastily thrown together the day before. To keep in theme though, something had to be hastily thrown. I figured my bike, down a totally blind fifteen-foot drop-in, was a good thing to sacrifice. For good measure, I threw my body down shortly after the bike, mostly on my feet, but not completely… I looked up at the root and stump laden drop and was glad to not have a red paint (which they organizers cleverly cover all obstacles in, to draw your attention, and front wheel, to) tattoo on my forehead or chest… As I took stock, I heard Kelli rapidly approaching the same trap I’d narrowly escaped. Figuring she’d suffer a similar fate, I yelled a couple warnings up the trail, but to no avail, she appeared at the lip going full tilt and proceeded to tomahawk down the drop, head, then feet, then rear first, landing in a crumpled heap at my feet. Shocked, I immediately started to help her up, but she jumped up with no problem, smiling and laughing it of.
“This is sweet, let’s keep riding.” was her first comment.
“Holy crap, you’re not dead.” Was mine…
Kelli was covered head to toe in clay based mud and had one of the aforementioned spraypaint tattoos on her arm where a stump had tried, unsuccessfully, to tear it off… Other than that she appeared to be fine, so we continued on our way. For about 100 meters… Then it became apparent to Kelli that something was wrong with her shoulder. Her first hint was that she couldn’t pull up on her handlebars. The second hint was the fact that she couldn’t raise her right arm above her stomach… Dang it. One and done, for the day at least.
A few more days of riding around in the Black Forest hills and sleeping ten glorious hours a night brought us handily to race day. Which handily came with torrential downpours just as I left the vineyard to ride down to the race start. Nothing like being cold and wet while trying to “warm up”… At least I would start the race prepared for the shitstorm that it was going to be. The poor women were had started under sunny skies and on dry conditions tires and bike setup, not a sweet finale for them in the rain. Kelli toughed it out like the trooper she is, regardless of not being able to execute a basic high five at the finish line…
The men’s race started fast and furious, as World Cups will, but calmed down markedly after a lap’s worth of carnage in the ridiculous conditions. My personal favorite was watching two guys battling for position on a 40mph paved road descent covered in muddy floodwaters. They obviously got tangled, high sided at full tilt and proceeded to slide about 50 meters into some metal fencing. Worth the position? I don’t think so… Which is why, after the first lap, I found myself in about 50th position. Where I would stay for much of the race as people dropped out or blew up in front of me, only to be offset by the steady stream of guys passing me whilst running their asses off, something I either refused or was unable to do… At least I finished in the “answer to the universe” position- #42… Welp, there’s always next week.
In an attempt to “keep it real” we hadn’t made a plan for the weekend off between the German World Cup and the round #3 in Swizterland. This kept our options open to to wherever looked good and do whatever seemed right. There were a few factors to consider on Sunday evening as we pondered our situation. One, the weather seemed to suck everywhere. Two, since we were in Europe racing bikes, we figured we should race bikes somewhere. Third, we had to consider the possibility of acquiring the ever-valuable UCI (union cycliste internationale) points, which were in high demand as the US of A trys to qualify for the maximum three start positions at the 2008 Olympics, and finally, we had to decide how much we wanted to drive the Vito around in the next ten days. Here’s how we made our decision-

1. The weather, for the first time in history, was better in northeastern Europe than in Italy, which meant ixnay on the coastal house shopping/wine drinking/pizza eating extravaganza we envisioned.
2. There were UCI Category 1 (lots of points and prize money) in both the Czech Republic (Saturday) and Austria (Sunday).
3. It seemed like we’d be clever, point laden, rich and either really in shape or really hosed if we did both races on the weekend.
4. The driving factor is what really made our decision though, 8 hours or so to Ceska Kamenice (in the northwest corner of Czech), then 5 hours to Windhaag (on the Austrian/Czech boder) then 10 or more hours to southwestern Switzerland for the world cup seemed a bit much for both riders and support staff.

We compromised and chose the Czech race essentially on the grounds that none of us had been to the Czech republic before and we might as well check it out…

To rubber stamp our decision to chase the sun north we left our humble Durbach apartment in a torrential downpour, good thing the Vito was loaded to the hilt with all of our stuff, it tracked straight and true in the wet… The combo of crappy weather, heavy stop and go traffic on the autobahn, and the fact that although we had a destination, we didn’t have a place to stay or even any leads had team optimism a bit low. Fortunately, I had brought a copy of SuperTroopers, which Kelli and Elke hadn’t seen, but Tom and I know and love, so the ladies fired the laptop up and watched in the back while we squinted into the rain up front and laughed our asses off. By the time the final scene had ended it was sunny out and we were nearing our destination.

Dropping into the Elbe river valley, which is flanked by both German and Czech National Parks towards sunset we made the call to start looking for digs while we were still in Germany and had our resident language specialist. Turns out the first place we pulled into, a little Frierenwonhung in the village of Bad Schandau (Bad means “on the water”) was happy to rent us a cozy apartment for the week. Cheap too. Perfect. I love it when a plan comes together. A nice evening spin on the riverside bike path to ease the travel stiffened legs, a late pizza and German beer dinner and we were feelilng great about our week ahead.

The next day Kelli and I set off to ride across the border into Czech to see if we could find the town where the race was and possibly the race course for some rudimentary inspection. I’m in a bit of a precarious position within the Giant team, you see, all of my life I’ve been going on road trips, big and small, so I’ve somehow (probably through my Dad’s subtle teachings) developed a system of always know where I am and how to get where I’m going. We put it to the test getting around in Czech for sure. Back roads immediately after the border and little signage, but I knew we needed to head east so we climbed up out of the Elbe Valley through beautiful sandstone formations on beautiful quiet little roads. After a couple villages we finally saw a sign for Kamenice, 12 kilometers. Perfect. Another half hour and we were there, blundering around looking for the senior citizens home where the race was allegedly going to be held. After some sleuthing around a sort of run down old industrial town of about 5,000 people we finally discovered a map of the town in front of the grocery store and figured out where we were going. Some surprisingly fun trails led us up through more sandstone formations into the park and eventually back into town. It was going to be a fun race.
And a fun race it was. Kelli started out strong and pinned it down a rocky drop that even I wasn’t riding out of prudence and was solidly in contention for a podium spot. Then, on the next lap, she pinned the drop a bit too hard and wadded it on her already sore shoulder. No matter though, in keeping with the theme that Kelli Emmett is tougher than you or me, she soldiered on to finish 5th, solid.

Instead of the normal M.O. of “get out of town as quick, tired and dirty as possible”. We decided to stay in Bad Schandau for an extra two nights. It was everything we thought it could be. Sleeping in the day after a race before making a nice breakfast and going for a nice ride (although it was raining) and finishing the day with massage and watching South Park is greatly preferable to sitting in a car all day or rushing to catch an early morning flight. Excellent.
We did have some driving to do, however, about 10 hours of it, we figured, to Champerey, in the southwest corner of Switzerland, nestled high in the Alps along the French border. The trip started off a bit sour with the telltale flash of a traffic camera recording the speed and presence of the Vito in the second village we passed through. German driving rule #1, if there’s a speed limit posted that’s less than 130kph and is within a town, it’s probably watched over by a speed camera. Hopefully Hertz Europe doesn’t have mail forwarded to the US… For Tom’s sake at least… After that, Elke and I took turns racing down the Autobahn at 160kph, much better… Except we, once again, were getting owned by Execs in Benzes and Bimmers going 200… Maybe next year…

Twelve hours later and some clever detour navigation, we rolled into Champerey at sunset. Good thing, I wouldn’t have been nearly as excited for daybreak and the exploring possibilities had I arrived in the dark (usual M.O.) and been unaware of how postcard perfect the scenery was. The Dents du Midi, a massive, craggy ridgeline covered in fresh snow (they got 40cm of snow the week before we arrived on June 4) separated from a vibrant green valley by a limestone cliff face, and, of course, dozens of waterfalls feeding the glacial creek tumbling it’s way down valley. I feel kind of out of place with such a storybook description, but it was awesome. Really.

The bonuses of staying at a Hotel, Le Rose de Alpes, run by some British mountain bikers were twofold. One, you could speak English to anyone you might need to speak to, whether it was about what time breakfast was or what kind of cake was getting baked for tea time. The other benefit was that they could tell you where to go for sweet bike rides. Of which there were obviously a lot.

Ride #1 was a trail that just happened to run through the 100 meter tall cliff across the valley. That’s right, blasted and terraced into the rock face was a pretty damn sweet singletrack. It was rooty and steep on the drop-in, then smooth and buffed into the wall with nothing but a rickety fence to keep you from going over the edge. Somehow, in addition to it’s shocking location, it was shockingly fun to ride, fast and flowy, with jumps and berms up onto the sides of the tunnel. Awesome.

Oh, and I checked out the race course too. Even more awesome. Flat and technical, just like the trails in Bangor, Maine, for the first 2k, then a steep fireroad climb for a few minutes, which delivered the oxygen deprived riders to a steep, slick and rooty, but somehow still fun, descent back to the creek and eventually the start finish. You had to know how to ride to be fast here. Good thing I’m from Maine, where you have to know how to ride to simply ride.

The next day the Brits tricked me into doing a huge sweet climb to an even huger sweeter descent. The Col de Cou sits about 1000 meters above Champerey, I spent an hour and a half climbing a mix of pavement, dirt roads and steep jeep trails to gain the Col. Where, after a bit of snowbank footprint deciphering, I found the ridgeline trail I’d been told of. I’d been told of it pretty casually, like it was pretty cool and I should check it out, but it wasn’t something to write home about. Well, see for yourself. I’m at home and I’m writing about it.

Ripping down a ridgeline on a ten inch wide cow track with clouds swirling over snowcapped peaks and playing tricks on your peripheral vision is my definition of a good time. So is continuing the party down below treeline on even more perfect ancient singletrack. People who live in the mountains sure know how to walk down out of them in style.
After that ride, I figured I’d take a day off , doing nothing seemed like a responsible race preparation strategy, surely more restful than more awesome riding… Nothing ended up being driving Elke up to the base of the Col de Cou and sending her on her way up to the best ridgeline ever. She wasn’t disappointed.

Race day came around quick. Unfortunately, my start didn’t… The triple threat of having gotten 100th place at the World Cup opener (during a sweet case of “black dot” poison Oak turned systemic infection), a lackluster 42nd in Germany and a narrow, steep start climb produced 60th position or so going into the first steep descent. Which was, apart from a crappy strategic standpoint, a pretty hilarious place to be. Lots of crashing. Lots of shockingly terrible bike riding. Even more bitching and moaning by the guys who were stuck walking their perfectly good bikes in the middle of it all. All in all, the only reasonable reaction was laughter and good-naturedly heckling the hecklers. Then, thankfully, hauling a bunch of ass the rest of the race whilst feeling awesome and keeping pace with the leaders from about 2 minutes back. I rode from 60th to 10th as the cheeky British announcer called out the “Impressive ride by the Big American” Thanks, buddy, that makes me feel way better on the climb every lap… Highlight of the race, other than feeling strong for the first time since Argentina in March: Passing convicted doper Filip Meirhaege and saying, in an even tone “Come on, jackess, let’s see what you’ve got now” minutes before hearing his tires slide out on the wet (did I mention it poored rain on the second lap, making a proper, awesome, mudfest) pavement and his drug-addled body crash into the metal course fencing as I rode away. Karma sure is tough…
A decently solid race and nice relaxing evening of more fantastic French/\Swiss/Alpine dining made the 6:30 wake-up and subsequent drive to the Zurich airport for our flight back to the states a bit more palatable. Not much, but it sure was nice to be on the way home… Wait a minute, this trip was awesome. Maybe I’ll do another one someday. By someday I mean in September when we go to Scotland for SingleSpeed World Championships, then the proper UCI Worlds, then over to Slovenia for World Cup finals, and, finally to Beijing for a Test Event on the Olympic MTB course. Might have to write that one up too. Although it’ll be more trains and planes than proper road tripping… It’s all point A to point B though, right?

Testing der Audi

2007-06-12T13:48:00.000-04:00

There is an old saying that goes something like this “don’t fix it if it aint broke” Well…. I tried to fix it. What I was fixing is my need for speed. I have spent the last 5 years racing a 2 wheel drive 140hp VW jetta… not so fast. But it has been reliable and a great tool for putting down quite a few stage miles.

So at this point I say to myself “You need an open class 4wd car”,.. brilliant!
Ok so I know this will cost allot more in general… big open class cars make big power and burn lots of fuel, tires, and every other part on the car. But somehow knowing all this does not stop me from buying an Audi A4 and building it into a mean rally car.

Testing begins…
Breaking in a new engine is a fairly simple process but deserves care. Basically I drive the car up and down the highway near my house trying not to go too crazy blasting the turbo etc… be nice to it but firm. Break in complete.

Test track day one…
I head over to my local secret test track for some hot laps. (the moto track parking lot) All goes well, and after blasting the turbo full on a few times I stop the car to adjust my safety harness. Holy crap this thing is fast!
Back to flogging the car around the make-shift track Im seeing just how big of a dust cloud one can create with an audi.
And then… stumble.. sputter,… stumble. Uh-oh… problem captain.
I nurse it back to the truck for further examination. “Captain, she’s out of fuel sir”
Its at this point I figure out the fuel efficiency is pretty bad on this rig.

Test track day 2…
For my second outing its off to CORE, a 100 acre do whatever you want dirt motorsports playground where the local rally community has put together a 3 mile rally course for all to enjoy. In other words, big fun. All goes well and I scare myself frequently. Mmmm, love that adrenalin.

So I could bore you with all the details but Ill give you the basics…
Over the period of 3 months I break, then fix the engine multiple times. The engine comes out of the car and completely apart 3-4 times, then buy another motor & proceed to quickly break that one.
So basically this car has crushed my spirit and my bank account.
Ohh but that speed was great!, ohh wait I hate it!
Uhh errr… hey where is that 2WD Jetta?

The new plan is, Jetta for rally, & audi for hillclimbs (if I don’t set it on fire first). Hillclimbing the audi might work better than rally as hillclimbs are usually 3-10 miles long, vs rallies, which average 140 miles. However this time I may skip the whole turbo idea for the audi and use one of audi’s V8 motors.

So we will see what happens as I change my mind every 5 minutes but that’s the plan for now.

Best Regards,
Brooks
http://4040racing.com

Oakridge Day Trip

2007-05-24T14:24:00.001-04:00

Not every “Roadtrip” has to take up weeks and involve sleeping in the back of a car in random gravel pits. A common theme this winter for me has been the “One-Day.” Shockingly, this involves one day of traveling with someone, or yourself, to do something, hopefully worthwhile. Now, some of you may be thinking that this sounds strikingly familiar to the old “day trip”. It might be, but for the sake of feeling like we’re talking about something exciting and new, not another trip to aunties for a reunion, we’ll stick with the one-day moniker. Maybe we’ll even think of a clever acronym….

Living in Bend, Oregon, there are infinite opportunites for one -day trips. The reasons for the one-day are accentuated by the situation I have in Bend. A vagabond at heart turned professional athlete, I’ve been kind of forced to settle down somewhere so I can be, or at least seem, grounded between month-long trips around the universe racing bikes. I was tricked into hanging out in Bend by an old buddy from Maine, Tim Jones, and my esteemed Giant teammate, Carl Decker. Turns out I like it here and have settled down as much as I’m able to… Great people, recreating, sleeping, it’s got it all for this kid. Unfortunately, I still get bored once a week or so, not bored enough to embark on a proper road-trip in the precious off-season, just enough to want to get out of town for about ten hours. Usually this ten hours is split between driving, some type of outdoor activity (kayaking, skiing, singletrack), eating, logistics, etc… The business model for the one-day requires at least a 1/1 ratio of driving to activating. Preferable is a 2/1 or better ratio. Neither of these ratios are especially carbon neutral though… I try to offset this by using the driving time to hone my line selection and visualization skills by traveling at an aggressive rate of speed through any remotely interesting stretch of road along the route. Fortunately, there are lots of interesting roads in the Pacific Northwest. Gravel or tarmac, the combination of rivers, mountains and logging interest have created hundreds of miles of epic driving. Fortunately, my Subaru WRX wagon was already totaled once when I purchased and dodgily repaired it, so I feel pretty good about flogging it within inches of it’s life, and the good line, on a regular basis. Good thing Michelin keeps me in sticky tires (both summer and winter) so I don’t hit anything… the only problem with this approach to the hallowed carbon neutrality is that I’m always the obvious volunteer to drive. Dang it. Carting your sleeping, hungover, drooling friends on an adventure every single time gets old, and hilarious after a while…

On that note, let’s get to the story of the day. We’ll start with a place name and a person’s name, both of which are very important in the cacophony of the universe as we all (should) know it. Timmy Evans. Oakridge, Oregon. Combine these two and you’ll have a great day, guaranteed. If you’re fortunate enough to toss in the rest of the neighborhood MTB crew compiled of a writer, a surgeon, an IT guy, a Canadian and everyone’s retirement hero, there’s no way you can go wrong. Ok, you probably still will go wrong, and it will probably be Timmy’s fault, or at least a result of his presence…

With seven folks and no cargo van, we were even less carbon neutral, but got to set up a fun hare n’ hound scenario for the hour and a half drive from Chardonnay Lane in Bend to the Trail Head Café in Oakridge. You see; the doctor-racer (Jon Finnoff) and the IT-racer (Ben Thompson) were able to conspire to rally the perpetually late Canadian (Chris Sheppard) to an on-time departure of 9am. The writer-racer (James Williams) and I were counting on at least fifteen extra minutes of bike loading/sandwich making/bathroom time on account of the Canadian’s reliable tardiness. No such luck. When a cowardly text from the (surprisingly punctual) Timmy came through with “still drunk, I’m not a rock star, no ride for me”, the hare ‘n hound plan was proposed. Canadian-Doctor-IT car would leave stat. Retired, Racer-Writer car would finish up in the bathroom, loading and sandwich construction departments, blaze across town to kick Timmy out of bed, roll him into the car, get gas, then catch the lead group before they finished their first (glorious) muffin at the Trailhead Café in Oakridge.

Two hours and a bunch of snacks, coffee (gross), storytelling, laughing, sleeping, drooling and good music found us in Oakridge just as the Canadian took his first muffin bite. Perfect. Oh, and it was a beautiful day, even more perfect. Leaving perpetually sunny and dry Bend to drive west over the Cascade crest and into the rain forest in march is risky to say the least. We hit the nail on the head, overnight rain had hopefully melted a bit more snow up high and tacked up the already perfect dirt in the valleys. Those of us who’d ridden in Oakridge before knew it was going to be mint and the two virgins could tell from our smiles that their cherries were about to be popped. There wasn’t even really a question of where to go for the first timers. River Trail to Alpine Trail. Just enough downhill, then uphill singletrack to whet your appetite before spending the next hour and a half climbing perfect grade fireroad to earn the Alpine reward.

A couple muffins later and we were on our way down the Willamette River under warm sun and on moist dirt. The boys fell into the first singletrack and things progressed from there. After half an hour of pumping short downhills and root slide-hopping the climbs along the North Fork Middle Fork Trail we were sufficiently warmed up for the next road slog. The racer boys immediately fell into their prescribed workouts for the day while I cruised with Johnny and talked about 29ers, privately scolding the boys up the road for integrating heart-rate monitors and stopwatches into our Sunday adventure. I lasted about ten minutes on my high horse before realizing I’d better do some fast riding of my own (which I wanted to do on the perfect big-ring logging road anyway), so I could catch up and make sure they didn’t miss any turns… Wouldn’t want them going too high and getting into north-facing snow banks after all… (turns out we decided to go high anyway, and go snowed out). After making the catch and purveying some information in the form of scratched-dirt directions, I turned around to cruise back down and finish the climb with the Candian-Doctor-Retired group. My timing couldn’t have been more perfect, just as I almost plowed into the Canadian, who was rounding a blind corner which I happened to be flattracking around, a bit out of control, he projectile vomited, almost right on me. Awesome. Semi-functional stomach viruses are great entertainment for casual onlookers. More puking commenced just after we got shut down by a couple feet of snow and were coasting back to a cutoff road. This time Timmy was fortunate enough to be within view, he was very impressed that someone else was vomiting all over the pure white snow with one foot unclipped at about 25mph…

Now, to the good part. You see, I really look forward to riding fast on unfamiliar trail with a couple guys who are also down for reckless pinning it. Chris and Timmy are the perfect partners in crime, and we had about 4,000 vertical feet of perfect Alpine Trail singletrack below us (after some chocolate eating and wilderness latrine techniques).

About one minute in we were already riding like dicks, laughing and hanging it out as we blasted through a winter’s worth of fallen twigs, branches and pinecones covering the velvety trail when I heard the telltale metallic grinding of someone getting the proverbial stick in the spokes. Not surprisingly, it was Timmy, and, in the interest of fun and aggression, instead of stopping pedaling, he went ahead and tore his rear derailleur off. Sweet. Great, now our favorite loose downhillin’ companion was riding a chainless coaster bike. But wait, he still could keep up, since the trail didn’t really require any pedaling anyway. We continued to rip it like there was no tomorrow, pausing only once to take in the (pretty spectacular) scenery and let Timmy push his bike up a short climb.

At the end of the trail, back on the valley floor, adrenalin subsiding, the reality of how were were going to get Timmy the four flat miles to the Trailhead occurred to us. How were we going to do that? First idea was to send racer guys back to get the car. As they rolled off in that direction, the Canadian and I decided we could just push Timmy home. Great idea, partner with the puker to push the hungover guy home. I ended up pushing the whole way, which is about as hard as it looks, that being pretty hard…

Back at the café, our ride time was only at 3.5 hours, factoring in the driving around time we needed at least another half hour, preferable an hour, of riding to make our trip responsible… Timmy and the Puker sat out for obvious reasons and the rest of us set out on the quintessential Oakridge quickie, Salmon Creek Trail. A half hour of cruisy singletrack up and a half hour of rooty, rocky slickness on the way back down the other side of the creek left us feeling like we had a solidly worthwhile day.

Back at the café once again, we had some more muffins, peeled off muddy clothes, recounted the day’s events, loaded up, high-fived and were home in time for a cruiser bike ride downtown to get Margaritas and Enchiladas at our favorite Sunday night watering hole and catch up with all the other Sunday one-day’ers in town. Not too bad.

Whistler, BC

2006-11-22T15:18:00.000-05:00

The weather in the Northwest is no joke. The sideways, driving rain leaves you feeling soaked for days. But even the worst case of seasonal affective disorder can’t compete with Whistler in late summer.

After driving up through Vancouver along the Sea to Sky Highway, we dropped our bags at the Delta Hotel in Whistler, all along the way sampling plenty of the region’s specialty: pouring rain. The next morning, though, the rain had quit and Whistler showed its true colors. Craig and the team at Epic Ride showed us just about everything that makes this place so incredible. After riding CreamPuff and Pemberton (using Blackcomb helicopters as our personal chauffeurs), we checked out the awesome Alta Lake. Afterward we made a pit stop at the Howe Sound Brewpub in Squamish for a few pints of their Devil’s Elbow IPA. There are few better ways to cap a perfect day.

About with some nasty weather is part of any road trip. Sure, it put a bit of a damper on our Northwest excursion, but the road is all about the unexpected. And while being carted around in a helicopter is pretty great, nothing beats the road.

Tour de Thule

2006-10-11T14:38:00.000-04:00

Thule's 2nd Annual Tour De Thule took place on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006, and included heroic performances, personal triumph and a near photo finish. Signaling a good-bye to warmer summer lunch rides and hello to harsh winter sessions on the indoor trainer, the Tour de Thule provides a yardstick for Thule's Seymour CT riders to train harder over the winter or relish in others misery. At any rate, the racers left the flagpole at US headquarters before noon, the first rider out being a new member of the Thule Wheelman's Club.

Denise started with 20.00 minutes on the field and fought off the peloton until the very end. Waves of cyclists left the building in intervals based a secret time formula planned to get all riders on the final hill together.

After a 13.3 mile course through rolling hills, past Clark Library, and back home, Thule's number crunchers had it right, as the last hill had over 10 riders climbing for top position.

First place finisher Peter Pell had the following to
say about his victory, "Clearly I have been
sandbagging to get a better start time, and my cleaver
rues has again paid off in a big event".
Pell also credited a pre-ride stretch and
expert mechanical work of product manager Darren Synder.

In total, 17 riders took the challenge of Tour De Thule 2006 - all who participated or cheered from the sidelines had a great time and are already in training for 2007.

World Kayak Tour makes a stop

2006-08-28T10:26:00.000-04:00

The World Kayak Tour Blog Site is sponsored by Camp Arrowhead, Jackson Kayak and Entropy Gear. Krazy Kayakers are a group of three paddlers travelling around, having fun, and searhing for the meaning of life. The group includes; Matt Rideout (Tennessee) Jez Blanchard (Australia) D-Mac (North Carolina).

We'll be following the World Kayak Tour and Krazy Kayakers Jez, Matt and D-Mac on our Roadtrip blog - stop over at http://www.worldkayaktour.blogspot.com// and drop them a hello - They love feedback and are always wired -

Thursday, August 24, 2006
We spent the night driving from Washington DC to Seymour, CT. This was quite an epic drive to say the least. We pulled out of DC around 11:00 pm and drove our way through Baltimore, and then onto New York City. Somewhere in Delaware we stopped for a midnight snack at McDonald’s. This was the beginning of an interesting conversation. Jez and I were standing at the drive thru, because the bus was too tall to fit through, and a guy sticks his head outside the window of his big black Excursion piloted by his driver wearing tuxedo and begins to speak. He asks,”Are you guys just standing there or what?” I replied by saying,”Yes we are waiting for our food, sorry mate.” A few moments later we walked away with our sacks full of food and Jez turns to me and asks if the guy looked like a member of the band Hanson. I answered,”I think your right.” I walked back up to the excursion and said, “You asked me a stupid question, so now it’s my turn… are you guys Hanson?” To make a long story short, it was most definitely the band Hanson ordering French fries at 1:00 am in the morning in the middle of nowhere Delaware… Random.We passed through the New York City around 4:30 am, and there were already massive amounts of traffic. I was amazed to be driving on an interstate that had 6 lanes of traffic in both directions, that’s right 12 lanes of mass chaos! The lanes are very narrow, and the tractor trailers were passing us as if we were setting still. Jez drove through the heart of the city; I feel that he deserves an award for driving the bus right through the middle of Brooklyn! After we traveled out of New York City I fell fast asleep as Jez drove us on into Connecticut.

We arrived at Thule U.S. Headquarters around lunch today and met with Steve Doviak, their marketing director. Steve checked out our remarkable new bus (which still does not have an official name) and then treated us to lunch. After lunch, we picked up our new gear and began to assemble the massive, massive new rack. The two of us spent the next 3 hours putting the rack together in THULE’s parking lot. The bus now has 4 sets of 89” bars ( largest allowed by law, built for a Hummer!), 2 Ferrari red twenty one cubic feet cargo boxes, 2 sets of Hull-A-Ports, 2 kayak stackers, 12 straps, 2 t-shirts, 2 work shirts, 2 hats, and a bunch of logos to put on the bus. The people at THULE are some of the best people we have met on the road. There is no question that the two of us will always be THULE customers. Check out the bus pictures, this thing is awesome & really tall. We are only 6 inches shorter than the average tractor trailer.Jez is back at the wheel again, and I have resumed my roll as computer nerd and we are headed for Watertown, NY. The next update will be from the Black River Festival.Good night from interstate 84,Rideout

Summer in Bend, OR

2006-08-03T13:25:00.000-04:00

The photo is from an intensity session early this morning. I’m entering my final month of training here in Bend, am looking ahead towards heading back East. This summer has been a good mix of working and training, while enjoying the west. I just returned from conducting a biathlon camp with some young junior biathletes in the Methow Valley in the north Cascades of Washington. By far one the coolest place I have been to in the US!

Haley Johnson -

Green River Narrow

2006-07-28T10:55:00.000-04:00

The Green River Narrows that runs between Hendersonville, NC and Saluda, NC is one of the premier class V stretches of whitewater in the world. That is a pretty big statement but when you consider these three criteria, than I think you will agree; 1.) damn controlled year round, so it runs at a good level more than most any other river in the country, 2.) warm water for 8 months of the year and just chilly, for you westerners, the other four months, and lastly but definately not least, 3.) Class V action with these two world famous rapids, shown in these pics Gorilla and Sunshine. If you have never been on the Green and you are a solid boater, than I am sure it is on your list.

Here is the pic of Sunshine.

Chris Roberts - Eastern Technical Representative

Eastern Envoy journal entry

2006-06-11T08:19:00.000-04:00

*Tuesday, May 30 - 7:30am flight from Greenville/Spartanburg airport to Seattle. Pick up, new to me, Thule van and start driving east. Live in Ontario, Oregon for the night. Wingers Diner dinner, solid value!
*Wednesday, May 31 - drive to Salt Lake City, Utah and hook up with my brother for lunch and dinner. Fighting through a pretty rough sinus ailment, so early night.
*Thursday, June 1 - solid night of rest and no humidity seems to be treating the nostrils pretty well. Play golf w/brother at Mountain Dell course right off I-80 on the way to Park City. Two courses, Lake and Canyon. We play the Canyon course. Absoulutely beautiful! I shoot an 84 and my brother, who by watching swing, you would swear you could beat with 3 clubs, shoots a 74!
*Friday, June 2 - Leave SLC at 7am, headin' towards Vail, CO. for the Teva Mountain Games. Arrive at games around 2pm, hook up with Eric (western Thule Envoy). Watch the semifinals of both mens and womens freestyle kayaking event. Pretty cool to see what modern kayaks, with serious athletes, can do in a pretty small river feature.
*Saturday, June 3 - pretty much a Mountain Games spectator for the day. Finals in the freestyle kayaking were pretty cool. All Jackson Kayak final. EJ, Stephen, and Jay all put on an impressive display of athletic prowess with EJ having to come up huge on his last ride. Simply put, he stomps every move, both ways to beat Stephen. Emily Jackson keeps the family tradition by beating all other femme contenders quite handily, by looping bigger and more often as well as coming oh so close to sticking a McNasty!
*Sunday, June 4 - wake up and listen to all of the interesting things that went on at the Mountain Ball last night. had every intention of going, but ended up falling asleep waiting for the 10pm start time. arrests, jail time, lost purses with phones and passports, etc. keep me entertained. 2pm start the big drive east again. make it to Hays, KS for the nights rest.
*Monday, June 5 - oh, something new, more drrrriiiiivvvviiinng! go to St. Louis, MO.
*Tuesday, June 6 - hook up with midwest Thule sales rep, Eric Pirtle and clinic 9 people in the REI located on Brentwood Ave. Great store. Outta there at 1pm and guess what?? Drive. Stop from fatigue in somewhereville, TN and crash in van for a few hours.
*Wednesday, June 7 - finish up the drive to Tryon, NC.
*Thursday, June 8 - wake up to hear Tuxedo hydrostation will be running one unit at 100% capacity from 1pm till 4pm, operational schedules are determined.....well, if you are a southeastern kayaker, you know the rest. Kayak on the world famous, for good reason, Green River Narrows. I have been to a lot of great places but I gotta tell you that coming home to dependable, warm, class V is tough to beat!

* stay tuned for more updates from earlier this year. travels to Utah for kick ass powder shots, Tuckermans Ravine on Mt Washington in May and ongoing trip reports from the working Thule Road Trip.

Eastern Envoy vacation

2006-06-09T09:13:00.000-04:00

*January 26 - 31, 2006
making the transition to live in the southeast, after growing up skiing and kayaking in the upstate of NY has it's plusses and minuses. the only real downside is there is not much skiing happening here in Tryon, NC. not to fear, that is what vacations are for! my brother still lives in Salt Lake City, UT. he and I moved out there together in 1992, he never left. take 3 good friends fly out and hit the snow as good as could be for 4 days (Brighton, Snowbird, Snowbasin and Alta) in late January. makes me a little envious of the folks that live in this epic place. if there was any decent kayaking in SLC, I would have never left. after all, where else can you ski "the greatest snow on earth" and have all the awesome amentities of a pretty cool city within an hour of each other. if the weather cooperates you could even get a round of golf in the same day! If you like sushi, hit up the Happy Sumo in the Gateway Open Air Mall in downtown. Port O Call for refreshing beverages is alway a quality choice as well.

I have got to give some advise here; If you have never been to Alta (sorry knuckledraggers), on a powder day, you need to MAKE it happen. The energy and aura exuding from everyone waiting for that first chair will make you forget anything other than that moment. beware, it is contagious! this first pic is sticking the landing from the top of Eddy's High Nowhere. I thought I was really cool right before this pic was taken, right up until a fellow freeheeler climbed up, clicked in and threw a 60 foot telecopter just left of where I dropped in. no thinking, no hesitation, step in and huck it, land and outta sight in 4 turns, awesome to see. wish I got it on film.
More to come.

CR

Day Eleven 4-4-05

2006-04-05T00:08:00.000-04:00

Today was a catch up with work day. We found a coffee shop in downtown Monterey that had free wireless access so Darren, Eric, and myself were finally able to get a decent internet connection. This has proven to be an issue during our travels and in our lovely hotel here in Monterey which at its price you would think would have free internet access, but no, $10.99 for 24 hours. Even the $49.99 a night motel down the road has free internet, thanks Hyatt!

Day Ten 4-3-2006

2006-04-03T23:47:00.000-04:00

Rain! I thought this was beautiful sunny California? Today we put our buddy Johnny on a flight back to the east coast and said our final farewell to our RV. I think we were all ready to sleep in a real bed after spending 9 nights sleeping in an RV. No ride today because of the rain and it looks like no ride tomorrow since the forecast is 100% chance of rain.
We met up with Eric Wallace today, the true end user of the trailer that started this whole excursion. Eric is Thule's Western Tech Rep or the official title of "Thule Envoy". He has already outfitted his new truck with racks, decals, and plenty of schwag, this rig definitely is a great match to the trailer he will be towing. If it ever stops raining we'll try to get some pictures of this match made in metal.
Dinner was at El Torito on Cannery Row in Monterey, a superb mexican restaurant located right on Monterey Bay. We recommend the Cadillac Margaritas!

Day Nine 4-2-06

2006-04-03T01:50:00.000-04:00

After a very long week of traversing the country we finally arrived in sunny Monterey, CA late last night thanks to Captain Snyder's Red Bull binge. Upon waking we decided to at least see if the hotel would allow us to drop the trailer for the day instead of continuing to haul it around. To our surprise they allowed us to check in at 10am. To celebrate this miraculous accomplishment and for cooking breakfast for our selves the previous 7 mornings we decided to treat ourselves to breakfast at Denny's, a fine establishment. After breakfast we headed back to the hotel for what we considered our first real showers of the trip, not that we didn't shower but we didn't have to hike across a campsite to some sort of make shift shower stall. After a shower and shave we headed to Santa Cruz for some touristy type stuff. Let's just say that Santa Cruz is an interesting town, possesing a very eclectic group of individuals. We then headed off to San Jose to meet up with my sisters for dinner and to unload our extra food on them. No pictures today, sorry.

Day Eight 4-1-06 Red Rocks

2006-04-02T00:07:00.000-05:00

Climbing at Red Rocks in Vegas, specifically Black Corridor. If you're a climber you will understand that we jammed on some 5.10a & bs. Enjoy.

Day Seven 3-31-06

2006-04-01T00:20:00.000-05:00

We made it to Vegas and did a little ride, nothing exciting in Vegas really but when I get better connection I will write more. Tomorrow we are going to climb at Red Rocks so there should be some good pics from that.

So, one interesting thing on the ride was all the burnt cactus and other desert vegetation that was on one side of the trail and not on the others. Very strange? There were other places around Vegas that also had this strange phenomenon. Apparently the lightning strikes and causes fires, but it still didn't explain that it was burnt on one side of the trail and not the other.

Day Six 3-30-06 The Epic

2006-03-30T21:49:00.000-05:00

Today, Captain Darren decided he wanted his subordinates to partake in an "EPIC" 35 mile "mountain" bike ride. I put "mountain" in quotations because 16.2 miles of this "EPIC" ride was on the road. Darren would like to say in his defense that 7 miles of the road portion was on dirt, albeit all up hill!!! Needless to say Johnny and I were/are not very happy with Darren. They call them "mountain" bikes for a reason!! So, basically the ride started with an 11 mile climb up to the trailhead. If you didn't catch that it was an 11 MILE uphill road ride on mountain bikes, did I mention it was all uphill. Normally I wouldn't complain about this but it is March and we are from New England where riding outside during the winter months that precede March is not all that feasible. In other words we're too out of shape to start a ride with an 11 mile uphill climb to start our ride at a parking lot where everyone else parked to start our ride. So, basically we were bonking by the beginning of our trail section of the ride which made it very hard to enjoy the surrounding landscape. The descent was unbelievable but would have been more fun if we had some energy to descend with. The picture below is actually about the time Johnny and I were planning our mutiny, which didn't happen but should have. Exhausted and sunburnt we packed up and headed towards Vegas, hopefully we'll be able to ride. Did I mention I slept from 6pm to 7am after this ride, not exactly the fun filled night I would have liked to have had, thanks Darren!!!

Day Six 3-30-06

2006-03-30T10:12:00.000-05:00

Your morning photos.

Last night we had dinner at Miguel's Baja Grill, excellent authentic Mexican food right on Main Street in Moab. The food was excellent, the Margaritas were superb and the atmosphere can't be beat. If you're ever in Moab definitely visit Miguel's for dinner, you won't be dissappointed.

Today the plan is an epic ride here in Moab with lots of photos and lots of riding.

Day Five 3-29-06

2006-03-29T10:39:00.000-05:00

WIND! WIND! WIND! Stay tuned.

So we woke up this morning to 40 mph wind gusts and very ominous clouds, definitely did not look good for riding. After a big breakfast we headed into the town of Moab to meet up with Darren's buddy Clark at one of the local bike shop. Once we were in town the wind was much better and it looked good for a ride. The rest can only be described in pictures. For those Thule people we will get as many pictures as possible on the F: Drive soon. I also have to give a huge thanks to CANNONDALE, these bikes kick big a**!!! Cannondale - We are all on Prophets

Day Four 3-28-06

2006-03-28T10:37:00.000-05:00

The picture is the scene we woke up to this morning. It was dark when we arrived at the rest stop so we had no idea what was around us. I'll post more as the day unfolds. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DIANE!!

We headed into Salt Lake City to meet up with one of Darren's buddies who works at Black Diamond. We had breakfast at "Eggs in the City" and were then treated to a tour of the Black Diamond facility and the life cycle of a carabiner. We then loaded up again and headed off to Moab. The drive from SLC to Moab was spectacular, mountain passes, grazing cattle, endless plains, truly amazing. We arrived in Moab about 4:30 MST and found the KOA campground to hook up the RV and finally cook a real dinner. No ride yet, we arrived a little too late and unfortunately the weather forcast is calling for rain tomorrow. We'll have to see in the morning how the weather looks. Like true pioneers we hunkered down for the night with a few beers and some delicious burritos courtesy of Chef John.

Day Three 3-27-06

2006-03-28T09:56:00.000-05:00

This was definitely the longest leg of the journey. I give you my word I will never return to Nebraska, 450 miles of nothing but wind bites the big one. We started out about a 100 miles from the Nebraska and ended up 50 miles from Salt Lake City (Thank you Red Bull!). Gas mileage sucked today because of the wind, not fun hauling 48' of camper and trailer across the plains with sheer winds and semis flying past. We are very excited to finally be at a destination. Maybe we'll get to ride today, that's the plan at least. We'll finally have more time to blog and update everyone on what's happening since we'll have internet connection that's not through a cell phone card. Even though the wind sucked it was beautiful driving, a little rainy all day but it cleared up as we approached Wyoming. What a beautiful country we live in, it was a little dark as we approached the mountains but you could see them rising up all around you, very awe inspiring. Till tomorrow!

-Shawn

Day Two 3-26-06

2006-03-26T18:59:00.000-05:00

Day two started at the rest stop in central PA where we spent the previous night. Captain Snyder felt quite ambitious this morning and made a scrumptous plate food of scrambled eggs for all. The rest of the day was quite uneventful, although Darren and I have mastered the moving driver exchange (don't try this at home), eventhough it's not necessary since we can only get about 300 miles to the tank. We've made it through PA, OH, IL, IN, and finally stopped for the night in Iowa about 100 miles from the Nebraska border. We drove about 17 hours and over 1000 miles today. Tomorrow is going to be another long day, things should get more exciting once we reach SLC and Moab and actually start riding.

-Shawn

Day One 3-25-06

2006-03-26T09:16:00.000-05:00

The day started at my house where we congregated and headed off to Middletown, NJ to pick up the RV. So, far everything went off without a hitch, returned to Thule and picked up the trailer and headed to the grocery store. After cleaning out Stop n' Shop in Seymour, CT we headed on our way with Captain (self appointed) Darren Snyder at the wheel. After a few hours Darren and I made a switch at the wheel and we continued on running into snow in the Poconos. Finally found a rest area and parked for the night, ending our day with a few beverages. Till tomorrow!

-Shawn

Prep Day 3-24-06

2006-03-26T07:54:00.000-05:00

Friday Darren and myself spent most of the day preparing the trailer for its journey; boxes, decals, & cago... it came out sweet!

-Shawn

2006-03-23T14:18:00.000-05:00

This is a similar trailer to the one we will be hauling to CA. It has a 42" Plasma screen, DVD player, and full sound system with receiver. I think we can find some uses for it!

The beginning of the trip

2006-03-23T11:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Darren and I went on a short trip to Cannondale in Bethel, CT to pick up a couple of demo bikes that they have graciously loaned to us for the duration of our trip. They've also hooked us up with a bunch of riding gear for our little excursion. If you don't know what we are planning read on...

Well the short version is myself, my friend/co-worker Darren, and our friend John are taking an RV cross-country hauling a very custom trailer to our final destination of Monterey, CA and the Sea Otter Classic. We plan on doing a little riding and climbing while we make our way across. So check back to see what we are up to.