A day at Yellow Creek......

Spent Saturday morning riding at Yellow Creek with Monkeyboy, The Disenchanted one and Sean. Spend about 2.5 hours riding the trails built by LHORBA. The trails are in really nice shape and well maintained, but if you don't know where they are....GOOD LUCK. The trails themselves reminded me allot of the trails at Boyce Park (8 years ago), as that is the last time I was there. There is nothing I would consider to be technical, although Steve found a way to get bloodied up. Can you believe I actually had time to pull out my camera on this one?

There was one rock garden that I doubt anybody except a trials rider could ride but for the most part I would say that these trails are beginner to intermediate in nature.

The other annoying thing was the bridges. It was pretty damp and the bridges were treacherous, so if you happen there on a rainy day...and you can actually find all of the trails watch out for the bridges and the single board bridge that kind of jumps out of nowhere at you. No real penalty if you happen to miss it,at least that I can remember, but watch for it.

There are also several tricks and log piles to ride over as well. they are all ridable...even Steve managed across one without any mishaps.

All in all we had a really good time and supposedly there is a map of the trails that somebody has mad up and I am trying to lay my hand on one of these right now.





If you get the opportunity to get out to Yellow Creek to ride you wont regret it. The park is beautiful and I am sure that they will work harder to make the trails easier to find. There are plenty of facilities and the lake is there for an after ride dip.

Mountain Weekend

Spent the better part of Saturday at roaring Run with Sean, Bill, Jay, Liz, Dave, Chris, Paul and Nina. Had a really good time and the group only had a couple of mechanicals. One really bent derailleur hanger and back to back flats. We road all of the old trails and most of the new. About half of the group bailed while we fixed the derailleur hanger but they all had to keep moving. Chris had just driven in from Maine the night before so he was already tired before we started.

Had another group Ride at Laurel Mountain on Sunday but was unable to attend due to my wife having to work. Hope to make it up there some day.

The bike is finished......

Finally got my sons bike finished this morning. I must say I was kind of concerned that he wanted it painted gold but it turned out really nice. I ordered some red stickers from eBay which finished it off quite nicely. Its a TREK but since there aren't any mass produced bikes made in the good Ole USA these days, not that there would b ea 20" anyway, any of them will do now.

Why is it I never have my camera......

So I got a late start on my ride to day and had a laundry list of things to do as well so I headed out for a quick 35. SO I am riding along minding my own business and I notice this truck sitting along the side of the road. As I approach this guy starts to get out and kind of flags me down, and as a fellow citizen I start to slow down.

As I get closer he asks if I want to see something cool, and as I ride past I notice he still has his pants on, (someday I will have to have my wife write about all of the times she has been flashed in her life), so I figure it might be safe to stop about 25 yards or so down the road from him just in case. As I stop and turn around he points to the sky and says check that out , a bald eagle. Now that is pretty cool. I have heard of some nesting near a rails to trail about 6 miles from here but come to find out there are a couple of eagles nesting near Keystone Dam as well.

Here is a crappy photo I took with my phone.


















Now the only bald eagle I have seen up until this point in my life was when I was in high school. I was a member of the sportsman's club and for our field trip we went to Pymatuning. Now this was an impressive feet in itself as most of us were completely plastered (about a three hour drive on a greyhound bus, with all the smuggled liquor and dope you could handle) by the time we got there. That coupled with the spotting scope you had to look through to see the birds was ridiculous.

Not much to say but this is funny.......

Shoveling poo and paintin frames

So as the weather could not decide what it was going to do yesterday I bagged the ride since it was pouring down rain and told my son we would take his bike apart and repaint the frame to a more manly color. It is hard to lay down hard cash for a bike that will maybe last a year, and as all cyclists I have along list of friends that have barely used, good quality bikes that their kids have outgrown as well.

So I scored this bike for him last summer from a friend whose 4th kid had finally outgrown it. Unfortunately all but one of his kids have high levels of estrogen so a more testosterone based color was in order. We got the bike tore down, sanded and the primer coat on. My son is only six but he did a pretty good job helping me sand and I even let him shoot some of the paint.

The Poo Part

Since it was damp from the rain I wanted to give the paint a good day to dry so we hopped into the truck and headed out for some manure for our garden. Its a short trip as there is a farm just across the road from our house. Of course my son came along to supervise the operations and to ask questions. He can make me nuts some times with all of the questions he has, so I asked him "Whats up with all the questions son?" He replied " I just want to learn all I can". Now how can you argue with that response? I guess all those books and tapes my wife invested in when he was a baby are paying off.

No....It's more like riding in the garage.

Was the response I gave to my wife the other day when she asked if riding my trainer felt like riding outside. I have been using the trainer in the garage on bad weather days, since I have moved it out there for doing some fittings for some friends. Of course this response was totally off base according to here but after all of our years together you would think it would be the answer she would have expected.

Riding with Brownie......

Brownie was in town the other day to finish the testing that Monkeyboy is conducting for his thesis. we did the revers five points loop and ended up running into both Wallwork and the rain. Fortunately though we were only about 10 miles from home and you can only get so wet. Unfortunately the temperature dropped about 10 degrees from when we started so needless to say we were pretty cold by the time we returned to my house.