Ein Abend mit Waldo

Free Beer?

Afternoon meetings got canceled at the last second so I headed over to Waldo for an afternoon ride. Met a few friends, one of which brought one of his dogs.  Cute dog but there is nothing worse than getting stopped in the middle of a climb because your tire is about to come into contact dog ass.  It's not the crap I am worried about more like hurting the pooch, and he dropped a beauty off trail.  Funny how dogs know not to crap in the middle of trail and yet equestriennes seem to leave their crap all over the trail; 

Got down to the water's edge just in time to see the last bit of color from the sunset fade from the horizon.  From then on, all riding required illuminated assistance.  The beer in suit case from the pickup at the parking lot belong to the dude having a bond fire at the water's edge.  He wasn't very chatty, was it because he knew he was breaking the law, or the six pack he already consumed.  Weird.  

That dog was a tick magnet.  They were pulling ticks off him at every stop.  I am glad I sprayed copious amounts of bug repellent on me before taking off.

I finally noticed that the Kona is starting to feel heavy!  I really need to weigh this bike but and replacing the Carver Carbon Fork with the Fox only added more to the weight but the bike rides beautifully so I am not complaining.   Might have to the do the old switcheroo and shift the Fox to the diSSEnt and put the Manitou Minute on the Spot, however I really want to get a new fork for the Spot so I can use OEM stem I got with it.

So far, the Narragansett beer that I have been getting from Trader Joes is batting 1000 so after the porter I tried the Lager and this is a really good beer.  I hope they make a 40!

Foxy Lady ... Reprise

I put the Fox F29 RLC on the Unit and it's completely changed the bike.  First off the fork, with the increased crown height slackens it a lot more than with the rigid Carver fork.  But the combination of the steal frame, the shock and the Rampages make the ride feel like butter.

 

Rode Upper Paugussett again and to my amazement, the Poly Brody is completely clear!  I rolled through there and came across quite a few people out walking.  One woman was carrying a can of beer and then further up the Brody I found two beer cans, same type, in a stone wall.  Are you kidding me?

I grabbed both cans and put them in back pouch.  Only one made it home with me.  The other one fell out somewhere on the Gussy as I clearing more blow downs.  I cleared out 4 more blow downs opening the Gussy completely up now.  I still need to go in and do some more benching at Blue Cross Blue Shield and there is another reroute I want to do on the other end of the trail.  I did, however, do the loop back again and then ride back up the Gussy and that made it a worth while ride.

Re-Route after Friday's work

Today's ride

An ice cold 'Gany Porter was excellent after the ride.

If I only had a chainsaw

With a chainsaw it would have made my effort much easier but I did it the old fashioned way with a hand axe, pruning saw, and clippers.  It took me approximately 4 hours to do everything that I did and as you can see on the map there is still a section the on the Gussy that still needs to be addressed.

I also had to do three re-routes: one at the Blue Cross Roller because there is limp sticking out into the trail that was too big for me to move.  The resulted in creating a new drop/roller going around it.

Another re-route further up on the Gussy between the two stream crossings and another just south of the new re-route, which by the way is now the main trail because there is a lot of debris that now blocks the fall line descent portion of the trail.  It's not the best re-route but I am sure it will break in over time.

The angled up-and-over is toast, too, so.  I hate to say this but I am glad it's gone because I hated it anyway.  I could never get enough speed to get over it while riding up the Gussy.

At first I thought I was going to have to put in a re-route on the re-route but after cutting and chopping the big branch that fell on the trail I was able to move it enough so that the original benching is accessible.  The only section I didn't do is the last 1/4 mile north of this.  From what I can recall there are two sections that are blocked.  I am going to ride in Sunday and try to take care of them.  As for the Poly Brody, I won't be touching that until I can get a chainsaw or the state does it for me, which will probably be quite some time.

One word of caution, if you are going to be in the forest on Monday through Saturday, beware of hunters.  There were three trucks in the parking lot Friday but I didn't see anyone on the Gussy Trail.  I did see some some guy hiking the blue trail and then when I returned to the lot around three there was a couple with day packs that looked like they were either going geocaching or actually going to camp out over night.  They were acting kind of secretative/aloof which led me to believe they were geocaching.

When in Trumbull ... Ride Trumbull!

Heading into the ninth day of no power after the Great Halloween Snowstorm, Alfred, my family and I have become CL&P Refugees and moved in with the in-laws in Trumbull.  So if I am going to be living in Trumbull I need to bring a bike and ride Trumbull.  

Conditions at Pequonnock River Valley were far better than what I saw the other day at Upper Paugussett State Forest..  It's been awhile since I rode P-Valley and some of the impacts of Hurricane Irene were being utilized by the trail minions.

I had been reading about this new ride down on the blue trail and it looked good from afar but when you get on it right in the middle of the course it's totally FUBAR.  Apparently it was open all the way through at one point but now it's not.  Too bad, because this would be fun to ride.

Living at someone else's house can be frustrating and disconcerting but the two hours of riding at P-Valley and enjoying some nice fall foliage seems to melt those frustrations away.

I decided to check out some old carriage roads on the other side of Whitney Avenue but they weren't that interesting.  There was an old rusty truck from the 50s that was kind of cool.  Nothing much back there, but curious who owns the property because you could make a nice little trail system back there and potentially tie in with the other commuter lot off 111.  Wouldn't that be AWESOME!

Death March at Upper Paugussett

After any major storm the safest bike to ride in the woods is the Single Speed and thus I took the Unit out to check out what happened after the Nor'easter we had here in New England on the weekend before Halloween.  Unfortunately, I never got out right after the storm to see what it would be like to trying riding any of my current stable of bikes in snow because I was too busy trying to get my generator hooked up and coping with the fact that we were going to be out of power for a spell.  That spell is now 6 days and it might be a few more before we get ours back and the town is fully restored.

I haven't been riding the Kona for sometime because I started having knee pains and figured I might have been over doing it a bit, I was riding every day at one point.  I am also considering putting the Fox Fork on the Kona to see what it's like with a little squish but I will tell you one thing, I still love riding rigid, even after yesterday's trudge on the trails at Upper Paugussett State Forest.  Any where there was a tree with leaves still on it you would invariably find branches across the trail.  It took me two hours to do the entire 4 mile circuit!  If you would like to see more pictures of the damage, surf on over to the Upper Paugussett Blog and check out the Snotober Carnage post.

While I wasn't intending on taking out the Fall Line descent across from the Trail Re-Loc that Rick and I built prior to the storm, Mother Nature has done it for me.  About 90% of what has fallen down can be pulled off the trail.  I was running short of time so I did very little but if we have power this weekend, I will try to get out and clear things up.  If you would like to help, shoot me an email:  mark@cyclesnack.com and let me know when you are available.  Shooting for a Sunday clean up at this point.