The Mud Puddle!!

Yup a mud puddle attacked me on my ride yesterday. I was Just Riding Along and bam the mud puddle sucked in my front wheel all the way to the hub and threw me over the bars. I had to fight with the mud puddle a bit to get my bike back from him but eventually I got it back and was able to continue along on my ride/hike.

Life is good right now, I'm back to working in a shop, kind of, I'm working in the build shop for one of the biggest bike shops in North America - Bow Cycle. So now on my time off from the drilling rig I am spending my time building bikes 8 hours a day. I finally got to pick up my very first by my self CAR!! a nice little Subaru Outback 2.5XT.

So now I have a way to get out of the city and explore some trails.

Yesterday I took my new car out to Bragg Creek and tried out some of the trails north of the parking lot. They were pretty good, I started out on a trail called Telephone which was all just double track up the side of the mountain. Looking at the map I saw that there is was a trail called Long distance that should make for a good loop off of telephone so that is what I planed on doing. I got to long distance and aparently they did not put up signs saying that this was a very incompleat trail. There was a little bit of a hike a bike, the whole time I was thinking that this better be worth it when I get to the finished part of the trail, a little more walking and I was thinking - they better have finished a bit more of this trail.

I did eventually make it to where work had been done on the trail and it was worth it, one spot on the trail ran along a little opening that looked out across the mountains to the west and it was hard to stay on the trail and not just stare out at the scenery. Close to the end of Long distance I made my way over to a trail called braggin rights. Now this trail made my day. A rolling downhill with some hard corners and lots of litttle hips and small rock and root hits. I can't wait to do this trail a few more times when it is a little dryer, I can see with knowing the trail I could get some really good flow and some really good speed along it.

Since the mud puddle got me at the start of the trail this is what I ended up looking like by the end of the day.

Its time for some more adventures exploring Alberta trails, which I can say are pretty good, the downs are epic but the climbs are as well.

April and May were busy Months

April and May were busy months in so many ways, there was racing, traveling, working, building, buying.

First lets start with racing...well kind of. back in April I traveled back to Ontario and attempted to race the famous Paris to Ancaster race. I went with the new bike and hopes that my fitness wasn't too bad. The bike was great but the fitness was not there at all. About half way though the race there was just a little hill up an over pass I tried to stand and peddle over it and my legs just said no you can't do that. From that point on the race just became a nice little ride in the mud. Yes as usual P2A was a mudfest.

My new bike on it's first real ride after P2A mudfest

The second half of my racing for the season goes out to Edmonton for an Alberta Cup race. All I can say is that there is a huge difference between the Alberta XC race scene and the Ontario XC race scene.

The start of the MENS SPORT catigory, yup all ages!

I was very disappointed that I didn't get to finish because of two reasons, first I had a pretty bad cold and second my shock became stuck down again for the second time this season. Oh ya one other factor that probably didn't help the cold situation, I am really out of shape for biking I guess working on a drilling rig is not overly great for bike conditioning.

As far as regular riding goes I had some good rides with some good friends when I was back in Ontario including the best of friends, My Rudy dog. Then when I came back to Alberta I discovered what Alberta riding is all about....Massive climbs great views followed by some fast buff singletrack decents.
These were taken from some pretty high points after a 4 km climb in the Bragg creek area wich is only about 45min drive from the house. I can't

wait to get back again and explore some new trails, but for now I will get some road riding in so I can acctually make it up the mountain.

Now for the last part of my last two months is the building...and buying...I spent the first couple of days off last month locked away in my garage, there was a lot of noise, a lot of dust and fumes that wofted out of there over those three days but in the end I ended up with this!!!!

My own persoal shop!! and the start of JRA Stories Bike Service Shop. There has already been a few nice little projects done with the workbench including a shock rebuild and an XTR crank install, not to mention regular service and cleaning of all the bikes.

 And if you didn't notice the stable got a little fuller last month as well, with the addition of Jolene's new Kona Dew Plus - The Bownesion a great little bike for her to commute to work with on the beautiful trails here in Calgary. Yup that is a RMB flatline in there as well, my new DH rig, I got out on it once so far and other then taking a good crash on it the first time out I love it, I can't wait for all the shuttle runs and park runs it will take me on this summer.

That covers pretty much my last two months of riding, now the challenge will be to keep this up to date as much as possible with more adventures pictures of all sorts.