Went for a LA Tourist tune-up ride on Saturday. If the trails stay as wet as they were, Tourist is gonna be fucken hard.
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Yesterday was my first experience hearing the crunch of frosty mud. Really confused me at first.
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Some of the crew I was with had similar experiences, for me it was a welcome sound from my past
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There’s a riding area in the Tillamook forest that gets hoarfrost on top of the mud. It’s super grippy until the frost melts.
I’m thinking about flying out to do the last LATR, and then the Stagecoach 400 route, should I hit ya up if I do?
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Absolutely!
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Have they decided if they’re gonna dynamite it or let it puff up and pop naturally?
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They’re going to let it lie. It had some surgical looking cuts on it I assumed were made so it doesn’t puff up. Not sure about that tho. Three other whales have washed up near here this year. Crazy.
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My favorite species of frozen mud switches from crunchy to greasy the instant tires hit it. It’s fun to pretend that if you hustle through it fast enough you’ll get out clean.
But you won’t.
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I went for a ride and here’s a series of many images, about 30 per second…
Almost exclusively making blading vids these days, but I figured I’d use those skills to make a nice biking vid and share with y’all 
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Rode the LA Tourist yesterday with some pals. For those that don’t know, it’s a ‘race’ where everyone is given coordinates for 4 checkpoints in/around LA. Route choice is completely open, and it’s self supported (save for one snack stop out in the ANF). The route we mapped out was to be ~68miles and 9k ft, with a fair bit of hike-a-bike. I decided to ride to and from the start, so added another 20 miles and 1500-2000ft, because…reasons. Felt great the whole day, was definitely putting the hurt on my ‘teammates’ but everyone was moving at a similar enough pace, no one really bonked or anything. The vast majority of the climbing was packed into the first half of the route, the back half had lots of really sick singletrack that was largely rideable, uh pretty decent hiking sections (really narrow/loose and over exposure). My garmin died at some point, so only captured the first 50 miles and 10k ft of my day. I ended up peeling off pet way back to the finish, because I had a dinner reservation for sup’s birthday and definitely could not be late for that. Managed to stay awake through dinner, too!
All in all a super fun, really hard day out
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15k hambike race.
Was fun, and cold (2 deg, quite windy). Goretex boots+fatty socks(but not squeezed in) were not enough. Should have worn insulated winter boots, hugely awkward size and tread be damned.
Hands, OTOH, I had to remove from pogies periodically to cool them off, wearing typical summer long fingered jawns.
Neck tubes are annoying, too many layers on my neck, cause glasses fog, kind of a pita overall. Glad I had it for the opening downhill sections, but yanked it ASAP.
45 North wool cap with ear flaps +visor worked great. Ear flaps could be 1/4" longer for my head but not critical. Maybe in similar cold next year I might tape up the front couple of Hamlet vents.
I did test fit my balaclava/goggles/bike helmet the night before but decided that the goggles pushed on my nose too much, and overall the setup would feel stifling on grinding climbs.
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Barkley marathon style checkpoints? You assigned a page number?
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Exactly. Race number corresponds to a page number in the books left at the checkpoint. Bring back 4 pages to get your time counted.
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I have an airfare alert set for the march edition. If tickets drop enough I’ll be there!
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