Ride Lugged

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Ha! I’m finally caught up on my posts, just in time for teh week-end to ride again, Yipee!!

So today being Sunday (the 12th of May) Veronika and I went for a bike ride.
We spent yesterday in Ikea and Globus(~czeck WalMart) and InterSPAR (big grocery) after a rainy morning, and were jonesing for some outdoor activity.

So the weather was a flawless 80degrees, dry and sunny. We headed south out of town by car 20 minutes to Brdy where I went when I was still jetlagged my first week-end here. We rode the ridge southwest(towards where they are going to put the US radar base) trying this time to keep from going up and down the ridge to the valley below.

The first 10km didn’t look promising with a ton of sick steep hills and lots of downed trees still from the crazy spring storms. We did find a nice place with craggy rock to go climbing though, maybe 30 minutes by car from home. After that the trail became nicer and held to the contour lines a bit more than any other trails I have ridden here. We stuck to the main route (red) heading out and caught a few sections of the Trans-Brdy race course I had tried in April. It was nice, a bit less dusty after some strong showers this week.

We had some really nice trail at points, even if the rocky slog up to this section was brutal. Sections very similar to what you encounter from the Shed north and west to State College. But here they always have a good place to stop and take a break. Whether it is a little town or a bench on the trail. You would be amazed at how many beer gardens are on the paths too!

At the southern tip of our ride today we stopped and contemplated a little out and back, but looking close to the map we saw plenty of other less traveled (ie. unmarked) trails. Come to find out these are some of the best ones here. The main blazed/marked trails often become overrun with pedestrians and amateur bikers. Some even end up getting paved. We rode about 5km of paved path that was dirt or gravel when we were here only 5 weeks ago! So anyway the unmarked trails in this area are maybe 3x more likely to be singletrack or are at least grown over doubletrack/forest road. One of the trails had greener, more lush grass then I have seen on a golf course.

So we wound back and followed the contours as much as possible, just trying to head in the correct general direction. We ended up on the race course again going backwards for a bit which was a nice change. As it is pretty dry and we were on our way to a 5 hour ride we were running low on water in the old camel back, so the next town we rolled into we decided to ask some lady who was watering her plants for a fill up our. Her husband peeked out from behind a shrubbery and was kind enough to take my camelback inside and return it with 3 liters of cool water. We thanked them and were on our way, only then to realize that literally directly across the street (no more than 5m away) was a town water pump. Oh well. We were amused.

So maybe 10km left and we were back in Jíloviště, where we had started. I’m not sure how far we went, maybe between 55 and 65km? (I should get a computer.) But more importantly we were back at the resto/bar where we parked. So inside for some beer, aged/pickled(?) cheese and some fruit dumplings. After the nice snack we got in Verča’s little Renault Clio to go home, but it wouldn’t start. Hmm…

Well it turns out that 5 hours before we we had set out I had left the headlights on, you know for safety’s sake. (You are required to have your headlights on while driving here, and the Clio is old enough to not have daytime running lights.) So we were at the top of a big hill so I pushed the car back out of its parking spot and rolled down the hill to jump it. No dice. It was really dead. So we walked back up to the bar to seek out some help. There was a pension/hostel next to the bar and they had the company car out front.

So in the bar we asked (read: Verča asked) if anyone had jumper cables. So as you may have guessed, who could help? The drunkest guy in the bar (remember?), who happened to own the pension. He didn’t have the cables in the car, but in the garage of his house next door. So he stumbled out to the car, and we promised to pay his fine if he got stopped by the police. (Which was of course a formality, because he was pretty drunk. The fine would be huge and would be accompanied by him spending some time in jail. But we were just down the street 200m and I think Verča could have talked the police out of arresting this helpful guy.)

So as Verča walked out of the bar, the drunk guy’s wife asked Verča if we were married. She was curious as to the point of the question, but said “yes,” at which point the woman said, “Well look, because that is what your husband is going to look like in 30 years.” Verča was amused, and to the guy’s defense he was a happy drunk and a very helpful one at that, and it was Sunday evening two doors from his own house, so I was OK with it.

So our friendly roadside assistance guy drives (pretty straight) down to our car and lines up successfully for the jump start. He gets out of the car chuckling, saying that he could only find one of the jumper cables, and proudly displays a 2m long piece of some heavy copper insulated wire he found somewhere, as the second cable. I connected the regular one then he held the 2 bare ends of his piece of wire to the grounds and Verča started her car with no problem.

We thanked him a bunch and promised to buy him a couple beers next time we came by, which we will (We all agreed he didn’t need any more then.) . And we drove on home. Another successful adventure. Then we called our Mom’s to wish them a happy day!

Happy Mothers day Moms!

What is up with Critical Mass in California? They just can’t get good press.

Hutch and I just made a pact that whoever can afford one of these first will buy one and let the other drive it.

Mercedes Unimog

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So I took the new Gerber out for a ride one morning last week when Verča went to work. I rolled out of the city to the Zbraslav a Točná area, where I figured I could warm up with 10km on asphalt on the river’s east side bike path then get in at least the same on some fairly reasonable dirt before heading home.

I climbed up this urban singletrack along a creek bed that Verča and I had started up our last time here. We had split off on a side trail last time, so I stuck to the creek bed. It was a bit nicer now with a little water in the creek. There are a bunch (maybe 15) little wooden bridges along the route. This was one of the most secure looking ones and the easiest to photograph without feeling too sketched.Lots of trees were down here too, but from what Verča said it seems that most of them had been cleared, so I only had to dismount maybe four times.

I made it to the top where 3 people were training 3 giant Doberman Pinschers to attack with the big arm protector thing. Kinda shady. I didn’t really slow down to chat and was glad for my 53 to keep rolling. I did a similar wander on the top here by the grass field airport and got in some really nice rolling singletrack, then found a trail that dropped me back down to town by the river’s east side bike path.

I was feeling good so I ended up opting for an alternate road and path way home, so I crossed the river to Zbraslav and rode 10km west to Radotín. Just before I got to the town I chased a deer along a field but got smoked by the little bastard. So I crossed the river on the fancy bridge here and caught the path on the west side of the river back up to the center of Prague and across the railroad bridge to our neighborhood. That last km of riding is pretty tough on you after a fast paced ride. And home in time to get to work, by 6am on the east coast.

Anyway the bike seemed cool with the ride and it only rattled me a little bit. I think I may check the cassette to see if it is tight. It looked like it may have been wobbling when I was crushing on the cobbles. I may even look to get a bigger cassette, with a 53/39 and a bunch of dirt rides ahead.

Ok, go ride your bike.
-cory

supposed to be some showers, an in the upper 60s.  so either bring rain gear or wear wool.  to those sans fenders: ha!

i pre-rode 90 percent of the course yesserday, and it has some great scenic views.  i took damien’s brother hal out for a 5 hour ride, and he told me it was easily one of the best rides he had ever been on.  i’ll post pictures in a few minutes, after i eat some toast and drink some tea.

ok its 3 hours later.

this post is an amalgam of a bunch of recent rides, sorry.  above is vonada gap road, which climbs 600 feet in under 1.5 miles.  on loose dirt.  i climbed it on my whitcomb, which recently got a pair of GB rando bars from my guess, the late 50s.  really comfortable, and nice looking.  anyway, its a wonking hard climb, similar to the roads on the ‘hardest ride ever’, (spoke cards pending…cory).  the whitcomb only has one waterbottle mount, to go with the one speed.  consequently, i was out of water about half way up the climb, and so i decided to refill at a mtn stream that went along the road.  usually i try to just drink out of water thats coming right out of rock, but i was really thirsty, with about 30 more miles to go.

so below, we have nice picture of my butt, refilling my bottle.  a rock was nice enoto take the picture for me.

before all of this though, i passed some scenic stuff, out on mountain back rd and upper georges valley.

later, as i was exploring the current conditions of a few dirt roads i originally intended for the ramble, i triple flatted on a recently regraded road, and being in the approximate middle of nowhere, i rode home on my flat, wrecking a super dubious old rear wheel and a 50 dollar continental tire in the process.  i could hear and feel chips and splinters of the rim cracking off and hitting my legs as i decended boal gap road at about 30 miles an hour.  a bit unnerving, but it was getting late and i didnt have lights, so i wanted to get out of the woods, stat.

yesterday i rode with 3 of the boalsburg bikers, bob, rob and john, as well as damien’s inlaw hal, from p-burgh.   bob was wearing a hypnosis suit that made it hard to ride behind him.  i kept veering off into farm fields and falling asleep at the helm.

we had to part a sea of cows who were off to get milked.

 at spring mills, the boalsburg guys left to attend to familiar duties, and hal and i pushed on, an 85 degree wind at our backs.  we stopped at the shure fine for some food and water.  we pushed on through milheim and coburn, and up beaver dam rd, easily one of the most scenic roads out here.

it was here that i started to really lag behind hal, who doesn’t take breaks, and lives in the land o’ hills.  so the pic below shows a typical scene, me trudgeing up a hill in the godblessed granny gear, while hal is taking water at the top of the hill.  that’s hal, the tiny speck at the top of the hill.

after this point, i was too tired to break out the camera, and spent most of my time panting and lamenting my fatness.

the ride finished well though, because we eventually ended up at Zenos and drank some beer and ate some greasy bar food.

my new odometer hit 500 miles on that ride, which made me feel something.  not sure what yet though.

So it’s a pretty bold statement to call someplace paradise, right. Well Verča and I were in the area for the long week-end (May 8), so we thought we should check it out (of course Verča has been there a number of times, being paradise and only 90 minutes from Prague, but not me!) I mean, come on; we had a week-end of wet biking. Of course it would be sunny in paradise. Well it wasn’t exactly sunny, but it wasn’t raining. And that was a big improvement!

We parked in a little town called Besedice just off of our way back to Prague and hiked a short few km loop circling along the top of the ridge with a nice view back down into Vranov. There are some cool rock formations there. Kinda like a cross between the outcroppings at Annapolis Rocks, the ridges in Seneca Rocks, and the hoo doos in southern Utah. There are so many cool outcroppings and this being in a national park the Czechs had built a series of steps cut into the stone and bridges and stairs from one rock to another in what they call rocktowns. It’s kinda strange to see the rocks built up so much on what is essentially a trail that was very minimally marked and literally started up some person’s dirt driveway. It is by all means very cool though, with even a bit if the red and tan sandstone peeking through the moss and conifer tree cover in this very humid area. Very cool. Lots of fun stairs and catwalks and little caves and passageways to navigate through.I’m sure we’ll be back with sunny warmer weather. I think we were only on the north end of this so called paradise, and some worldly friends here keep telling me how much different this place is than anywhere else they have traveled. So I’m psyched to see more of it!

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We started todays ride with eight people and finished with only seven; never a good thing.

So the next day of the long week-end (May 7) we woke up reasonably early (for the amount of beer and weird liquors consumed the night before) and settled on going for a ride. It was to be a group ride into the Jezerské Hory National Forest to the north of our cabin, with riders ranging from recreational cruisers to xc-marathon racers; we would probably do about 50km with lunch along the way. We were all sitting around the picnic table outside waiting for our friend Lukaš to wake up, when he jumped outside ready to go while the rest of us were still sipping tea wearing whatever we fell asleep in.

A few minutes later we were all ready and off. We rode as a scattered pack along empty paved and dirt mountain roads until we came to the gates at the national forest. The paths through the park were at first asphalt or bluestone dust. After our first stop though we came to the idyllic paths these forests are known for.

Sweet mother-of-what the hell is that you say? Well it seems that in the places most revered here; where you come closest to nature; they paved the trails with giant block of precast concrete. Its as if they laid jersey barriers down on the ground on their side, so as to prevent any erosion. And are they smooth and even you ask? Of course not! It’s like riding along on the freaking Penna Turnpike! Which leads us to what happens next…
(Casey is about to dig this!)

So much for amazing Czech engineering? So anyway all those repeated bump stresses apparently led to the catastrophic demise of Lukaš’s Czech DURATEC. It looked like a really nice bike. It had a cool but proprietary asymmetric design. But lastly it’s flaw… It was made of aluminium, and it didn’t bend it broke. Luckily Lukaš didn’t crash as we were riding along at a decent clip. But he was a bit heart broken and we a ways from home. I can attest that it was truly a JRA occurrence as I was just riding along behind him. (as it turns out though, he is the second owner of the frame.) But just look at the puddle of a weld there, and over a machined bit! It seems like on close inspection that the method of construction was kinda asking for trouble.

Karel did volunteer to ride the half he found home like a unicycle. But alas we took turns carrying it for Lukaš until we realized that it hooked on my bar ends rather nicely and securely. Lukaš walked the front half in. We really weren’t too far from the restaurant where we were planning lunch anyway, so after everybody poring over the maps we were able to take a fairly short route to get there. Lukaš called his girlie who was back at the cabin and she came and met us for lunch and to shuttle him home.

It was a bit of a cold dreary day, so we were all happy to get to the lunch spot and warm up with some hot tea, cold beer and warm food. As you can tell we were not alone. This bar/restaurant is at a big crossroads of bike and hiking trails in the forest, so it’s pretty packed on the week-ends. There were even some weird old mildly overweight Czech guys out under one of the umbrellas in assorted US and Euro army fatigues. It was a bit strange; one of them even had a union civil war cap on? Anyway with Lukaš’s bike sitting just outside it got a lot of looks from everyone who came by. (which was pretty much the same reaction when I was riding with th e back half of it on my handlebars.)So after leaving Lukaš with the sag wagon, it had started to rain a bit and the rest of us figured we should be on our way.

By the time we were on our bikes again and riding it had stopped raining but was definitely still ominous. The long gravelly/sandy climb out from the bar must have been one of the main routes across the area (leading south out of Poland only another 10km beyond) because as we rode up the trail there were concrete pillboxes left over from the last war littering the forest. It was a bit strange but cool nonetheless, because when you looked closely at the bank you could see a bunch of little hidden bunkers lining the trail.

At the top of the long but gradual climb we regrouped and decided to take an alternate route that would be more pleasing to the entire group. While we waited Karel did donuts on his lugged steel touring bike, on which he had been smoking us all day with his much larger than the rest of us gearing. Not to side with Casey, but a steel cyclocross bike is definitely the ideal machine for most of the longer rides in this country.

Somewhat to my surprise the move to appease the weaker riders almost immediately went straight up a steep technical climb, which only Verča and I cleaned. As you can see Verča was a rather happy to ride past the guy who had been leading all day.

After that we rode along the edge of the hill on and old roadbed that had pretty nice views to the valley below and of the impending storm behind us. Verča and I cruised ahead taking advantage of the long fast climb and following descents through scrubby pine trees.

That was pretty much the last picture I took as the ride soon after began its downward spiral. Waiting at the bottom of another Penna Turnpike section, we mapped out our course home for the remaining 20km or so, with about half of which would be dirt and a little steep. But by the time we were riding to our next turn it started raining. And it kept raining harder and harder. We decided to forget the dirt climbs which would be brutal, since it was now raining so hard we couldn’t really see. So we took a path(?) with more Jersey paving for about 10km which dropped us fast into a dense forest paved road for another 10km. We had to stop in the forest for a while to see if anyone could feel their fingers or toes. It had gotten much colder (50deg?) with the storm front and the consensus on the extremities was that we could see just not feel them. A few minutes later and we were in a small town about 500m lower than we were when we last stopped 25km ago and 200m lower and 5km away from our cabin. Luckily the climb mostly warmed us up as we passed another ski lift. And we were all happy to arrive back home at the cabin where we were again greeted well by a warm fire, cold beer, and hot showers.

I crashed out early that night and everyone else wasn’t too far behind me.

Bike helmet crushed, but head fine

Best quote from the story:

The truck ran over his head.

“I didn’t see it coming, but I sure felt it roll over my head. It feels really strange to have a truck run over your head.”

His helmet, a Giro, was crushed, but Lipscomb’s head was fine.

The RailANT - the newest, lightest, very strong, very versatile way to ride, enjoy, work, inspect, etc. ? the railroad tracks of the world. It comes apart for easy transportation, it’s light, 112 pounds, it’s strong, 2” aluminized steel, can carry heavy loads, wheels have been proven to work in cold and hot climates, it’s safe, the builder of the RailANT takes out blind & handicapped people. It’s 6 feet long to 10 feet long.

I guess disk breaks are kind of essential.

I like utilitarian design but these are a bit ugly in my opinion. They’re a quiter, lighter, healthier, eco friendly option to the speeders we saw on the York, PA ride with Shaun and Casey.

I really like this Knight Rider thing that they have on their site:

So another four day week-end (May 5-8). It seems they keep planning the holidays on Tuesday here so you get off Monday too. (kind of like US holidays observed on Monday, only better.) This time the occasion is VE, Victory in Europe Day, the end of WWII as I’m told here.

So we were to join the Czech biking group for a week-end in a cabin they rented in the north of the country in the Jizerské mountains about an hour and a half away, not to far from my Ještěd post from this past winter. We were actually touch-and-go all week as it looked like a week-end full of crappy rainy weather. And I was a bit reluctant to spend 4 days cooped up inside with a bunch of Czechs who don’t speak much English. Towards the end of the week it looked like it might break, so we figured we could head out on Sunday.

Sure enough, the week-end started off rainy, but it began to clear as we drove out of Prague. We called to see where our friends were as we arrived, and not surprisingly they were in a local bar drinking. They had gone on a ride and were retreating from the rain when we showed up. We joined them for the last beer then headed up the hill to the cabin. As everyone else dried and cleaned off, Verča and I put on our bicycle costumes to go for a ride, taking advantage of a short burst of clear weather. We headed off for a short 35km ride through the surrounding hills.

The first thing I noticed in this region was ski lifts, we passed a number of them, strangely it seemed like we would keep riding from the bottom to the top of them on some inexplicably steep hill. (read: ski slope) We did ride down one as I recall too. The area definitely is pretty and would be a fun area to ski-bum around in the winter. Again no surprise, it started to mist then rain a bit. It was mostly warm enough, so no big deal. We did stop at a lodge/bar about 2/3 of the way in and had a nice hot cup of tea before we were off again for a good bit of downhill. Verča took me to some big lake and then down some hill that she had told me about before. Just a long double track downhill (but the story I had heard was when she was riding here with two girlfriends and Verča made a wrong turn and made them climb this gravely 3 km slog.) Of course the hill dumped us into another pretty (though worn-looking) little village, with a km of paved climb out of it at some ungodly steep slope.

It evened out a bit, then up someone’s dirt driveway, then up another ski slope, then up a sick steep washed out dirt double track. Verča was definitely happy when we knew the climb was over. Over the peak and it was 3km of technical rutted, rocky, and rooty singletrack back to the field above our cabin. There were a couple of cool rock drops and rock gardens so I gave Verča the camera and played for a minute.

That’s what I get for ‘trying it again for the camera’ after Verča missed my first and second flawless attempts, Oh well. The weather had let up and we had a nice misty mountain view as we rolled back down.

We dashed inside and warmed ourselves with some new beer from a local brewery and chatted into the evening by the outdoor grill. I stayed up late with a couple of drunk Czechs after Verča gave up playing cards, learning a czech version of the card game asshole, played with some cryptic weird pinochle -type deck. The funniest part playing drinking games with Czechs is that no one gets punished for playing poorly, everyone just gets drunk anyway; win or lose. A few more beers later and I ended up teaching them gin and rummy (with normal cards) cause I was tired of trying to decipher their weird cards with acorns, leaves and such, and there was a drunk girl still at the table willing to translate rules to those sober enough to care.