The crazy folks from down under have done it!

Imagine being a kangaroo. As a kangaroo you naturally love mountain biking. But alas, it is such a hassle getting the bike to and from your favorite trail. You've tried adding a hitch mounted rack to your tail, but it chafes and you are losing patches of hair. You tried putting it into your cool little marsupial pouch. But with each hop the handlebars smack you square in the nose and the pedals dent the 40oz Fosters stored in your pouch.

Well, the cool folks at OnYerBikes have come up with a solution. A folding Mountain Bike! Now you can have a snazzy Full Suspension rig complete with SRAM X9 components that folds up small enough to fit comfortably in your pouch so that you can take it anywhere! Check it out at:

http://www.onyerbike.com.au/

The Pimp putting the hurt on at Froze Toes!

The Pimp, 3-Bowl, Fixie and I went over and tried our luck at the Winter Worlds (a.k.a. Froze Toes) yesterday. Those guys raced the 19+ 5's while I was in the 3/4's. I took out at 11:30 and did a fairly easy 31 mile loop only losing the pack at the last few meters up to the line. I felt pretty good about this considering, well it's February for christ's sake and it was a 3/4's race.

For the other guys, I expected nothing less than a win. The GORC boys failed to come home with the hardware, but did put on a good showing. Unfortunately, our boy Fixie got segregated from the other two for being an even number. Apparently, there were too many 5's and due to their unsafe riding skills, were forced to half the field. That left Fixie to fend for himself and the Pimp and 3-Bowl to wreck havoc on their own. It sounded like they attempted to stir the field, but couldn't get anything going until the final few miles. With a couple guys off the front, the Pimp attacked dragging 3-Bowl with him to the line. At 30+, 3-Bowl was set adrift and the Pimp came across the line in fine GORC fashion as the picture below will prove. Great job by those guys to make it a race!

Mardi Gras Survived Successfully!

Thanks to all of the tips it was a breeze making it through another Mardi Gras.
Here, our own Sniker risks life and limb to ensure that the keg tap was installed correctly. She gave it a very thorough inspection, and after giving it a thumbs-up, the beer was flowing again in no time.
It was that kind of personal sacrifice and generosity that allowed everyone to have a good time, even on such a cold, blustery day.

The Final List for Surviving Mardi Gras

"From last weekend's Dog Parade. No, really, she had complete control of the situation."


The List

1. Don't give alcohol to minors. They can find it without your help.

2. Bring warm clothes. You can always take them all off.

3. Warn surrounding partygoers before attempting a kegstand. Never interrupt the flow of beer unless absolutely necessary.

4. If two or more kegs are present and one contains quality brew always, always, always, drink the shittier beer first. Never move backwards, it's hard enough to stand.

5. Skanks and bead whores prefer shitty beer, especially Bud Light. Remember this.

6. Never pass out in public.

7. If it's past 3pm, it is not considered inappropriate to ask the hot lonely female behind you if she wants to use the restroom at the same time because, hell, you can just piss in the sink. This can lead to tip 8.

8. Always lock the door when using the restroom. No explanation necessary.

9. The Jagermeister goes quick. Get in line if you want a hit. A $40.00 bottle will disappear in 5 minutes.

10. Drain all combustible motors of gasoline, including but not limited to, chainsaws, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, motorcycles, cherry pickers, tractors, and model airplanes.

11. Hide the drained gasoline - even from yourself.

12. Finally, never ride down a flight of stairs on a sled no matter how badly that hot chick begs you. It always hurts like the sky is eternally blue.

GORC Wants Your Ca$h

Yep, the Trail Pimp's got expensive taste. What with buying new trailbuilding tools, paying for newsletters, posters and other printed stuff to get the word of GORC out, and even putting on the Midwest Mountain Bike Festival, things add up. What better time to renew your membership?
Not a member yet? 10 bucks a year is a bargain to help maintain and develop new singletrack in the STL, isn't it? Don't forget to check out the work schedule to see other ways you can help.

Workdays this Weekend

There are several workdays going on this weekend. Why not get out and help build some trail.

First, is our own re-route and maintenance at Matson Hill on Saturday, from 9-1. We're going to re-route the one climb that's become a little too rough to sustain. As usual, there will be a ride afterward pending the weather.

If that's not enough for you, SMBA has a workday going on Sunday, Feb. 19th to reroute a section of the Cove Hollow Trail. This is a really fun, technical trail which is going to be even better once they get done fixing up a few sections.

Also, for you people in Illinois, Rod is having a workday at Lake Lou Yaeger near Litchfield on Saturday the 18th. They're steadily getting trail built and pretty soon it's going to be a place to go for mountain biking. There's a real nice lake for swimming there as well.

Human hybrids

The Stokemonkey is a human-electric hybrid drive bicycle kit. Think of a really long bicycle with racks, bags, and a back seat that's supposed to pedal easier than a regular bike. From the webpage it looks great for people with long commutes, people who use a bike instead of a car, or MILFs that want to haul their baby home from the grocery store. It's sold as a $1350 kit that attaches to a bike with an xtracycle freeradical kit already on it, so by the time you have something that works you're looking at easily a couple grand. Too bad, but it's still less than it cost to rebuild my truck transmission and clutch.

This is not to be confused with the human-animal hybrids that a less clever chimp warned us about. We've got labs full of them already and now they're on T-shirts.

I got this link from a decent interview with the founder of Xtracycle in some online environmental magazine called Grist. The interview is pretty good and has some other silly links in the middle. (thanks BobF)

disclaimer: I haven't used the stokemonkey and I haven't seen any human-animal hybrids around here.

all the LINKS:
human electric hybrid
human animal hybrid
Kipchoge Spencer interview
Xtracycle
Grist

Tool Review: Fiskars Loppers

I borrowed a well-worn set of these 15-inch Fiskars Powergear Anvil Loppers for a while at an OTA workday and was pretty impressed. They went through stuff as big as my 24" bypass loppers but were a lot lighter and quicker. I think the geared drive works well with short handles. With the longer-handled geared loppers you have to move the handles a long way to get it onto whatever you're cutting. I like the small size because you can carry them easier and munch through scrubby brush faster than with the big'uns. Long handles are nice for thorn patches though. Anvil loppers are generally better for hard woody stuff, (and trailwork) while bypass are easier on the plants in your yard that you're pruning, not killing. Both work fine. Also, these are made in Finland, so they have that freaky european playschool style going, if you're into that.

If you're looking for a little set of loppers, these are GORC-recommended and worth the twenty-something bucks. Besides, the club already has a bunch of big loppers now thanks to a discount from Fiskars. For some reason Lowe's didn't have them but Home Depot did, although the last time I was at Lowe's they had a screaming closeout on fiskar's 24" bypass loppers for $12, and of the two big-box stores, Lowe's usually has nicer stuff.

Tip List #2 for Surviving Mardi Gras

Wearing too many beads will attract the dirty ladies who think that just your acknowledgement of their existence is enough to warrant them ownership of your best beads.

Beware the female with the most beads. She may be hot but she probably works the pole on amateur night.

Respect anyone who limits their drink intake to shots (or Pun's Hurricanes) all day and later wants to shotgun a beer or two. They will win. Unless that tall engineer guy shows up.

The bathrooms will be backed up for at least 30 minutes, plan accordingly. Eventually they may not even work. At which time you will rely on Plan B and find that bush you scouted earlier on the way down.

Microsoft wins a round in the online mapping war

When Google came out with their mapping service it was the best thing out there, at least the best thing out there free and not requiring installation on your computer. Now they have google earth which is also pretty cool, but dog slow on my old computer. It's neat but hasn't been all that useful to me yet, mainly due to the old PIII-550. And while maps.google draws strange cartoonish maps that are very good in cities, it's worthless for small towns and country roads, even in Missouri where the country has a lot of roads. The roads don't get labels until you're zoomed in so far that only one is on the screen.

Well microsoft has jumped in with both feet with the curiously-named local.live.com. Unlike google, it actually shows the names of the roads at useful times. The maps of the boonies are better and it has aerial views, click-and-drag panning, and google.earth-like zoom-in when you double-click. It works ok for me with firefox on windows 2k, winxp, and linux, although like windows, it makes my computer slower when it's up. I have no idea if it runs on a mac.

Example: where do you think this is? (You have to click these images to see them full-size.)



Worthless... Maybe this will make it more clear.



And what the hell is up with this All Roads Named 3 business? I've seen this all over. Many MO highways get erroneously numbered 3. Maybe that's why they hide the labels...

Google Maps still has some things going for it, but I guess they're going to have to step it up in the accuracy and usability departments. I still use both, and I'm hoping one of them will decide to show us rivers someday...

As always, your mileage may vary.

The Great Randini in Action

Randy shows how it's done at Chubb on Saturday. To put in perspective how big that log is, remember he's on a 29er!

Jedi at SIUE

The only thing missing from the ride last night was the Pimp and his Vistalite.
Between forgotten and half-charged batteries we decided to do about half the ride jedi-style.
The clouds were really low so we were able to get a lot of reflected light from the university, which was enough to make it rideable. If you think SIUE is fun when it's completely dry, you should try dodging the trees when the trails are a little wet-- jedi!

Boonen scores a hat-trick in Qatar.

Somebody's been hittin' it hard in the off-season.