The coolest bike ever?




From Antbikemike.com, comes the Major Taylor:




Oh yeah, as pictured, it's $2600. But can you put a price on something with so much retro-cool that it drips off the frame. Antbike is the shizzle!

SIUE Workday- Saturday, April 29 + Other Happenings


We'll be cutting a short connector trail between the 1st and 3rd sections of trail out there, and doing some maintenance leftover from the construction of the 3rd section last fall. You might even learn the (im)proper way to carry tools. The fun starts at 8:45 am.

SMBA is also having a workday on Sunday, April 30 at the Cove Hollow Trail near Carbondale, IL.

This weekend is also the official dedication of the 200+ miles of continuous Ozark Trail. There's going to be bbq, music, hiking, and a shuttle for mountain bikers to ride North Trace. Details on the festivities can be found here.

Self Chilling Beer Can


Now you can go for a 3 hour ride on a hot summer day, reach in your camelback, grab a can of Miller, and enjoy a cold beer on the trail. Check it out!

Coming soon to a trail near you?


Yes, folks. Segway is now making and selling an off-road model, the Segway XT Cross Terrain Transporter.

From the website:
The wider track increases stability on uneven ground, and the Segway XT happily navigates a variety of surfaces including sand, grass, gravel, dirt and pavement. Depending on local regulations, it may be possible to use the Segway XT on multi-use pathways but it is not intended for use on sidewalks or pedestrian walkways.


I wonder how it will go over at Segway Polo games.

Then they've got the Concept Centaur, not for sale. It's like a mini electric Segway ATV that can switch from two to four wheels on the fly, i.e. ride a wheelie for you, in case doing that on your couch was too hard. I first saw this in one my my freebie electronics magazines but now it's on the Segway website.



I'm offering a six-pack to the first person to provide me a picture of someone navigating the steps at Chubb or the slab on donkey kong with either of these. 30-second photoshops don't count.

Thank goodness these things cost so much and we have hard trails. Hopefully that's enough to keep them on the golf course and nowhere else. I don't think the sky is falling yet. To be fair, I'd still play on either of them if given the chance.

Links:
Segway XT Cross Terrain Transporter
Concept Centaur article
Concept Centaur

South Trace plea for help, and free beer

The weekend is almost here. The Ozark Trail Association is pretty overwhelmed by their own festival planning, and some major storms and a few fires have caused an abnormal amount of trail maintenance needs along the Ozark Trail lately. So to help out GORC has volunteered to do some deadfall clearing on the South Trace Creek section of the OT. This is from Council Bluffs to Bell Mountain. Who am I kidding, it's selfish. There's an awesome trail here under a bunch of logs, and if we clear them, it'll be like a brand new trail in our own backyard. Plus we'll make it fun.

The plan for this weekend is pretty simple right now. We'll meet at the DD/hwy 32 middle fork trailhead at 9am Saturday morning (april 22). Yes it's early, but if we get a decent start and have enough help to do three crews or so, we could probably get an unencumbered ride in afterward. On Saturday we'll break up into groups to divide and conquer the deadfall on South Trace with chainsaws, USFS-certified sawyers, bob trailers, and helpers. We need all the help we can get because sawyers can't work by themselves and there will be lots of cut wood to move. We'll camp saturday night, then ride whichever trail we want just for fun on Sunday. This type of day is noisier, but less backbreaking than normal trailwork and we get to ride our bikes from point to point. The more people we have the easier this will be.

To sweeten the deal, I'll bring at least a case of some quality beer TBD to share on Saturday night, better than and in addition to my usual cheap camping beer.

Stay tuned to this topic in the gorc forum for updates, to express interest, maybe set up a carpool, etc. If anyone without a bike wants to help, say so on the forum or let me know and we'll make arrangements for a hike-in crew too.

tom

Tour of Georgia ---- It's ON!

Oh yeah, Things are heating up down south of the Mason Dixon line.

They even got the Godfather of Soul himself shootin' up in the air Saddam-style!!!
















the skinny --> Linky

velonews.com is carrying the stages live. Starts at 1:30pm today.

Progress on DeClue Reroute at Greensfelder

While we were listening to Tom's safety talk at the Tower parking lot right off of Allenton Rd. this scene presented itself:

Here's one of the turns that passes right above a nice waterfall. While the reroute does bypass one unsustainable climb plus another short one, it's certainly not going to make the trail any easier. Go see for yourself. You can ride the lower part of it below the current trail right now.

more Greensfelder goodness, coming right up

The MMBF is over and now it's time to get back to business. Lucky for us, business is building trail and riding bikes. What could be more fun?

So it's Easter weekend and you can't leave town. Come out to Greensfelder and start work on the next phase of the DeClue improvements. This time we're doing a pretty big reroute for the doubletrack hill climb heading uphill from where DeClue crosses Allenton Road. We'll reroute a little bit of high-maintenance singletrack too but don't worry, we're not about to throw the baby out with the bathwater, most of the old trail remains untouched.

This hillside is covered with rocks and ledges and the new trail goes through a lot of good stuff and some historical oddities. It's buildable in three sections and if we have enough people at both of the spring workdays we'll be riding a bunch of sweet new trail there this summer instead of a piece of low-quality trail with water problems.

The first workday is SATURDAY APRIL 15. You should register with St. Louis County Parks RIGHT NOW to ensure a free lunch. See the gorc homepage for details and directions. We'll post a map of the new sections when they're built. In the mean time, check out Ron's new mountain bike map of the Dogwood and Declue already. Then ride it all with us after the lunch on Saturday.

MMBF...even more

Here's some random pics:

The Iowa Posse spanked all in many events. Including the HillclimbTT.



The No-Touch event was off the hook!



Things got a little weird Saturday night...



Good times were had on all the rides.



Stay Tuned to the GORC website for more pics from this weekend. OR - Send 'em if you got'em!

More MMBF


I think the image speaks for itself...Friday night's ride was one for the books.

2006 MMBF is in the books



Yes folks, the 2006 Midwest Mountain Bike Festival is history, and it appears to have been a rousing success. If this photo doesn't convince you that EVERYONE had a good time, then it probably isn't going to be possible. More to follow...

Festival Music

If you're a fan of the whacked-out traditional music, don't show up late on Saturday.

The band lineup is looking great. Big thanks to Mesa Cycles for footing the bill for us to get so many good bands.

noon The Monads, punk bluegrass rockabilly, think split lip, but with more strings on the bass, I bet they hate that. Click the link and find out for yourself. Or better yet, just show up. The beer starts flowing at noon too.


2:00 Maid*Rite I don't have a link, but these girls rock country style, or play country rock style, or something. It's always a good show.

4:00 Red Ass Jones: You saw them last year but this year they'll have two more people, a mandolin, and electronical amplification. Another good country-style thing, maybe more traditional bluegrass than the others.

6:00 Dub Kitchen. Dub is kind of like reggae, but more electronic. Don't take my word for it, find out why these guys have such a big local following.

8:00ish The Choir: You might recognize Matt Black Matt James, the guitar player, as a local bike shop wrench (big shark, now mesa). Mr. Ray-of-Sunshine's band will be playing "balls-out rock and roll" as soon as he catches his breath after the night time trial, and hopefully puts on some pants.

After that, who knows.

So, fans of the stand-up bass, don't put off coming out. We have three in a row right from the get-go. Get your stuff together now, enjoy the show, get a demo bike and enjoy the trails, whatever.

Early registration is closed so when you come out you can pay your $25 (still a bargain!) for the whole shebang or pay $10 for the cheapskate limited-benefits saturday-only registration.

FEST

No Monthly Meeting 4/05/2006


There will be no monthly meeting on Wednesday, April 5th due to final preparations for the Midwest Mountain Bike Festival this weekend. Kirby says it's ok to go drink beer and talk about bikes if you like. See you this weekend!

Hell Tour




I watched this movie over the weekend. It follows Erik Zabel and Rolf Aldag of the T-Mobile team during the 2003 Tour de France. It's a great movie for several reasons: 1) It has really nice footage of things you never get to appreciate through the grainy, flickering video that OLN shows, including b&w archival stuff; 2) You get to hear a lot of talk about how it really feels to go through 3 weeks of the Tour--crashes, road rash, suffering, exhilaration, not the canned answers from some riders about how everything's perfect, couldn't be better, etc.; 3) Not much about Lance.
It turns out that Zabel and Aldag are really funny as well. You find out lots of interesting things about the "glamorous" world of professional cycling--with one French historian equating the origins of the tour with a way for riders to improve their lives by getting out of the coal mines. The title in english is Hell on Wheels (Netflix), but it translates more literally as Hell Tour. In German, French and English with subtitles.

GORC Does the DRJ Bike Clinic













A few of us helped out with the DRJ sponsored Bike Clinc at Castlewood State Park on Saturday. We gave a little talk explaining what GORC does and a little about proper bike etiquette on the trail. We had a lot of interest in GORC and the Festival. Rich Love and the rest of the presenters gave GORC huge props for the work we do, very nice of them.