Ok, there is no way I can sleep in past 9am anymore that's just it for me. It comes in handy for work and for drinking coffee in the morning before you probably. Today was the first real day of fall, yesterday was the equinox. I saw some sweet MTBs at a punk house in SF called the Cave last night, later hung out with 2 people I really like lamenting over old school non internet jukeboxes and earlier that evening watched the sun fogset from the Berkeley marina. Stayed up til 3am feeling generally giddy.
Woke up at nine and texted a couple dirt dogs ASAP to see if there would be some shred. It was foggy outside but I put on shorts anyway because I had a good feeling.
Mark Taylor is in Texas, shitty.
Hours later Brian gets back to me wanting to hit the hills. I am happy about this. I am happy for two reasons Brian still has the ability to sleep in which gives me faith and we were going to get up. While I had my dog out earlier I noticed that the leaves had literally started falling off the trees today. Uncanny how uncanny nature can be.
I empty my pockets and my mind and hop on the stumpy leaving the phone/camera behind with the hope that I can write an interesting blog post about this ride, the first ride of the fall.
On the way to Cole I run into Mark Nicola, just on his way back from his ride. I tell him my idea and he tells me to pay attention. Mark informed me that the ride would most likely be in the foghouse the whole time with slight chance of nice. I told him this would be in the report.
Get to Cole, hope the clouds break, drink a large iced coffee, and check out my most crushed out crush, after my second crush, after the oldest school sacred crush. Also there was a sick Kelly cross bike at the shop looking a little dusty. Rockridge who knew you could be so good?
Brian shows up and we try to create our own personal folklore patchwork knowledge of the trails from Grizzly Peak to the North (my ibuprophin) and Skyline Boulevard to the South (my prozac). Can you get to Tilden from Sibley in the dirt? I ate a pad thai that would cause cramping later, oh well it was good.
So we got a little jacked up on the the jack juice and proceed to our usual route up the hill a little quicker than normal. For the first time ever I noticed a plaque on the side of the road, turns out there used to be an old tunnel somewhere up in the hills named after a presidents last name that was used mostly for foot horse and 2 wheel traffic in its end days. There is a flag pole looking thing and a median. I did not see a tunnel anywhere. It smelled peaty and a goat bawed at me and Brian. To be honest it felt kind of like this:
cushy british touring (good job to Brian on this one)
So we had decided that we could get to the Pinehurst entrance to Redwood from Sibley. We Went into Sibley into the shade structure and started consulting the maps and posing for pictures that a touring bus full of Swedish suntan lotion models wanted to take. Weird, but they don't have MTB there.
Almonds eaten trails were beaten. Brian dropped us down one of the funnest descents I've been on so far, basically whatever trail we were on was made for feeling amazing and bunny hops off nice little kickers seemingly every 50 feet or less. It was excellent and set the tone for me to try and get some hops of anything in the way for the rest of the day.
A little misunderstanding and the 5 to 7 minutes in heaven landed us at the bottom of a somewhat brutal dirt climb, but hey we were in a volcano. A lot of work payed off to the point of us getting to look off a steep cliff and see the "hippy thing" (sic. Brian) describing the very order and nature of human life as we know it. I overstep the fence hoping with all my might I can pee all the way onto the quarry's floor, but a wind disadvantage destroys my chances. At this point we realize we busted our butts to do a loop that ends with a portion of no bikes allowed trails. We poach and pray, dirt a dog a day.
Alright back on the road to Redwood saw some dogs and a creepy boyscout leader and continued through to Joaquin Miller. Admittedly I was excited to hit the usual kicker trail, but we were feeling exploratory so we took a different route which led us to the top of Cinderella. This was practically a dream come true for me, I have not been able to find this one and was ready to ride it down. I'll tell you what Cindy is crazy, she is chewed up steep burmy burly rocky confusing pitted rutted rooty and rude. Only a couple of places were unfriendly to rolling descent, but I had to admit this trail would be fun with springs, still a great find today.
We got to the bottom went by an old building thing looked heavily squattable and saw some poets on the bridge, continued down Sinawak which starts off in a dreamy Endor speeder style flight feel and ends up kind of sketchy rear wheel is sliding wherever it wants to feeling, especially today with fallen leaves covering up the dusty rutted trail.
We end up looking at SF in the distance in close proximity to a burrito in a town where all the beautiful people smell good.
I LOVE THE BAY
By the looks of the parts on this Peugeot I'd guess 84/85 and it's either the Canyon or Orient Express model. I didn't do tons of research because I was just being lazy, but here's a link to some catalogs.
Same fork crown as my '84 Ridgerunner and similar lugged bullmoose bars like the ones that came on the 1983 Trek 830.
Pretty ugly. I'm going to build it up as my commuter, and ditch my commuter roadie.
strange clamp on this bad boy
Deore crank and Biopace rings. I'm always surprised at how well the sticker stays on. Stuck there for 24 years and counting.
U brake
Interesting chunky dropout and stays
horse shoe
Dirt drop stem
Cool deore thumbies
Nuff said
90's Fisher frame had a BLOWN fork originally, which inspired the 29er build. Koski Stem, easton seat post, wrecked Concor saddle, LX hubs, old DX front brake. Other parts listed below.
Sorry sideways, but here you can see we added the Surly fork with soooo much clearance.
Oury grips, Shimano DX 7spd shifter on a pod mount.
Old Deore singled triple crank and the bear traps form the Berry.
Jon had the bike set up as a single speed for one week and we used this old Sante rear der. as the tensioner. When we got the geared wheelset (also found in a trash pile!) we just kept the Sante. It works pretty well too, which is surprising given the super short cage.
Here's the jankiest part. The frame of course was made for 26" rims. Jon fond this brake with a lot of clearance and mounted it on the Brake bridge/stiffener. The tire is so close!
We rode Redwood and Jouquin Miller and Jon said it was sweet, we'll see if it holds up.
