It’s somewhat difficult to formulate a single train of thought blog post with so many things happening at once, so quickly. Over the last week, I’ve been super busy at the shop, overhauling suspension parts, building bikes, and fixing whatever else walks through the door. Words of advice- don’t get your hand meat caught in the slide on the bearing puller

Also, Fox forks will randomly break… well before you reach the 50 in-lb torque spec

In shop stuff that doesn’t suck, I tried out a new XTR drivetrain on a SRAM 10-42 cassette.

The shifting was OK. Not perfect, though I attribute that in large part to the cassette’s ~2yrs of prior use. I think that the 10t and the 42t are what set SRAM 1x drivetrains apart from anything else, but I love the ergonomics and function of the Shimano shifter, so I’d love to try it out with a new 10-42 and see if it’s what I’m hoping for.

After building the XTR11 bike, the winter shop staff/Enduro kids showed up. They invited me to ride Golden Gate Canyon with them, and we managed to find both nice views and all of the trails that still had a snow pack on top of them. It was a nice, laid-back time that included peanut butter sandwiches and yoga. Only in Colorado can you find 21 year old college bros who can execute “tree pose” on top of a rock while holding a sandwich in one hand.

Through working on everyone’s bikes, Indy and I have both made some new friends

Indy and Agnus played until they were both pretty exhausted. Once we were back at home, Indy passed out hard

Sunday, Ky (from the pic above) and Shane (from the 92Fifty team) invited me to ride with them at a place north of Boulder called Devil’s Backbone. It was a pretty great day of riding and whatnot. Both scenery and company were excellent.

Afterward, they took me to a place called Georgia Boys to sample Colorado’s interpretation of Southern barbecue. It was slightly less greasy, and I’m pretty sure the collards lacked any hog jowl, but for a place far flung from its roots, it does a good job.

Yesterday, I planned my own epic solo ride. It was a little overly ambitious… but that’s generally true of some of the best rides. I rode to a place about 12 miles away called White Ranch Open Space. It was… interesting. I’m not really in to trails so steep and used that they necessitate the installation of hundred of water bars, and that’s mostly what this place was.

It had its high points, though.

I managed to clean all of the roots and rocks going uphill to the spot in the above pic. By that point, I was so out or breath that I was slightly dizzy.

The descent in this pic was very rowdy and very fun:

From there, I headed back towards home, but detoured through Golden Gate Canyon state park. From where I entered the park (~7400ft elevation), it’s almost all climbing up to where I exited (~10k ft) and headed home. Grand total for the day was just over 6000 feet. I’m not usually one to pay a lot of attention to amount of climbing in a ride, but jeez, that wore me out. I felt very much like this:

Back at the house, I scavenged the pantry and found a bag of pre-cooked/seasoned brown rice and quinoa. I heated it up with leftover easter ham, broccoli, and then put some ranch dip on top. It tasted way better than it looks, I promise.

I still feel like this guy every time I go up hill

Today is the last nice day we’ll have for a while.

While the Weather Channel is only predicting 1-2″ total, I was in a place called Dot’s Diner this morning (after yoga in Nederland) and an older mountain man named Smith told me that it’s highly possible that we’ll have feet of snow. Possible enough, in fact, that he and the waitress discussed how they were getting a few days’ worth of groceries in preparation. Seeing as this place didn’t bat an eyelash at the last 4-6″ that came through (which would have shut Memphis down for 3 days), hearing locals talk about snow-prep makes me think it’s time to batten down hatches and break out the fat bike. Dot’s is a unique little local place, and it was full of older mountain people sharing gossip over coffee and waffles.

P.S. The biscuit at Dot’s is homemade and the size of three normal biscuits. I ate nearly everything, because I had post back-to-back big ride hunger that was potentially insatiable otherwise