Saturday, September 8, 2007

mountain biking

For those of us who think ripping through a trail is silly I'd like to enlighten you on the pleasures of getting lost in the woods on a bike.

I'm not one of those tall seat posted super zoot full suspension circus freaks, but I sure do love challenges in biking. I think the idea of having a bike with over 3 logical gear combinations takes the fun out of mountain biking. Thats why I prefer my single speed full suspension moutain bike.

Tonight I biked down the hardest trail ever with my single-speeder and aside from watching it roll down the hill without me on it, it was very challenging. For those of you who are not familiar with mountain bike trials or trials riding, it takes an awesome amount of skill to leap with a 38 pound bike over a boulder, but it can be done.

So with that said, I think we should include SORBA in our efforts to love biking more. The idea of getting those SUV driving full-suspension bike riding freaks may be our bride to mutually understanding each other.

Well....can never really get why you'd want to drive a war machine.

jim "I got more bikes than dykes" spagnola

3 comments:

clintpatty said...

I have another unrelated reply, but I don't have posting access. This post reminded me of how much cheaper bike trails on mountains would be than roads. Huntsville recently installed a new traffic camera, and that is part of about $2.4M . Apparently, they have received money (may have to use search feature for Huntsville) for the same thing in 2004, so I guess it's in other years also. I could have built a bike path to serve the same purpose as Cecil Ashburn Drive for $10K, but it wouldn't be paved. Huntsville seems to think that bike paths would cost about $250,000 per mile (pg 15, or 25 on your pdf viewer) for bike paths. They say they have plans for some pretty sweet ones in the next 10 years. Stuff like Alridge Creek Greenway looks pretty expensive. A bike path can be 3 feet wide with no pavement and not have the city mow it regularly. Dirt and gravel paths for transportation? How much land that could be used for that does the city already own? It seems like the Aldridge Creek Greenway shouldn't have cost that much for land because they needed something to get flooded anyway and room for additional future expansion of the creek.

Anonymous said...

"The idea of getting those SUV driving full suspension bike riding freaks may be our bride to mutually understanding each other."

Gee Bello...if it were more about the VELO and less about your strange idea of who people are by the "war machine" they drive, then we might one day "mutaully understand each other."

I'm all about doing my part to decrease my carbon foot print, but damn. How 'bout some solidarity, brother? There's too few cyclist around here anyway. Why alianate? Educate!

--- Soulryder

Anonymous said...

I completely agree with you. I just have the same issues with SORBA as I do Spring City. After repeated efforts to get them both to jump on the bike advocacy bandwagon not one person from either organization has approach us about any solidarity.

And by the way, your not all circus freaks any more than I. I just like the colorful language. my apologies.My humor comes from my lack of skills on the trails.

On that note there needs to be more MEMBERS of these bike organizations supporting Alabike. At least to show support for statewide advocacy issues. And speaking of which other bike shops should also support more community based rides and let their employees participate in the critical masses and possibly some other group rides. One of the things we all talked about after the alley cat was getting Bikes Ect. to participate as well as Omnibus, Works and Madison cycles.

Maybe they are involved and maybe we need more communication.

The fact that you come to rides and support the events should be sending a message to the other shops....but then again, they would never get the message because they are never there.

jim