Pirate Party

Thomas turned five and we hosted a Pirate party.

Kayaking 101

It was pushing 100 degrees when Martin suggested that I should take him kayaking "some day", my response was how about today? We had been planning a 3+ hour mt. bike ride and the idea of hanging out in water for a couple hours sounded great:Henry and Thomas were hip to the idea as well:
We rounded up the boys, dusted off the boats, and headed out to Long Pine Reservoir. I could scarcely remember how to tie two boats onto my car. I had the ropes, but the knowledge was rusty. As we left Starbucks and headed for the lake, William Nealey's Kayaking bible started to come back to me - slowly. The many trips to WV began to revisit me, the chasing flood stage creeks in PA, SC & WV began to seem familiar again - in a weird way.

Here is Martin with a near-perfect set-up for an Eskimo roll. Someone once told me that you could tell if someone was going to be a kayaker if, on their first roll attempt, they came up smiling. Martin was laughing.

and, ready to try again.

Thomas and Henry were modeling for some surfer kid magazine:Another great day - 364 to go!

Heaven or Hell

My brother, Nabil, was down yesterday so I threw an impromptu ride together on his behalf. I wanted to show him Heaven or Hell. Larry and Martin came over to help ready my bike which is still having issues. Once we thought we had it back together, we headed out to Mont Alto State Park. About 50 meters into Park Trail, I realized I was in for a rough ride. My chain was jumping, shifting poorly, loose hub, etc. - you know same as HO-fest and the Stoopid 50. I hobbled up the buckets, broke a quick link, fixed it, then Larry and I took Staley over to upper Turtle. Nabil and Martin rode Charcoal Hearth over to Staley. Larry let me sample his SS 29'er on the climb up Turtle to Wayne's Highway. Survey says: incredible. Had to climb out of the saddle because of the set-up - which meant fast. The big wheels were awesome, throw some gears on there and wow! I broke my chain again going down the Middle Narrows, this time we didn't use a quick link and it was much stronger for the duration. Lee's Rocks over to Heaven or Hell. The Gate was unrideable for me given my gear situation but everyone else rides it. Nabil rode it clean on his first attempt - something noone else has ever been able to do! Martin was liking HorH much more this time than his previous run. Nabil rides the ramp (above). Nabil at the foot of the ramp
Larry tries the lower level of Hell, how many levels did Dante say there were? He almost makes it - but not quite.

Taking advantage of the horsepower on this ride. We stop to build a little optional rock thing about half-way down that I have been thinking about for awhile. We have a blast riding pretty much everything else clean. The lower section by the river is all rideable, a little obscufated in places but several of us clean it.

We session a bit at the final river crossing. Nabil survives what could have been a horrible crash down the rocky stream bed and gets back up to clean it on some ridiculously high route with a 90 left-hander in front of the cliff face.

At the end, we play on some recently cut logs near the mushroom pavillion, wish we had brought beers, and reminisce about the fine riding we just had. I go home and later, after dinner, purchase a whole new drivetrain.

5 Kings

A very nice 90 mile jaunt around Franklin, Cumberland, and Adams Counties that included five 900+ft climbs and grades over 20%.
Summary Data
Time: 5:20:09
Distance: 90.09
Moving Speed: 16.9 avg. 62.1 max.
Elevation Gain (ft): +8,160
Avg. Heart Rate
137 bpm Zone 3.4

Temperature (°F) 79.1°F avg.
Wind Speed: SE 8.9 avg. SE 11.5 max. Only one adjustment and no mechanicals.
Hills, hills, and more hills.
Chuck was losing some sodium chloride.

Ok. More than a little.
Joel back at the ranch 90+ miles later. Cathy Large joined us in Caledonia and rode over to the base of Timmons with us before peeling off to go to work. We ran into "Fast Eddie" from Carlisle as we began the climb up Timmons. On this ride I drank nine full bottles of water, peed only twice, and burned 7,243 calories.

HO-Fest 2007

We drove to State College this past Sunday for HO-Fest. HO-Fest is an annual cycling event put on by my friend, Aaron. HO is a rather obvious and adolescent shortening of his last name, Hofelt; but it was a cool nickname and it has stuck. We have been friends since sixth grade - long before mountain biking was even a twinkling in Joe Breeze's or Gary Fisher's eye. Our friendship has weathered middle school food fights, high school ski trips, college frat days, many girlfriends, rooming together, marriage, divorce, Dead shows, rock climbing trips to Kentucky, epic bike rides, horrendous camping trips, and much much more. Not to mention this video we once watched that his dad was allegedly previewing for the english course he was going to be teaching at Juniata College on Arthurian Legend - yeah right: Here is a review:
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea is a film of contradictions. Beautiful and disturbing, erotic and psychotic, this melodramatic thriller is a film of unsettling dichotic elements. Quite an infamous film in its day (due to its shocking subject matter and modestly explicit sexuality). Just be prepared to file it in the "oddest films I've ever seen" category of your mind.
Trust me due to the aforementioned subject matter we filed this baby time and time again.

But life with HO has always been like that, odd and cool.

HO-Fest begins starts from Black Moshannon State Park west of State College, PA. The black part refers to the coloration of the lake due to the high level of tannins in the water; the moshannon part is a derivation of "moss-hanne" Native American for moose stream.
Henry and the tannins. HO-Fest begins with 15 riders who travelled in from all around Pennsylvania.
Including some of the Perry County boys: Ray and Dave.

From the HO himself:

"Here’s the recap: Kberg paced us up Dry Hollow to the gasline, where an unnamed local blew past the gasline.""After a quick direction correction, we dropped the wicked Rattlesnake trail to Benner Run. We climbed up the fire road to the gasline.""Despite the recommendations to the contrary, an unnamed local led us on the gas line where we encountered high grass followed by a grunt of a climb (not fun)."

"Unnamed local then blamed poor trail judgement on Yoda who magically ‘appeared he did’ at the Rock Run trail head." (Yoda in green)

"The easy part over, we followed Rock Run over rocks (HO above) and drainages and abandoned rail beds.""Allen and Don took the ‘large cahuna’ prize for riding the sketchy bridge across the creek. We climbed the rail bed up the switchbacks to the AFT."

"This marked the beginning of a rash of mechanicals: Ray, Dave, and Darius all ended up with chain problems." - like this one wrapped around the seat stays.

"We passed the normal bail-out point at Moosehead lane and continued on downstream where an unnamed local had knowledge of perhaps the sweetest piece of single track in the forest."

-I swear that unnamed local is flipping me the bird.
-Yoda rides the bridge he does. After this nice bridge ride, the group split up; half going up a nasty double-track hike-a-bike to a fire road.-The other half taking a sweet piece of singletrack down by the creek with challenging uphills and rock gardens. "As the rest of group delighted in the challenging rocks and beauty of this trail, Rich found that he had somehow snapped his frame between a rock and his grundle??? "

-Fortunately, there is no picture of his grundle.

"We regrouped at the crossing of Black Moshannon then either went upstream (or uphill) to the AFT/Shingle Mill intersection. The group, now weary from the days’ unrelenting technical tortures, drew its last ounce of strength to face the daunting Shingle Mill trial. This trail is always difficult and can take the best riders out of their game and have them screaming for their mothers. At the end of a long ride the group did a terrific job of taming this trail."

"Kudos to everyone who met the challenge – it was a great day to be in the woods on some great trails." - a great group of folks to ride with durable, amiable, and skilled - like Jedi. After the ride we headed down to HO's house for a picnic and some cold refreshments. It was Canada Day and HO had hockey pucks to grill (inside joke on his grilling skills). Thanks for another great ride HO - you have come a long way since Mello Yellow and holding your rear deraileur on with a drywall screw.
-Cheers

KAW 53 & Covered Bridges

As is customary in south central PA, there were almost too many cycling options to choose from today. Just this past Thursday I was party to a 43 mile joy ride through thunderstorms up Whiskey Springs and Kings Gap with two former pros who happen to be married, and happen to live in Carlisle. Carlisle rides are always good. Keith, aka KAW, is sort of the guru of Carlisle's Tuesday and Thursday night rides - one of the longest continually running group rides on the East coast (My friend, Jim, has the longest running one from his shop in Nyack, NY). Regardless, Keith was leading a ride this morning and that was the one for me.

I first met KAW over five years ago on a referral from my younger sister, Sierra. She knew someone who rides a bike. You know how that can go - you show up at the ride start and the dude doesn't even have a helmet let alone a spare tube or water bottles. That was not the case with Keith. Turns out he has taken over the reins on this Pennsylvania standard, rides frequently, knows the routes, vacations to ride, and has a large network of friends who also ride. Little sister was right on this one but don't tell her.

9:30 from the Carlisle Movie Theatre and we were shooting for 50+ miles. The weather was absolutely beautiful, cool, dry, and sunny.Heading out of town we encountered our first climb, a warm up for things to come.

Up Starret's Gap, turn right on Mountain Road, down the other side and in Perry County the roads became sublime.

For some reason when this guy was pulling I kept getting real thirsty.

Certainly a road bike ride the green team would enjoy.

Covered bridge numero uno:

Graham Watson couldn't make it, he had some other engagement in France this week - his loss.
The powers that be converse on where we ought to go - the field of dreams won out over covered bridge numero dos.The real field of dreams. Because Kevin Costner insisted on cellphone coverage while filming we were able to check our voicemails, I made a call to set a ride up for Sunday morning, took a leak, someone decided that the powers that be made a bad call, so we decided to backtrack to covered bridge numero dos.Jen almost got creamed by a Dodge Ram Dualie SuperStudly 9500k Small Weiner Limited Edition Diesel Truck (you know the DRDSS9.5KSWLEDT) while crossing this obviously single-lane bridge.

We then cruised into Landisburg, took a look at my friend, Ray's, house and I found out that he is a banker. Ray wasn't home or I would still be there drinking Guinness. We tanked up at a Shell station. A Shell station that happens to be sporting the finest beef jerkey selection in southern Pennsylvania and an outside deck with a spectacular view.

We rode some more and climbed some more.
All told the day ended at around 53 miles and close to 4,000 feet of climbing.

If you haven't already, you should try a KAW ride (Carlisle Movie Theatre on Noble road Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6pm).