Of Boojum and Bicycles

Back from the desert with all fingers and toes attached. Started the trip off with a Hueco crushing sesh with the Danimal into tequila sipping at secret radium hotsprings. Drove to San Diego for crew rendevous, then pushed the muff for about 700 miles from Ensenada to Loreto all detours included. With the additional "blue blazing", we made it from San Diego, California, United States of America to La Paz, Baja California, Sur, Mexico in 19 days. Highlights include our all day ride into 30 mph headwinds in the high desert plains, secluded beach camping with natural, tidal hotsprings, the start-up of Crusher Industries (look for the spring line-up "Photo-op One" to be dropping in department stores too soon), and new prophetic incarnations of the prophet boojum, who is not. who is. who. (insert elightenment).

Click here for the full photo spread from eye of Rodson

Middle Creek

A long slow drizzle that started late Friday the 13th and continued through Saturday only got a few creeks in the Chattanooga area up to a runnable level. Suck Creek got up to around 4.5' North Chick. Creek ran at a minimum flow, and many rivers on the plateau came up as well.
I met Jeremy at the takeout for Middle Creek to asses the level. The new gauge was reading 1' and we weren't sure if the creek would have enough water, but it is a thin margin between not enough water and too much. A coin toss determined that we would drop into the gorge... "best two out of three?" Just then Nick pulled up fired up about trying something new and with the nudge of his enthusiasm we headed up the mountain.
We hiked down past Rainbow Lake and stayed on the trail until we got past Rainbow Falls and proceeded down to the creek.



Every time I go in here I tell myself I am never going back. I tend to go back about once a year, I must forget. But after this trip I find myself not coming to that conclusion. Having enough flow and it being cleaned out minimized the portaging to only two mandatory portages due to wood. Next time I think we'd all like to bump it up as far as the water level goes, and with a little more work with a saw and another motivated but small group I'd go in again.



The run is about a mile long and drops around 700+ feet. I think we managed to run just about every runnable drop amongst our crew. There were probably 2 others out there that would go but you'd have to take the hit, and someone else has already taken the hit for that glory.



I am not going to provide any sort of river description other than to say its steep and dangerous; full of sieves and undercuts. In fact just to give an example there is water flowing down stream to the entrance of "shoot me in the face with a 9" that is coming across the top of some boulders which pours into the rocks at the runnable line, below those boulder is a pool (fed by a sieve above) with a falls that falls into the back of one of the caves near the landing of the first drop, this falls actually falls back under the flow going towards the entrance. If that description doesn't make sense it is because the structure of the rapids and sieves that create them often don't make sense.















Sierra Slide



First Decent of the center line of "Dirty Willy"- Nick M.




Superman Slide is a full on chargefest. There are two drops that make up the entrance that are still unrun and remain there for the taking... its only your face...

tighter than the picture makes it look.

A little more boogy gets you to Craze Maze. The top drop has been run before, this trip was the first descent of the second drop, the third portion of the drop, which consists of a three drop series and is really the best part, has been run but was portaged due to bad wood.



Setting Safety to avoid a 25 foot drop into a sieve:

Andy D is riding in Mexico- check his progress here: crazyguyonabike

We got some rain and got to go kayaking in Alabama, saw lots of friends paddled a few river miles, good times, no photos, no video.

A great cyclist was lost in Chattanooga, our deepest sympathy goes out to David's family. Below are several links to check out on this:
Chattanoogan
Suck Creek Cycle Blog
Suck Creek Cycle Blog more
Drunk Cyclist: Rider Down

Our boys at LVM did a feature on squirt boating on their "monday morning mad house" series and the video featured some TJ action, watch the video here:
Lunch Video
check out their other stuff on the link to the left.

Got a report back from the annual march get together, which I was bummed to miss this year, that there was good water and nice weather for a green run and heartbreak ridge ride. It was also reported that "the big game hunter" now has a bike. Look out fat bottomed girls!



Stay bright, be seen and crack a cold one.

Trip Report:
"The Bear roars again"

The Chattanooga area received several inches of rain January 5th and 6th. We decided to wait for the river to drop to 22" or lower before we put on; January 7th. Lookout Creek had peaked at over 8,000 cfs the evening before. We put on with 21" on the gauge and healthy flow coming in from the tributaries. Most of which formed beautiful waterfalls spilling into the gorge.



We knew we would need to scout most drops due to the high water moving the wood around in the gorge. Most all the wood was avoidable except some wood that has fallen in just above Omega. Get out well above the entrance to avoid the log. You can still put in below it and run most of the drop. After our trip some people pushed the log into Big Bang which required the assistance of another group of boaters to push it over the drop where it disappeared. You must boof here and the right side pocket where you can pencil in (pocket- protector) is out of business. Use caution until the log can be located and/ or removed.







































Stairway to Heaven;
David Cohen














Curtbag testing the Big Bang Theory



















We had clean lines on Revelations, Momentary Lapse of Reason and Armageddon and entered the boulder gardens, where it always seems like the action is on; Daniel Creek adds substantially to the flow. Casey hiked out after having enough of dealing with a sinking boat. We lost one other member of the group who decided to hike off as well. Aside from some wild lines off Stairway, that will likely be campfire material, there was very little carnage.


Lookout Creek at the end of the day:

Crushing New Years Eve

It seems that dry weather has temporarily made itself scarce here in East Tennessee, which has certainly made all water loving mammals happy, but during the drought of the past few years other avenues of adventuring were explored. Over the holidays an old friend returned from "the land of enchantment" to explore some southeastern geology. Here are some shots from the Devil's Racetrack, an interesting rock fin protruding from the edge of the Cumberland Plateau near Carryville.

Danimal half way up, cold stoked

The view down from the belay station at the top of the first pitch (look at little Walden asleep in the sun, what a good puppy)

Danimal charging pitch number two

Looking off the top into the Tennessee Valley

Rock Fin

So thats why they call it the Devil's Racetrack...

Here is why we didn't climb this route when we came here during the summer. Huge jug half way up the first pitch is a giant bees nest. Yikes. Luckily they weren't home when we were there.

Suck It

(((^^^666^^^)))

It was the year 2008. It was The 555. Seven riders mounted their steel ponies and headed for Portland, OR. They completed their task and have risen to demigod status. Their foolish bravery has spawned another two-wheeled movement. The 666. Six states. Six centuries. Six days. Its all happening Spring 2009. Stay tuned...

Tour A La Bama

The first reaction that most people had was something like, "are you crazy?". I would usually then explain that we would get up super early and ride before it got too hot, and that 70 miles a day isn't that hard on a bike, especially when you've nothing else to do but push the pedals and eat. Cool, clean hotel rooms are a luxury that make the heat of the day all the more tolerable, and we would spend a number of hours basking in the chilled air of someone else's power bill. Was this convincing? Maybe to some, but to others we must have seemed a bit masochistic. But, as you can see from the sequence of photos below, it was clearly the bikes that went crazy...






With a little good fortune and a lot of good food we made our way from Lookout Mountain, TN to Destin FL, in about 6 days. Day 1 was a beautiful ride out Hwy 157. Rolling hills, beuna vistas, and fajitas for two when we arrived at Weiss Lake, AL.

Susanna, Roller Coaster Road, Day 1

Days 2 and 3 we followed Hwy 9 from Centre to Wetumpka. We awoke on our first morning on the road to local news stations warning of poor air quality for this to-be the hottest day of the year. No problem. We made a short jaunt from Centre to Heflin, about 50 miles, and found respite and barbecue near Interstate 20. We went to bed, planning on getting up super early and trying to knock out a bunch of miles before lunch the next day. 6:00 am and some Hardys biscuits got us to Goodwater before lunch, about 50 miles. We found more awesome barbecue and tried to loiter in the A/C as long as possible, but the magnetic pull of the road got us rolling again by 1:00. As we rode into Wetumpka, we were both finishing our first ever centuries and the weather that had been building behind us all day was just beginning to break. We walked to the closest Mexican restaurant between breaks in the rain, and toasted to sore legs and sweat over some more fajitas.

Typical Hwy 9 Scenery

Fed up with chicken trucks and rednecks in mudslingers, I picked up an Alabama Atlas and Gazetteer on the morning of day 4. Now it was time to get lost on some county roads. The weather began building behind us again, and by noon we were hiding from lightning at a dog kennel in Downing. The first storm passed and we found ourselves trying to ride through sand in BFE, AL. By the end of the day, we had waited out another storm at some random church and had been invited in for a Wednesday night Bible study. We graciously declined and headed into Troy in a light drizzle and dwindling light.

Sand Road

Opp was our next destination, and our fifth day on the road would prove to be that of our muscular discontent. We were quite fatigued this day, but only had a quick 50 miles on roads less traveled. Opp was our favorite town, we ate steaks and seafood at a quaint little restaurant and, so that we could drink a beer and play some billiards, became members of the local club "Regis' Four Sons".

Fun with Fatigue

It was in Florida on day 6 that we finally got caught in a giant thunderstorm with no shelter. We found a low spot near a culvert in the road and huddled together hoping the lightning would not see us. It didn't and we made our way to Niceville, having our first and only flat tire on the way. We celebrated with some more seafood on the sound and some redstripe while picking which sail boat we would buy for our next adventure...

Success

You must be joking...

I did my first road race last weekend. CAT 5 road race that ended in a climb. Achieved my goal of being in the top 10 by the skin of my teeth... 10th place.

I didn't think there was much doping going on below the pro level until I was reading the drunkcyclist's blog and stumbled upon this link to a forum all about doping... I don't even know what to say about this.
I've got my own form of doping and plan to do lots of it tonight. Think I'll start things off with a lager and move on to the ales from there.

Keepin' Up with the Joneses

I've noticed that lots of other bloggers have important causes they promote to their vast readership be it conservation of rivers in canada, green practices, research on terminal and chronic diseases, looking at boobs, and last but certainly not least... general self aggrandizement; not being one to be left behind TJ also has its causes. I present to you one cause TJ has deemed worthy enough to champion... Bringing the movie RAD to DVD release.

We will work hard to keep you up to date with the latest progress in this most important endeavor.

Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em

On Saturday night several other lazy cyclists and myself decided to sign up for the Southeastern Regional Championship pedal-bike race being held at Raccoon Mtn. on Sunday. Despite our lack of preparation we felt the need to defend our home turf. The SERC series is a regional race so it brought out fast men and women from around the southeast, I hoped my home field advantage would garner me a few spots in the standings.

This was the first XC race I have participated in, typically my focus in cycling, if you can call it that, has leaned towards the endurance side of the sport. So going all out for two hours was quite a change from the long duration events done at a more sustainable pace.
Race Recap:
After a series of phone calls between the local lazies to determine when we'd show up at the event, planning to arrive as late as possible to increase our odds of missing the start, we had a brief team meeting before warming up and lining up at the start.

I was off in the single speed class. The first bit was on paved road and I got off the line fast enough to be in first place at the first turn, second place at the second turn and the pattern seemed to continue... I ran out of gear as the road got flat to slightly down hill and lost several more places. When the course turned into the woods and got technical I rounded a corner to a pile up in a technical section. Since I knew the section was there I was commited to a line I thought would be there around the blind corner only to find a bunch of wheels and feet and legs I had no time to slow or change line so I ran into the tire in front of me and had to dismount the bike and subsequently lost a couple of places, I was bummed, had I been in front I may have made up a good gap here.
Back on the bike and chasing back up to the leaders I came off the end of a bridge and my handle bars rotated around in the stem. I rode it like that for a while but finally decided that I'd have to fix it. Lost some more places and started getting swept up by the leaders of the sport class. I was able to bust ass and catch a few more single speeders but the leaders were gone.

TG came across the line bloodied from a botched jump, I wish we had photos of the gore.

So I learned several things that will hopefully help me go faster next time. I was bummed to lose spots due to the pile up and the mechanical but I probably wouldn't have done much better without those mishaps, but maybe less bad.

- make sure your bolts are tight enough on your bike before you race, but not too tight
- if you are really serious, gear accordingly (i.e. if they modify the loop to take out the worst climbing and give you a paved start take off the 20 tooth and put on a 19 tooth freewheel)
- now that you've geared accordingly get out in front of everyone else because most of the racers suck ass at technical riding
- stay out in front because riding a hill behind a geared racer (even if he is the leader in that class) sucks, and despite how much you want to kick him in the forehead off the trail so you can get by it's easier to just pick up your bike run past him and get back on, I think this also helps to demoralize the geared biker as well.
- don't race in the afternoon in the end of June
- preemptive strike against cramps
- plan to have your mechanicals later in the race, in the early parts everyone is amped up, a mechanical failure later in the race seems to create less of a gap to make up





old photo dump: TJIB/ TDUB after Cohutta 100