History has been made

America has spoken, history had been made. Here's to hope and change! Progression is never a bad thing and possibilities have been opened up! Excitement in our country has been sparked - expectations need to be met. There is work to be done and we have a new leader to guide us through, even with failure still in reach I am proud to follow diligently.

Creating a Remedy Slopestyle

After riding Whistler on a Slopestyle bike, it occured to me why not make my bike a Slopestyle? Intense, Rocky Mountain, Jamis, Norco, and other manufactures have thier own Slopestyle bikes, why not a Trek. So what would the modifications would be required? Simple, change the 8.0 X 2.25 air shock to a 7.875X2.25 coil shock. What would the effects be? A slackened Head Angle of about 66.5 degrees (from 67 degrees) and a lowered Bottom Bracket hieght of about 13.6 inches. (from 13.8 inches). So the parts are on order and we will see if this mod dishes out what I hope it does. Here is what I got coming in:

1) Fox DHX Coil 4.0 7.875X2.25 (Source: RockyMountain Cycles) (Push is still a possibility right now, TBD)
2) Fox rear shock mounting hardware (Source: Fox Racing Shocks)
3) Fox Steele 350lbsX2.45 Coil Spring (Source: Cambria Bicycle Outfitters)

Here is what the bike should look like when completed:


BTW, the Remedy is already fully capable out the box. The only reason for the conversion is aftermarket improvements. If you can tune something to make it better, stronger, faster.... why not?

She makes a great Goldfish!

This year my daughter got to go Tick-or-Treatin for the first time (she's 2 years old). She even got to experience it with her buddy (and my God Daughter) Dahlia. I know that she had a great time and was super excited for the Candy. We spent the evening with the Navarro's and headed out for a short 20 minute candy raiding adventure. Awesome time and the best Haloween ever. Good friends, my God Daughter, my wife and my little girl. What more can you ask for. She makes a great goldfish!

A mountain bike trip of a lifetime

On September 26th I and 3 other riders (Norm, David, Rob) headed to Whistler to ride where pro mountain bikers train. These trails are world class and so well put together that I don't think there will be anything that tops this riding. Since we couldn't bring our own bikes on this trip we rented from Summit Sports in the Whistler Village.

Weapon of choice was the Rocky Mountain SS396. It rode well, but was a bit choppy on the high frequency bumps which left the rear suspension less active then I'm used to under those conditions. So what do you do to compesate? Nothing, just ride the hell out of it, and that's just what we did.

Being in up there enabled me to work on jumping (big jumps at that) and big drops as well. I definitely feel more comfortable in the air now and really look forward to any chance I get to getting airborne (so to speak). My favorite jump was the one on top of a trail called "Freight Train". Pretty good size air to pull it off and a nice drop to get back down. Norm had a pretty gnarly crash off this one, but he came out OK. Kinda shook him up a bit but the body armor did it's job pretty darn well.

I definitely improved my riding abilities, just in that couple days of riding. So what's next? Til next season just ride hard and don't forget that everything is smaller compared to Whistler.

All in all the trip was a blast and I can't wait to get back up there next season. This time I'm gonna bring the wife and kiddo to share the experience with, and of course get some riding in ;)

Damn Scraps!

The usual morning drive to drop my daughter off at school was not so usual after all. I couldn't find the Bob Marley CD (that Trinity has in rotation in my truck right now) so I opted for the good ol' fashion FM radio. Yeah I got Sirius in the ride, but decided to see what the latest is in mainstream nowadays. Needless to say, I found myself fumbling through radio stations trying to find something decent. Yeah... that wasn't happening, it might just be because I'm older or my standards for music is somewhat unique, but I couldn't find anything on, I couldn't even tell you the name of the artist that were on the radio, at least the ones that I scanned through between home and Trinity's school (short drive). So I didn't get my morning audio breakfast, thank goodness for coffee. It leaves me thinking of this verse:

"It is time we put the hometeam back on the map
All you radio stations play a whole lotta crap
It's like I'm hungry at the table and you feedin me scraps"
--Aceyalone : B-Boy Real McCoy

Hotter than the cheese on fresh made pizza

The week of August 4th I took some vacation time off work to take the fam to Orlando. We met my sister and her family there and crashed at their timeshare (it was a nice spot) and we all went to a couple Disney parks and had a great time. This is my sister, Brandon, Ryan, and Analyn (not neccessarly it that order thoug):
It was hotter than the cheese on fresh made pizza, as well as humid but all in all it turned out to be great first family vacation. We even got to see Wii-nang Angela, Tito Geh, Tita Rosana, Josh, and Tita Rosana's pops and had a nice dinner at their place. Difinitely had some good eats and plenty of it over there, especially the salmon and the fresh fruit that Angela woke up at 5AM to pick from their fruit trees ;)

Here's the Jambalaya combo for ya!


We spent a couple days over at Downtown Disney, just hanging out all together. We played with legos, rode choo-choo trains, and merry go rounds.



Me, my lovely wife and wonderful daughter!



Appearently there was some kind of dress code over at the Animal Kingdom, however I didn't get that memo.



Anyways the trip was fun, it was good to travel as a family, and awesome to spend some time with my sister and her crew. All in all it came down to one thing, having this little girl find Minnie Mouse (even it meant asking Mickey where she was).

A Noble Saturday

Last Saturday a couple of me and a couple friends went out to shuttle Noble Canyon. Other than the hot temps in some areas of the canyon it turned out to be a pretty good ride. Here are the stats from that day:

# of riders: 3
# of flats: 3 (1 per rider)
# of crashes: 6 (2 per rider)

I would say that the stats are pretty good, considering the trail. If you not familiar with it, Noble has some pretty techy sections. All in all I cleaned most of the major areas: "Widow Maker", "Barney Rubble", the upper and middle switch backs, "The Roman Wall" and the rest of "Extra Credit". I couldn't get through "Stairway to Hell", but that's just how Noble is. It wreaks havoc on the bikes and it's never the same ride twice. I was only able to get a few shots off during the ride (too busy riding). Here's what I captured that day.

Permanent Gloves?

So why "permanentgloves"? It probably started around 2004, that's about the year that I got bit by the MTB bug. So what does that have to do with "permanentgloves"? Pretty much everyhing. You see I wear full finger gloves when I ride and as the years and my MTB habit progressed, being from Sunny San Diego, a glove tan burned it's way onto my hands. I'm not sure if it's as noticeable as it really is, but if I showed you my hands, more then likely you would be able to see a significant difference in skin tone starting from my wrists. I guess I could of just as easily made it "permanentsando", but that's not as viewable daily as my "permanentgloves". Anyways pictured above are my favorite gloves.