Spring is Coming!

Government Island Revisted

I escaped the house after being cooped up for A WHOLE DAY due to the snow. The temperature was relatively warm so I set off to play photographer. I took a walk around Government Island in Stafford County - a site I visited in the spring of 2012 and posted about on Jackson's blog. This trip there wasn't much to photograph.

 The wildlife consisted of a few gulls picking through the mud flats.

The wooden walkways go on forever. The lumber for these walkways must have cost quite a bit.

I'm still fascinated by these carved initials. In the first post about Gov't Island I wrote that the owner of a small parcel on the island carved his initials into a corner marker in the year 1786. So unless someone has done a little retouching of these carved letters they have remained sharp for a LONG time.

 Some strange marks on a rock. Not sure if they are tool marks or some form of erosion.

 There are benches placed around the island (probably to compensate for the really long hike along the walkways.)

 I included this fuzzy picture of a bird not to show how poorly I can take pictures but because the bird made me laugh. This stick is in the middle of the channel and the wind was gusting heavily, churning up whitecaps and generally making things unpleasant but our friend the bird was just hanging out like it was a beautiful spring day.

Weird trees.

Another fuzzy shot of a bird. 

Just because.

Random (version 2.1)

Snow

Rockburn Skills Park

I visited the Rockburn Skills Park today. The park is located near Elkridge, Md. and is a small bicycle course designed and built by MORE (a local mountain bike organization) in conjunction with IMBA. The skills park has a 'pump track' which is a smallish circular track filled with whoop-de-do style hills. A rider can practice bike balance and movement over these whoops - the goal is to complete circuits of the course without pedaling (the shifting, or pumping motion of the rider propels the bike hence the name pump track).

The park also has three trails for riders to play and practice their skills. The three trails are rated as Small, Medium, and Large based on the required skill level. The small trail which is basically a linear pump track with flowing whoops, berms, and tiny jumps. The medium trail is a downhill run with many large jumps. The jumps can be rolled over, or if you have big enough cajones you can get some big air. The large trail is a pure technical challenge with large rock gardens, logs (skinnies), and tight turns.

This is the start of the Large trail. The vertical drop to the skinnies is about 15 feet. This photo does no justice to the real life trail.

One of the sections of whoops and berms.

The easy part of the Large trail.

Here is where things get a little tougher...

This rock garden is where I "stepped off". I rode most of the Large trail several times early in the day by slowly picking my way through the rocks. After watching quite a few riders roll smoothly through section that gave me trouble I asked their secrets. The apparent key to success in the rocks is to carry speed over the transition and roll quickly over the rocks. So carry speed I did - unfortunately I carried a huge amount of speed over that large angled rock in the center of the picture below. On the other side of that rock is a three foot drop that tends to swallow your front wheel if you don't time your wheelie correctly. I did not time the wheelie correctly and executed a high speed nose dive/arm flail/shoulder roll into the dirt below. 

Ouch.

This is what the rest of the Large trail looks like...

A view of a catch (run out area of a jump) on the Medium trail.

High speed flowing berm

This is the start of a super technical uphill rock climb named Melanie's Madness. 

Melanie certainly was going mad when she designed this. The obstacle is able to be ridden but the climb will tear out your lungs!

This is Gonzo.

 (I don't know the guy's real name but he flew every jump and threw every trick possible with no regard to his personal well being while he was playing on the jumps of the Medium trail so I'm going to call him Gonzo!) Gonzo's warm up was a 360 tailwhip. For those of you that are not up on your trick knowledge a 360 tailwhip involves launching off the lip of the jump and rotating a complete revolution while kicking the rear of the bike 90 degrees to the side. Gonzo did this trick 30 seconds after getting out of the car. No walking the trail, checking the jump - just drop in and let it rip!

 Gonzo is certifiably insane.

Hard to tell in the photo but Gonzo is about 8 feet in the air over this jump. 

Yes, Gonzo landed this.

More than once.

Pretty Cool Cake

The Bike

I've recently repaired the bike. After a somewhat less than successful adventure on the ramps at a local skate park, the bike suffered a major setback when the rear wheel shaped itself into a modern art interpretation of a pretzel. The front wheel had been bent slightly several months ago after a hard landing off of a three foot drop. The front wheel wobble was irritating but not disabling. The mangled rear wheel sealed the fate of the bike - no more riding until a fix was made. 

So here is the bike in all of it's repaired glory. The stock wheels were all black. And of single-wall construction. And weighed approximately 500 lbs.  The new wheels are double-wall construction so they should be much stronger. They are fairly lightweight. And they're BLUE!

The new wheels have some pretty decent parts. The hubs are SRAM 506 hubs that should carry my 'heft' better than the old hubs. Plus the new hubs spin wonderfully smoothly unlike the old ones. The spokes are DT Swiss and the rims are Alex aluminum hoops. Not top notch stuff, but leaps and bounds above the stocker stuff!

Did I mention they were blue?