2020 Olympics Tokyo Cycling, BMX & Skateboarding Mascots!

Ladies and gentlemen, here are your 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics Cycling, Mountain Biking, BMX Racing and BMX Freestyle mascots!

BMX RACING

BMX FREESTYLE

ROAD CYCLING

TRACK CYCLING

MOUNTAIN BIKING

SKATEBOARDING

How freakin' awesome are these? I love them. Share this post!

Trail Review - Trail Creek, Athens GA

Rode Trail Creek Mountain Bike Trails in Athens GA for the first time today, so I'm laying down this review while the ride is sill fresh in my memory bank. This trail is just a short hop from the downtown area, and very easy find. Parking was not an issue at all when I was there.
Download Printable Map Here

My overall first impression is very good, and definitely a bit different than other GA trails I have ridden. To me, this trail is very "bike-park-ish." Each loop is short, and if you are looking for epic mileage this is not your best choice. Head on down to Ft. Yargo if you are trying to clock up your distance stats.

What this trail lacks in single loop distance it makes up for in fun factor by way of some excellent "intermediate/advanced" sections, which are "sessionable." By that I mean that most of the berm and jump sections are set up so that you aren't forced to go all the way to the end of the trail hit them after your first pass. Sometimes you can go right back into the fun sections and loop them over and over. On the really heavy stuff, you do have to follow through a little further, but even the ride back to the top is not very bad. You can access the entry points to the heavy stuff about 1/4 mile from the main parking lot, at the 3 o' clock point of entry off filed 2 in the mao above, then hang a right and you'll be at the start of the two heaviest sections. But let's go through the map trail by trail with my recommendation on how to do this trail the first time.

Orange Crush (orange on map):
To get to this trail, come down out of the parking by field 2 to Trail Creek Street and hang a right. Take Trail Creek  Street until you see the cement path on the left. Hop on the path and talke it all the way to the entry point on the right. Yes I know we passed teh entry point to the Green Trail, but we are going to do that later.

When you get to the trail entry, hop on in and go clockwise. You're going to do a little climbing for the first half, then when you get to the top, the fun stuff starts. You'll see on the map a dotted orange section which is the berms and jumps business. If you aren't comfortable with berms and jumps, just take the other direction. If you take the intermediate section, get ready to commit because it gets fast quickly and it is hard to impossible to back out of a line once make your choices. I had to footdown twice on this section on my first pass, but I also roosted some good lines on the berms and caught a little air. Then when it ended, it was easy to see where you could hook around and repeat the section. This is what I meant about sessioning. I could easily ride just the intermediate section of this trail for like 45 mins to an hour, then call it a day. However, on your first time there, you need to experience more, so instead  of doubling back, go ahead and close out the loop and you'll be back on the cement path where you started.

Green Trail (green on map):
Directly across from the outrance of the orange trail you are going to see an entry point to the Green trail. You can go in here if you want. I did not. I went back up the cement path to the main entrance. Once you pop into the trail, there are a few picnic tables you can chillmode at, and get your thoughts together about how you are going to kill it next time you do orange.

Green trail is almost totally flat. Not a lot to say about it, except that you can always use it as a cheat to get your distance numbers up by doing it 2 or 3x. It's only like a mile long, just like Orange Crush. If you are new to mountain biking and don't want anything too heavy, this is your trail, I mean, when I say it is flat, it is, but it is not so tame that you aren't really mountain biking.

Drive By Truckers (blue on map):
When you finish green, go back on the cement trail the way you came, then hang a right onto Trail Creek Street. You'll go about 1/4 mile til you see the entrance to the blue on the left. Head on in!

You're going to start twisting and climbing. be aware of bikes hauling ass the opposite direction! The rules at this park are that downhill riders have to yield to climbers, but sometimes they can be hauling pretty fast and not have time to get off the trail, so just keep your eyes open up ahead. If you look on the map you'll see a dotted line section of blue. You want to go to the left of this section, because it is a unidirectional intermediate section. You'll go about 1/8th mile and the trail will come back together. Hook around and try the intermediate section! You can handle this one. You can just roll over the jumps or you can go for some air. It is a short but fun section, and again, you could get to this spot and just loop around sessioning the berms and jumps til your heart is content. But today you are going to go back to just do it once and then keep going in the original direction. When you get to the top rightmost part of blue, you'll have reached the top as far as elevation for the entire trail.

So now you'll be going mostly downhill but some of the switchbacks take you back up a bit. The whole way up the berms on blue have been useless to you because you have been climbing, but now there will be a bunch of small jumps and berms that are working for you. This is a nice long section, so rock it all the way til you connect with the yellow/red trail entrances.

BONUS: if you look at the map you'll see that when you get to the intersection with yellow/red, you can also take a short path back to the parking lot so you can get a beer. You might need one for these next sections.

Panic (yellow on map):
Hold tight here you go! This is a sweet downhill section with bigger berms and jumps that you have encountered so far. Although they are larger, they are not terribly scary and you can roll over most of the jumps. But that's no fun. You'll have a few opportunities to catch a little air and maybe scare yourself a little. If you cleared the intermediate on orange, you'll dig this section which is longer.

Eventually you'll meet back up with the tail of red, and at that point the heavy stuff mellows out, but you'll still be cruising pretty quick. Make sure to keep an eye out on your left where the trails come back together so you don't collide with someone from red. Go under the bridge and at the next fork hang a right. This will pop you out onto Trail Creek Street, and you'll see the way back to the parking lot. You can go to the left and get a little extra distance, but I did not do that on my visit. I was anxious to get to the final section. Once you get back to the parking lot, you can easily head right back in and do this again. Sessioning!

Widespread (red on map):
Are yo ready? because this is where it gets real.
This section has the biggest berms, the fasted speed, and the most rad jumps. Take it slow the first time, but there will be spots where you can catch some air very easily. Most of the jumps are not gaps, they are tabletop jumps, but even the ones that are gaps are only slighting gapped, but you still don't want to case it with your back wheel if you try them. You're can go a zillion miles an hour down this section, but remember there is going to be a point where you meet back up with the yellow trail so keep your eyes open for riders to your right as the trails come back together. The finish is that same as red. Take a deep breath and realize that you just did something very rad! Then if you want to, go back up to the parking lot and do it again, and again. Sessioning! While I was there today tehre were some locals that were doing nothing but Widespread, over and over and over, ad they were rinsing it pretty good.

Drive By Truckers (blue on map): 
To close out your first visit to this trail, go to the intersection where blue, yellow and red meet (again) and this time take blue. you'll be doing it the opposite directoin that you did the first time. Take it all the way back to Trail Creek Street. This will give you some extra distance, and you'll get to do the downhill sections of blue that you passed when you were climbing it previously. There are a few rock drop off options that you can try of you want to get really gnarly. I was not in that mode today, and truthfully they may be better for the full suspension crowd.

When you get back to the road, you'll know where you are at this point so you can go do some more riding or you can call it a day. If you call it, you'll be at about 7.5 miles/500ft climbing. That's All! So you can see how sessioning may be to your advantage for fun factor and to get your stats up.

Conclusion:
I love Athens. I love that all of the trail names have to do with Athens bands. I love that I have found a trail that is very different than every other trail in the area, I love that this trail seems like an entry level "bike park" only here you don't have to take a shuttle or lift back to the top, and you do need to do a little uphill business. I can't wait til next Spring when I can go and stay for a whole day. I think you should go with me.

NOTE: You'll see that there is a way to connect the bottom section of the blue trail to the green trail but as of this writing that section is closed so they can build a new bridge over the creek because the old one is failing. The trail stewards straight up said NOT to ride this section and you should listen to them. You can go to the SORBA-ATHENS facebook page for updates on bridge construction and other trail related news.

Big Ups and Bike Together!

V-Brakes Suck. There I said it.

Bicycle V-brakes are such garbage.

Any bike system where one of the components is called a "noodle" shouldn't exists simply because of said noodle.

I've been trying to look up who the actual inventor of the first set was but so far no luck. Anyway, brake designs previous to v-brakes were already working very well, so long as you knew how to properly set up and adjust them. Then at a certain point about like 10 or so years ago, seemingly out of nowhere the v-brake was on everything. I want to know why.

Why would something with such a crappy, bad, ridiculous, ugly design, with no sigificant leap in performance, and a huge PITA factor for regular, non-bike mechanic people to adjust, suddenly become an industry standard?

Oh let's put out a brake system that anyone who has ever worked on a spring tensioned system could look at from a mile away and see that you're never going to get the adjusted properly while having them actually look centered. Pick one or the other. The offset on where the noodle ends creates a situation where in order to be adjusted properly the spring tension has to be uneven on either side. Dumb. Since you can't begin asymetrically adjusting the spring tension until the actual cable is tightened, once you get them centered, one arm is always in a different position than the other. Always.

Some of you tough guys might want to get on here and talk about how you can get them centered perfectly, but you're not going to convince me. Even if you think you're the v-brake master and -claim- to be able to get the centered and symmetrically aligned (which you'll never get me to believe), it still doesn't take away that it is a badly designed system that makes you work three times as hard to get results that were easily achievable with previous designs.

Anyway, I have been out of the bike industry since 1995, so obvs I don't know what the heck went on between then and now, but I do know that someone somewhere had to do a helluva job selling v-brake technology as the "new big thing". Maybe it started with some custom manufacturer making really nice ones, and the big manufacturers all copycatted it. Maybe vice-versa. If you know, please tell me. It smacks of someone trying be -different- by fixing something that wasn't broken.

Yes I know that disc brakes have replaced v-brakes on down to all but the lowest end bikes. That still doesn't excuse the years of embarassing industry wide adoption of a failure of a system. So Mote It Be.

Bruise Report

Last Sunday I bailed pretty hard on the single speed, and ended up taking the handlebar end to the chest with full momentum. I knew as soon as it happened that it was the kind of injury that hurt then, but would hurt worse and look worse later.
Day one there was no bruise at all.

Then by day three it reached the initial development "yellow stage"...

 

By day 6 it had fully developed. 

 

OUCH!

 

Product Test: HALO II HEADBAND (pt.1)

Last year I started using a regular old NBA style sweatband under my helmet during the summer months. It worked great....until you stopped for a rest. Of course the solution is to NEVER STOP TO REST, but I'm a regular cyclist, not a pro, so sometimes I stop. We all have to stop at stop lights (sometimes) right?

Anyway, the NBA style sweatband worked great at soaking up sweat, but stop for just a second and all of that sweat would come streaming down into my eyes. Then I'd take the backside of my glove and rub my eyes, which just made more sweat go in them. Then my eyeballs felt like someone was jabbing them with a red hot poker for the rest of the ride.But even that was better than no sweatband and having sweat run down into my eyes as soon as I started perspiring.

This year I'm going to give a new solution a try. While browsing REI I discovered the HALO II PULLOVER HEADBAND.

At first glance I thought it was just a reworking of a standard sweatband, with a little bit different shape, but the real difference is on the inside.

 

The yellow rubber strip is known as the SweatBlock Patented Seal (no really it is a legit patented) and it is the reason I opted to shell out the $16.00 price. The seal is pretty self-explanatory, but for those of you who don't get how it works, the seal creates a channel about an inch above your eyebrows, and is supposed to channel liquid back and away from your eyes and face. Think of it as a rain gutter for your mug. 

The HALO II is available in a wide range of colors and is made from Dryline® Visa Endurance Fabric which is a blend of 63% Nylon, 23% Polyester, and 14% Lycra. The result is an incredibly thin product, which is nice because the old NBA headband I was using was almost too this to get a helmet over. However, I am thinking that the HALO II will be more about moving sweat than absorbing it. I'm okay with that, but we'll need to see how it works in practice. The feature set says it is anti-microbial, odor resistant and quick drying. I'm hoping for excellent performance on all of these since they are all areas where the NBA sweatband fell short.

Initial fit seemed pretty good and after wearing it for a few minutes I forgot it was on. That works for me, but I'll be keeping an eye on the elasticity and hoping that it doesn't get loose. 

I'm ready for some summer torture testing. You can probably tell from the pic above, and will shamefully admit, that I probably get more sweaty than some of the super fit cyclists out there. That is one of the many reasons why this blog is called "Regular Cyclist" not "Unsponsored Pro". So this thing is going to get a proper thrashing, which I'll report back on in a month or two. 

I'm thinking that a replacement once a year would be cool with me, and I'd be interested in hearing what you think the lifespan of a product like this should be. Let me know. 

Haw Creek Claims a Victim

My buddy Jay and I hit Haw Creek Park for a cold riding session today. It was not intended to be anything heavy, just a chill ride so jay could test out his vintage 1991 Specialized StumpJumper which he recently converted to a single speed. I call it FrankenBike. 

This bike is pretty rad. It has a super cool lightweight tube set and was actually on the high end of the range when it was brand new. Combine decent specs, the single conversion, and the steep angles and you get one light, quick handling machine.

The ride was a short but fun one. It was fun because the locals have done some work on the trail since we were last there. We found this out when I took a new section and Jay stuck to the trail we knew. I sort of thought the new section would run parallel to the old one, which it did for a while, but then it abruptly hooked back into the woods, and I decided that since Haw Creek is pretty small, I'fd take the gamble that it would sync back up with the regular route.

The next few minutes were awesome. Very cool twisty turney singletrack with a few jumps, a wooden bridge, and rolly-poly elevation changes that made the new cut like riding a skatepark. Very fun. It did indeed sync back up with the trail Jay was on.

The ride was short because when we headed out for a second pass, about 1/3 of the way throgh Jay broke his chain. We both had no tools because Haw is so short. We just walked the climbs and coasted down the new cut section back to the cars.

Oh well.

The thing is, Haw Creek is about halfway between my hut and Jay's, so we ride there pretty often even though it is short. We use it to log miles and stay active, but it is far from a fave trail. That may have changed now that the new section has been added. It is also a directional trail so I can't wait to go back and try it again "backwards".

Atlanta 2014 Critical Mass Halloween

Although I cannot make it to every group ride that happens in Atlanta, I try to make it each year to the Halloween Critical Mass. It's always one of the more well attended rides. This year, Halloween fell on the last Friday of the month, so that was kind of a bonus. Unfortunately for me, it was kind of a mediocre ride, which was my own fault. I drank too many beers too early, and by the time we got to Little Five Points, I had to break off to find a place to use the bathroom. It also started raining, well, maybe heavily drizzling, around this same time. By the time I took care of business, I had lost site of the ride, so I ended up going my own way and syncing up with some friends. I like to ride at least 10 miles every time I get on the bike, but only logged about 7 via Strava. I did not factor in the actual ride from where I parked my car (right by The Spindle) to Woodruff though, so all told I was probably pretty close to 10.

Anyway, here are a few pics of some of the folks who wore costumes.

Every year there is at least one person who is dramatically under dressed, and this year was no exception. Crazy penguin man.

Clunker - Very Rad Old School Homage

A pretty well done modern clunker. Love that gold anodized front rim. I'm thinking they may have actually had the mounts for the V-brake custom welded on as I'm sure that this thing started life as a coaster brake.

Learn a little more about clunkers in the vid below: