False Horizons

I guess it's time to write another blog post, now that the holidays are done and the new year is here.

Personally, I'm not too excited about the new year.  The best thing about it is that it means that 2016 is finally over. It was not a banner year for me, and I'm glad to see it go.  But the course ahead looks grim, and the prospect of watching the country go down in flames over the next four years really depresses me.  So I've made a decision to have a personal boycott of all news media until January 2021 - everything may suck, but I won't know about it.  As a part of this effort I'm no longer visiting Facebook - not because I believe that it's inherently bad, but because I don't want to see the news or all the ugly things that ignorant, evil people believe. I have been sharing items to the bicycling page I made for our area on occasion but I'm no longer actually visiting my page.  This is for my own piece of mind - if it bothers you, kindly keep it to yourself.

Since I last posted in October the fall riding season has long since come to an end.  But late fall might be my favorite time of the year, and I took advantage of every bit of good weather to get outside. There was a great camping trip with Diana at Kelly Pines in the Allegheny National Forest, quite a bit of trail work, and of course lots of bike riding. That includes some great mountain bike rides as well as plenty of pavement miles.  I made several trips down to Beaver Creek State Park to ride the trails down there, including the still to be finished new trail above Salamander Trail. I think that Beaver Creek might have the most mountain bike suitable terrain in Ohio, and the new trail takes advantage of it to the fullest extents.  The riding can be very technical, but I love that stuff and really enjoy getting out on Dogwood, Salamander, and the new trail.

Of course I also got in plenty of fall rides at West Branch, the park that's just 25 miles down the road.  Much of that was night riding, which doesn't really make for great photos but is still a lot of fun.  I just checked back on my MapMyRide ride log, and it looks like the only other singletrack that I rode in the fall was at North Road Nature Preserve, where I had a whole bunch of short, after work rides.

Apparently I never get tired of taking pictures of the West Branch skinnies.

Freshly raked trails at North Road Nature Preserve

Speaking of North Park Nature Preserve, I've finally finished the trail project that I committed to four long years ago.  So the last of the three trails, the one that took twice as long as the others, is finally finished.  The first two trails, Red Trail and Blue Trail, mostly went through a semi-mature forest where clearing the trail corridor and building the tread was easy.  This last one, Yellow Trail, has about half it's distance in a mature forest, with the remainder located in dense scrub.  The forest part of the trail was easy enough, but clearing and building trail through the scrub was incredibly difficult.  Just clearing a corridor was very tough, and since the trail wasn't finished and not getting any user traffic, it was a constant battle to maintain the already built trail.  And the ground in the scrubby section was an unbelievable mess of wet spots and pot holes, so that making a tread required several rock armoring and infill sections.

And then there was the wet spot - a short section of very dense scrub that tends to hold water way longer than anywhere else we built.  Because of the restraints of the property we had to build at least some trail in this wet area, or not build the loop at all.  Thinking that the only solution was going to be to build over 100' of turnpiking, we put this section off for last.  But with volunteer hours dropping off I was faced with the prospect of singlehandedly bringing back several tons of fill gravel with our trail wagon - something that would have likely taken me another year to do.  So I was very happy when Trumbull Metroparks agreed to give us enough money to build a 120' long boardwalk across this problem area.  I started construction in August, and finally finished in October.  Most of the construction and material hauling I did myself, but there were a few kind souls who pitched in for a work session or two.

The boardwalk with newly finished transition.

Stopping to cut out a downed tree while hauling more lumber back to the build site.

I'm very glad to have this project done, since it already has taken longer than I thought it would, and I'd like to get involved with some trail building at other parks.  But after finishing off the two loops and one out'n'back trail I started to wonder if there was a way to make that out'n'back into a loop.  Long story short - this winter I'm working on adding another 1/3 mile of trail through mature woods to make Blue Trail into a loop.  Next year I'd like to work on adding some mtb specific features to the trails, but I haven't committed to that yet.

New trail will run through the trees on the creek bank.

During the summer I had decided that I was spending too much time riding on the rail trails, and not enough riding my mountain bike in the woods.  So I started riding more mtb miles, but I still managed to get in quite a bit of different rail trail rides.  Of course I did the local trails - Western Reserve Greenway & Little Beaver Creek Greenway - but I also managed to hit a couple that I don't get to that much.  One trip on the Maple Highlands Trail had an unfortunate incident where I managed to crash on pavement in dry, clear weather.  I managed to ride through a small moist spot on the trail, which was slippery as owl snot and hit the pavement hard.  I was lucky I had my helmet on, because I banged my head off the pavement way harder than I really wanted to.

I also managed to put a large hole in my elbow, which is still not healed 6 weeks later.

I made a Thanksgiving day ride on part of the Ohio & Erie Towpath Trail, doing some volunteer work for the Industrial Heartland Trail Coalition by checking one of the 'trail itineraries' that they are developing.  It turned out to be an interesting ride, with almost no one on the trail, rain most of the way - and a nice layer of crushed limestone trail surface spread evenly over me and my bike.

Covered with grit.

I also made a couple of snow rides in the cold periods of December & January, evenly split between mountain biking and pavement riding.  Keeping my schedule of riding 3 or 4 days a week was pretty nice, and I managed to hit my 2000 mile goal for 2016 by finishing with 2100 miles. Not sure how many miles I'll try for this year. I'll get in as many as I can during the winter, and then see how the numbers shape up when the weather starts to break.  

Near the end of the year I took a look at some of the video that I'd take while out riding, and put together a short video of my riding year in review (though there are some clips included from before 2016).  I did the same thing last year, and was happy with the result, but this year the song I found to be the soundtrack really added a lot.  This year's review turned out even better than last years, if I may say so myself!

Here's hoping that your trails are dry, the wind is at your back, and the hills are few.

SD card clean-up Photo Post

I've taken a ton of pictures this summer and fall.  Enough that my SD card in my camera is getting full.  So here are a couple of the better ones before I empty the card.

Ruins in the woods.  I don't even remember where I took this photo.

I love the fog.

Foggy sunrise in Warren.

Looking waaay down at Diana from the Cooks Forest fire tower.

Storm blowing in on Western Reserve Greenway Trail.

Shadow selfie from the roof of Debartolo Hall, YSU.

Kenny marching in the Apple Cider Festival parade.

Abandoned church in Youngstown.

Fog and fall colors in Youngstown.

New section of the Greenway under construction!

Fungus by West Branch mtb trails.

Fall colors from a moving car.

Mill Creek Park in the fog.

Enjoy the beauty of fall - it's almost over.

Keepin' Busy

Another two months have zoomed by, and summer has turned into fall.  Looking back it seems that I was both extremely busy and missing out on doing a lot of stuff I wanted to do.

I have been doing a bit of extra work, and while it hasn't taken up huge chunks of time it has pared down the amount of free time that I have available.  Of course there is a flip side to having extra work and that is having some extra money.  Some of it went for a new GoPro Hero, and a bit more went for fixing up my bike a bit.  The GoPro ( a Hero White) is a huge improvement over my old GoPro, which was one of the early non-HD versions.  This new one takes great video and photos, and even has decent sound.  I'm still figuring out what to do with it, but I'm betting that I'll get in at least one mtb and one kayak video before fall is over.

As far as the improvements on the bike, I need to step back in time a bit to get the whole story.  My wife bought me a new bike for Christmas a couple of years ago - a very nice Gary Fisher Mullet.  This thing is a heavy duty ride, perfect for a guy who likes to ride a lot and doesn't baby his gear.

Me with my Mullet at West Branch State Park.

I used the bike pretty heavily for a couple of years, putting on lots of singletrack miles as well as hundreds, probably thousands, of pavement miles.  And it served me well - only a couple of broken rear derailleurs in over two years. I took that bike on rides all across Ohio and western Pennsylvania - West Branch, Beaver Creek, Moraine, Kennerdell, Quail Hollow, Bavington, Royalview, Findlay, Hogback Ridge, Allegheny National Forest, and I'm sure others that escape my memory right now.

The week before vacation, in early June, I took it to my local bike shop, Thumm's, for some work on my rear brake cable (more on this problem later).  I'd also noticed some weird noises coming from the area of the front derailleur, and asked them to take a look.  I got a call the next day saying that the frame was broken right under the front derailleur clamp - terrible news.

When I got down to the shop to check it out I couldn't believe my eyes.  The post was broken the entire way around, with small chunks missing.  The fact that it was concealed totally by the front derailleur clamp was puzzling, but the fact that I was able to ride it with a break that bad was amazing.  More on this later as well...

I was surprised to find out that the bike was still under warranty. Then the owner of the bike shop told me that he'd been on the phone to Trek and they'd be sending a replacement out in time for me to have it for vacation!  I could hardly believe my luck - things like that just don't happen to me.  But, alas, a snag - when the owner at Thumm's had talked to Trek they hadn't clarified exactly what was being sent as a replacement.  Thumm's believed it was a whole new bike, but Trek was talking about only sending out a replacement frame.  That would be a problem, as it would take a while to build up  the new frame, and I was leaving within a couple of days.

Then Augie, the owner of the shop said not to worry - I was a valued customer and he'd make it right.  He kept the replacement frame for a shop build, and gave me a brand new Gary Fisher Marlin off of the floor so that I'd have a bike for vacation.  Another amazing happening - a small businessman taking care of his customer with the cost coming out of his pocket.  The new bike isn't quite as good as the Mullet was when it was new, but it's still a heck of a bike and I'm loving it.

So when Trek agreed to warranty the frame they wanted to make sure that the old frame was actually not going to be used any longer.  They could have paid for the shipping to have it returned, but instead the bike shop just took a video of me sawing the frame in half and sent it to Trek.  Pretty good evidence I'd say.  Notice the break on the bottom of the seat post.  And I got to keep the two halves of the frame, and all attached parts.

The end of the Mullet

Some of the extra money from doing the side job I've been working on went to upgrade the Marlin a bit.  I switched over the better wheels from the Mullet, as well as the disc brakes.  Now the bike stops on a dime.  And I had them add a rear rack, so that I can carry my chain saw for doing trail work.

I also asked them if they could do something about my rear brake cable.  In the two months I'd been riding the new Marlin I'd noticed a recurrence of a problem that I'd had on the Mullet - the rusty rear brake cable.  The cables are partially exposed on both bikes, and run below the top tube of the bike, where they go back into the cable sleeves to head to their respective destinations.  That leaves a tiny opening for moisture to get into the ends of the cable sleeves and cause mischief.

This probably wouldn't be a problem for 99.9% of people but for me it was.  That is because I 'perspire freely' - that is I sweat like a lawn sprinkler when I exert myself.  And with the opening of that cable sleeve directly in the drip line I was constantly introducing salt water to the cable as well as the sleeve end.  Within a month of getting the new Marlin I was experiencing the same problem - the cable was rusting and binding inside the sleeve, so the rear brakes were working poorly.

On the Mullet I'd had the sleeve replaced and put in a teflon coated cable to help avoid the problem.  And I upped the maintenance of this area in an effort to keep things working smoothly.  But on the Marlin I wanted to eliminate this problem once and for all.  So the shop put on a one-piece sleeve that covers the cable from the handle bars all the way back to the rear brakes.  Problem solved!

My Marlin with new wheels, disc brakes and rack.

But this leaves a question unanswered - why did the frame on the Mullet break so badly?  Augie said that in his over 30 years of selling bikes he'd never seen a frame break like that.  Everyone that looked at it was puzzled over what could have caused such a failure - but I have a theory.  Galvanic corrosion.  Yup, the process where two different types of metal are in contact with each other and form a weak galvanic current, which takes metal from one side and deposits it on the other.  The frame is aluminum and the derailleur clamp is steel - two metals that can cause galvanic action when in contact.  And from what I've read the presence of salt water (or sweat!) acts as an electrolyte and accelerates the corrosion.  And all that sweat just runs down the top tube, then down the seat tube to the derailleur clamp.  Amazing.  I'll be rinsing off the new bike with warm soapy water after every ride in order to keep this from happening again.

As far as outdoors adventures go, things changed from the first half of the summer.  The pattern of weather that brought rain to us every three days has changed, and although we aren't dry by any means there is enough time between rains for the trails to dry out some.  Of course that means the creeks are too low for kayaking, but I'll take what I can get.  I've been able to get in several rides on my local trails at West Branch State Park, plus some rides over at Moraine in Pennsylvania.  Add to that a bunch of rail trail riding, several trail work days, and a camping expedition in the rain with Diana and things start to look a little busier.

Diana braving the mist at Seneca Point overlook in Cooks Forest, PA.

My brother and I even got out for a mountain bike overnighter down at Mountwood Park, outside Parkersburg, West Virginia.  This is an incredibly well developed county park, that features camping and mountain bike trails.  The main campground is a mile away from the trails, but we thought we'd try to get one of the seven primitive lakeside camping spaces if we could.  Turns out that no one else camped down by the lake while we were there, so we had a sensational campsite right near the trails, with no noisy neighbors.

The morning view from our campsite at Mountwood Park, WV.

The trails were really nice as well. There are a bunch of different sections,with a fairly wide variety of difficulty.  There are a bunch of hills, so there were definitely long sections of hike a bike for me, but balancing that off with the nice flowy parts, the tech sections, and the lightning fast downhills provided us with some great riding.  This place is just over three hours away, which is close enough to guarantee that I'll be back.

Two tortoises that were hanging out right on the trail at Mountwood Park, WV.

Boardwalk trail at a fern gully in Mountwood Park.

There have been lots of other adventures as well since my last post.  The Oxroast Car Show over Labor Day weekend was really good this year.  There was an excellent spread of cars and motorcycles there, varying from antique restorations to muscle cars to rat rods.  I look forward to this show every year and I certainly wasn't disappointed this year.

A Packard hot rod.

The fall colors are starting to really show now - my favorite time of the year.  I'm hoping the weather will cooperate enough that I can get in some nice singletrack rides, a couple of kayak trips, and at least one more camping trip with Diana.  There's a lot to do before winter gets here and the snow flies!

Western Reserve Greenway in Ashtabula County.