Cycling Carson City is in need of a logo. Something that would be easy to put on a sticker or a flyer. It could say “Cycling Carson City” or even “Bike Carson”, and would need to include the website URL. The trouble is, is that I can barely write my name in cursive, let alone design a cool logo.
Is there anyone out there that is good at this sort of thing? Mull it over…
In the meantime, please enjoy, Bicycle Repairman!
My son and I were recently having a discussion about how he didn’t like going to school. I told him I didn’t really like going to work either, but that I made it a lot better by giving my self something to look forward to throughout the day. And for me of course, that something is a bike ride!
I’ve been riding at lunch since 2001. I’ve been doing it for so long now that I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I couldn’t ride. And now with bicycle commuting, I get to tag on a fun bike ride at the beginning and end of the day too.
Work has become the thing I do between rides, almost insignificant in the big scheme of the day. It certainly makes work more tolerable, and I probably even do a better job at it, since I don’t dwell on it.
I had originally thought I’d do a whole “day in the life” photo shoot for this post, but after considering how unbelievably boring shots of me sitting at work would be (although the Cube Self project is kind of fun…), decided to include only riding photos. Here are a few shots of my riding day starting with my commute to work, and finishing with returning home.
8:00 AM – On the Way to Work
1:40 PM – Late lunch ride with the wife, climbing Combs Canyon
1:45 PM – Overlooking Washoe Lake. Yeah! Shaved (most of) the beard!
2:00 PM – Heading South back to Work. Hooray! They cleared the bike path!
5:20 PM – Back Home
It’s been awhile since my last post. I’ve recently suffered from a touch of blogging ennui, coupled with a bout of stomach ailment that has made my insides feel like a lava lamp with berserk polarity. My brain has been a an old, rusty, bicycleless wheel rolling through the desert.
I’m starting to pull through though, and I feel a surge of creativity coming on. But until the surge arrives, I present to you a post about why I haven’t been writing!
We had a big snow storm last weekend, but it is already melting quick. In fact, we’re due for sunny weather in the 50′s the rest of the week. Still, the trails are under snow and will be muddy as things melt. It looks like it will be another week of road riding.
Which is kind of cool really, because I’ve really been having fun on the road bike. It’s been a thrill to travel around twice as fast (as my mountain bike) with half the braking power. About once a day I have an incident that gets me to rethink my hot dogging though. One incident in particular jumps to the front of my mind.
Today I was approaching main street, heading east on Musser. I couldn’t believe the light was staying green for me, so I stood up and sprinted. Right before I got to the intersection, a sports car passes right in front of me heading south on Main Street. I got on the brakes just in time, but I was still very confused. Had I not really seen a green light? This guy didn’t even slow down, and the light had been red for him for quite a while. I looked around and saw that all the other traffic was stopped, and figured out that I wasn’t crazy. My knees were wobbly for about 5 minutes after that…
In celebration of still being alive, I’m going to get back on taking pictures and making blog posts. See you tomorrow.
Welcome to the new home of Cycling Carson City! We were starting to outgrow the limitations of our free account, and decided it was time to create our own domain and privately host the blog.
The new domain name, bikecarson.com, is easier to remember, and will be better suited for promotional purposes like flyers and stickers. Privately hosting the blog will enable us to provide better content and more interactivity for the readers. Look for cool new stuff in near future.
In the meantime, I’ll be rebuilding the blogroll, and fixing some of the bugs…
Thanks for updating your links and bookmarks!
…and a special thanks to Mike Henderson for helping us with the move!
Last week, Jeff P and I met with Barbara H, and talked about Bike Month coming up in May. The League of American Bicyclists is promoting Bike-to-Work Week from May 12-16 and Bike-to-Work Day on Friday, May 16. This week will be the primary area of our focus for promoting the event in Carson City.
The more I learn about Bike to Work Week, and the hard work that went into it last year, the greater appreciation I get for those involved in such projects. I felt a bit overwhelmed at first, but we’re starting to break down all the duties and making assignments. I’ve been getting in touch with the people that worked on the event last year, and finding out what their rolls were. Jeff P is starting to contact businesses to see if they’ll sponsor the event. Tasha G has contacted NDOT and has gotten a lead on some free promotional materials.
To help us organize, we’d like to get a feel for how many people will be participating in Bike to Work Week. Make a comment here and let us know what your plans are! If we can get commitments from people at many different businesses, it’ll be much easier to get the word out. Additionally, each contact could adopt a friend or coworker as a Bike Buddy, helping recruit those who would otherwise not participate.
We plan to have some social events as well. We may have a movie night, and will most certainly have an after work social ride. We plan to have bike swag and a raffle too, so if anyone has some leads in this area, let us know!
The theme for Bike Month is going to be “Fun”. We all know how healthy cycling is, and it’s an activity we can enjoy that causes minimal environmental impact; however, that’s not how we plan to sell this event. We plan to encourage people to start riding more, because it’s fun! All the other beneficial aspects can be the wonderful side effects of cycling.
We have a whole list of ideas that we’ll be sharing with you in the near future, so stay tuned. In the meantime, share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.
As you have seen from previous posts, the Sierra Nevada’s are still covered in snow, preventing any trail riding on these mountains whatsoever. Fortunately for us Nevadans, there are over 300 other mountain ranges to pick from. Sunday’s adventure began 20 miles east of Carson City in the mostly snowless Flowery Range, on Jeff P’s Iron Mountain Singletrack.
When we pulled up to the trailhead, I was shocked at the great turnout we had! We had twelve riders show up, and probably half of them I’ve never met before. After exchanging pleasantries, Pecos Potter (aka Jeff P) announced that it was time to ride. We headed north up into the mountains along a gently graded double track, the perfect warm-up for the singletrack to come.
Like other Jeff P built singletrack, you pretty much need to be shown where they’re at. He does a good job of concealing the entrances, as proven by the little use this trail has seen. Although primitive, the singletrack was smooth, and easy to ride. The dirt is still drying out, so the ground was a little soft. There was even a little bit of snow on some of the less sunny exposures. I was glad to have a full range of gears for the day.
The trail was neither fast nor slow. There were a few grinder climbs and a few fast downhills, but for the most part, the terrain was rolling. This kept the group together and made for a good social ride.
There were only a couple of casualties on the trail that I heard of. I heard talk of Jeff P endoing on a gully crossing, and one of the guys had a flat tire after we skimmed through a couple of spiny desert peach plants. But overall, we all returned back to the cars with nothing more than tired legs.
Near the top of one memorable switchback climb, we had to port the bikes across the side of a snowy hillside. I love little challenges like this, as I think they add to the adventure of the ride.
The scenery of the day had me constantly thinking of old western movies. We saw many wild horses throughout the day too, but they kept an eye on us and kept a safe distance. You could almost hear an old west cowboy theme playing as we rode along the barren landscape.
I think all the riders would agree that we had a very successful day, both in riding and making new friends. I was glad to see the Cycling Carson City blog act as a tool for getting this many riders together, and I imagine that we’ll see even more riders on our next outing. For those of you who missed out, I wouldn’t be surprised if we did the Iron Mountain Singletrack again real soon.
Here’s a little video that sums up how the day felt to me.
We had three cameras going on the ride, and got a lot of great pictures. Browse the rest of these great pictures over on Flickr by clicking HERE.
This weekend’s ride is a go. The weather looks to be cooperating and most of the snow should be melted off the trail by then.
Ride description: The first two miles of the ride will be on a double track that will provide a good warm-up and an opportunity to socialize before hitting the singletrack. To give you an idea of the level of difficulty, this trail is a little more challenging than the Centennial Park loop. I hope that helps.
Total mileage will be about twelve, with 1200-1300′ of elevation gain. Depending on the makeup of the group we could extend the ride and add another loop. The pace of this ride should be early season casual, but if there is too big of an ability level gap we’ll split into two groups.
When: Sunday, February 17. 10:30am
Getting there: On Highway 50, approximately ten miles east of the Dayton Valley Road (stoplight), there will be a dirt road heading north (just beyond Chaves Rd. If you’ve crested the hill and can see Stagecoach, you’ve gone too far). Turn left, and in about two hundred feet there will be a clearing on the right. Park there.
If you would like to carpool to the trailhead, leave a comment and I’ll make the appropriate arrangements.