Two Wheel Blogs

The Unit made a day the trip into town with the rest of the family today to pay a visit to Pete and his family. Pete rides. Unit rides. There was no way they weren't going to escape for a few hours for a ride, now was there? Doubtful, because Unit brought his bike.

Lucky for me, I got the call. I loaded up my Karate Monkey and headed for the Chubb trail.

What a great day for riding. Plenty of sunshine, warm but not too hot and the trails were in primo shape.

We rocked around the park for a couple of hours having a great time. Chubb's one of those trails where the steeps are steep and long. And it can get pretty technical. I've heard the term "singlespeed friendly" applied to a few trails. Chubb is not one of them. We saw lots of bikes out there, but our three were the only ones we saw with no suspension and only one gear.

The thing about having only one gear is that when it's steep enough that you can't pedal you have no choice but to get off and push your bike up the hill. That's why people have gears on their bikes, so they can get up the steep climbs. Interestingly, at Chubb you see lots of people with gears pushing their bikes up the climbs.

So why do I think Chubb is best experienced on a fully rigid singlespeed? Well, if you're going to push your bike up a hill anyway it might as well be lighter; and a bike without gears and suspension should be lighter than one with gears and suspension, right?

I remembered to bring my camera along today for a change. Unfortunately I'm disappointed in how most of them turned out. Here's a couple of the better ones.

This is one of the many rocky climbs on the Chubb. If you like bumping and grinding then the Chubb trail is the place for you.

This one managed to come out OK because I happened to be standing in the shade when I took it. I think many of the others got washed out by the bright sunshine streaming through the trees.

Here I am practicing my Kerkove photography technique. That's Unit behind me on the Castlewood Loop wondering how much longer we're going to have to ride through the tall grass in the sunsine. I have to admit, compared to the rest of Chubb, this part isn't so grand.

Then again, everything's grand on a beautiful Saturday afternoon bike ride.

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