Nass RAW - 10/7/08

Great ride with rueler tonight. This was my first time riding with him, he's a really good guy and an excellent rider. I'm a little too beat to do a full TR right now, I'll update it tomorrow. I'll just say that according to his bike computer we did 9.5 miles at an average of 7MPH. Which sounds crazy, even to me, but that's what it said (I'm pretty sure). My GPS stayed on the whole time this ride at least, but it still seemed to miss a big chunk of the ride. I'll pull what I have off of it later and see what I got...

you guys were cruising. nice work.

From my experience, my cyclocomputer is very accurate. If anything, it's usually a bit lighter on the miles than other folks computers that I ride with.

Right from the start, Bri was on my ass, so I just kept creeping the pace up a bit here and there. He seemed happy with the pace, so we cranked on. You must remember that there are large chunks of flatter single track (3 miles or more) where we probably were moving at 12mph or better for a decent duration. That'll jump the average up pretty good! Hope you liked the loop we did. We definitely rode some trail sections in uncommon directions...which is my style when riding over at Scoville. It gives it a bit more flavor and variety!

Here's the loop we did:

Cemetery twisties (straight out at the 4 way)
Devil's bypass climb
Left on the blue trail
Surveyor's trail to the big rock near the top of the Cornwall cul de sac climb
Rode the trail most normally climb as a downhill.
continued on the blue trail straight through the fourway and down to the river
up the gnarly hike a bike climb
across 69 to the sessions side
We zig zagged through a bunch of single track in there
made our way out to E. Chippens Hill via B street
Scoville (mudhole) twisties and crossed the road
Took the north Scoville twisties (the jug-a-lug) to the swamp twisties and looped back out to the cars. 9.45 miles 7 mph average. Brian rode hard and fast. Very good rider!!

Of note:
Greg, the first swamp twisty bridge is HAMMERED. It's going to need some TLC before anyone puts rubber to it again. You could probably try it, but it's sketchy as hell. From looking at it, it seems as someone may have damaged it on an awkward dismount or fall. A couple of the side log supports are slid out and the first few boards are totally untacked from the rest of the supports. The middle is way shakier than it's been too. Whatever I missed, Brian will add.

Very interesting route! I never descended the Cornwall climb nor the surveyor's trail heading west, but have done most of that ride in that direction. How long did you guys ride for? Sounds like you were killing it. Nice job on keeping up with the bionic rueler, B! :beer:

Are the south Scoville twisties really muddy?

Greg said:

Very interesting route! I never descended the Cornwall climb nor the surveyor's trail heading west, but have done most of that ride in that direction. How long did you guys ride for? Sounds like you were killing it. Nice job on keeping up with the bionic rueler, B! :beer:

Are the south Scoville twisties really muddy?

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No they're not muddy!! They're actually really, really nice! I just call them the mudhole twisties because they spent most of the summer in a mud infested state...there are a couple of soft sections just before and after the rock armored sections, but it's not sloppy by any means...

I like riding the Cornwall climb down once in awhile...it's an absolute ripper IMO. There were a couple of other trail sections in the Sessions woods that we could have added that would have put us in the 10+ mile club....again, they were mostly easy miles...the only arduous section was the bypass climb and the techy climb on the blue to the surveyors trail...after that, it was all cruising miles.

Ride time...well, we started at around 4:45 and popped out of the woods around ??? (Bri, do you remember) It was dark and we both were psyched to use our light set-ups...6:30 or so. My computer said the ride time was 1 hour 28 minutes...but, that's not accurate because I didn't check that stat until I got home from the ride...and my front tire spins while my bike sits on the rack...so, I'm thinking our wheels rolling time was about 1 hour 20 minutes or so. We didn't stop much either. At the top of some climbs and just to bullshite a bit.

I think you covered it pretty well rueler. Thanks for the good pace, that was exactly the ride that I needed. You did a good job of covering the ride. I'll add that descending the Cornwall climb was fun, I would definitely climb the kitchen bypass to do that descent again. I made it further up the bypass climb than I did last time, though it was much earlier in the ride this time so I guess that's probably why. I was pretty beat and ended up losing it on two of the steeper, rockier stretches towards the top of the climb. I made a bit more of the sections towards the end of the cemetery twisties than I normally do. I almost made it up the rock roller on B-street, but didn't carry quite enough speed.

Right before we crossed Scoville to finish up on the warm-up twisties backwards we decided to turn our lights on. We both had lights that we hadn't used before. I had never done any riding in the dark (except when rides went a bit too long and we finished in near darkness), and rueler had only been once before. It was still kind of light when we turned them on, but as soon as we crossed Scoville it got dark in the woods. The canopy in there is pretty thick with pine trees. I was psyched, the light worked awesome, plenty of light to ride by. I'm definitely going to try and helmet mount it though.

Greg said:

Very interesting route! I never descended the Cornwall climb nor the surveyor's trail heading west, but have done most of that ride in that direction. How long did you guys ride for? Sounds like you were killing it. Nice job on keeping up with the bionic rueler, B! :beer:

Are the south Scoville twisties really muddy?

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We rode for about 2 hours I guess. As rueler said, the south Scoville twisties weren't muddy at all, very nice. The leaves were messing with my head or something though. I just couldn't get into a rhythm in there, rueler was cruising it though.

Bri, what did you end up getting for lighting?

bvibert said:

We rode for about 2 hours I guess. As rueler said, the south Scoville twisties weren't muddy at all, very nice. The leaves were messing with my head or something though. I just couldn't get into a rhythm in there, rueler was cruising it though.

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The leaves were definitely tough...but, the other challenge for me in the south twisties was the fact that the lighting was difficult...it wasn't quite dark enough for the lights, but it was certainly tough to pick up all the details of the trail you need...when in doubt pedal harder, you'll go over it or through it!!

o3jeff said:

Bri, what did you end up getting for lighting?

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My wife bought me a NiteRider RoadRat light at a going out of business sale last week. They don't make that model any more, but it's a 10 Watt halogen light with a 6V lead acid battery. It's pretty low tech and probably heavy by the standards of more expensive systems, but it works great for me.

I could definitely see myself doing more night riding.

rueler said:

The leaves were definitely tough...but, the other challenge for me in the south twisties was the fact that the lighting was difficult...it wasn't quite dark enough for the lights, but it was certainly tough to pick up all the details of the trail you need...when in doubt pedal harder, you'll go over it or through it!!

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There was definitely flat light through there, thanks for giving me another excuse for not being able to keep up.

Here's the track I got. For whatever reason it didn't start until the end of the cemetery twisties, I guess it had trouble finding a satellite. Seemed to get most of the rest, but lost a few points right at the end of the ride.

http://www.crankfire.com/trails/data.php?dataid=495

the cemetery twisties are approximately 2 miles...so, add two miles to your GPS reading for that. We def. got in a solid 9 + miles.

Sounds like a really cool ride guys! Glad the light worked out for you, B. You guys are animals riding at that pace!!!