Doin' Work

Tuesday after class I headed up to the trails to get my workout in and if I had time I was going to do some trimming on the ETSU trails. When I got there the sky was talking a little with a low grumbling noise in the distance. I decided to trim the briars first! Usually we can just trim the trails once in the summer and be good but this year the green stuff is growing like mad! A good briar is a dead or trimmed one!

After getting finished and putting up the tools master Ben rolls up in the parking lot! So, I had to catch up and he gave me the run down on what he was hired for. Our trail system is going to be pimpin' after he gets finished. New 4X gate, new parking lot, new kiosk, landscaping, 2 new trailhead access points and so much more!!

As you can see in the pics above and below those rumbling sounds I heard in the distance earlier made its way over and found us! This shower really dumped alot of rain on the trails and area so I was a little worried it may slow Ben down or delay things a day. Luckily the next day (yesterday (Wed)) the ground just swallowed all the water up! I came over and to get my ride workout in and out of the way so I could get started helping with the gate install. The trails were perfect! I'm really amazed how fast our trails dry out now. Years ago if we got rain like this it would take at least two days minimum before it was dry enough to ride so that you wouldn't do any damage to the trail.

Here's the gate we had constructed from a local company nearby. They did a great job with the fabrication and Dr. Seek nailed the measurements pretty good it seems. I can't wait 'til we get this operational! The concrete truck arrives at 1pm today, it should be interesting how the liquid rock makes it to the forms....

Above is the framework for the actual gate. This has to be supported in the concrete and the gate attaches via hinges.

Here's the gate, the mo-fo is heavy. It took three of us and a wheelbarrow to get it up the course and to it's resting place.

Ben and Dr. Seek traded some labor favors so we wouldn't have to hand-dig this form for the concrete starting pad. Thank goodness! Even after Ben dug this out we had to do a lot of shovel work to get it just right.

Two scoops please! It took two buckets of gravel to fill in the form. Dr. Seek ordered 3 yds of concrete to fill the gate from. I hope it's enough cuz Ben ordered 1 yd for the kiosk pad at the trailhead. Please, please, please be enough!

On the riding front; One of the junior road racers is getting into mountain biking but was a little short on cash to finish his build so I sold him the like new Fox Float 29 I had on the China29a. I've been hearing some pretty good stuff from X-Fusion of late so I wanted to try out one or two of their products. I ordered the slide 29 with a tapered steerer to give a try. How has it performed?....

First off, it only costs HALF of what other high end forks do and after 4 rides on it it performs quiet well I must say. It's a little over 2 ounces heavier than the Reba but almost the exact weight of the Fox Float. So, cost points get a 5star rating for delivering the same performance at half the cost. The way that X-Fusion works inside is a little different than normal forks but the performance is as good as anything this fork competes with. What brought the company to my attention was some of the riders that they have been sponsoring. I thought.. " if these guys will run these products on their bikes and still perform well there must be a reason other than them getting paid to run them". There are a couple of things I didn't like though...

 

I didn't snap a pic of this but the lockout cable stop is mounted to the rear. So the cable is ass-backwards coming off the remote bar switch. I haven't had time to do any research to see if this can be corrected/modified because of all the summer class work now but if there's a way to flip it around 180* I'm gonna. Like I said I'm very pleased with this fork and will continue to use it. At the Karl's race I left the lockout on almost the whole race because the course was so smooth and there was a lot of gravel fire/farm roads so I needed to get it back to rougher trails to give a good test ride on my local trails. Another note; a 5lb psi adjustment makes a huge difference in this fork's performance too. With a Fox or RockShox fork it would take double or even a little more/less psi to feel a difference in the air pressure. So my recommendation is if you are needing new squish up front is.... TRY THIS FORK! Save $$$$$$  !!!!!!!

Guess what finally rolled up into da shop? Yep CARBON 29ers from BMC! These bikes received killer reviews at the Otter earlier this year. There goes any extra grant money, my my.....

With a little over 3 weeks left of summer school my mind will probably be frazzled so I'll need some riding to wind down among other things. Since I'm not able to make the Barnett's trip to Colorado because of class timing I'm looking to plan some sort of knobby tired adventure after classes are over! Where oh where do I go???

LAter G.............................