A Mild Winter - Early Riding Season

Well, since the snow season was pretty much non-existent, it gave me a bit more time to work on the bike and ride it in between wrench sessions. This worked out in a way as I have joined a year long rally, The Waffle House Grand Tour. This is a charity ride actually that is put on by Hoagy's Hero's. www.hoagysheroes.org

In essence, we have the entire year to visit as many Waffle Houses as possible. We receive one point for each visit and one point for each pin we get the waitresses to donate to the charity. To get a visit point, we must take a picture outside the WH with our bike and rally towel. There awards for various things like: riding to a location in every month, most visited, farthest distance traveled, etc.

This rally started on 1/1/2012, unfortunately we didn't receive our towels to till around mid January. So in order to get a points before our towels arrived, we had to include ourselves in each photo. This got rather entertaining...

My first Waffle House entry. Salisbury, NC

One, "Warm" afternoon I decided to trek our for a short ride on the Vstrom and bag as many WH's as I could just off the interstate. So I decided to go down 85 south to 77 north to Statesville and then home on I-40. In this short route I managed to get 12 WH's! I didn't even go down into Charlotte for any!

Waffle House #667, Statesville, NC

After that ride was over I started pulling the Vstrom down for some winter upgrades and was pretty much out of the game for about a month. During this time several riders had started gaining some serious points! One my bike was back together, it was time for a test ride. So I headed down to Charlotte to try everything out and find the rest of the WH's in that area.

Waffle House Rally Flag. It arrived bare, so I added some patches and my rally number to it for some flare.

For this ride I wanted to try and get familiar with the GPS so I decided to use the POI's that Dad loaded into the GPS for all the Waffle House's. Well that turned out to be a bust... those locations were way off! It took half the day to figure it out but eventually I did get the GPS figured out and worked out a good method for finding them.

Waffle House in Concord, NC. Got the waitresses to take a photo with the bike and they donated 18 pins!

Waffle House outside of Belmont, NC

The pins that the Concord store donated.

During this ride I got to try out my new heated pants as well. Talk about a wise investment! I ended up going back to the shop the next weekend and purchasing the heated socks and jacket liner! I rode a few hundred miles that day in February in upper 30 degree weather. It was a bit brisk but the sun was out and the roads were dry.

At this point I only have 26 locations and there are several riders that are already in triple digits! With the up coming rides Im not too worried about their lead as Ill be on the road alot here in the next few months.

Speaking of that I guess I should go and speak about the rides that are on the books for this year.

Ride 1: SS2000 ride in to IBA party in Jacksonville, Florida. (3/13/2012) This year, Dad, Mike Brown and myself will be attempting a SS2000 (2000 miles in 48 hours) on the way into the Jacksonville, Florida. This route will be similar to the ride from last year. This years route will take us into Dallas, Texas then down to Beaumont, Texas and across I10 to Jacksonville.

Ride 2: Moonshine Lunch Run. (4/13/2012) Pretty excited about this ride. Always heard about how big this event is and this year Ill be attending with Mike Brown and gang.

Ride 3: Wisconsin Rustic Road Ride. (Late June) Will be riding up with the parents to spend a few days with the grandparents in Wisconsin then we will head over to the gathering in New Glairus.

As always we will be doing the typical local riding in the mountains and what not on the weekends in between. However this year Im looking to expand my state riding and head to the cost a bit. I have a goal of visiting every Waffle House in North Carolina and to achieve that I will have to get out on the coast a good bit.

Vstrom Upgrades...

Like every winter off season that I can remember, the bikes have gone through a series of upgrades. While the Vstrom came pretty well set up for long distance riding, there were a few things I wanted to do to make it my own.

First thing I did was paint the saddle bags. The bags a bit of damage and some scuffs from the previous owner that I wanted to touch up. In addition, they were all black and blended in too well with the back of the bike. I wanted to do something to make them visually stand out some.

Solution: Paint the vertical surfaces of the bags silver to match the front of the bike.

Doesn't look to bad if I say so myself.

Added a little reflective tape to make myself a bit more vizable at night.

Saw this trick done on another Vstrom online. Love it how looks like I have extra head lights.

Dad and I made a list of things that we needed to do to the bikes before the start of our riding season. We purchased some white boards so that we could write on them over and over. The list for the Vstrom was rather long, but we stayed after it and got it done.

Checking the valves was one of the items on my list. Pulling the valve cover on the rear cylinder was no big deal. 4 bolts and done. However, the front cylinder required a bit more work since I had to pull the radiator off the bike to get the clearance to the valves.

Front cylinder valve cover removed. Valves all checked out.

Another, much larger task at hand for the bike this year was to mount and wire a GPS and a radar detector to the Vstrom. In addition to these goodies I wanted to mount my SPOT device and arrange all these items where they could easily accessed and used.

Ram mount for the SPOT. Used the SPOT cradle and the 1 inch connection bar.

Another task was to change out the brakes on the bike as that was my biggest complaint with the Vstrom. They were very soft and lacked response. First steps to fix that, new pads and fluid. Problem mostly solved. Braided lines may come later...

OK, so I didnt take as many photos of the progress and upgrades as I would have liked. However, I did manage to get the bike out for some photos the other day before we set out on our SS2K. So here ya go, the new and improved, "Big Ugly Beast."

Fuel cell mounted up over the passenger seat. Shut off valve for fuel located on left side. .5L of water hanging from right side of fuel cell mount.

J&M Intercom, SPOT, iPod wireless remote, Map light, ride clock, cramp buster, throttle lock, GPS, radar detector.

Controls for heated items. Rocker switch turns on heated grips, large knob controls grip temp. Two smaller knobs control temperature of heated gear. (I now have socks, pants and jacket)

Voltage meter, auxiliary fuel pump switch, auxiliary light switch.

Plugs for heated gear.

Pelican box mounted. Purchased the pick and pluck foam to go inside the custom bag liner. Set up to carry camera equipment and ride documents. Cut the clips off three clip boards and velcro'd them to the lid.

Saddle bag set up. Chain lube, tripod and first aid kit are velcro'd to the lid to prevent falling. Bag liner from Bagsforbikes.com.

Bagsforbikes.com

Overall I am really happy with the way things turned out on the bike. There are still some things that need to change in time. But for now I think she will do. :)

Snow Season 2011/2012 - Done.

Another snow season draws to a close, this time it’s a bit early due to several reasons.

Mother Nature hasn’t been that nice to the southern ski areas at this point in the year. We had a very mild winter with lot of rain which kept snow bases thin and most of the difficult terrains bare. Reflecting back on the season I came to realize that I didn’t ride a single difficult trail this year, which upsets me a bit, but alas.

One of the main reasons I cut the season short this year is due to my extensive riding plans for the 2012 riding reason which include a SS2K attempt in early March, Moonshine Lunch Run in April and various other rides through out the summer. Prepping the Vstrom for these trips became a priority over the snowboarding.

The nail the sealed the coffin, however, was a back injury that arose during my weight training a few weeks ago. While doing squats one evening I felt an odd pain in my back when completing my last rep on a set. The next morning the pain was very intense in my lower back and was not relieved by the next day. After seeing a chiropractor it was determined that I have a degenerative disk in my lower back that I had aggravated to the point it was causing muscle spasms. After a few adjustments the pain diminished but my lower back strength has dropped off. In fear of re-injuring my back while snowboarding before the SS2K attempt, I officially packed up the board and gear for the 2011/2012 season.

It was short season for me, but I still enjoyed each and every trip. I started the year at SugarMountain on some borrowed gear following the play off game between App State and Maine. That was the only time I made it to Sugar for the year. At that point, the only trail open was the upper and lower flying mile.

Josh and I and made a trip up to Beech Mountain a few weeks later. The only trails open there were Upper and Lower Shawnehaw. The cloud cover was thick, add in the snow blowers and the visibility was horrible. We made the most of it and enjoyed our day.

My last trip was over New Years with the home town group. We only rode at Beech that weekend but we had a great time. Please feel free to go back through the previous posts to see photos and more details on each trip.

As far as the bike are concerned, Dad and I are very busy! We have both bikes down at the moment as we are wiring up GPS units, radar detectors and doing the usual maintenance. I’ll be sure to post more details on the upgrades when they are complete!

UPGRADES!!!

New Years 2012!!!

Every year for New Years, my high school friends and I get together and party. In recent years we have usually camped out or partied on the lake. However, this year we decided to move it to the slopes.

Robert's place at Echota was open for the weekend so we made our plans accordingly. Friday morning I picked up Carrie at her parents place, loaded up the Escape and headed to Boone. We planned to meet up with Drew and Becca on the outskirts of Boone to pick up some groceries and mainly, beer.

From there we planned on heading to the profile trail so that we could hike along the side of Grandfather Mountain.

Heading West on 421, always a welcoming sight.

Once we had the amount of beer and water we felt was appropriate... we made our way to the trail head. The previous couple of days/night had been seasonably cold and with that a few snow showers had occurred.

The trail head was rather muddy from the rain and melting snow but the trail looked to be in pretty good shape so we carried on. From the trail head it was a little over 2 miles to the "Profile View Overlook." It was early afternoon when we started, so we knew we would have to move pretty quick in order to get back before night fall.

The trail was lined with snow as we started our climb up the mountain. As you can imagine, the higher we got, the deeper the snow accumulation was. At some points the trail was completely frozen over. Our pace was rather slow but we continued on anyway.

Starting up the trail. FRESH POW!

Around 4pm we managed to find our way to th Profile View. It was an amazing sight! I checked my altimeter app and we were approximately 5000ft above sea level at that point. Judging by the time it took us to get to the overlook, we knew it was going to be dark when we got to the base again. No worries, over prepared drew brought along his head lamp....

Profile View

When we got back to the cars (3,800 ft above sea level) the sun had already sat for the day. We changed clothes and got out of our muddy boots and headed to JVC's house in Banner Elk to meet up with the rest of the crew before heading to dinner.

Fluffy had built a mini ramp in his garage, which actually turned out quite nice. He and a couple guys from Alpine Ski Center were riding the ramp on skate boards and bicycles. It had been almost 10 years since I rode a skate board, but after some convincing I decided to drop in on the ramp. It had been a while... it wasnt pretty, but I did it.

From there we headed to an Italian place near Sugar Mountain. With 8 of us trying to eat at 7pm on Friday in a ski town, our wait was a bit ridiculous. After calling several restaurants to learn that the wait was about the same everywhere, we looked across the parking lot to see a Food Lion. Becca proudly exclaimed, "I'm a good cook, how about some bow tie pasta and pizza." SOLD.

A bit later we were up to Echota where we met up with Robert, his girl friend Claudia and his roommate Eric. I hadnt seen them since I left Raleigh, so it was good to see them once again. As we unloaded the cars, Becca and Claudia got to work on the pasta and frozen pizzas. The beer bottles started opening and the stories started flying. It was good to be back up there.

Nothing like having a nice winter lager while sitting next to the fire.

We threw a small party for Drew's accomplishment of hitting 200lbs! We hope this is his max and he can get back down in weight. This is our way of encouraging it. Humiliation!

Will rolled in around midnight that night as he had to work late in Charlotte. Unfortunately, we all partied a bit hard and were passing when he rolled in. As he walked in he let us know he had a nice present from playing Dirty Santa with his family...

The next morning I was up around 6am. Showered and began getting ready for a day on the slopes. By 7:15 we were rolling off the mountain and ordering our breakfast at the local country store.

By 9am, lift tickets were purchased and we were making our way to the lift line to catch the first chair for the morning.

Two things Beech has going for it, high speed quad and a hell of a view!

Good freeze the night before, so the runs were a bit crunchy on top. However, it didn't take long for the other riders and the sun to soften that up and make the conditions pretty good considering the lack of snow so far this year.

Drew and Will at the top of Beech Mountain.

Will and I about to make a run down the mountain.

Not too long ago a movie came out about Squall Valley and the game of GNAR. "Gaffney's Numerical Assessment of Radness." Its about having fun with friends and assigning points for doing different things on the slopes. Points are assigned for certain runs, tricks completed and shenanigans committed on the slopes. (Peeing mid run, calling people out, etc.) Points are deducted for crashes, losing you pass, etc. We we started playing our own version of this....

One thing that we took from the movie was, calling your mother while riding down the hardest run on the mountain. Well, seeing as how Lower Shooting star was the hardest one open, we did it on that one.

Drew was the first to call his mom.

Will followed Drew and completed his run with far less turns than Drew did. :)

This type of thing continued for the entire day as we rode. It really was good time considering the lack of runs that were open. For the most part we stayed on the Robbins Run/Shooting star as there were less people on it than Upper/lower Shawneehaw.

We stopped for a bit to rest. Robert, will and I went in to grab a few cold beers. They had Busch Light on sale for 2.00 a can. (for the slopes,that aint bad) However, things changed when we found out there was a 10.00 debit card minimum. We walked out with alot of beer.

Back on the slopes we continued playing our game and trying not to make fools of our selves. (oops) At some point we talked Becca into going up to the top of the mountain and riding. She was very scared, but she did pretty darn good.

We did pretty well to not embarrass ourselves on the slopes. However, the lift lines were another story. At one point we made it our mission to keep Drew out of his skis. We would hit the latch to release his bindings, then someone else would push him at the same time. This got alot of attention and laughs.

At another point, Carrie threw a snowball at me and managed to miss. (surprise) This ended up starting a snowball fight in the lift line.

Becca and Drew on top of Beech Mountain. Her first time up top!

Can't get enough of this view!

Through out the entire day of riding I was putting the Go-Pro camera up on my helmet and making runs down the mountain. I did this in order to make a short movie about the day. This was all fine and well until I ended up taking some kid out (really he took me out) while recording... Below is a link the to the video. The crash is at the end.

Enjoy. Beech Mountain New Years Video <~ Click

Walking back to the car we saw this thing. Parked in the Handicapped spot, too.

After leaving the slopes we stopped by our favorite restaurant on Beech Mountain, Brick Oven. We killed some more pasta, wings and pizza before heading back to Echota to celebrate the new year.

Every Christmas Carry buys us guys a nice dark beer. This year's was a aged stout from Trader Joe's. Was very good had a high alcohol content as well...

Chillin out around the fire place waiting for the ball to drop.

We ended up playing circle of death that night, again. Along with some other card games while watching the ball drop and the RedBull jump. It wasn't long after that we all passed out again... there is a reason why...

Will's present from Dirty Santa. Peach Moonshine. This ended up making laps around the table...

Sunday was a lazy day with some crazy weather. Woke up to an amazing view and temperatures in the lower 60's. We managed to get up and moving to make it to lunch at the Banner Elk Cafe. The food was great, fried chicken, green beans and mashed redskin potatoes. All for like $7.00! We were all a bit hungover still and apparently I was a bit rude to our waitress, but honestly the service was crap right from the start. But anyway...

Good Morning, 2012!

While we were at lunch the temps dropped like 10 degrees and rain came outta no where! It went from sunny and warm to cold and wet, quickly. So we went back to Echota to drink the rest of the afternoon away and lounge.

Becca ended up having us all craving some baked Mac and Cheese after telling us about her recipe. So we managed to make it down the mountain to the store and picked up the ingredients we needed. For 24.00 we ended up getting enough stuff to make two pans of the stuff and it fed 8 of us, well! I think we will be cooking more often!

Later that afternoon the temps kept dropping and the wind was blowing hard. It found its way through any lack of seal around the windows and doors. The blinds were moving and the doors were creaking due to the wind and the pressure. We later had fun with this by opening the front door then the back door... If the back door was open, it was all I could do to open the front door for all the pressure on it.

The next morning a few of us decided to go back to Beech for a half day ride for 20.00 since it was weekday and the holiday rates were over. The temps were well within blowing range so they had them all on that morning.

Drew and Robert decided to get some more GNAR points by parking at the top of the mountain and riding down the slopes to pick up their lift ticket.

All the blowers were on at Beech.

After one run down the mountain...

Conditions weren't as good on Monday as they were on Saturday thanks to the warm weather and rain. But it was still worth $20.00. We rode till around 12:30 that afternoon, called it quits and headed back to Echota to pack up and head home.

Visibility was a bit low again, but manageable.

All in all it was great weekend. Good times with friends on the slopes, lounging around the condo with drinks and good food. Really can't complain. Hopefully things will turn around in the weather and we can get a trip up to Snowshoe, WV soon!

Until next time... think snow!

Day Trip to Ski-Beech

As we approach the middle of December, Mother Nature continues to tease us with ideal slope conditions. After it got nice and cool for the season opener at Sugar Mountain, the weather turned warm and rainy for a couple days. That pretty much killed all the snow that Sugar had built up. However, following this warm rain was a good cold snap that brought some moisture with it. Boone and the higher elevations were hit with 4-6 inches of powder and highs in the upper 20’s. The snow guns were running non stop, day and night. With this, Josh Beasley and myself were constantly watching Ray’s Weather as well as the slope cameras for Sugar and Beech. With these types of conditions it was looking like the major runs would be opening up shortly.

In the following week, Travis and Josh were blowing me up asking when we would head to the mountains for some boarding. Honestly, I wasn’t ready to go yet as I was hoping to wait till the black diamonds were opened up. Didn’t really feel like spending the money in gas and lift tickets to ride the same greens and blues all day on poor snow. This was fine and well until Josh had finally had enough of watching the blowers on the computer, he wanted to shred. With this urge he offered to foot the gas bill in my truck if we went. Well, that wasn’t a difficult decision to make. So I called Travis to let him know that we were going, and well… he got a bit upset because he couldn’t make it on Saturday. He will get over it, I’m sure.

Friday night I headed over to Josh’s place to crash; we were planning on leaving his house early to ensure we were on the slopes right after they opened. After dinner, Josh and I watched, “The Art of Flight”, Travis’ Rice’s new video. One word to describe that film, EPIC! Any boarder or skier should really watch this film as it tops his previous film, “That’s It. That’s All.”

5:30am, Josh and I are loading up the truck with the gear and headed out of Thomasville, NC and making our way towards Banner Elk, NC. Once on 421, we made a quick stop at Bo jangles for a Cajun Filet and continued heading west with sun rising behind us.

That day was the start of my second season on my Burton Clash and unfortunately it caught some hell last year when I was taken out by a couple kids at Sugar. The board had a couple large gashes in it and they needed to be filled. Thankfully I have made some good friends that work at Alpine Ski Center. Before our trip, I made arrangements with, “Fluffy” to have him wax my board before we headed up the mountain. After killing 20 minutes in Alpine, Fluffy gave my board back with a hand shake and out the door we went.

While we were at Alpine we made the decision to go to Beech for the day since Sugar was having their “Sugar Fest.” They would have the K2 reps there and you could demo the new gear, live band playing, rail jam, etc. Seeing as how Josh and I had no interest in buying new gear and weren’t going to enter a rail jam, we decided Beech would be the better option with the high speed lift.

By 9:30am Josh and I were on the lift for the first run of the day. The blowers were on all over the mountain, including White Lightning, their black diamond. (Still closed though)

After a couple runs the cloud cover had moved in, add the blowers into the equation and visibility was poor. At times it became difficult to see 50 feet out but we made the best of it and typically the poor visibility was only for short section.

Josh ready to make the first run of the season!

Not my first lift of the season, but stoked to be in my own gear and getting the season going.

Blowers were covering mountain that day.

Blower on White Lightning doing work. Never noticed that road there... explain the ledge that is right there every year.

Good photo showing the grade of that part of the slope. Fun run, just wish more of it was like that part.

After a couple warm up runs I began working on riding switch. For those that aren’t familiar with these kinds of sports, riding switch is riding backwards to what you are used to. I have learned to ride, “normal” or left foot forward as I go down the mountain. So to ride switch is to go “goofy” for me with right foot forward. Once you’re so used to riding one way and having each foot do its own task on the board, it’s hard to re train it.

I would ride switch on the lower half of the mountain, trying to practice going from edge to edge. As you can imagine I fell a good bit, mainly when I tried to go from my heel edge back to my toe edge. In addition to riding switch I began working on my spins. After a few runs I was able to complete multiple spins to my right side while moving down the mountain. I am still working on spinning to my left. Not sure why it’s more difficult, but it is…

Around 11:30 the clouds got really thick, Josh and I were ready for a break anyhow so we decided to take an early lunch. In an attempt to save some money, we packed our lunch and spent an hour resting in the truck. During that time the clouds began taperi off a bit, making visibility better on the mountain.

After a few more runs down Upper and Lower Shawneehaw I was slowly starting to get the hang of riding switch. With that, Josh and I decided to make an entire run down the mountain riding switch. As you can imagine, I fell, a lot. My legs were shot and I had to take a couple rests on the way down the mountain. Eventually I did make it and I did ride the entire run switch.

After a 10 minute break, Josh came up with the brilliant idea to race down the mountain. (Normal stance) The slopes really weren’t that crowded and the visibility was ok at the time. Off the start I was ahead, but not for long. Josh came by me pretty quick as I made a poor line choice in the middle of the slope. I started to gain on him after turning onto Lower Shawneehaw, however, a skier bit the dust right in front of me about half way down and I had to make a hard turn to avoid him and I lost a ton of speed. I tried pumping to gain speed back but my legs just weren’t having it. Josh pulled ahead a bit as we made our way into Crossover and onto Freestyle. However, on Freestyle he took a bit of a wide line to avoid the snow blowers. I wasn’t about to get my ass handed to me, so I sucked it up and got as tight as I could to the inside of Free style and did my best to tuck below the blowers. By the time we made it to the drop off just before the chair lift line I was within a couple feet of Josh. At the drop off (which we called the finish line) I cut hard to get to the inside of him. As I made my way to the lip I lost my edge and my board went up, my ass went down and I began to slide. As this happened, I looked up to see that my board was within inches of Josh’s calf’s as he made the drop. I almost had him! Since I lost, I had to buy dinner… oh well. It was a fair race.

Josh and I were both shot after that so we decided to take another breather before heading back onto the chair lift. At this point the cloud cover was very sporadic. They would be heavy one minute and then clear up the next. So each run we made for the rest of the afternoon, we would sit at the top and wait for a few moments for it to clear up before we made our run.

A little cloudy down there....

Good enough... time to shred.

Blue sky eventually showed up, for a bit.

On Lower Shawneehaw, Beech had a few small park features set up, one of which was 1 foot diameter pipe with a slight ramp leading up to it. There were blowers all around this area which had the pipe extremely icy. With that in mind I wasn’t about to try and ride it. However the lip leading up to it was pretty good so I start jumping off it. After realizing my vertical hop was pretty good, I decided that I could probably jump over the pipe by crossing it from left to right. Success! Josh was able to do it as well. After doing this a couple times, we decided to take some video of it.

Me jumping over the rail.

Josh getting a grab off the lip.

Around 4:15, Josh and I were beat. Our legs were dead and the cold air was starting to move back in. We called it a day and headed for the truck. After packing up our gear we headed into Boone to visit, Mellow Mushroom for some good pizza and cold beer.

We made it home that night around 8pm. Overall it was good day of riding considering the run that was open and both took advantage of the easier runs by improving on some of our tech skills. Looking forward to the next slope session! (If weather co-operates, it looks like I will be spending New Years on the slopes!)

Side Note: Today (12/14/2011) it is in the 50’s with clear skies in the mountains.