After last week’s fun ride up in the Laguna mountains and our first time on the awesome new Los Gatos Trail, J and I decided we wanted to hit it up again real soon. So we decided to wait all of one week and ride it again today. We were actually able to talk Tom/NappyT/fellow founding STAT Crew member into riding with us–his first ride in quite some time. I got a text message from James last night asking if we were headed up and if he could join. The more the merrier, so he met up with us at Tom’s and we all piled into my car for the drive up. In hindsight I should have gotten a picture of all 4 of our bikes on my roof rack. Nothing like driving around with well over $10,000 in bikes on your car!!
The weather was awesome and we set out. We ran into an acquaintance or two–which is always nice–and had a good ride out the Big Laguna Trail/BLT, out to Agua Dulce, up to Chico Gatos Ravine and eventually the Los Gatos Spur Trail. There are a few new features on Los Gatos–added since our ride there last week!!
We sessioned a few of them, though I didn’t photograph them (more on why in a second). I did verify with pictures I took just last week that the new stuff was built since then.
There’s a couple new log rollers towards the beginning. There is a new roll/up-and-over right after the flattest log/trunk roll. In this freeze frame from a video we took last week, I confirmed that it wasn’t there then. The new feature goes up and over this log I marked and there’s another small one immediately after.

You can see the edge of it in this pic:

And yes–those are horses in that pic!! While we were hitting the new feature, 2 equestrians came down the trail. I REALLY wanted to question them on why they felt it necessary to ride Los Gatos, even though the sign at the top discourages it and that they have a gabillion other trails to ride. I knew it wouldn’t do any good and would only give them a negative view of MTBers, so I kept quiet.
Overall it was a good ride though. I hit a couple things I didn’t hit before, which was cool. There’s a long tree trunk log roll that I finally sacked up and rode. James got a vid of it. After watching it, I realize how lame it looks having J and Tom spot me and run along side me. I asked them to and was thankful they did–as I didn’t feel much like taking a nose-dive off the log. Next time I’ll try it without the spotters. For now though, I think it looks kind of lame. Who knows? You be the judge:
Log Ride
I got a pic of the steep log roller from last weeks ride/post. The camera view in the video doesn’t do a good job of showing how steep the angle is, so I got a pic of it:

Now for the reason we didn’t take many pics: James/Quaestionis had a bit of a spill at the top of Los Gatos and suffered an Open Dislocation (Google “Kyle Orton” for more details) of his right ring finger. He also broke something in his hand–so said the text I got when he was done at the E.R. It looked kind of gross–like he had a “free-floating grape” on the top of his hand.I have yet to get all the details, but he did tell me he is now sporting a cast. We did stop to hit a few things, but the main objective was to get back to the car as quick as we could so he could get to a doctor, so we didn’t mess with pics too much. Although he did pull out his camera to take a vid of me riding the longest of the trunk rolls. What a trooper!!
Here’s a few random pics I took throughout the day:
Can you spot the bikers?








All in all though, it was a great day of riding on awesome, scenic trails with great views!!

Now then, to explain what my last post was all about–
So I’ve been wanting to do a sort of consolidation of my bike stable for awhile now. I got the Yeti awhile ago and it served as my main ride for over 2 years. During that two years, I built it up from a somewhat light weight trail bike, to a pretty beefy trail bike. It started at around 28 lbs and ended up at closer to 32 lbs. Now 4 lbs may not seem like a lot, but when you consider that 4 lbs is about 15% of the bikes weight, you realize it is significant. With its burlier build, I took it on rides like Noble Canyon and Ted Williams a lot–rides that are tough on bikes. As a result, the frame broke twice. Yeti was always cool and warrantied it just fine, but it’s really not meant for this type of abuse.
I built up the Niner and fell in love with it. It is a very capable back up bike and really fun to ride. I’ve also always wanted a Turner 5-Spot and I acquired that late last year. Over the next few months I proceeded to make it lighter and lighter and now it is sitting at 28 lbs. Given the terrain at most of the trails I ride, this is a perfect bike. So, I ended up riding it primarily and the Yeti has been sitting and collecting dust.
During all of this, my freeride/downhill bike Haro has been sitting even longer than the Yeti. It has an awesome build and is fun to ride. But, at 43 lbs it has a very specific purpose–to be pointed downhill and let loose like a wrecking ball on wheels. Given the lack of agressive DH trails in the area, I never rode it either.
So I have an awesome trail bike in the 5 Spot. I have a fun trail/back-up bike in the Niner. Then I have the overly-heavy-yet-not-designed-to-be-thrashed Yeti sitting and collecting dust–as well as the too-much-bike-for-me Haro collecting dust as well.
I decided to sell the Haro and use the money to buy a burly, yet not too heavy aggressive trail/All Mountain frame and transfer the Yeti’s burly parts onto it.
I sold the Haro on Craigslist and was able to get a great deal on a barely used Santa Cruz Nomad frame. It turns out that my friend Joe had a co-worker who was selling it and I got it for a steal!!
I got it Thursday night and built it up/swapped the parts over last night. Now, I just have to drop it off to Tom the mechanic at Bicycle Warehouse next week, so he can run new shifter cables. After that she’s done and ready to ride!!
Lookin’ mighty fine for a crappy cell phone pic:

The Nomad is a 6″ travel bike that us built burly enough to take jumps and drops without cracking/breaking, all while still maintaing a relatively low weight to make climbing and general trail riding still doable. It only has an inch less rear travel and a half an inch less front travel than the Haro–all while being over 10 lbs lighter!!
I can’t wait until she’s finished and I can take her on her maiden voyage!! I’ll be sure to take lot’s of pics. Until next time, seek your bliss.
Ride lots…