A wasted weekend, sort of
I don’t know what happened. I had planned on working on my car’s brakes on Saturday and working in a ride in the afternoon. I knew one of the rotors needed to be replaced. It would’ve been a bad idea to do the brake pad and rotor change out seperately, so the brakes had to wait on the rotor. I didn’t make any plans ahead of time to order/acquire a rotor–which was a stupid move. Needless to say, none of the local shops in Fallbrook had the one I needed. They all said it would be Tuesday or Wednesday before they could get one, so I ended up having to drive to Napa’s main warehouse in San Diego to get one. By the time I did that, it was too late to ride.
Today’s plan was to do the brakes after church. I was hoping it would go quickly and I’d be able to ride after. Dad and I had a bit of a problem and it took longer than I had hoped. By the time we fininshed, it was too late to ride. I am glad to have the brake job behind me though.
The day was not a total loss though. As I may have mentioned before, there’s tons of trails right out our front door here in Ramona. The equestrians/San Vicente Pony Club have built miles of trail, so we have it at our disposal. With this in mind, I decided to take Spencer out for a short bike ride around the ‘hood. I took out the Haro just in case I found something I could play around on. Turns out–I did. We came across a wood deck off to the side of the trail. I have ridden past it a few times and never knew it was there. It was built around a tree–the tree was growing through the middle–and was as low as 8 inches high on one side up to about 2 feet high on the other.
—-A little sidenote…I have mentioned before that I want to get better at hucking/taking drops/jumping. I tend to land very front heavy the majority of the time when I jump and take drops. Last year, I came across an instructional video by the guys at FluidRide.com. It shows the proper technique for taking drops and I found the video fascinating. At the time, I still didn’t have the necessary guts to try it, nor a place to practice. I lost the link to the video but fortunately, I was able to track it down recently and knew it would help me fix my nose-diving problem. http://www.declinemagazine.com/visuals/fluidride/fluidride_vol1.htm
Now back to my ride today with Spencer—-
So I come across this deck. I realize it isn’t that high, but it should be high enough to practice what I learned in the video. Also, the way the deck sat, I wouldn’t be able to get up much speed. When I have taken drops before, I needed a lot of speed to not nose-dive. The rider in the video floats his bike off a drop with ease at a very slow speed. I knew if my technique was right, I would land both wheels at the same time. The fact that I couldn’t get up much speed was actually a good thing.
I hucked off the deck probably 10-12 times. Each time, I worked on getting my weight back and “motivating” the bars forward with my hands like the video shows. I was landing pretty smoothly and was wishing I had a camera to film it. If I had used my old (lack of) technique, I would’ve been nose-diving like crazy at such a low speed. But using the tips in the video, I felt like I was doing it correctly. I decided to go back to my old form and not use the correct method a couple times just to see if I felt a difference. I knew that the 170mm of fork travel on the Haro would compensate for any mistakes since the deck was only 2 feet high. Sure enough, at that low speed, my front wheel dove like crazy. I went back to the proper technique from the video and the landings were much smoother.
The little bit I was able to do today was encouraging though. The fact that I was able to keep the HEAVY front end of the Haro from nose-diving was encouraging–the Haro’s 170mm Marzocchi 66RC fork weighs close to 7 pounds. I know I need lots more practice. I really need to take this techique off some higher drops to see just how good or bad I’m doing. I see a trip to TW in my near future. I will definitely be returning to the deck to practice as well–hard not to when it’s right down the street. Maybe I’ll take the camera and shoot some video too. That’d be a good way to see just how well I’m getting that front wheel up.
I’m planning on riding with Mark in Fallbrook tomorrow morning. Then the usual Hodges on Wednesday. I’d like to hit LPQ again soon–maybe Friday. I’ll probably have to work at the shop Saturday, so maybe I’ll hit TW after. And, here’s hoping I get the Yeti back this week. Until then, seek your bliss.
Ride lots…
