Pump Pump Pump

My friend Kyle said he wanted to build a pump track in his backyard. A pump track is a series of jumps and berms that are designed in a way to allow you to ride around the track without pedaling. It took three weekends to build this track. See the video below for an example of it in action.

Click to view

As the dirt gets more compacted it will only get faster and better! Not sure if I had more fun building it or riding it.

Tune It Up

I spent the last couple of days in the back yard cleaning up the living space. I figured it's a good time to trim up the plants, clean out the dead growth, and work on a couple of projects I've been thinking about.

A while ago I decided to keep an old window from our house. The window was located in the closet, and was removed during the construction. It had been sitting in the garage for a couple of years. I took the window out if the frame, stripped off the paint, and hung it on the fence. I like the way it complements our other windows in the yard.

The next day I decided to work on another project. We have a beautiful staghorn plant growing on the avocado tree.

It is getting very large and needs to be turned back. The nice thing about staghorns is that you can take the cuttings and easily replant them on another flat surface. I drove up and down the alley of Ocean Beach looking for suitable pieces of wooden artwork. I found an old fire pit mantle complete with tile,

a cool looking wooden chair,

 and an old wooden fence.

I took the items home, cleaned them up, and created items to hang staghorns on. I also used the frame from the closet window to hang another staghorn.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing in the backyard. What a wonderful weekend.

Up & Down

I went for a mountain bike ride yesterday. This time it was something a little different. A friend of mine and I drove to Big Bear Lake. We decided to visit Snow Summit, a Ski Resort located in the area.

Snow Summit closes doors for skiing when the snow melts, and then switches over to providing trails for mountain bike riding during the summer. They add a bike rack on to every other chair in the chair lift. This way your bikes ride up in one chair and you sit in the next one.

It's an interesting way to ride your bike, you takes a ski lift up to the top of the mountain, and then you ride down.

A normal bike ride for me is around 20 miles with almost 2, 000 feet of elevation gain. I'm pretty tired after something like that. yesterday I rode 35 miles and client over 9000 feet in elevation. Of course it was a little misleading since all of the climbing was on a chairlift.

The best trails are steep and have lots of jumps. Some of the jumps were really big. The best line of jumps was called party wave. It had over a dozen tabletop jumps you can hit while riding down the hill. Lots of burms and other obstacles to ride on. It was considered a black diamond run. While I don't have a lot of experience jumping mountain bikes, I've been jumping BMX bikes for years so that background definitely paid off. I could see how people who come to mountain biking through riding road bikes can get themselves in troubleriding quickly.

Want to get an idea about what it looks like? See below for a video of someone else doing the same jumps I did yesterday. I was going a little slower than him but not by much. I was able to clear almost all of the jumps you see in the video. Click here to watch.

The top of the mountain had signage telling people about different jump runs you could go on. I loved how they included notes about changes they've made to jumps. Notice how the sign below says one of the jumps has been shortened by two feet. Two feet makes a big difference when you're flying in the air. The place is totally set up for dirt jumpers.

 It was very fast and I almost never had the pedal. As a matter of fact I would get on the chairlift, ride to the top of the mountain, and then ride down the mountain and roll over to the chairlift again. I never had to change gears at all. It was a lot of fun!

On the way back we drove through the Inland Empire. It was over a hundred and eight degrees at 6 pm. Very hot!

I had a wonderful time and plan to do it again!

Weather Prediction

I am rereading one of my old favorite weather books. I came across the chapter that talks about the role that wind direction and air pressure plays on weather. You can measure these two items with a simple weather tool. See the chart below for how to interpret the data and make it weather prediction.

Rancho PQ Jumps

About 3 months ago we found some jumps located in the Rancho Penasquitos area. At the time they seemed a little big, but they were inviting and worth checking out later. I frequently think about them at night.

Being its Spring Break, I have been riding mountain bikes every day. I went for a ride with Darren, a guy I knew from my dirt jumping days. He took me on a trail in Santee with jumps and gaps. I also took a trip up to the Temecula area with Mark and a few other guys I ride with. We visited a mountain bike park complete with trails, jumps, burms, and other fun things to ride. One trail consisted of a "jump run" complete with doubles, table tops, step ups, and other types of jumps. They gave me an opportunity to work on my jumping skills.

We decided to go back to Rancho Penasquitos jumps today. See the video for me jumping some of the jumps on one of the lines. The line consists of about seven or eight jumps going down a hill with burms and other fun things to ride. One jump covers a gap across a road. Its a little scary because you are jumping a 10+ foot gap while going down hill. See below for a video of that.

Later on the same line ends up with two sets of doubles. See below for a video of that.

There's a second line with slightly larger jumps. Maybe we'll do those in the future. It was nice to get that adrenaline rush back!

Black Mountain

I rode around Black Mountain yesterday on my mountain bike. Take a look at the photo looking South to Point Loma. This year was wonderful. We ended up climbing a total of 2000 vertical feet.