This afternoon in my spare time between opportunities I went for a bike ride.  While I was climbing I stopped once or twice to check on a sound that my rear wheel kept making, something to do with the spokes, but I couldn’t identify it.  After a little bit more riding, and climbing up Overlook Road in Los Gatos, I decided it was something I should have checked out.  I turned around and headed for Summit bikes which was literally all down hill from where I stopped.  There was no obvious problem with my wheel other than being out of true which means the spokes are giving uneven tension from one spoke to the next and it results in a slightly crooked wheel.  While fixing the truing on the wheel one of the spokes popped, and split the rim down the center.  Had I not gone in this probably would have happened while I was riding.  Good news is that it was all covered by the warranty as the wheels, and the bike are only about 4-5 months old.  There was also another spoke a few spokes away from the split where there evidence of more splitting.  Below is a photo of my split rim.  I am just happy this happened at the shop and not while I was on the road.  Summit bikes gave me a loaner wheel to ride home on and will work on getting my split wheel replaced under warranty. As always, Summit continues to impress.

The Los Gatos Turkey Ride 2008 is almost here.  Last year mountain bikers came by the hundreds, many carrying complete meals to share with everyone at the top.  This year I am excited to have more of my friends interested in this ride as they will be joining me to the top of the hill.  To prepare we started to go on longer bike rides, the first of which was to the top of Kennedy trail.  I am glad we started to get ready before the big day because we were clearly needing to rest a few times.  I wanted to do it again last weekend but the rain prevented us from leaving the house.  Weather permitting we should be up there again getting in better shape for a more enjoyable ride on Thanksgiving morning.

It looks like people just started to talk about the ride on the mtbr forums located here:
http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=465893

If you don’t know what the Turkey Ride is, here is a brief overview.
On Thanksgiving at ~7:00AM, Summit Bicycles in Los Gatos provides coffee and healthy refreshments and is open for business for a short time to help people prepare for their ride up Kennedy trail.  Many people have kid trailers for their mountain bikes and they fill them with ready to eat turkeys and all of the other yummy stuff everyone likes to enjoy on Thanksgiving.  Other people bring beer and other things to drink.  People share everything that they tote up to the top and everyone is very friendly.  The ride to the top is not very technical but its also not easy, especially if you have not been riding, but people seem to rest everywhere along the way and there are enough people that you never feel left behind.  Last year was my first year and I didnt bring anything, this year I will figure out something to bring to share.

… also if you have not read my previous post from last year about Turkey Ride 2007, it has some videos and additional information.  It is found below, sadly it has been a year since my last post.

This Thanksgiving I woke up at 6:45am so I could put on all my cold weather bike gear and leave the house by 7:30 on my bike. I was headed to Summit Bicycles to go meet up with a bunch of other mountain bikers for the annual Los Gatos Turkey Ride. That may not be its official name, but the idea is that everyone meets up at 8am to go ride up Kennedy Trail, which has its trail head located half way across Kennedy road in Los Gatos. The trail is a large fire road that is quite steep in some areas, but big enough to allow many bikers to ride at the same time. I was very surprised to see that there were several hundred people at Summit Bicycles so early in the morning, and they were kind enough to have the shop open for business until the ride started, and they provided free breakfast rolls and coffee.

The ride started at 8:15 or so and it took me 1:15 to climb 3000′ to the top in about 7 miles. The very last section of the ride, just before the peak where the party was had a 24% incline and was brutal. This was the first time (out of about 8 attempts) that I’ve actually ridden all the way to to the top without having something go wrong on that section of the hill. That incline is steep enough that a single rock, a chain issue, or anything out of the ordinary will completely throw you off balance and its too steep to start again. At the top, there were turkeys, beer, someone actually hauled a keg up on a bike trailer. Someone carried up an entire cooked pig to share, and there was no shortage of brownies, cookies, and other good thanksgiving food to be shared. Next year i’ll have to bring some food to share. I dont know if I’ll go as far as to carry a trailer on my bike, but we’ll see.

Here is a little video clip from my digital camera.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqTWjTKJruY[/youtube]
This was such a fun ride that I will for sure participate next year. I hope that I can get more of my friends to come with me as it would make a huge difference once we were at the top. The whole ride from my house was about 20 miles and the whole trip was about 4 hours long, and I was home in time for thanksgiving with the family, or I would have been if we had plans this year. My mom got sick at the last minute so we had a very low key day.here is a link to the message boards where everyone who participates talks.
http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=359615

I setup a new blog today, for use in my e-marketing class at sjsu. The URL is FAIL check it out. I’ll be blogging there about all my boat related activities.