Tomicles' Blog » Mountain Biking

crisis averted while biking today

tomicles — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:06:25 +0000

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.

Preparing for Los Gatos Turkey Ride 2008

tomicles — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:51:28 +0000

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.

Los Gatos Turkey Ride 2007

tomicles — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 21:56:58 +0000

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

Highway 17 takes SI Crew’s Boats, Trailer, and Pickup

Tomicles — Mon, 08 May 2006 08:46:46 +0000

Today started just like any other Sunday, I woke up and decided to ride my bike. Jess wanted me to come say hi to her and her family up at the regatta at Lexington so that’s what I went to go do. I rode up the creek trail to the lake, and just as I went up the first little hill, before crossing over the spillway, there was a group of people gathered pointing up the hill. As I approached, I looked up and my stomach sank. There was a pickup truck, with a rowing trailer with five 8-person rowing shells on it, half way slid down the hill, facing backwards. The truck was in very bad condition; it looked like the truck bed was bent at about a 30-degree angle to the cab. The driver and the passenger were OK and climbed out the passenger side window and up to highway 17. This all just happened about five minutes before I arrived at the scene. I immediately called Jess who was at the boathouse and told her what had happened, and I think she was the first to tell anyone who was still there. Most of the people had left the regatta by then, but the few that were still around went to go help out. I rode over to the boathouse to show them some pictures, and then headed home. On my way home I decided to go up St. Joseph’s hill to see if I could see the accident from above, and sure enough, I could. I whipped out my camcorder again and proceeded to film for an hour, or until the tape ran out, while they removed boats from the trailer and pulled the truck and trailer back onto the freeway. The story I’ve heard thus far is that the brakes on the pickup gave out, and the trailer wanted to go faster than the, causing it to jack knife and fall off the freeway. At $20,000 – $30,000 each, this was no cheap accident. I dont even know if they will be able to repair the one boat they removed by hand before pulling the rest up the hill, as it was missing its entire bow. (see video)

Video Footage: SI-Crew_Boat_Accident.mp4

Except for the first 15 seconds or so, I took this footage from half way up St. Joseph’s hill in Los Gatos. To the very left of the main shot, is Lexington Dam, and to the right, is downtown Los Gatos. The camera shot is from at least a mile away, zoomed in all the way on my little Panasonic 3ccd minidv camcorder. I didn’t use any digital zoom. I took interest in this accident as I rowed for LGRC for 4 years and know the kind of dedication those rowers have put into their sport. Hopefully they have more boats at their boathouse so they can continue their season.

If you have more info about this incident, or if I didn’t quite get something right, let me know. If you’ve come to this site, and are a member of SI Crew, I’m very sorry for your loss and am very happy to hear that both people in the truck are doing well. I can provide a DVD copy of this video to those directly related to this incident.

23 mile bikeride

Tomicles — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 23:53:49 +0000

so yesterday I decided to buy some running shoes and to run st. Joseph’s hill.. the route i usually bike ride. Well as it turns out i ended up walking about 75% of it. Hopefully next time I can run a little bit more. Today I went on my regular bike ride, but it didn’t turn out so regular. I rode to the top of St. Joseph’s hill, and then down to the launch ramp at the lake. I was feeling pretty good at that point so i decided to ride around the lake. When I got back to the launch ramp I decided to go home the hard way, up the steep hill and to the split where Jones trail will go back to town or i can go up the hill more to the summit. I decided to once again go to the summit for the 2nd time that day. It was harder the 2nd time and went a little slower, especially since I already drank 3 liters of water and had no more. It was an easy ride home from the top, and the trip was about 23 miles long. Much longer than Ive been doing. Tomorrow morning I hope to do Spin class at 6am, but we’ll see how i feel. Now I’m going to go eat some food and go do my homework at Starbucks in Los Gatos. If its still the 16th of October and before midnight, come see me at Starbucks.

long bikeride today

Tomicles — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 04:22:54 +0000

So today i went on a much longer bikeride than normal. When I was done I went almost 19.24 miles and climed and decended near 2000 feet. I left the house and went to the bike shop to get some things checked out, and then headed up kennedy road. At the top of kennedy road is a fireroad called kennedy trail (i think). This trail winds up the hill for almost 4 miles of switchback after switchback and eventually puts you on top of the mountain. This hill is right in front of the large white radar cube that is visible from almost everywhere, actually its about 300′ lower. I’m now exhausted and dont really want to move. Im sitting at starbucks with jeff matt and dan and have not done anything worthwhile. I think I’ll go home now.

Week of 8/15/2005

tomicles — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 06:47:28 +0000

This week I had a lot going on. For starters, I took the boat trailer to get painted and sandblasted in santa clara and went on a nice bikeride to the top of St. Joseph’s Hill where I saw a very nice sunset. I went up to Sausalito again to help out my friend Alfonso with some computer stuff, as well as worked a bit for Cybermanor. Later in the week I went to the Control4 Real Tour off highway 92 with Gordon from Cybermanor. This was a small demonstration of the Control4 system and how they will integrate into homes of the future for home control and automation. They presented some cool aspects of home automation that I just never thought of before, including some major safety features. Some of these safety features include shutting off central air if there is a fire to stop the spread of smoke, and the flashing of exterior lights in the event of a fire to help firefighters find the location, if for example the flames and/or smoke are not visible. The whole control4 system communicates via 3 methods. It will use Ethernet, 802.11, or Zigbee. Zigbee is the slowest but also the coolest of the three, and is only used for sending control commands, like switching a light on or off because it is quite slow on the throughput, but it is a meshed network, and with a range that isn’t that great, you just need to add more zigbee devices, such as dimmers or switches, to extend the network further in the home. they relay signals off of each other, know how to figure out the quickest path, and will correct the path if a part of the home looses power.

Top of the mountain, quick decent

Tomicles — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 05:13:33 +0000

today I went on my usual bikeride… almost. I started off a little differently, went up winchester and through downtown to get to the trail instead of getting on the trail at Lark Ave. It was a very fast ride to downtown, I saw someone at Winchester and Dave’s Ave with a mountain bike on top of their car, I beat them to the bottom of the hill. I averaged like 14mph to downtown, and then my average went to crap. I went to the top of St. Joseph’s hill, did some push-ups and other upper body workout stuff, then went down to the lake. Once I was at the lake, I decided to go up ‘overgrown’ or otherwise known as limekiln trail. This takes me about half way up the mountain, to an intersection where I can go up higher, to the top of Kennedy trail, same height as the crazy “box” on top of the south bay mountains that is very visible. But instead I went down the hill, since I was completely exhausted. My bike worked very well, and my total trip was 18.04 miles. Now i can barely move, and I’m gonna go get a beer with a friend.

what a day

Tomicles — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 07:05:17 +0000

So today I went on a bike ride with my brother for the first time, it was fun, but he slowed me down a lot, and all my new bike wants to do is go downhill really fast. Before we left I was cleaning up the chain on my old bike for my brother, and he was trying out my new bike, and just about kills himself and breaks my new bike. Luckily neither happened, but he was riding about 5mph just trying it out, decides to pull the front break, and flips over the handlebars. He was lucky because he wasn’t wearing a helmet, and he didn’t land on his head. He got a few scratches on his elbow, but was alright. The bike was OK too, it needed a little tune up as the gear shifters got hit out of wack a little bit, but that was an easy fix. Tomorrow I think I’ll ride in Santa Cruz, at wilder ranch, since I may have to go work on some stuff at the beach house :(. I wish I had someone to ride with that was at my skill level. Riding with a beginner kinda sucks because i don’t really get a workout, but hell, everyone has to start somewhere.

My comcrap (comcast) is still broken at home. It usually goes out at night and I get about 50% packet loss for several hours, then randomly it works again. Also while the internet is broken, i also cant get any HD or high number digital channels either. Comcast needs to fix their shit on my street and give me free service. I think they have already credited my account more than $80 for the month, its free until they fix their shit and I stop calling. It being broken is also costing them a lot, since I’ve had a service call every other day for the past 2 weeks or so. I’m also pissed that my dsl is not going to work, they came back after 4 weeks of figuring shit out and said that my line is 17,000+ feet away from the CO, which i actually already knew, but they convinced me otherwise when I ordered it. We’ll see how long it takes for them to ask for the modem back.

I need to move out of the house now so i can finally have good internet again. I’m at Starbucks right now because my crap is broken at home and its pissing me off. Hopefully when I get kicked out of here at 12 I can go hang out with Jenn for a while.

got my bike, diffrent than before

Tomicles — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 19:01:30 +0000

so the bike i ordered thats listed below is not availale, everyone and their whole family wants that bike and its backordered until the end of may at the earliest. So i spent a few hundred dollars more and moved up to a 5″ travel bike.