MagicShine Recall Info

The Magicshine batteries were recalled by GeoMangear a few months ago and I promptly sent mine in considering that the issue at hand was batteries that were faulty and there were a couple of cases where the batteries started fires.  Considering the fire hazard, I thought it best to send everything in and get the batteries replaced.  

GeoMangear definitely stepped up to the plate and did the right thing in regards to the recall.  It cost them a big chunk of change and it is really commendable that a small business is doing what they can to resolve the issue at significant cost to them.  The replacement lights are supposed to come sometime by Oct 31st which is a little frustrating because days are starting to get shorter and who knows if weather will permit riding much beyond the 10/31 date but I am hopeful that the batteries will get here before the 10/31 and am super thankful to GMG for taking the initiative to fix this despite the turn-around time.

I received the following email from the Magicshine recall via GeoMangear.com:

Please disregard this email if you have already received your recall battery replacement(s).We really apologize for the length of time this recall process is taking. We had planned to get batteries to everyone before the days started getting shorter and lights were needed for riding. But best intentions don't always work out.

We want to let you know that your claim has been received and validated against the Geomangear order database by the recall administrator on May 2, 2011 and you are in the recall queue. This whole process has been very complex with major issues surfacing constantly including severe supply chain problems due to Japan's very unfortunate twin disasters.


When will you get your battery(s)?


For claims that have been received by June 15, 2011 we will get all those batteries shipped out, at the latest, by October 31st


For claims that have been received after June 15, 2011 we will get all those batteries shipped out, at the latest, by December 31st.The three of us at Geomangear kindly ask you - please don't email us wanting to know more specifics. This recall is pushing our resources to the limit. We need to focus on getting batteries out as quickly as possible to everyone.


A side note - for those of you who are upset with us because we are still selling products on our website, please understand the reality that we must continue sales to fund this recall.


We thank you for your past patronage, your patience now and hopefully your continued support. Let us all be able to safely Ride On!

The Team at Geomangear


*** Please do not respond to this email. Responses will not be answered.***

MTB: Lost Cabin Ride Pix

Pix from the Lost Cabin mountain bike ride in the Tobacco Roots:

There was still a small snow drift at the lake....

 Looking away from the lake towards the north:

 Awesome little alpine lake

 looking north-west

 look how big that snow cornice is up high!

 Interesting pattern on the stone cliff:

 everything looked pretty green and lush

MTB: Lost Cabin & Curly Creek

After seeing amazing pictures of the Lost Cabin Lake up in the Tobacco Roots, I decided to rally and head back to the Tobaccos and ride that trail.  On the way to the trailhead, I found myself in the middle of a Montana traffic jam...yes, you read that correctly...traffic on a back-roads 2 lane highway.  Specifically, this traffic jam was caused by.....cattle!  We came across  folks moving their cattle from one location to another via means of this lane highway.  It just meant some head on driving through the cattle for a couple of miles as the car flung cow pies from all the road deposits the cows were leaving.  At that moment I was thankful not to have done the Cardwell loop on my road bike or else those cow patties would have been all over me and the bike.

Once we got through the traffic jam, I made it to the trailhead and decided that after the Lost Cabin trail I would link up to the Curly trailhead, take the trailhead up to the lake and then take the Curly Creek trail back down.  Rumor has it that going up Curly Creek trail is not the best of choices as it is steep!  Turns out people were not making that up and I was pretty content to be going downhill on that as opposed to hiking a bike up-hill.

It turned into a great ride with great weather.  The scenery up at Lost Cabin was spectacular and the riding was equally so.  It is a gradual climb on nice singletrack until you hit the last mile where it gets a little steeper and more tekkie.  Other than a down tree, I was able to clean everything and keep my no-dab goal intact for the ride...yup, pretty stooopid goal but heck, it is always good to ride clean.

Upon arrival at the lake, the camera got busy and took a lot of pix....will post ride pix tomorrow....

$35K To Burn?

Just in case anyone out there has an extra $35K to spend, this looks like it could be fun...until you ran out of gas and actually had to pedal power it somewhere.....

Terminabike

MTB: Where There's Smoke

There is no one riding on the trails!  We have had a couple of fires in the surrounding areas of town and our skies have been a little on the hazy side as of late.  It is just enough that you can smell and see the smoke in the air but not enough to discourage outdoor activity.  I decided to take the bike out to Blacktail and ride from the trailhead with no specific agenda or ride in mind.  I was really surprised to not run into one person on the trails or in the parking lot.  It was a ghost-town and it was my own little world once again.

My bike ended up pointing me up the trail, down the Archery Ranged, up to the Thompson Park area where the bike was just happy to be out.  The bike rode me around the Thompson Park upper loop, then it re-traced its steps back up the Archery Range, over to Blacktail and back to the car.  It was a good ride with a lot of elevation gain in short mileage.

I had to set up another Garmin Connect account since my old account won't let me in to my activities - I keep getting maintenance errors and the Help Desk has not called back or resolved the problem.  The next best thing was just to create a new account...Fortunately I was able to salvage the Curly Lake ride data too:

MTB: Curly Lake Video

A video of our ride on Saturday:

MTB Montana: Curly Lake 2011 from Tiago on Vimeo.

MTB: Curly Lake Ride Pix

Pictures from Saturday's Curly Lake ride in the Tobacco Roots:

The dirt grinder for 7 miles....

the turn off the dirt road to where the single track starts, and the climbing continues

 switchies on the way up looking south:

 The meadow on the climb up

 views from the saddle about 800 ft below the summit:

 switchbacks on the way between the saddle and the summit

 getting closer to the summit:

 Summit:

 Summit part Duh

 Loose descent from the summit:

 last climb of the day:

Removing Stan's Sealant From Tire

If you have run a tubeless set up on your bike, you have probably had to remove your tire at some point for  some reason.  Most of my tubeless tire removal experiences have involved switching out tires so I have not had to scrub the Stan's sealant off tires to remount those same tires.  I have had to clean the rims before mounting new tires which comes off pretty easily.

If you have had the pleasure of removing a tubeless tire with Stan's sealant you will empathize with just how well it covers the tire and just how much of a pain it can be to remove.  As you can see from the photo below, the Stan's covers a lot of the inside of the tire (picture is taken with the inside of the tire folded out - so we are looking at the inside of the tire).

The sealant does not come off very easily.  Stan's secret recipe is so effective that it is difficult to get the rubbery/siliconey type substance off.  In order to salvage the tire, I had to use some serious elbow grease.

I turned the tire inside out, filled up a bucket with warm soapy water and did some scrubbin'.  The key was warm soapy water - it helped the gunk to come off a little easier.  I went through a full pad (in bucket) for the tire but the replacement cost of the pad (less than a dollar) was well worth the replacement cost of a new UST tire ($65 and above).

I had to use something that was abrasive enough to work the caulk like stuff off the rubber...it took some work but it came off once you had a flat surface to scrub against.  I worked 6 inche sections at a time and was careful to make sure to scrub the beads of the tire where the beads sit in the channel to seal against the rim.  I did not want any remnants of the sealant on those beads which might prevent a good seal.

After 2 beers worth of scrubbing, the tire looked relatively clean and ready to remount....it is definitely possible to remove the sealant, it just takes some patience and hard scrubbing in order to get it done.  

Humbug Spires Hike

As a change from the norm, we decided to head down to Moose Creek and catch the trail that meanders through the Humbug Spires area.  After feeling guilty for running out of time and not being able to walk the dogs on Saturday, we decided to try and make it up to them with a nice long walk on Sunday.

The temps were going to creep into the upper 80's so we got out relatively early and were on the trail by around 10:00.  The dogs had a blast exploring new territory and it was good to see them running around chasing squirrels. chipmunks, birds...pretty much anything that moved.  They quickly started panting because it was getting hot but fortunately the trail followed the path of the creek for a while so we took frequent stops so they could cool off, drink, etc.

I was curious to see if the rock in that area was any different from what we had seen to date.  The rock seemed to generally be more featured but still somewhat broken and fractured so that there are no long panels to climb.  We only saw a small area and I think that the bigger cliffs were further back because the guidebook describes multi pitch climbs on good quality stone.

We saw some larger bands in the distance but did not get up close and personal enough to see the possibilities.  It was a good day to be out stretching the legs after an eventful ride at Curly Lake on Saturday (blog entry re: Curly to follow).

Unfortunately, most of the boulders we saw were just not quite large enough for bouldering but it makes me think that there are some bigger brother boulders somewhere with these honeycomb huecos...there have to be!

It was definitely mission accomplished relative to the pups.  They were pretty exhausted and content when we got back home.  All is well that ends well with tired pups....

Friday Stoke

Danny is at it again - this guy is just incredible.  Combine that with awesome footage and it makes for an awesome watch.

MTB Vid: CDT Segment in Helena Nat Forest

Here is a quick vid from Sunday's ride....

Montana CDT Mountain Biking from Tiago on Vimeo.

MTB: Helena Nat Forest CDT

We headed up to the Helena Nat Forest on Sunday and did a point to point ride with the Helena crew.  It was awesome to ride with new faces and explore a new segment of the CDT.  The views were incredible and ride proper was short but stout.

Garmin Connect is currently giving me errors so I don't have the link to the ride (apparently my account is hosed up as I have been escalated to level 2 support and they are saying it will be 3 business days for resolution).

In the interim, the old fashioned data points will have to suffice....

Mileage:  13.6 miles

Elevation Gain: 3,100 ft

Ride Time: 1 hour, 54 mins

We were in grizz country so we made sure to make lots of noise and wear bear/dinner bells to warn the bears.  OK, so the reality is more about the bear bells making enough noise to not surprise the bear - if anything, it probably just piques their curiosity and they subsequently come over to investigate.  Kidding aside, we did see a HUGE bear dookie in the middle of the trail.  All I can say is that it had to be one BIG OLE' bear that created that mess.

The ride proper started with steep climb right out of the gate with no time to warm up and ease the legs into the grunt that lay ahead.  The heart rate climbed quickly and did not get a chance to settle back down for a while.  I stopped at the first false summit and snapped a few pix:

The ride snaked along the ridgelines which opened up into spectacular views to either side.  Instead of peaking, the trail winds around just below the peaks and offers up some super fun riding with a little bit of everything thrown in for good measure.  There were some punchy climbs, some talus, some sweet singletrack in the trees, some sweet singletrack on loose trail, some double track, even a smidge of dirt road, some tree hopping, some stopping to take in the views, and yes more stopping to take in the views....it was a great day to be out on the bike.  The legs felt a little on the tired side but it was easy to forget as soon as you looked around you to breathe it all in.

and some more throughout the day:

All in all, it was a great day to be out exploring new trail with a new crew.  Thanks to the Helena posse for letting us Butte interlopers tag along!  

I took the Go Pro and have been putting together a video of the ride - video to be posted on the next blog post....

Climbing Rattler Gulch

Ever since we moved up to Montana our climbing seems to have taken a back seat for multiple reasons.  We got spoiled living in Denver where we had so much variety and so much quality rock close by to climb.  I had been reading about Rattler Gulch in the Montana Climbing guidebook and figure it was worth a shot.  It is about an hour north of us and the book described the area as limestone fins.  I love climbing on limestone so we decided to dust off the climbing gear, load up the dogs and head out for an adventure.

We found the cliffs easily enough and then it took a while to find the climbs.  There are only about 40 climbs listed with no crag hosting more than 6 climbs - so the search was on for bolts...we finally found the wall that had some moderates and headed up.  It was a super sketch approach through a really steep talus field that did not have much of a trail - the trail that did exist was super eroded and you had to watch your step.  We finally made it up to the crag and then tried to settle in.

The problem was that the slope of the talus field continued through the crag so there was no place to sit down and take a load off....the dogs could not get settled or even lie down because it was really steep.  Erin belayed me as I headed up the first climb.  It took a while to get into the flow - partially because of the particular climb we chose and partially because it had been a while since being roped up.  The climb itself was very uninspiring with some very hollow sounding rock that did not sounded super healthy.

After getting back down, I belayed the wifer and fought off the attack of the annoying flies (and there were many)...the belay/swat dance continued as the wifer made it up and by the time she got back down we had resolved that the climbing was poor, it was hot, the dogs were not having fun, we were not having fun swatting at all the bugs so we decided to wrap it up.  Before we threw in the towel, we did check out the other crags to see if the quality of the rock was any better.  There was one wall that looks like it will be worth a return but the rest of the walls don't warrant a return trip.

It was still good to get out though and see some new terrain....plus, we needed to take a day off from riding as we were going to explore new CDT trail the next day (Sunday).
Pix of Rattler Gulch area:

If you look carefully, you can see the car in the lower left and just how steep the approach was heading up.   

MTB: Riding in the 5th Dimension

Friday late afternoon was another splendid day to be out on a bike.  Once again the temps were just about perfect and yet again I had the trails all to myself.  I did not once run into another biker and am starting to think maybe I am riding in a parallel universe where people are tearing up the same trail but in a different dimension....enough of the Star Trekkie geeking out...

I decided to head up to Thompson Park where I did the lower loop, upper loop, then road the RR bed up to Pipestone Pass and caught the CDT over to Beaver Ponds and followed the trail until the connector over to Blacktail and caught the spur down through the Archery Range and back over to Thompson Park.  It was my third day on (relatively hard efforts) so the legs were not super snappy but they did respond when they were asked to crank up the wattage.

The Garmin somehow picked up some weird signals and apparently either it got a little confused and got lost, or I really did go off into the 4th dimension and set some serious world speed records.  I am going with the confused Garmin or else the 77 mph average and my little jaunt down to Utah during my ride were so flash fast that I don't remember it.  All the other data points seem to be OK with the exception of the distance.

I once again captured some Panoramic shots - apparently I currently only have eyes for Pano shots.
Heading along the RR bed to Pipestone Pass - crossing over the trussel with Roosevelt below:

The Beaver Ponds are looking green for August:

MTB: Homestake Pipestone TT

What an awesome time to be out riding a bike yesterday afternoon.  I headed up to Homestake Pass and caught the CDT up and over to Pipestone Pass.  More than anything, I wanted to find out where the legs were and gauge the level of fitness.  The temps were perfect, the riding conditions were nice and tacky and it was just a good day to be out riding on trails.

The theme of the day was panoramic photos...just like a new kid with a new toy...I was watching someone create panoramic shots on their phone camera and then wondered whether the point and shoot that I use had that function...shua' enough, it did so I have been playing around with that feature the past couple of rides and just can't get enough....so here are some of the results from the rider yesterday - you can click on the pictures to enlarge and get the full effect:

Music Vids

I have been getting into these guys lately...can hear lots of influences from RL Burnside to some White Stripes, etc....

MTB: Burton to Bear Gulch to Burton

Despite the relative heat during the day, it started to cool off shortly after quitting time so mother nature was agreeable to letting the fat tire get out and rollllll....trail of choice was hooking into the CDT at Burton Parkway and taking the trail for seven mile until you hit the junction where you could either go to Basin Creek and do the long loop through Herman Gulch and the long grinder dirt road back up to the car.  Option # 2 was to take a right at the junction and ride towards Bear Gulch which put you on to Highland road and you road the dirt road back up to the trailhead.

Option 2 it was....As usual the Burton CDT was amazing - buttery smooth and nice smooth lines after the Butte 50/100 riders went through.  Getting more riders on the trail is great because it starts to wear in some nice natural arcs through turns which make the lines easy to follow but also more 'natural' in line choice.

It was a little under 14 miles which is significantly shorter than the larger loop back through Herman Gulch so this will be a nice addition to the arsenal of rides depending on time allotment to ride.....

The views back from Bear Gulch were absolutely amazing!  It was great to see the Highlands from the south/west side which just gave a totally different perspective and a 'cleaner' view of the whole range.  What made it all the more amazing was that the sun was setting and the colors were just going OFF!
I even managed to play around with the camera and figure out how to do a 'panoramic' shot with the cheapie point and click:

close up of Red:

The Highlands highlighted in sunset colors:

Looking back West towards the Humbugs with clouds forming and moving:

Whiskey Bouldering

I decided to switch it up a little yesterday and took the dogs up to Whiskey Gulch where they could do a little exploring and I could do a little pebble wrestling...the dogs did a fine job of exploring where I on the other hand did a fine job of flailing on the stone.

It is a humbling reminder of just how quickly climbing rocks can put you in your place when you don't do it frequently.  I got a quickie flash pump and then tried to remember to stay connected and use some core.  Unfortunately, the stone was starting to get a little greasy from the sun baking it by the time we made it up there so it just enhances the flail factor.  I spent most of my time on the wave boulder and another steeper boulder that was close to the entry area.  It was fun to pull on stone again and hopefully it is the kick in the ace I need to do it consistently again...I miss the movement and the problem solving.

I stayed off the tall boys / highballs considering I had one crash pad and only the two pups to spot me...

It was good to be out....even Moby decided it was a good day to chill and keep an eye out for interesting sights/sounds....pics of Moby in front of the wave boulder:

MTB: Rockin' It Single Style

The weather let up enough on Saturday to provide a primo ride opportunity.  I am not sure what has gotten into her but, the wifer wanted has been experimenting with my old single speed bike over the last week.  She decided to change it up a little and see what all the hubbub is about.  We did a little bike maint so she would have a better working bike than what I had been dealing with over the past couple of yrs.  We swapped out forks from my old geared bike onto this bike and then replaced the brake housing, cables and pads so they feel brand spanking new.

The wifer decided she wanted to tag along on today's ride so off we went.  We parked down by 9 mile and rode up to Thompson Park where we did the lower loop, then upper loop, then headed up to Pipestone pass where we caught the CDT over to Beaver Ponds and took the connector trail over to Blacktail.  She hung in there for a good solid 20 mile ride on the singlespeed - not too shabby for her 3rd time out on it...

It was a nice day to be out and it was even better considering it had been a few days since I had been able to put rubber to dirt....
Pix of the wife rockin' the single speed ride: