Monday, May 30, 2011

WWDF

World Wrestling Dog Federation...

what to do on a cold snowy wintery day on Memorial Day?  yes, I did mean Memorial Day, and I did mean snow.  The snow levels dropped to around 6,000 ft last night which I guess is a good thing considering we could have woken up to a layer of snow.  Fortunately, the snow line was a little above us so it did not reach us.

We had to time our dog walk such that we were between storms - even then, there was no guarantee of a dry walk...as it turned out we got sprinkled on but that did not stop the dogs from playing a good old fashioned game of 'catch' and 'wrestle'....some pix of the Ridgies on our walk - fresh snow in the background as Moby scopes out the scene:
Otis preparing to unwind after being couped up:
ding ding ding ding ding ding - Round 1:
I got you!  no wait, I got you...
so ferocious!  until they get freaked out by an ant, or mosquito, or bird, or butterfly...or whatever makes an abrupt movement or noise...
everyone had a good time and I even managed to get a pic of the wifer striking a 'don't take my picture pose'....or maybe she was just inspired by Our Lady and was having a moment of inner dialogue:


Sunday, May 29, 2011

Roadie: Butte to Helena

The good news:  the long weekend is here....the bad news: winter has a hold of our spring!  Everything withing a 6-8 hour driving radius showed rain for the entire weekend.  We decided the safe bet was to stay local, get a few errands done, take some day trips to Helena & Bozeman and make the most of what we could locally.

The forecast showed weather rolling in later in the day on Saturday, so the smart move was to try and get out early a.m.  The problem with that was that it was in the low 30's!  The wifer wanted to head up to Helena so I decided that I would leave early and ride up there and meet her the Great Divide bike shop where we had a little business to take care of (wifer needed a new saddle and shoes).

The beginning of the ride was chilly!  My finger numbed up quickly and I kept reminding myself that it was going to get warmer as the morning progressed.  About 2 hrs into my ride, I dug out some Clif Blocks and realized that they had frozen!  I had to let them sit in my mouth for a few minutes before they softened up enough to chew.  Fortunately, it did warm up a little though!

The ride proper was 70 miles and fast as you generally lose elevation from Butte (5,300 ft) to Helena (4,100 ft).  There are a couple of climbs along the way though that added up to about 1,700 ft of total elevation gain for the ride.  The first climb out of Butte to Elk Park and then the 2nd climb out of Boulder.  Despite the climbs and the winds, I managed to average 20 miles an hr on the roadie.  It took me 3 1/2 hrs door to door from our house to the bike shop.  I figured that was pretty reasonable given the slowing up in town on either end.


The body and legs felt pretty cooked after the ride as I was pedaling pretty aggressively for the entire time and did not stop during the ride.  There was just enough of a head wind that the downhills required some pedaling to maintain speed.  I forced myself to do an e-stim Compex session when we got home.  I ran a 'resistance' program and then did an active recovery.  Today, my legs feel tired and heavy which makes sense as it was my 4th day on yesterday and the Compex session was a doozie as I turned it up as high as I could handle so the legs are on a much deserved break today.

We finished the day off by piling in the truck and heading to the local drive-in to watch Kung Fu Panda...all in all, it was a great way to salvage the day from challenging weather.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Direct TV - Pulling the Plug

The first step was to set up the old PC to be able to stream content from the internet to the TV.  Now that everything seems to be working well, it was time to really commit and pull the plug on Direct TV.  I made that call about three weeks ago and in a way it felt really liberating to get rid of our Direct TV bill.

Somehow the TV bill had crept up to around $90 a month once all the 12 month promo offers lapsed and they were unwilling to renew at another promo price.  The other thing that had been bothering me is how phantom charges kept sneaking their way onto the bill.  I had to watch the monthly bill diligently and call them whenever a new feature was added on without having asked for it.  They would always adjust the bill but it just seemed to be in poor form to have to monitor the bills that closely - plus, how hard can it be to not mess with an account??

It is always a little surprising to me that cable/internet/phone providers are not willing to negotiate much after an initial 12 month promo price expires.  It is more difficult (translates to expensive in the marketing world) to win back a lost customer than to keep a customer or win them over for the first time.   At some point I asked what would happen if I disco'd the service and then called back a week later to start it back up as a new customer.  They had the foresight to think of that and said I would be a returning customer and not a new customer...sneaky!  Well, now they have a lost customer and it feels good!

As for content, we are currently relying on Hulu,  Netflix, and the major channels that you can get an HD signal with the HD antenna that look like the old rabbit ears....  Hulu is free and we can get most of the recent shows that we watch (all 3 or 4 of them).  Netflix costs $8.99 a month but we were already paying for that for movies and dvd's, so no new bill there.

From what I understand, our ISP (Bresnan) does have a 250 Gig monthly limit on data so it will be interesting to see if we surpass that considering the uptick we anticipate with streaming from Netflix and Hulu going forward.

For now, it is week 3 of the "TV service provider free zone" and all is good in the hood...we have watched more movies as of late which is always good as we had fallen out of the habit of watching new releases and were shamefully out of touch with movies over the last few years.  It will probably be a good thing in the long haul considering that I had gotten in the bad habit of turning on the tube because I was not creative enough to find something else to do, so hopefully it will break me of that bad habit.  

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Ark Building/Blog Building

At what point during this Spring is it prudent to start thinking of building an ark?  It has been a long, dreary, grey spring with no relief in sight.  It has been raining non-stop for several days now.

The rain was welcome at first - the usual reasons of being good for the water levels, keeping the area from getting dry and creating potentially risky forest fire threats in the heat of the summer.  It was helping melt the snow, etc....now it is has turned into an aberration and ohhh by the way, that rain that was supposed to be helping melt the snow?   well, it has become snow in the foothills...DOH!

So what to do when the daylight hrs are long and the weather is preventing anyone from getting out and playing?  Idle hands...well, in this case, they are not the work of  Mr. Louie Cifer (for you Angel Heart fans), but instead the idle hands turned into typing hands.  I spent some time on updating the blog with local ride beta.  It was something I had been 'meaning to do' for several months and somehow something just lit a fire under my 'ace' recently to get moving on it (considering all this rain and humidity, lighting a fire in itself is quite a feat - although I should not mention the word 'fire' as Butte seems to have an awful lot of suspicious fires to residences and businesses).

and back on-track:  There are now 4 tabs....a 'Home' tab, a current conditions tab (wet, wet or wet), a  'Local Rides Beta MTB' tab (listing some of my favorite local rides with topos, elevation profiles, etc), and then another beta tab for 'Local Road Rides Beta' (under construction - and that be non-union construction or else it would take 5X the people and 10X the time).  once again, back on track.....These tabs will continue to be works-in-progress over the next couple of weeks and beyond as it takes some time to put together the info for a ride description & associated data.  Fortunately I have the data from past rides, but it is time-consuming to format, etc....For now, the building blocks are in place and it is time to build the Lego-Land (not to be confused with the "let go my eggo" campaign) - geez, the trifecta!  managed to get completely off track 3 times in two shortie paragraphs...if you are still reading, you have no one to blame but yourself!

The intent of the ride beta tabs is to have a small repository of local rides that peeps can reference in the event they are new to town, passing through town, etc....At some point, an additional tab might be added to include pseudo local trails like Curly Lake, W Yellowstone, etc...for now there is still plenty of content to plug into the formula so there will not be much of a threat of idle hands during this Montanny monsoon.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Fat Tire: 5_22_11 Ride

I tried timing my mountain bike ride yesterday such that I would beat the storms that were due to roll in later in the afternoon.  It did not seem to matter as I got full on hailed on up in the Highlands.  To the point where I had to tilt my head and look down at the ground while riding so that I would not get nailed in the face...ouch, it hurt!

The ride started in Thompson Park to Herman Gulch to the Highlands via Moose Creek then turned around up at the top and headed back down via the dirt road back to Herman Gulch to Thompson, over to the Archery Range to Blacktail Canyon and back out to the car.

It ended up being a good solid day with 30.4 miles, 3 hrs 20 mins, & just over 4,000 ft of elevation gain.  The route:
Elevation Profile:

I switched up the direction of my ride a little and went up a trail I usually go down and noticed some boulders that warrant a return trip for a proper recon.  This is about as featured as I have seen on the local granite - the down side is lack of good landings...still will merit more exploring - sounds like a perfect day hike with the mutts!
View up at the Highlands - somehow it managed to unload as I rode towards the top of the road and then really opened up once the descent started:
view looking south west:
It will be a while before the upper trails are open...there is still a lot of snow up high on the north facing aspects...view of the CDT heading down to Basin Creek:
On the return I saw some down power lines....scary - it was not sparking or anything but I was amazed at just how much flex the power lines have without snapping.  That is one of the risks with all the dead trees (due to the beetles).  I called the power company when I got home and tried explaining where I saw this...hard to do when you are trying to explain a trail to a non-local - "It is 1 mile from junction X, by the big rock and trees" Fortunately the person they dispatched to was local and knew exactly the area I was talking about when we chatted.
The legs felt pretty good (with the exception of the climb up the Archery Range which is steep and especially mean on a singlespeed!)

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Airstream Updates - Fridge/Lights

A couple of little milestones on the airstream....I cut out a piece of formica in the same pattern as the countertop (seagrass) and put it on the front of the fridge:



a look at the galley...the countertop has become the workman's table by default....still need to put drawers in the cabinets and figure out how to organize the storage (currently just big spaces there right now)
looking from the back towards the front:
bathroom lights - one of the last items that needed solutioning (had to cut a hole in the vinyl wall in order to flush the light back).  All the lights are now new and modern looking, lower profile, better lighting...hmmm seems like a no brainer!

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Dog Day Afternoon

Today was an official rest day ride-wise but it was anything but a rest day - in a good way though.  It was super productive and the to-do list kept getting nice big old strikes through it!  I did some work on the Airstream (more to come on that in a later post), took the mutts on a nice long walk,  and even managed to get a quick bouldering session in on the home wall.

Towards the later afternoon, the dogs and I did the full loop up at Maude S Canyon.  It was rainy and overcast all day but then started to clear up and warm up in the afternoon.  It ended up being a blessing because there were only 2 other cars in the parking lot at Maude S.  Our walk took us to the top of the vista where we had some nice views of the Pintlers, Fleecer, and the Highlands.  I snapped a quickie pic of the Highlands from the top of our hike:
Despite the tongues drooping out of the side of their mouths, Moby and Otis seemed to be having a grand time.  Otis with a tired look:
Moby surveying:
a quick water break on the way up:
such a RUFF life:
on the way down....looking at the freeway intersection where I-15 and I-90 meet - with a view of the Pintlers in the background:
a different view that includes the infamous Pit - our house is to the left of the big dead tree in the foreground of the picture...house is in the flat-lands a little further south (left in the pic) of the big set of buildings (middle school) to the left of the tree - yup, that be one big ole mining operation!: 

we made back to the car and then the dogs managed to stay awake for 30 minutes after we got home until they got fed...they are now passed out and probably chasing rabbits or squirrels in their sleep.  While they were chasing critters, I was getting a quickie bouldering sesh in the garage:
ahhhh yes, a dog day afternoon...

Friday, May 20, 2011

Fat Tire - Thompson Park

Thursday's weather started out like a really nice spring-like day and then as it got closer to quitting time, the clouds rolled in and started to threaten with some big and dark looking fluff!  I decided to take my chances and head out to Thompson Park and see what the trail conditions were like.  I am glad I did!  It was a great day to be out with good temps and very good trail conditions.

All in all the trails were in great shape - there were only a couple of spots that still had snow and those were very brief and still rideable considering their size /depth.  It ended up being a 16 mile ride that took a little over 2 hours and included a lot of vertical gain (2,600 ft).  I ventured up and pretty much did all the loops on Thompson (with one exception) and then crossed over to the other side of the road and climbed up the Archery range and caught Blacktail back out.



I was on the old singlespeed and noticed my legs need to get used to trail again and used to pushing big gears and mashing...grind grind grind!  The good news is that it gives me hope that the mid elevation trails will be rideable in a couple more weeks (weather dependent), while the upper / north facing trails are still a ways out... There were quite a few down trees but it was a good day for the head and the beat-down on the legs. 

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Airstream Upholstery

Yesterday marked a sweet milestone in our Airstream Globetrotter overhaul.  The upholstery is done and back in the tin can.  It turned out well and fortunately the foam bedding was in good use and still able to be re-applied once it got a material update.

The pictures are a little on the dark side since the airstream is currently in the garage so there is not much in terms of natural lighting.  I was originally concerned that the dark paint and dark upholstery was going too much dark but there is definitely enough contrast with the lighter floor, walls, cabinets, and countertop.

Side gaucho - still need to install the vent cover on the side an a few other things but getting closer...
front bed/sofa - the back of the couch turns into an extension of the side gaucho to make for a wider bed for the side.
the back panels that attach to the wall on the side gaucho:
next on the tin can agenda - install bathroom lights, re-install the bathroom screen, finish installing curtains, add a few snaps for the curtains and at that point it should be really really tantalizingly close!

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Wifer Stronger

The wifer has been training for her Oliver 1/2 Iron Tri next month and the fruits of her labor seem to be paying off!  She has been diligently sticking to her training schedule and having had last year's Boise 1/2 Iron Tri behind her, she is better prepared in terms of what to expect too.

It is fun to train, but even better when you get to see the results of all the hard work.  This past week those results for the wifer were pretty impressive.  She managed to whack 19 minutes off of the same mountain bike race she did last year (in a 2 hour race)!  She has done the Unravel the Scratch Gravel race in Helena the past 2 yrs (this year being her 3rd).  She forwarded the  results to me yesterday and I was psyched to see her solid mid pack and reaping the benefits of her training.

She has been much more dedicated than I have this year - so it is the balloon effect in the Reis home this year...she has pushed the balloon on one end causing it to push up on the other end...I still have about a month and a half to get some training in before the BC Bike race....come on weather, play nice(r).

Here is to hoping her training and race prep continues to go well.....

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Spring Sprung A Leak

It is not unusual to get a few spring storms that dump snow on the ground in May, so I should not have been too surprised when we woke up to a layer of snow this morning.  It should also not surprise me that we washed the cars this weekend (tempting the weather Gods), or that I turned on the sprinkler system yesterday (further tempting the weather Gods to unleash some cold on us).  So it will be with a wee bit of trepidation that I crank the sprinklers on again  if / when it ever gets warm / dry enough.


As for the saddle...I managed to get out for a quickie road ride yesterday after work before the latest installment of a spring fling storm rolled through.  It was a ride up to Rocker and back....a little over an hour of pedaling with the first 40 minutes being into another mean headwind - although the return leg was sweet with a strong tailwind.  It ended up being 24 miles at an average power output of 200 watts.  The original plan was to get out for a quick ride and then get out for a longer ride on Tuesday on the fat tire.  This plan is definitely up in the air given the weather...have to hope it warms up enough to melt this stuff quickly since most of our lower trails are (doh! I mean 'were') ready to be ridden.


Monday, May 16, 2011

'dems 'da rules

For those of you wondering what protocol is for riding your road bike....here goes:

Velominati Rules

I comply with most of the rules with a couple of exceptions - notably the saddle bag and my reason is that I need the pockets in my jersey for food!  Although, it has me re-thinking it since most of the other rules make total sense to me....or I could be OK with being a rule breaker/bender.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Road Ride - Cardwell Loop

Despite the heavy winds today, it was time to get out on the skinny tire and get a ride in.  I figured the Cardwell loop was a good option because it is early enough in the year that there is not a ton of turista traffic on it yet and it was something different than the options out of the house.

Cardwell is about 30 minutes away and the loop I occasionally do is going by Lewis & Clark caverns on Hwy 2, then to the junction with 287 and head south. up a hill and then take 359 back into Cardwell.  It is right around 34 miles and usually has great views of the Lewis & Clark cavern area as you head west on Hwy 2.  The closer you get to the junction, you can sneak a peak at the Bridgier range due east and also occasional peaks at the Tobacco Root range.  Once you crest the hill on 287, the view of the Tobacco Roots really open up and you can see them in their full splendor.

The Cardwell triangle loop usually entails some heavy and hard headwinds on the final leg back to the car. Today, the winds were all mixed up and they were blowing from East to West which meant the beginning of the ride was straight into a bad headwind that will crush your spirit if you look down at your speedometer to see how fast you are going.  On days like today, I just try to focus on cadence and wattage and try to avoid the trap of watching speed.   I was fully anticipating headwinds in every direction (as per usual) but was pleasantly surprised with a nice tailwind on the last leg back to Cardwell.  It was the first time I ever had a tailwind on that piece of road - sweet. sweet nectar!

The views did not disappoint:
sneaked a view of the Tobaccos as I headed east on Hwy 2
looking east on Hwy 2, you could see the Bridgiers
rode through farm land with sweet views of the Tobaccy's

Once I got through getting beat up by the headwinds, it turned into a nice ride.  You had to be careful not get blown over by the sneak attack wind gusts that could easily knock you over at some points.  Light traffic, great views, sun, bike...not too shabby of a way to spend Sunday a.m...now to get some chores done!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Airstream - Curtains

With the weather warming up, it is time to get the Airstream finished up and ready for use.  There are a handful of things to get done but fortunately nothing too overwhelming.  I installed new curtain sliders on the port side window and the curtains mix in well with the current color scheme/theme.

The front side is also coming together:

Big Thanks to the mother-in-law for doing such a bang up job on the curtains - they really turned out great!  We don't currently have curtains for the galley or the bathroom yet but more to come...
The cushions/bedding are at the upholsterer getting a facelift - we hope to have those back either this weekend or the following.

The galley has gotten some love too - cabinets stained/painted with hardware:

Next items on the agenda on the airstream is to re-do the fold out table to match the countertop formica pattern and also cut out a piece of that pattern for the fridge door.  There is still a lot of 'tinkering' to do, but the big visual items are more or less done.  It will be close to looking close to done once the bedding/foam is back in.  With a little luck and planning, this should wrap up in the next couple of weeks!

Monday, May 9, 2011

Album Releases / Review

Album you ask?  yes indeed, some of us grew up with vinyl (and I am not talking rubber unders) and loved every moment of holding album covers in our hands and reading all the liners, notes, pictures as we heard the needle scratch and claw its way through the grooves going round and round.

It seems like music releases come in cycles and we are now entering some great up-swings with releases - both quality and quantity.

Some of the recent releases that I have been getting through are:

Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 : my rating is a 9 out of 10 (a 10 being Paul's Boutique since nothing can really compare to the FUNK and sampling that was allowed during the time period)... HSC Pt 2 is just an awesome CD that references some earlier work that is just classic - then you have the vid that goes along with the CD that is classic beasties with great cameos

Plan B - The Defamation of Strickland Banks.  I give this a solid 7.5 of10.  It took me a couple of listens to figure out what to think but a solid effort with a couple of stand out tracks.

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light:  8 of 10.  This is one of the better Foo efforts!  Every song is great and the single released with it is a sweet hard rocking tune that brings out their edge.  They are just a good solid old school rock n roll band without gimmicks.

Sade - Ultimate Collection...I can't give ratings to compilations or best of series...

My Morning Jacket - Circuital - still getting through this and have not really decided...so far, so it is good

Raphael Saadiq - Stone Rollin'.  7 of 10 for me.  A good solid CD and if you saw the NPR tiny concert series with Raphael, it makes you realize it is not all just studio editing...he got some skills!

Gorillaz - The Fall - still deciding

TV On The Radio - Nine Types Of Light:  8 of 10 for me.  There are a couple of great tracks on the CD and he definitely has a unique style/sound.

Blu - Her Favorite Color:  6.5 of 10.  A good down tempo CD with some filler in there...never a big fan of a CD starting out with a bunch of talking to start the CD...it might be interesting the first time through it but hard to be surprised after the first listen.  

Friday, May 6, 2011

Pipestone Ride

Yesterday might have just been our finest spring day yet...although the cloudy & rainy stuff is back today through the weekend.  When a window of decent weather opens up, it is time to take full advantage of it and play.

I loaded the rig up and headed out to Pipestone to try to catch some sunshine.  I rode for about two hours and can slowly feel the legs getting used to riding outside again.  It was great to be able to get out and not worry about digits being cold - quite the contrary, it almost felt warm!   As usual, there were great views of the snow capped Highlands:
The trails were in good condition until you hit around 6,000 ft where there were some muddy spots and an occasional patch of snow.   The trails that had moto or 4 wheeler traffic were already starting to loosen up, although it just means being a little more of an explorer and finding the more hard to find trails that have not been too tracked out yet.  I took a couple of road spurs that I don't usually take to find out where stuff went or whether they linked in to prior trails.   Slowly, but surely this maze and network of trails is starting to come together in my mind.  There are still a couple of gaps to link a couple of areas up but considering all the moto traffic in the area, I would suspect they exist.

The weather looked a little ominous off in the distance but held out just fine for the area while riding.  It did look like the Tobaccy's were getting some action though:


Thursday, May 5, 2011

Mini Mac(k)

The transition from PC to Mac is pretty much a done deal!  The last piece was getting another external hard drive to act as the data store for all docs, music, vids, pictures.  We have two external hard drives hooked up to the Mac.  One is the hard drive for the Mac, and the other is the backup to the root external drive.

The internal hard drive of the Mac stays clean this way.  We are using Chronosync as the vehicle to run backups from the root external drive to the backup external drive once a week.  Once it is all set up, it is great because there is little to think about as the backups happen as frequently (or infrequently)  as you schedule them with the Chronosync SW.  I had originally thought of mirroring the drives but then thought a scheduled backup would be better so that in the event of a drive failure, the backup drive would not mirror that data loss!

My overall impressions of the Mac are very positive.  The OS seems a lot more stable, and generally much faster (some of that can be attributed to the memory and processor).  It is taking a little time to learn how to navigate through Mac-land but I am slowly figuring out where to customize things and just how powerful this OS is.

One of the most impressive things with the Mac is the speed of the Firewire 800!!!  I transferred about 120G of data from the Mac to the external drive in about 1 hour!  That is just unbelievable.  That is part of the reason I wanted the external drive option - there is no loss in speed compared to the internal drive when editing music, pictures, movies, etc.

So far, big thumbs up!!!  

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Getting Through Hump Day

How did mid-week get here so quickly?  I am happy to see that we have a couple of days of sunshine slated for the area as it will definitely help in getting 'over the hump' this week.  Is it time to officially start thinking of riding outside with some semblance of consistency yet?  ahhhhhh, but a boy can dream....

Local Trail Conditions:
There won't be any riding in the upper trails anywhere yet...Missoula, Helena, Butte...all the lower trails are  rideable but nothing doing on the upper elevation trails yet.  All of these areas show promise until yu start to get into the higher elevation where you run into snow drifts - we are getting closer though!  At least we are on the downhill slope of that bigger hump called winter (I refrain from lumping spring in there as we have not yet had one despite what the calendar says).

I hear the tick tock of the calendar getting whacked away as the BC Bike Race approaches.  The scary thing is we are 2 months away from the event and I have yet to get out on the bike with any consistency.  With a little luck, the next 6 weeks will turn for the better weather wise so I lay down some mileage.  If not, then it will just be some suffering during the week of the BC stage race  - c'est la vie...can a guy ride himself into shape over a week?

Compex - switching up programs:
In keeping up with prepping for the BC event, I switched up the e-stim workouts and moved from the 'strength' program to the 'resistance' program that I will stay on for about 3 wks before switching over to the 'endurance' setting on the Compex.   There is a marked difference between the two settings (strength vs resistance).  The strength programs are settings where the muscles are stimulated for around 20 seconds with lower energy and then there is a sudden surge for a few seconds until it subsides back into lower twitching - I am taking the leap of faith that these would be similar to a sprint where it is a quick sudden burst of energy and engagement.

The resistance program engages the muscles more frequently where it seems to be equal amounts of 'resting twitching' and 'engaged twitching' - something like 7-10 seconds on each cycle, so the muscles are engaged  more frequently without feeling so harsh a contraction compared to the strength programs.  My muscles don't feel nearly as tired/sore today after running the resistance program compared to the strength program. I continue to run active recovery sessions after any e-stim session in an effort to help flush out the legs a little and help with the soreness.

I definitely plan on taking the Compex with me to BC to run active recovery after each day so it will be interesting to watch how the legs feel on back to back to back to back to back to back to back days.  The more I think about it, the more psyched I get about this BC stage race!!!  Soon enough, it will be time to start mentally prepping for it and looking at each day's profile, etc!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Essplorin'

I decided to get out and enjoy our spring like temps yesterday after work and decided to do some exploring on local dirt.  It was fun to not have much of an agenda and just ride and see where dirt roads went and whether or not little spurs off those roads that looked like trails, actually were trails.

90 mins, 1200 ft elevation gain, around 16 miles on the singlespeed fatty and all was well for a Monday...There were even a couple of nice views along the way...looking towards the Highlands:

looking towards the Pintlers: