Ride! And a slight oops...

Took a buddy of mine into the local mountains around Lake Silverwood and Lake Arrowhead.

Why am I always the only one towing with a Mustang GT Convertible??? :)



Blue skies and miles of trails, just outside of Los Angeles (shh, don't tell anyone)...




Just warm enough to splash!




This is a double-black section above Deep Creek, holy cow this was hard. Could've used a trials bike...




Video of my ascent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHJiauDEPQ8

This is where a 47 tooth rear sprocket, Michelin AC10 tires, and a full bashplate are invaluable...



Made it!




Break time...




And along the way I learned a valuable lesson: Never cross a creek flowing across a road while turning!
It turns out the the bottom can be covered in a thin layer of algae, at which point the bike sloooowly slides out from under me like it's on ice, and I skin my shins really well.

So purdy:


Oh well, chicks dig scars. I came home, limped into the house and my wife made me dinner, put ice and Neosporin on my war wounds, served me wine and took care of me. I need to crash more often... :)

Would those happen to be foot peg bite marks??

I wasn't looking down at the time, but yes, they do look suspisciously shaped as such, don't they?

Oh, and here's the points my satellite beacon gave off along the ride (the Spot on tracking mode sends a signal to a satellite every 10 minutes)...

But did you like my video? Did you watch it in high def? Very sexy, I think. :)

I most certainly did. Wished I could have tagged along for that ride, it looked like you guys had a hoot! I should really invest in one of those SPOT thingies. Glad you didn't bang yourself up worse than you did. You'll no doubt have a partial rainbow going on there by tomorrow.

Nice trails you got around there. Vid was good, why no standing up?

Also, what kind of boots where you wearing when the shin injury happened?

Standing up would have meant flipping over backwards on some sections, particularly that first uphill bump...

The boots I had on were Sidi half boots, but I should have been wearing full motocross boots! Oh well, the problem is I like to hike quite a bit when I ride, and full boots won't work...

GusinCA wrote:

, the problem is I like to hike quite a bit when I ride, and full boots won't work...

Carry hiking boots with you?

Shewolf, those SPOT thingees are invaluable. I carry a PN-60w GPS which communicates with the SPOT, so I can send text messages over satellite to my wife like "chain broken, no cell coverage, hiking out" or "leg fell off, send helicopter, won't you?" Or just push the SOS button.
What it also does is send out a location signal every 10 minutes so in case my wife doesn't hear from me by the end of the day she can call the rescue and say "well, he was here and here and here at these times" so they have a general idea of where to look for the body.

But that's not all, I ALSO carry a PLB, a tiny, cell phone sized satellite location beacon that has much more power, and talks to a moving satellite (rather than a stationary one like SPOT) and sends out a rescue signal only with GPS coordinates.
See here:
http://www.rei.com/product/791972/mcmurdo-fast-find-210-personal-locator-beacon-with-gps

If you're only going to get one, the PLB is the better, more reliable option. I only got the spot so i could tell my wife I was ok, basically. One time I was so late getting back to cell range that she almost had a heart attack...

I ride alone in the middle of nowhere so often that these little things seem prudent and hopefully not priceless...

Trav,

Too big to lug around. I already carry a full backpack of gear...

In 31 years of riding this is about the worst I've ever hurt myself, so I think i'll be ok...

By the way, you have to read the review by "spazzedninny" on the PLB page I posted a link to earlier, basically sums up the reason I carry both! :)