Thursday, August 23, 2007

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

    I know rain is good for the environment, it makes my flowers, weeds, and grass grow and my trails wet. It's been raining, literally 5 days straight. 3 days of it has been the misty rain, which I personally like the best. At least with the misty rain, you still can ride, it delays the point where you are completely soaked. Of course this weekend will be beautiful, i have a wedding to go to that's at least 2 hrs away, nothing close to home, where I can get home at a decent hour and squeeze a ride in. And with summer drawing to a close, the hours of sunlight and warmth are going to end.

    I have been thinking more and more about buying lights for my bike. It would extend my riding time but being the way that I am I would want something good and that means trying to buy HID lights. I can't find them lights for under $300. I also had a hard time finding reviews on lights, word of mouth is helpful but I wanna see what the lights look like at night. So I searched on the MTBR forums and found this lights shootout. Yes, it is from 2005, 2 years old but at least it shows what the lights look like at night. There was a set-up on there that seemed as bright as HID lights and it was TurboCat S47 system. Now I know a lot has changed since 2005 and i also know that a lot online retailers don't sell TurboCat. I hear from the forums that Light & Motion is good and so is Nite Rider but what do you buy. Magazines never do an in-depth articles, a shoot-out of lights and if they do it's all the high-end lights kinda like what they do with their bikes (i.e. mountain bike action). So who do we turn to?

    So what are you using? Why do you like it? How much was it and where did you buy it? Did you buy and extra battery and how much? Do you know how much the bulbs are? All important questions that need to be answered by... YOU!? who knows but I NEED ANSWERS!

~happy muddy trails
dirty bert

Monday, August 20, 2007

LOTSA SLIPPIN' & SLIDIN'

    It's been a long time since we last talked, and a lot has gone on. I lost and found a new job. A better commute, a bigger company, tons of work to keep me busy AND more opportunities to ride.

    See the new job is centraly located for me to ride at 4 spots. 2 of them is less than an hour away, 1 is about 30 minutes and the other is about 25 minutes and with me getting out of work by 5 pm, that gives me plenty of time to ride. So I have been fortunate this summer in getting a lot of riding time in. For awhile there I was riding 5 to 6 days a week, hence no postings.

    So tonight i met up a few people from NJ MTBR forum. We all met at 6 Mile Run but when I got there, the dark clouds already rolled in and in the faint distance you heard thunder and quick flashes of lightening. The wind picked up and the rain came and we all went to our cars hoping it would pass thru. Well it rained lightly, then harder and then hail dropped, about the size of marbles and of course the wind. Well it finally let up a lil and we all came out of our cars and started the ride. I say we had about 7 people, all different ranges but with the way the trails were, the playing field was even. It seemed like a quick ride, lotsa slippin and slidin' but on the way back, the wind picked up, some thunder was heard and the rain came back, heavy. Now riding in the rain is fine in the woods, half the time you don't feel it thru the trees unless it pours and thats what it did. So as we climbed up the trails, the trails themselves became lil rivers or like lil log flumes of fun.

    It was fun. The ride was cut short from the rain earlier. I wish I could ride a bit longer, but hey, that's what the weekends are for!

~happy trails
dirty "muddy" bert