We had a great time at the East Bay JAM. The weather was perfect for MUni, and we wound up doing two rides. In the morning we did a family ride with five riders, including a 9-year-old girl and her dad from Hawaii, and an afternoon ride with eight riders. Plus a bunch of people tried to learn to ride in the meadow. Fun times!
G was in town, and we had a couple of hours to hit the trails, which are way more fun here than in Durham, North Carolina. We didn't have time for much, but played around a little bit with some different loops, especially the downhill on the north fork of Big Trees. Anyone who's in town, hit us up; any excuse for a ride!
Several folks from the uni crowd came up to support me in the Kinetic Grand Championship in Humboldt County, where I unveiled the first-ever truly amphibious unicycle. I got to lead the race on the first stretch out of town square, and managed to Ace the sand section on my new 4.4" tire.
We got to ride with Sarah this weekend, a newcomer to the Bay Area and a relative newcomer to MUni, although she's a former national champion at urban (flatland) riding. We took her on one of our standard loops, hitting Big Trees, Chaparral, and heading down to the overlook, because, Oakland, baby. We also did some scouting for locations for the East Bay JAM, and found a great place for flatland and learn-to-uni lessons. June 16, see you there!
Nathan invited us down to Silly Valley for a birthday ride around Lexington Reservoir, with a bonus climb and descent over Montevina Road. We had total of five unicycles, all Schlumpfs, four 36ers. Everybody did the loop around Lexington (which was not full like last year, but not empty like two years ago), and then most of us went for the climb. Great day!
I'd never done five days of MUni in a row before, but here we were on Sunday. Nathan and I were sore but doing generally well, while Chris and Dragon were still itching to ride more. Today’s plan was to go to the 18 Road trails at the foot of the Book Cliffs, which were repored to be mellower, flowy trails. Because it was warmer, and the trails were supposed to be easy, most of us decided to go without armor. (What could go wrong?)
For day 4 we added Chris and Dragon to our riding group. Nate, Jim and Jesse had to leave mid-day, so we made the plan to shuttle up to the top of Ribbon Trail, where those guys could do the slab portion and bail out where it crosses Little Park Road, while the rest of us would take a new route down to the trailhead. We'd had so much turnover in riders that only Nathan and I had been on Ribbon Trail two days before, so we got to share it with a new group, who of course really dug it.
On Day 3 we were riding at Palisade, on the other side of the valley from Fruita, in the Book Cliffs. It's a beautiful area, with stark cliffs leading down to wineries in the river valley. The ride is a climb to the top of a mesa, a double lollipop with a short lower loop and a longer (4 mile) upper loop. The trail system is not as well developed as the ones on the other side of the valley; it's very tight singletrack, with not many trail options, in contrast with the criss-crossing trails at Kokopelli and Lunch Loops.
On day 2 we were going to shuttle to the top of Ribbon Trail at Aspen Mike's suggestion. The start is almost unbelievable, an enormous rock slab that slopes off for over a mile. We also got some cave MUni, and a bunch of desert singletrack on the Gunny Loop.
This year's MiniFest started out with me, Nathan, Owen and Nancy taking the train out to Grand Junction, where we met an international group, consisting of Jenni and Emma from Denmark, Adam from the UK, and Benoit from Montreal. After getting in around noon, we headed out for a quick afternoon ride on the Kokopelli Loops system.
