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.
Training goals for the last weekend before the event: Have fun, get a good workout, don’t get hurt.
It had rained all week, so Mount Diablo, which would normally be on the schedule, was out, based on our experience last year with bay mud out there. We did Dimond/Joaquin Miller last week, so we went for Soquel Demo, which has two grinding climbs, good drainage, and skippable injury risks.
The latest in our Family MUni series featured our first father/son combo. Scott and Matthew came over from Mill Valley, and Scott’s wife Tracy hiked along with Nancy. Scott won Best Biff on one of the chutes, Matthew did a line on the way back that he wasn’t willing to do on the way out, we got to see the Oakland DEVO middle school mountain biking team, and everyone had fun, which is of course the whole point.
I’ll continue to try to do one of these rides monthly, to give newer and less gnarly riders a chance to try things out.
One of our standard epics that still works in the wet is the Dimond/Joaquin Miller combo. I always love this ride for its contrasts. You start in flatland Oakland, and just by rolling through a playground wind up in a forested canyon. It’s not exactly a wilderness, but it’s really impressively secluded for such an urban ride.
