TandemHearts

The Grand Canyon.   The name says it all.  There may be no more iconic natural wonder.  Google says that there is a  “Grand Canyon of..”  Yellowstone, Yosemite, Texas, and even Pennsylvania.  While these are fine gorges, I’m sure; there really can be Only One.  For years we have talked about going there to ride mountain bikes.  The National Park Service generally has a “no bikes on trails” rule.  The Forest Service (FS) does not and some of the land north of the Canyon is FS land.  So while you can’t ride in the Canyon (which is NPS land), you can ride the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, which is FS land.  The Rainbow Rim Trail (RRT) was created especially for mountain bikers and it is spectacular. (more…)

The last photo gallery of the Ridge Trail was all about the climb. The nice thing about climbing is that there is usually a descent to follow. Today, we embrace gravity and show a little bit of the descent.

Just a little reminder about how this looks from the bottom.

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All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray.
I went for a walk on a winter’s day. – The Mamas and Papas

Veronica spent the weekend in Maine, while I stayed in California. January was a wet and cold month for us, but February is shaping up to be much nicer. When we talked on the phone, we compared weather. I went mountain biking – she made snow angels.

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The only major biking stop on our Work is Over Rated Tour 2007 was Moab, UT. Moab is famous for its mountain biking opportunities. We have been to the area twice before, but never had the chance to ride the trails in and around Moab. Generally, the riding is on jeep trails, rocky single track or slickrock. Unfortunately, we found that Moab doesn’t really fit our style of riding. Jeep trails are fine, but many trails are best done as point-to-point rides, using a shuttle to get there. We didn’t want to do this, so that ruled out a bunch of trails. We don’t ride many rocky areas, and we ride hard tail mountain bikes, so the rocky single track was at the limit of our abilities and very uncomfortable to ride. Slickrock is anything but slick – it is like riding on 120 grit sandpaper. This is plenty of traction so you can go pretty fast. It also gives the rider the chance to do jumps off of ledges. We don’t do that very much either. (more…)

We went to Maine to visit with family and took the mountain bikes with us. We weren’t too sure what sort of riding we would find, but we stumbled on to Southern Maine’s mountain biking mecca. We also took a boat tour to see puffins nesting off the coast. (more…)