Justin Herx just got back from Peru on a riding trip with Sacred Rides. Amazing scenery.

Looks like Justin wasn't holding back on this adventure!

Glad the Spectrum gear worked well for you in Peru Justin!

Logging

My wife and I went to ride something different this past weekend. It was supposed to be a long out and back singletrack ride, but as we approached the 3/4 way up point, the trail vanished into a new clearcut.
I know you're thinking "boo hoo, it happens". That's true. But the trail in question is the nearly 900 mile long Pacific Northwest Trail, designated to become a National Scenic Trail this year. The trail was gone, as if never had even existed.

I'm not sure the span of the trail that was affected, but it must have been a considerable amount, as we could not find any markers pointing toward how we were supposed to continue onward.

I've ridden through clearcuts for over a dozen years, but this one was different. It was fresh, having just taken place less than a week prior to our visit. The trail was gone, a trail that many hours of volunteer efforts had gone into, a place where people go to seek refuge from their stressors, gone. I know it's necessary.

We need to wipe our butts. We need to write stuff. We need to build stuff. It's a natural resource. Renawable? Yes, but to what extent? Do these trees grow back fast enough to keep up with our demands and increasing population? Just something to think about.

Speedy Beavers PA race 2 results

The Speedy Beavers finished another race weekend at Port Angeles with great results!

Dawn 1st place Expert Women
Joy 3rd place Pro Women
Brooke 5th place Expert Women
Carolyn 7th place Expert Women


Great representation by these gals in the local downhill scene! Way to go!

Shuffling Around

No update in quite some time, so here goes:

Nearly 4 weeks ago, I went to visit some friends in Canadia. We rode all day, and at the end of the day, I felt the need to hit this big contraption here:


Well, I didn't make it all the way up there. Luckily, I fell inbetween all those trees there and landed straightlegged and flat footed on a couple of big logs. And then of course the bike fell and landed on my head. It really was not a spectacular crash at all, and I was fine for a few minutes.

Since then, my whole body has felt the jolt and I haven't really ridden my bike in 4 weeks. I have a slipped disc in my back, but apparently all is well again with some chiropractic assistance and heaps of stretching, so I can ride again.

One week after crash, I was still in denial and figured I could just "ride it off". I helped my buddies at Transition Bikes move to their awesome new building, and upon waking the next morning, I knew something was definitely not right in my back.

Here's some pics from the big moving day:

most expensive Jenga game EVER - I won, and got to keep 11 forks...NOT

Sam B loading up the truck

I hope you guys bought the $2 rental insurance

Out with the old...

In with the new!

Plenty of space to fill

The new lobby

Keep up the good work with such great bikes guys!

Finally, Spring, but now it's gone again

Saturday was by far the closest to Spring-type weather we've had. Sunny and warm for the most part. Lyndsey and I started the day off on Blanchard Mountain for a change of pace.

Lynz not so stoking on the steep, wet 2 hour climb

Mustering a smile

Still not fun yet

Not yet

Okay, now it's fun!

Kyle of Transition Bikes called up just in time for me to catch a second ride for the day. Conflicting schedules keep us from getting together as often as we'd like, so with weather like this I jumped at the chance to take a rip with him.

Kyle dropping in

Myself over the road gap

Kyle over the road gap

Kyle on a hairball rock face

Now the weather is back to the normal wet/dreariness of the Pacific Northwest. Boooooo.

Spectrum teams podium at Port Angeles DH

Our two sponsored teams, SpeedyBeavers and DirtCorps, held multiple podium spots at the Port Angeles, WA Dry Hill DH race last weekend. Congratulations are in order!

Speedy Beaver's Dawn Lambert - 1st place Expert Women

Speedy Beaver's Joy Mutoli - 2nd place PRO Women

Dirt Corps' Chase Schmidtt - 1st place Sport Men 15-18

Dirt Corps' Matt Patterson - 1st place Expert Men 30-39

Dirt Corps' Brian Guse - 2nd place Expert Men 15-18

Dirt Corps' Jim McCracken - 2nd place Beginner Men

Congratulations to the Speedy Beavers and Dirt Corps riders for excellent representation in the first WA race of the year!

Old School

Jesse "the Dude" Hooks sent me this old school photo that I took about ummm...5 years ago. Man, has it really been that long? Doesn't seem like it. Anywho, it's the best trailside repair I've ever seen, AND he rode it out of the woods on a gravel road nearly 10 miles back to camp!

There's no telling what other awesome photos were lost during the great computer crash of 2005.

Spectrum Introduces Cape Line-up for 2008

We at Spectrum Techwear are happy to announce our new line of riding capes for 2008.



The Flight Control, above, is specced with waterproof/breathable SpecTex FDR5000d-ish and offers fully independent thermo cloaking abilities. The dual bilateral extrusion baffles keep crud away from your chamois, while the plastisol impregnated exoskeleton keeps the cape rigid enough to gain 16 nanoseconds longer average flight duration.

For now, the Flight Control is the only available model, and will retail at a very reasonable $325. The future does hold more though, as we are currently testing our prototype Wayfarer XC and Duh-Huh DH model capes.

The Wayfarer XC

The Duh-Huh DH

Happy April, fool.

Pro Snow Riding

Of course I was stoked when Tyler Maine from Pinkbike called on his way down to Oregon with plans to stop and ride for a bit. Unfortunately, the bottom fell out of the sky and dumped A LOT of wet, heavy snow unexpectedly. At first I thought it was all over for the day, then I came to my senses when I heard Geoff Gulevich was in on the tour too. I've always wanted to meet this guy, and I figured there was no way I could let him roll through town without sampling the goods. Tyler, Gully, and James Splinter met myself and Kyle Young from Transition Bikes for a little splish-splash down the mountain.

making the most of it

It was quite the hike up. Not a single bit of road was pedalable. The above photo was taken about 1/2 way up, so needless to say it got deeper. I really should have taken more photos, but we were kinda in a hurry due to the usual Canadian time zone difference (can't be in a hurry to cross the border on a Saturday!) and we also had a bowling tournament scheduled for 2 hours later. The hike-a-bike to the trail was hilarious! You'd think that the people in the back would take note of the slide tracks from where the front guys had busted our asses, but no, everyone had to try it for themselves! We all wrecked on the same feature (first steep part of the trail). It was not reassuring whatsoever when Kyle went first and hit his nuts really hard, but again, everyone had to try it for themselves. Man, it was really fun!

Gully taking the high and dry line

The middle part of trail was hairball. Very few jumps were rideable, and the ones that were sent us out of control on landing. Basically, there was lots of slip sliding down the mountain. It was Gully's first ride on his Rocky Mountain bike since signing with them for '08 last month. He says he likes it on the virgin ride, but we probably could've been riding Huffy's with similar results for this ride. Splinter, hailing from the Yukon, had his first snow ride ever today. What a way to start the season!

Tyler testing the waters

All in all a great time. And the bowling tournament, well, maybe you'll see pics of that later. Thanks to the WHIMPS mountain bike crew for putting together a fun social event! No thanks to myself for the hangover afterwards. I'm sure Tyler will have a great story written up on Pinkbike next week when they return from Post Canyon, Blackrock, and Port Angeles. Good luck boys!

Full Contact Cuisine

Props to Spencer at Prospect Street Cafe. This guy knows fresh.

Cooking it up in some Wilson shorts

Chef Spencer Santinello recently moved to Bellingham from Hawaii and has years of experience creating unique doses of mouthwatering flavor. Using the freshest ingredients such as first of the season pacific Halibut, Spencer and the crew at the 'cafe whip up some amazingly high-end entrees. Oh yeah, and they also offer an eclectic array of the best wines and rare beers to accompany your meal. Did I mention Spencer rips on the trails too? I've never seen him without a smile on his face.

fresh

"full contact cuisine"

Is it wrong to lick my plate?

You get what you pay for. Wanna wow your ladyfriend? Check it out!

Chic Rally: a mid-week ride with the gals

Daylight Savings Time is a wonderful thing. Same time, more light! I joined Lyndsey and Kelsey on a Galbraith ride last week after we all finished the work day and shot a few photos. Spring is here yall!

Lyndsey on SST

Kelsey on Bob's Trail

Spectrum owner moves on to round 2 in mountain bike photo contest

Brad Walton, owner/rider/amateur photographer of Spectrum Techwear, won week 2 of NSMB.com's Money Shot photo contest last week. The Money Shot contest is a 3-stage contest open to all amateur photographers based on mountain bike photos and judged by professionals of the industry. Dan Barham, a Vancouver, BC freelance professional photographer, picked this photo as the winner of week 2:

Kendall "Dangerous Darnell" Isenhour on the Shore

Brad says: "I have been very hopeful towards the Money Shot contest this year, mainly because last year brought about epic contributions in the places I was able to travel to ride, the number of great athletes I have as friends, the awesome scenery surrounding the trails, and the feats of amazing greatness witnessed by the camera. It's a collection of images that I am very excited to be able to look back on. I was a bit surprised that this photo won, as I had seen several people's photos in the contest that struck my eye and others of my own that I perceived as better than this one, but the amplitude of the subject matter in this photo was key. I'll have to say, it was one of the craziest days on the bike that I can remember, and it's cool that this experience now impacts a broad audience. Most of my pictures are just high-end snapshots, taken with minimal setup time with a nice camera. That's kinda how it goes when you're out there mainly just to ride! The best part about any of my pictures is that they are of my best friends."

The week 2 winning photo moves on to round 2 where it goes head to head against 4 other weeks worth of winners. The photo was made with a Nikon D70s camera and Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 lens.

DVD Movie Now Available!!!

FINALLY! The Spectrum Techwear 2007 Movie "Untitled & Boring" is now available!
http://spectrumtechwear.com/items.php?category=MOVIE&id=32

I didn't make the video, so I can unbiasedly say, it's really dang good! $14 online or at your local Spectrum Techwear retailer.

own a piece of history

$7,000,000 deal to protect Wilson's Creek, NC

I remember it like it was yesterday. The first real mountain ride I did was on Yancee's Ridge in Wilson's Creek with my buddies Shannon StClair and Mike Swanson, aboard our overly-quick handling jackhammer hardtails with 3" forks. We shuttled, except for this crazy guy Terry Sane that suggested he could beat us to the top pedalling. Shannon broke his finger on a gnarly section of trail that 10 years later, we gap over on our big squishy bikes that we pedalled to the top. The only detail from the ride that I can't remember was the date; I'm pretty sure the year was 1994. Not like it matters, because time does not exist in this place. I was instantly addicted. If it weren't for these little recreational havens like Wilson's Creek, companies like Spectrum Techwear would not exist.

Depending on where you live, riding areas are either abundant with options or limited to one. Or perhaps you have to drive an hour to get to the one spot with abundant options, which is what we had to do back when I lived in North Carolina. Wilson's Creek, NC is where myself and my friends from the east grew up riding. As the "freeride" movement began around Y2K, we began to explore deeper into the mountain forests and see what kind of riding was available. The area is a retreat for those who want to "get away from it all".

myself enjoying a mid-ride cool down

I used to get-away-from-it-all several times per week in Wilson's Creek. The sense of adventure from mountain exploration by bicycle is a real release from, well, anything that could be on your mind. And we weren't the only ones. Mountain cyclists, equestrians, hikers, kayakers, fly-fishers, tubers (not potatoes, but rather hillbillies in tubes - I once saw one hit a huge waterfall drop with a beer cooler tied to his leg) all enjoy the communion with nature this special place offers. In 4 years worth of navigating the backcountry of this area, I still found new trails quite often. And seeing other recreationalists when you get "back in there" is quite uncommon. Just being there makes you feel like the only person on Earth.

Lyndsey developing some skillz back in 2003

Designated as one of four Wild & Scenic Rivers in North Carolina in the year 2000, Wilson's Creek is surrounded by some protected Wilderness Area land and some privately owned land. Last year, a development company wanted to install 225 homes along a 4-mile corridor of the river, through a nearly 700-acre tract of undeveloped forest land. Although the family owning the land has every right to sell it to whomever they want, the impact of such development would surely lead to a significant loss of the area's recreational appeal.

Mike Swanson of Clark's Bicycles in Hickory, NC keeps me up to date on current events of the area. A bit of a steward himself, Mike has seen changes in the area in the past 20 years that have directly impacted the local bike industry. I was stoked this morning when Mike sent me an email stating that the land is scheduled to be purchased for protection. This is the article from the Charlotte Observer newspaper, regarding the recent change in development proposals for Wilson's Creek: http://www.charlotte.com/171/story/541644.html

Looks like we made it through unscathed this round. Thank goodness for forward thinking officials who realize the opportunity abounding in such a natural rarity of this day and time.

cooling down amongst 100 degree temps

We coined the term "CrossRideFreeDowning" to describe the riding in Wilson's. As corny as it sounds, it was the gnarest of gnar. 30 mile rides, 8+ hours, aboard 7" pigs, 50 lbs with 27 gears to choose from. Uphill, downhill, sidehill, overhill, logrides, steeps, etc. You don't have to ride a big bike thanks to the rapidly-progressing technology these days. Even still, it's a unique place where you can rapidly progress your fitness, technical ability, and close friendships.

Sometime around 2003 we began the Weekend at Wilson's rides. Ride, camp, ride.

It was a love/hate relationship where you either came back the next month or never again.

For years I have wanted to live "out west". I would look at road maps of the US and think about how many roads there are on the east coast compared to how few in the west. The vast openness has always been quite appealing. Now that I live here, I realize that people on this side of the country cannot even begin to imagine what a "wilderness" would be like amidst the veins of Interstate that tangle the east. The "black hole" known as Wilson's Creek serves as refuge from the everyday hustle and bustle. It's the only place I've ever been totally lost yet known exactly where I am at the same time. It's a wonderful feeling, and I'm glad that it will be there for more people to find themselves.

For more info, visit the original HickHucksters.com