Ride And Abide

This is going to be an interesting post... and a long one.. .and one that probably won't make sense, at first.  It is about a trip I am about to embark on.  The destination itself is not what is important, or significant.   Moab / Fruita is a place I have wanted to visit for quite some time, but.. had I never made it there, I am not sure I would be very disappointed.  I just knew I had to take a trip again this year... and the stars aligned that Parker would be at the  Fruita Fat Tire Festival  and I had some banked vacation I had to burn up.  I also decided to pursue a few more notches in my "ride a trail in each state in the US" quest. Life's Prologue It is now funny to me how a number of things that my Dad would go on-and-on about... actually are pretty bad-ass.  It's clear that I was listening to my Dad (as I still remember the conversations) but, sadly I was not "hearing" him.   Case in point:  The...

"A man's gotta know his limitations..."   Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan. Today turned out to be fairly amazing.. Starting out with a pretty great ride around Los Alamos but the highlight was conquering obstacles outside of my comfort zone. On the ride returning to the AirBnb, we happened upon a rock that had obviously been ridden before.  However, it did look fairly menacing.  Parker rode it without much fanfare.. but each time I would look at it.. or start an attempt, I would "chicken out".  Finally... one of the attempts just sort of "happened" as I was past the point of no return and fortunately my mind turned off the fear response and just let it happen. @angryparker got me out of my comfort zone and it all worked out. A post shared by James Radtke (@rideandabide) on Dec 25, 2017 at 9:00pm PST

My friend Parker Roenfanz , who lives in Colorado and works for Rocky Mountain Bicycles, graciously offered bikes from his demo fleet for us to ride on our 4-day adventure.  I opted for a large carbon Rocky Mountain Altitude. For comparison, I should mention my current (personal) fleet: 2016 Pivot Mach 429 Trail (currently a 29'er) 2017 Ibis Mojo 3 (currently 27.5 x 2.80) I also should mention I typically ride Minnesota trails (well managed/maintained) and trails around Washington DC (some maintained and some are fairly rugged).  The riding out here in Albuquerque and Los Alamos is quite a departure from what I have grown accustomed to.  First, elevation... we're over a mile high here... and the cactus and thorny shit growing in to the trails ;-) At first I was not in love with the Altitude.  It felt like the front-end was super heavy, and the turn-in was much quicker than I was expecting a bike focused on downhill activity would be.  At this point I s...

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. --  Neale Donald Walsch The journey on the bike today was fairly crazy.  It started at the bottom of a fairly decent hill... and ended there.. 5 hours and 49 minutes later.  After traversing 27 miles and climbing 3800 feet. Mountain biking...in mountains. Uau A post shared by James Radtke (@rideandabide) on Dec 23, 2017 at 10:37am PST Note to self:  You should start/end at the TOP of a hill.  If you spend a few hours climbing, by the time you're ready for the downhill I am too wiped out to really enjoy it. Unfortunately I had run out of steam about 2-1/2 hours in to the adventure.  I was just on the verge of cramping and really had very little "pep" left in my legs.  But, we pressed on.  A short while later we encountered a highway that the trail system seemed to straddle and I tried to "bow out" gracefully.  It was getting dark and I was pretty much shot.  My co...