Bay Area Biker

Last week I took a trip up to Fairfax to ride in the incredible anomaly that is Camp Tamarancho.

Where else can you find a sign like this?

The first time I visited the park and came across this sign, I imagined it to be some kinda Br’er Rabbit psychology: park officials, figuring all mountain bikers for scofflaws, tell us to stay on the singletrack and assume we’ll instead “poach” the fire roads. Well, I discovered early on in my visits to the park that my outlandish assumption was wrong: they really do want mountain bikers to stay on the singletrack. This is true even as you ascend Iron Springs fire road into the park - when you see Alchemist Trail jut off to the left, that’s your cue to leave the fire road; it’s not made entirely obvious by the signage, but they don’t want you on the fire road beyond that point.

Here’s another sign you don’t see all that often:

Camp Tamarancho is one of the great pay-to-play parks in the Bay Area. It’s $5/day to ride, and you can also purchase annual passes. The loop plus the Alchemist out-and-back gives you 8.5 miles of technical singletrack, with many switchbacks, a few rocky sections (one of which I’ve never cleared), and a few sections that precariously skirt ravines. It’s fun in either direction, but first-timers are best off taking it clockwise.

Since I didn’t get a chance to ride this weekend (due to a variety of reasons and not excluding laziness on Sunday), and since today is a rest day in the Tour de France, I was really hoping to live vicariously through one of my buddies who did ride.

I found Kellsey on chat and asked him about his weekend mountain biking trip to Northstar at Tahoe. I was particularly interested to hear his impressions of riding with suspension, as it was to be his first ride with a suspension fork on his Karate Monkey. Up until last week, Kellsey had been a die hard rigid rider, but then this article dropped and I simultaneously sent him a craigslist posting for a good-deal used 29er fork. Those two occurrences mixed with the cold front of incredulity Kellsey had continually faced when talking to people about riding rigid at Northstar and a perfect storm formed that left Kellsey with a springy front end. He got the fork mounted on Thursday, rode it to work on Friday, and then left for the mountains on Saturday; and I was excited to hear the results.

Apparently the fork Kellsey bought was at the shelter for abandoned or unwanted bike parts because it was afraid of heights and not actually because the previous owner was moving to a smaller apartment that didn’t allow suspension forks. Despite having performed exquisitely over curbs and potholes all day Friday, somehow the fork failed during the first ride up the ski lift at Northstar, before he even got one chance to ride it down the mountain. Broken fork, blistered hands… I’m assuming it was at least pretty up there in the mountains this weekend and I’m curious to know how he spent his time on Sunday since he opted not to ride the second day, but the story will be fleshed out tonight: I offered to douse his frustrations in booze, since I feel largely responsible for having pointed him in the direction of that used fork. Kellsey heartily agreed with this plan, saying “we can drink and make the monkey rigid again.” A few minutes later he apologized for his untintentional double-entendre, but I assured him that my brain had been in bike-speak mode and that my sensibilities remained unassaulted.

This is one example of the perils of purchasing used equipment. Yet again, in some circles this will be seen as but another example of the perils of running anything more complicated than a brakeless fixie. To the latter I say, “run brakes and freewheels because it’s better, and make your bike as complicated as your pocketbook will allow,” to the former, “purchase as much new equipment as your pocketbook will allow.” When building my Niner I opted to purchase a used fork off of mtbr.com classifieds. When it showed up, there were blemishes not accounted for in the original product description/pictures. Before I mounted and rode the fork I addressed my concerns to the seller in an email, perhaps more fervently than I ought to have. The seller reassured me that my used fork functioned perfectly, and ultimately I found that to be true. In contrast, Kellsey’s used fork had no blemishes to cause him concern but turned out to be borked anyway. Tonight’s application of beer mechanics will show the two experiences to be one and the same.