Anyone have anything they'd like to rant about?

[Anospa]

Mostly the hilariousness of the chain cleaning thread.

I truly wish I could make the time to sit down and boil wax to wax my chain. I love working on bikes and tinkering with stuff, but that's just a shitton of time to spend doing something that'll give no advantage to me. How? Do you ride like 3 times a month? Jesusssss

[gravitylover]

Ya know those times when you just feel like ripping into every ignorant motherfucker on facebook? Yeah that's today I've already deleted a couple of posts before they turned into absolute shitshows.

[skaredshtles]

Ya know those times when you just feel like ripping into every ignorant motherfucker on facebook? Yeah that's today I've already deleted a couple of posts before they turned into absolute shitshows.

Never read the comments...

[plugboots]

You talking Winthrop, WA? That's a shame. So much badass terrain around there. There's no reason for that nonsense.

Yup. With the added excitement of “Oh my god the trail makes hard right turn around a tree, we better straighten it out.” Especially on old, well-established trails.

I completely understand straight fall line trails that become a big rut, and muddy run off eventually ends up in a stream killing salmon, but this is fucking stupid.

[MrMan]

Yup. With the added excitement of “Oh my god the trail makes hard right turn around a tree, we better straighten it out.” Especially on old, well-established trails

"My 66 degree HA 150mm travel wonder bike doesn't like making sharp turns! Modern trail bikes are too fast to ride slow twisty turny trails! I'm going to have to cut that corner because the trail was designed poorly!!!"

this is fucking stupid.

So fucking stupid.

[scrublover]

Let me guess. Wide machine built meh that they're calling singletrack? Saw some pics from Thunder Mtn of a DH machine built trail with berms that you could easily drive a truck down. Not singletrack. Not a MTB trail IMO.

That is...not most of Thunder Mtn. Or Platty, Sunday River, Highland, Diablo, or most lift serve places. The steeper and techier stuff that would make gapers such as yourself pee themselves aren't as photogenic as the smooooooove bullshit.

Thanks for playing.

ETA: take a lap!

[MrMan]

That is...not most of Thunder Mtn. Or Platty, Sunday River, Highland, Diablo, or most lift serve places. The steeper and techier stuff that would make gapers such as yourself pee themselves aren't as photogenic as the smooooooove bullshit.

Thanks for playing.

ETA: take a lap!

You endurobro dirt roads haha.

[scrublover]

You endurobro dirt roads haha.

Aha. You're so cute.

[westoxified]

Go faster? Ride the "B-lines"? LOL. I've ridden that trail literally dozens of times since my first time on a hardtail in '94. I've raced it and done well, I've ridden the original notch clean a bunch before the re-route was in. I've made it from Geyser to the river in 2 1/2 hours numerous times. That's not blazingly fast or anything but you don't get through it that quick pussyfooting around, breaking your bike, or flatting. I'm not afraid of rocks or complaining about them. I'm over pounding my body and bikes on that bit and handing out tubes and waiting for everyone else to fix their flats. I could give a fuck about the short climbs, climbing's part of mountain biking. They're just an easier place to pass more people.

What I'm saying is, five more miles of UPS/LPS style singletrack would be vastly preferable to slamming uphill square edges for an hour. Also, the Kokopelli road is like ten minutes out your ride, NBD.

Woo said it, I go to Moab for a handful of trails and increasingly, TWE isn't one of them. Blue Dot/ Portal, Rock Stacker/ Jackson's. The more lines I find, Ahab is really growing on me. Even Pipe Dream is fun, especially both ways. Hell's Canyon is fun to throw into the mix. Did someone say they like Navajo Rocks? LOL, more boring blues. Mag 7 makes it into the 'OK' range, but it's just a warm up for Blue Dot and Portal.

This is a rant thread right? This is just my opinion. I know no-one gives a fuck if I don't want to ride TWE or anything else for that matter.

I like Navajo rocks. And Hells.

[westoxified]

oh and Jimmy Keen is not on the like list.

[jm2e]

I sometimes think about trails getting too easy, then I remember the weekend we rode at Windrock Bike Park this summer. Jesus Christ, there is no limit to how fucking hard the terrain there can be. We were walking, multiple times, on the “easy” blacks. Anyone who thinks they’re hot shit on steep technical natural terrain needs to make a trip there.
My only gripe is my lack of skillz.... and commitment.

[MrMan]

Aha. You're so cute.

You know that I know that you rip the gnar.

[Jonny Snow]

Ever consider that today's rocky, rooted, nasty "natural" trails were generally smooth single-track, paths and dirt roads when they were built 50++ years ago?

[jackstraw]

Just horrible routing that goes neither up nor down for any meaningful length of time, needless meandering just for the sake of meandering, stuff that would never make sense if it were a hiking trail because there's no progress moving forward in any defined direction. Trails that go nowhere other than doubling back on themselves for no reason. Basically the exact opposite of things like amasa and porcupine which made moab famous, for the type of endless shitty routing that is the original slickrock trail.

So out there it makes sense to "go somewhere" and for the views. Here on the EC and especially where I'm at, many of our trails have multiple "high five" moments. We just snake trails back and forth as we don't have the massive acreage necessary to build long "a to b" style trails. And since our forests are so densely forested you often have no idea that another trail is 5 yards away unless someone else is riding it. We also have a lot of granite features that are fun to incorporate into the trail, so we'll snake back and forth just to capture all of those.

[gravitylover]

^ One of my favorite 'new' trail zones the spaghetti is so tight that the trail is frequently within a few feet of itself as it winds back and forth. I love being able to have nearly 25 miles trail miles in under 1k acres.

[kidwoo]

So out there it makes sense to "go somewhere" and for the views. Here on the EC and especially where I'm at, many of our trails have multiple "high five" moments. We just snake trails back and forth as we don't have the massive acreage necessary to build long "a to b" style trails. And since our forests are so densely forested you often have no idea that another trail is 5 yards away unless someone else is riding it. We also have a lot of granite features that are fun to incorporate into the trail, so we'll snake back and forth just to capture all of those.

I grew up on the east coast and used to live in Bel Air Maryland, skiing all over new England, and started riding bikes in the Carolinas/north Georgia/Tennessee etc. That's not why your trails are so twisty. And there are plenty of hiking trails around that aren't built like I'm talking about. There's just as much space to continue a gradient out there as anywhere else.

[skaredshtles]

Ever consider that today's rocky, rooted, nasty "natural" trails were generally smooth single-track, paths and dirt roads when they were built 50++ years ago?

Yup - around here you get ENDLESS griping about "sanitation" every time a trail crew goes out to improve sustainability of a rocky trail. And these trails have been, at one point or another, nice smooth sidewalks. But nobody remembers them like that because everybody migrated here 18 months ago.

Fuck the gripers.

[MrMan]

A trail can never have too many rocks and roots, IMO.

[oftpiste]

My new motto in life: "what the fuck is wrong with people?".

Why is it that it seems OK with so many people to say one thing and do another and act as though they didn't? Why does it seem OK with so many people to lie to your face and then pretend they didn't in spite of overwhelming evidence of truth? People just ignore the truth these days and it seems to be acceptable somehow.

What the fuck is wrong with people?

[skaredshtles]

A trail can never have too many rocks and roots, IMO.

So around here one issue we face is that trail users will simply go around the rocks, which widens the trail and increases erosion, which exposes more rocks, which means people go around the rocks, which makes the trail wider... you get the idea.

Some of the trail work has been to address this specifically, which, IMO needs doing. And the resultant "worked" trail is pretty smooth. And probably will be for a couple years until the rocks naturally start getting exposed again.

For the record - I agree with you. I love lots of roots and rocks. But I don't complain endlessly when OTHER people put the time in to maintain the trails I ride.

[wyeaster]

i was about to rant about you guys ranting forever about bike trails and then i realized this was in sprocket rockets. carry on!

[Jong Lafitte]

Maybe this has been covered before. When this thread pops up in my feed, I can't help but sing this little bit to myself:

I'll be back when the day is new
And I'll have more ideas for you
And you'll have things you'd like to rant about
And I will too.

[jackstraw]

I grew up on the east coast and used to live in Bel Air Maryland, skiing all over new England, and started riding bikes in the Carolinas/north Georgia/Tennessee etc. That's not why your trails are so twisty. And there are plenty of hiking trails around that aren't built like I'm talking about. There's just as much space to continue a gradient out there as anywhere else.

Ok, I wasn't going to comment on your 'hiking' trail comment, but now that you keep mentioning it I guess I will. Hiking trails are good for hiking. They suck for biking. That's all we rode in the 80-90's and they sucked then and still do. Well, they're slightly entertaining now and then, but I'll take a bike specific trail any day over a hiking.

You are wrong about having enough space in my location. We don't have enough without getting on railbeds and that is hardly single track. I don't live in the mountains.

[gravitylover]

I grew up on the east coast and used to live in Bel Air Maryland, skiing all over new England, and started riding bikes in the Carolinas/north Georgia/Tennessee etc. That's not why your trails are so twisty. And there are plenty of hiking trails around that aren't built like I'm talking about. There's just as much space to continue a gradient out there as anywhere else.

Well, sort of. The old hiking trails were generally built to go somewhere and those were the old mt bike trails that you remember. If the new trails around here were laid out to go someplace there wouldn't be much for trail mileage in any particular spot and it's usually not possible to link spots together to create that distance. One of my favorite places has mostly old school trails and there's only about 6-7 miles in over 1k acres. It does link up with another that's similar so you can get a ~15 mile ride in if you use a few short pieces twice to connect to other trails but it sure would be nice if each of these spots had 20 miles or more. The upper spot will be logged this winter and supposedly we will be allowed to go in and rebuild a network when they're done so I'm hoping to be able to add some mileage but that will depend on how messy the area is and if they don't close off parts for habitat reconstruction/preservation.

Oh and c'mon face it, you never really grew up

[buttahflake]

He's right you know.
Riding on hiking trails in New England is no fun. They go straight up the gut, and on the way down, you end up walking more than you did on the way up. Not fun.