Stinkpalm

I hear ya on recovering from time off the bike. Leading up to October, I was getting multiple rides in per week, and by September was having some of the best rides I’ve had in years. Felt like I was flying down the trails with relatively little effort. Then October hit. Spent nearly all of October trying to get my wife a really good buck I’d seen with her bow, then got the snip-snip on November 1. Put me out of commission way longer than I would’ve expected. Only time I’ve been on the bike since September was a quick trip up to Bentonville at the end of October… until tonight. Finally decided it was time to see if the berries were up for it and charged up my lights. Ended up riding horseshoe since I was short on time and it’s the nearest trail. Had a good time, definitely enjoyed getting in a night ride as I haven’t done that in quite some time, but decided I was done after just one lap. Felt slow and out of shape, lower back was screaming, and lungs were burning due to the cold dry air. Probably wouldn’t have bothered me as much if it weren’t for the fact that I know just how good I was riding before the hiatus. But I’ve been looking to take a page out of the twicehorn book and get a little ss for a while now, just to cruise around the neighborhood when I don’t have time to run to a trail, and this experience was probably the thing to get me to pull the trigger. I need something to drag around the toddler wagon anyway without scratching up my carbon and wearing down my knobbies.

I clicked on this fully expecting a quote from Leach saying he was going to “work up a number 6” on aggy.

Needed to get out of the metroplex for a bit, so we took a camping trip over to Arkansas this past weekend. Got some rides in at mount nebo S.P. and then the Northwoods trail system at Hot Springs. Really fun trails with lots of elevation, tech, and flow. Likely headed to eureka springs next month with bike in-tow. Need to start making mtb trips over there a monthly thing.

Bitch, you don’t even own a tooth brush

That’s what perplexes me. Granted, years of alcohol have ruined my memory retention, but I feel like we’ve really tried to force the running between the tackles in these first two games. That’s fine with a great o-line, but we simply don’t have that. We should be getting the ball to Bijan outside the tackles and let him do his thing in making guys miss. Tonight it was glaringly obvious that we’re not strong enough up front to impose our will and wear them out inside. I assumed the half time adjustment would be to get bijan running outside in space, but alas…

We, uh… we are not the same. A lot of time gets taken off the clock when I’m playing from behind.

How does he miss the open goal opportunity that was right in front of him? ”Today is a big win for the conference from where it was six weeks ago. BYU Is a big national draw that will open new time slots. UCF and Cincinnati could compete for conference championships from Day 1. Houston.”

We all do, man. We all do.

Cargo shorts and the fatty in boots are the two most accurate depictions of aggy I could imagine. Glad to see them permanently memorialized in front of the Kroger there

Yep. Just switched our lawn to Bermuda this spring, while the rest of the neighborhood still has St.A. They crushed my lawn, while the rest of the neighborhood still looks pristine. They came out of the one area of the lawn that was already Bermuda and spread out to the new stuff. Luckily I caught them in time (relatively) and the granular/spray applications last night and this morning appear to have done their job quite quickly. Couldn’t find a single live one this evening

Those bastards finally showed up in my yard today… or at least that’s when I noticed them and the damage they’ve already done. Luckily they hadn’t spread out too far just yet. Another day or two and they might’ve taken my whole lawn, bc they are thick. Spread out granules this evening and hitting them with the spray in the morning.

Cool

Damn… a lot of y’all didn’t get my tongue-in-cheek joke directed at Sal for his earlier comment about the racist optics of choosing a white QB at the end of a QB competition 🙄

Not ideal. If our white QB throws to our white TEs instead of our black WRs, people are going to say we’re racist.

Psycho Rocks. That was it. No telling how many collarbones that run has claimed. Yeah, they’ve definitely seen it all on that river. They’ll make you run through your entire fly box looking for the right fly, and even with the right fly it takes multiple perfect drifts, especially in the C&R stretch. We actually did quite well all up and down that river, to my surprise. There were so many emergences while we were there, And we wore them out on dries. This was my first trip to that area of Colorado, so I had planned on hitting quite a few rivers in the area, including the East. But with the newborn, it ended up being easier to just run up and down the Taylor since we were camping on it. I may have to pick your brain before our next trip up there since I wasn’t able to scout out the other streams in the area.

It’s penalty group 1, which I believe is coke, H, meth, or Ketamine. THC is penalty group 2. but you are correct that any time it’s concentrated into vape oil, it’s a felony possession

Just to add, this is by far the best pic that came out of that trip. After heading back from CB bike park, we stopped off at camp just long enough to drop the bike and grab the fishing gear. Decided to give the C&R area a go, and ended up getting into some nice fish that evening. As I’m holding this one up for a pic, the four month old reached out and gave the fish a feel. Proud F’ing dad! (And just for reference, that’s a small fish in that stretch of the Taylor)

First off, that’s awesome about the kids. I was amazed at the number of kids I saw riding the trails (likely part of the bike camp.) CB definitely had fun runs and I thoroughly enjoyed my day there, so there was certainly no disappointment in the variety (if it came off that way). That said, there just weren’t many offshoot trails that branched off the main runs, and midway down the mountain most of the trails begin to merge down to a green runout and a black runout. So while there’s decent variety at the top, whatever you choose will have you riding the same couple of runouts for a good bit of your run. I compare that to places like Vail or Angel Fire, where you might have the same number of options at the top, but then there are short offshoot and transfer trails all throughout the runs and they all only merge once you near the very bottom. I will say, that double black diamond there (forget the name), looked insane. Rode everything else multiple times, but I probably wouldn’t even walk down that run! (Attached a pic of the visible part of that trail from the lift for others) for a mtb specific trip (at least for us Texans making a road trip), I’d say Breckenridge area as a central location is a fun trip, and one I’ve done several times. Vail is an hour down the road, keystone is fun, and copper mtn has a new bike park that I haven’t been on yet but looks to be pretty good. And then there are some really good traditional trails right around Breckenridge that will challenge your lungs going up, and are a blast going down. Angel fire is another great one. And then there’s always Bentonville, where the Waltons have donated millions of dollars to build that area into a mtb Mecca. That’s a must-do for any dfw mtb-er, IMO, given the relatively close proximity to dfw (compared to driving out west). We camped outside of Almont, up near the Taylor Reservoir and focused on the Taylor River. I plan to go back to that area and explore more of the Gunnison, but the fishing was just too good on the Taylor this trip. We caught a lot nice fish and lost some monsters, but the dry fly bite was phenomenal. If you haven’t ventured up that way, make the drive up to the catch and release area just below the reservoir and look over the bridge. It’s like looking down into an aquarium. Large trout stacked on top of each other. It’s unreal.

I love northshore, but I also usually hit it at non-peak hours. And completely avoid it on weekends due to the crowds. Rode it a couple days ago for the first time since it reopened after being flooded. Seems the flood waters made some of the tech stuff even more hairy than they previously were. And it was definitely hotter today, Twice. Headed to horseshoe earlier with the intention of doing two laps. Knocked out the first lap and decided “fuck it, I’m going swimming.”

Weed and another controlled substance, the way I read it. “littering and… littering and….”

When this first came to light, had an aggy tell me he just didn’t see how we would get anywhere near enough votes and that the word was that this was all just to get NC and Virginia to join. Yeah, they were going to pass on two blue bloods for those two schools… right. I chose to take the high road and just state that if this was coming to light, it’d already reached the point that TX and OU knew they had the votes. The NC/Virginia talk was simply aggy hoping beyond hope for anyone but mean old TX.

Ha! Very true. More efficient frame geometries have certainly changed the traditional thoughts on how much travel you can get away with. I still remember worrying prior to purchasing my scalpel back in the day that stepping up from the 80mm bike I had to the 100mm travel on the scalpel was going to make it a slug (I was definitely wrong, that thing was a burner). Now 120 seems to be what most XC guys prefer. So who knows. I still can’t fathom pushing around a Fox 38 on dfw trails… that’s a lot of weight regardless of efficient modern frames!

The ripmo is about a 150r/160f, where the mojo is only 130r/140f travel. The mojo HD is a different story though, with much longer travel than the regular mojo. So that may be where the confusion comes from. And yeah, it’s been comical the amount of enduro bikes I’ve seen running around the local trails lately. I’m guessing it’s new riders getting into the sport due to covid and just figure “moar travel, moar better”. Can’t imagine trying to push a YT Capra around northshore but I’ve seen it in the past year.

Glad to see he’s following aggy tradition and pasting unimpressive finishes on his shirt, much like their wall. “Top 10 ribs” is definitely aggy-speak for 10th place in (likely) a 12 person cook-off.

I’ve heard really, really good things about the ripley AF. Seeing a lot of them popping up around the Dfw trails. If I was wanting a pure XC bike, that’s probably the route I would have gone. And I saw a ripmo up at crested butte. Agreed that it’d be just a bit much for around here. I chose the mojo bc it splits the difference between the two in travel, allowing me to just have one do-it-all trail bike. It gives up a little performance on both ends of the spectrum (basically a jack of all trades, master of none type bike), but the older I get, the less I care about burning past other riders on the XC trails anyways. And the step down to 27.5 was pretty noticeable when it comes to rock gardens, but I’ve actually enjoyed how much more nimble and playful it makes the bike. But yeah, for XC, I’d give the ripley a serious look if the Marin ever fully croaks.