This past week I
traveled to Pennsylvania for DirtRag Magazines Annual Mountain Bike Festival
Dirt Fest. I have been trying to capitalize on the fact that I can fly Southwest Airlines pretty cheap, and I
have been wanting to demo more bikes in more dynamic terrain than what is usually afforded at demo days in MN. The
week before last, the Angry catfish had a demo day at Carver Lake. While this was a great chance to try out a
bike, its hardly the place to put a 4 inch FS bike through the paces. The trails at Rays Town lake in PA offer the
perfect mix of terrain, and there were no less than 10 different demo trucks,
so there were tons of opportunities to ride a lot of different bikes and
evaluate what was right for you.
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| Patterson concedes the position of Capt to Matt, instead relishing his role as Rear Admiral. |
We arrived at Rays
Town lake on Thursday night for the exhibitors cruise around the lake. I ended up hanging with the guys from
Swiftwick, talking about life back in the old country.
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| TPatt and Graham counting cans |
I also got to chill with Graham Daniels of
Cannondale over many Dales Pale Ales. I
explained that I had never really considered a Cannondale since I was not
really familiar with the Lefty. He
offered to pull one apart for me the next morning before the expo opened, just
to show me how simple they actually were.
The next morning
feeling kind of bleary, I stumbled over to the expo area for my Lefty
lesson. It literally took less that 90
seconds to disassemble the fork for damper service. Graham showed me that all you really need is
the special tool to remove and replace the Cartridge Damper, which is
recommended at least once a year. The
next thing I knew, I was on the Scalpel 29 headed up the hill with the
Swiftwick guys for some early morning shred session. We were immediately blown away by how nice
the trails were. The Allegripis trails
at Rays Town Lake are not overly rocky, but require diligence since they allow
you to carry so much speed into corners and rollers. I was immensely impressed with how well the
Scalpel performed, and how precise the steering was with the Lefty. Matt, from Swiftwick, was on a rigid bike,
but was still just absolutely thrashing it given the fact that he is pretty new
to mountain biking. Ended up getting in over 35 miles of single track that
first day, and ended the day at Harlan Price's Cornering skills clinic. Harlan did a really great job walking
everyone through the principles of trail riding. He covered body position, line of sight, plus
weighting and unweighting the pedals.
There really was something for everyone.
My only disappointment was that we did not have enough time for some
actual trail time.
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| Harlan Price advises riders during a skills drill. |
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| 4 people and 3 tents |
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| No shortage of good reading material in the ol' blue box |
On Saturday, I got
to use some of the basic skills that Harlan instilled in us, as I got to ride
with a brand new mountain biker. One of
Pattersons college roommates, Alex, from VA came up for Dirtfest. We put him on the Niner Jet RDO. We practiced clipping in and clipping out a
few times, talked about being in the "neutral" and "ready"
positions for turns and obstacles, and the kept repeating the mantra "just
keep pedaling, don’t stop". Alex
did great all morning, and never had a problem all day. Its really fun to see people progress as a
rider.
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| Badass Plumber |
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| Patterson lets no demo bike stem go unslammed |
Saturday afternoon I
did the Rays to Lake ride. Which was
essentially a race paced ride out of the expo area up the road to the top of
Osprey trail, then screaming down to the Hydro loop where we were supposed to
meet a house boat. It was sort of like a
race in that only the first 30 people that finished would be able to board the
houseboat (that also had a keg of Sierra Nevada). This was also the only time during the
weekend that I demo'ed a hardtail, a Cannondale Flash. I was really impressed with that bike. As we went up the road to the top I really
started to see the flash shine. It’s a
29'er that really does not start to shine until you put it in the big
ring. I was a little worried when we
started down the descent, as I was in front of the group, but once we hit Hydro
the group was pretty strung out. There
was only one SS'er that was with me, and I wanted to see how the bike handled
in the corners, so I started really punching it out of the turns. I did not
know where the boat was going to pick us up, so me and the SS'er just busted
out another loop on Hydro. So much fun
on a super fun bike.
Then we started our
cruise back to camp, that we interrupted for some cliff jumping and aquatic
shenanigans.
More tomorrow.
