Boost for Bike Commuting

Some encouraging news from our neighbours down south (our American neighbours that is)

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Feds, Caltrain trying to make it easier to get to work

Buried in the financial rescue bill passed by Congress last week is a provision to encourage bike commuting. The idea is to level the playing field for cyclists, who currently can’t get benefits like those available for participants in car or van pools or other programs designed to reduce traffic congestion.

Starting in January, employers can reimburse bike commuters up to $20/month for the “purchase of a bicycle, bicycle improvements, repair, and storage, if such bicycle is regularly used for travel between the employee’s residence and place of employment” and have such reimbursements get the same favorable tax treatment as other benefits. Twenty bucks a month isn’t a lot, but as a regular bike commuter, I think the concept is very cool!

Meanwhile, Caltrain, which runs commuter rail service into San Francisco from points south is trying to figure out how to provide more bike capacity on its trains. All trains have a specially fitted bike car with room for 32 bikes and passengers. During rush hour, some trains have two of these bike cars. But the number of bike commuters is growing (now 8% of Caltrain’s ridership), leading to overcrowding and frustration among cyclists when they can’t get a spot on the train. Waiting on the platform for the next train 30-60 minutes later is no fun, especially if you’re trying to get to work on time.

Caltrain is using all the cars it has, so this won’t be an easy problem to solve. In a plan approved last week, officials said they will increase bike-parking facilities at stations and experiment with removing some seats in train cars to make room for more bikes. A long term solution probably involves a big investment in more bike cars and more frequent train service.

Source: TerraPass + Sustainable Travel International

Utah Part 2: Moab, Slickrock, Gooseberry Mesa

Part 2 of our installment from recent Southwest Slickrock participant John Brownlow. Thanks, John!

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Thursday: Finally, we arrive in Moab. It's a tiny, funky little town surrounded by huge vertical rock walls, a bit like Fernie in the desert. We meet up with our local guide Julia, and immediately embark on Moab's most famous trail, the Slickrock. Before we ride, Julia warns us that it's like 'three hours of stairmaster', and she's not wrong, but despite its fearsome reputation it turns out to be eminently rideable, and unlike anything any of us have ever ridden before. Terrifying climbs and descents are only made possible by the sand-paper like texture of the rock surfaces, and the 'trail' is simply a series of white lines painted on the rock surface. An unforgettable ride and one which features a seemingly endless menu of challenges, limited only by your own abilities and courage.

Friday: Julia guides us through the famous Porcupine Rim trail. An hour-long technical climb along a rock-ledge-strewn jeep road finally crests at a spectacular lookout, and then begin a 10-mile descent. The first two-thirds is a bike-eating rock-fest featuring a seemingly endless roster of boulder gardens, drops, S-bends and whoop-de-doos before narrowing to singletrack as the trail teeters a thousand feet above the Colorado river, subjecting the rider to extreme exposure and considerable vertigo, as well as numerous extreme technical sections, before finally descending to the canyon floor where we wipe the sweat from our palms and crack open a beer. Another unforgettable ride.

Saturday. Moab's third 'serious' ride is Amasa Back. It's an out-and-back, with a two-hour technical climb followed by an hour-long fast-but-technical descent. Others enjoy it but I'm not riding well and the trail seems crowded with both riders and ATVs. I almost endo several times, and a whipping sandstorm makes life ever more difficult. It's not a bad trail, but we've been spoilt by Slickrock and Porcupine Rim, and I leave feeling a little deflated.

Saturday afternoon, we head back to Brian Head in the hope of riding Virgin Rim, but as we climb into the mountains, a huge snowstorm hits and it's touch and go whether the van will make it to our lodging. By the time we finally make it to the ski lodge, there's five inches of snow and the temperature is -8C. The altitude (12,000 feet) is making several of us sick, and we decide instead to head back to St George in the morning to ride a trail we skipped earlier in the week.

Sunday: Mark finally gets on his bike and guides us through most of Little Creek. Also created by Morgan Harris, this is a sister ride to the extraordinary Gooseberry Mesa, and Mark says it's his favourite trail in the world. Within a few hundred yards we see why. This is a real bike-rider's trail, with seemingly infinite flow, from slickrock bowl to smooth singletrack winding through the rocks and cacti, to rock gardens and ledges, then back to slickrock drops and loops. The trail eventually gives out onto one of the utterly spectacular views over the vast Utah landscape we've now gotten used to, but within minutes we're back on the bikes and hurtling along the trail again.

James and I get deliciously lost before finally locating the trail head and our companions. We only ride about half of the full trail, but it's an addictive place and of all the places we visit it's the one I'd go back to first. Not for the views, or the challenge, but the simple ride.

Sunday night, we bundle back into the van, back to Vegas, and take out flights home. On the plane back I nostalgically review helmetcam, and as I drive home from Pearson Airport I think about the vacation. In a single week we've seen temperatures from scorching heat to freezing cold, ridden the desert floor and 12000 foot peaks, skidded through snow and mud, and found infinite grip on slickrock. To our surprise, our group is repeatedly complimented on its riding skills by our local guides, and in conversation we agree that although much of the riding is technical and exposed, overall it is slightly easier than the BC trails most of us have experience of. Also to our surprise, we agree that the little known trails around St George are easily a match for the famous rides around Moab, with Thunder Mountain probably the highlight of the trip for its unforgettable combination of scenery, flow and technical challenge.

Utah, part 1 - St. George, Gooseberry Mesa and more!

This post comes to you courtesy of John Brownlow, one of our riders who just completed the maiden voyage of our new 'Southwest Slickrock' trip in Utah:

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Sunday: Arrive Las Vegas and check into the South Point Casino. Vegas is the saddest town in the world but this is National Indian Rodeo Finals weekend so I pay $25 and pass the afternoon watching Navajo teenagers riding bulls and wrestling steers in the huge equestrian ampitheatre. They even play the Canadian national anthem at the beginning (there are many riders here from Alberta). I'm touched. I thought mountain biking was tough until now, but these guys are something else. Nobody seems to leave uninjured.

Monday: Meet up with the other riders and our guide Eddie who's driven down from Fernie. We build bikes in the parking lot to the bemusement of passing gamblers. The group is almost entirely composed of former Sacred Rides clients and I know several of them, so we have a good
esprit de corps from the get-go. We also meet our local bike buddy Mark, a gentle drawling Mormon who will shuttle the van for the next week while telling some of the tallest stories I have ever heard.

After a two-hour drive to St George, Utah we change into riding clothes and manage a single shuttle run at Bear Claw Poppy, an instant hit of a downhill trail replete with berms, drops, hucks and little wallrides that sends us hurtling out onto the desert floor as the setting sun paints the huge mesas surrounding us a deep shade of crimson. At this point we realize this trip is probably going to be something special.

Tuesday: Mark introduces us to Morgan Harris, a barrel-chested local legend who built the trail we about to ride. Morgan leads us through Gooseberry Mesa, a twisting pretzel of a trail that loops around the top of one of the local mountains through pine, cactus and juniper. The trail requires total concentration with several sections featuring several thousand feet of exposure, and others taking us through our first taste of the steep slickrock bowls whose infinite traction turns apparently unrideable steeps into red-lining anaerobic workouts that require you to believe that you can do the physically impossible.

In the afternoon we shuttle to the top of J.E.M., another hurtling, smooth, twisty downhill trail whose twelve miles are gone in a matter of thirty minutes or so, the last section of singletrack snaking alongside the edge of a canyon, a couple of feet or so from what feels like certain death.

Wednesday: Mark shuttles us to the 'top' of Brian Head Mountain. The elevation here is about 12,000 feet and the real top of the mountain is still above us, the simple climb made grindingly hard by lack of oxygen and several inches of snow that has just fallen. We're the first riders through the snow and Mark is worried, but we assure him we've seen snow before, and set off. The first few miles are a slip-fest, then the snow transitions to mud and we splatter our way
down to the tree line, where the trail turns into a humdinger of a downhill sidewinder following Bunker Creek through yellowing aspens, where it seems a shame to even think about touching the brakes as thousands of feet of elevation shoot us out into a dirt road where I finally pinch flat on one of the hundreds of little rock drops it's impossible not to hit. Afterwards, Scott pronounces it one of the best trails he's ever ridden, and it's hard not to agree.

As if this wasn't enough, the afternoon takes us to Thunder Mountain, a trail he discovered and now voted Utah's best. A long series of alternating downhills, bermed hairpins, and grinding climbs finally emerges into an utterly spectacular hidden canyon, the trail winding up between eerie redstone hoodoos then along a three-foot wide ridge with exposure on both sides, before ricocheting down a series of tight, technical, exposed switchbacks, culiminating in a balls-out
rocket ride to the trail head along smooth, bermed singletrack. Afterwards, Scott pronounces it even better than the first trail and many of us feel that we've just experienced one of our best days riding ever.

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next post: Moab, Porcupine Rim, Brian Head

Company Name Contest

A big thank you to everyone who submitted an entry to our company name change contest. We're sorry it's taken so long to get to the next stage (the voting stage) of the contest, but we've been overwhelmed with submissions, over 1,000 of them, and it's taken a while to sift through them all. We've circulated the names among our staff and are whittling down the suggestions to our top 5. We'll put the top 5 back out to you in a week or two for a vote - the winning entry will receive a free trip to Peru in 2009!

On a side note, we just got this e-mail from a client who was on our Rocky Mountain Singletrack trip this summer. E-mails like this really demonstrate how enthusiastic we are about our jobs and why we love what we do:

"Just wanted to say a big thanks to Sacred Rides for my Rocky Mountain Singletrack trip. Not only was it the best mountain biking holiday I have ever had, it was the best holiday I have ever had. Great people, great weather, great guides, great rides...

Eddy and Johanna were great, took care of us all really well and I learned so much from both of them. I learned more in 1 week than I have learned in about 5 years of riding. My confidence and technique have improved greatly and I'm looking forward to trying some new things when I go to Scotland in a few weeks.

Anyways, just wanted to say thanks again for making it such a memorable trip. You guys rock!" - M. Barrat, UK

The feeling is mutual, so thank you too!

Mike

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Alps + Adriatic, part 2 (Croatia)

We crossed the border into Croatia, climbed the hills above Trieste and were greeted with an immense, beautiful panorama of the Adriatic: deep blue water and islands dotting the landscape, the coastline receding into the distance, with green mountains providing scenic relief.

This is the coastline of my childhood: my parents left Croatia 2 years before I was born, and I returned often with them, spending weeks and even months on the coast every summer. The sea is an emotional home for most Croatians; they spend their summers on the Adriatic, emptying the cities in the months of July and August.

We soon stopped at a small coastal resort town, stripped down to our swim trunks and jumped in the clear blue water of the Adriatic. It's been five long years since I was in Croatia, and it felt like home. We topped off our swim with a local beer and a cevapcici sandwich, made of spiced meat and pita bread. Yum.

An hour later, we arrived at our hotel: a 16th-century baron's residence in the interior, surrounded by vineyards and rolling green hills. The owners bought the villa from the community in 2000, and spent 2 years lovingly restoring it. Before we sat down to dinner, the owner sat us down in front of his homemade rakije (whisky) collection. There was fig whisky, mistletoe whisky, cherry whisky, and others. More yum.

Dinner was a multi-course, 3-hour affair. We finished off our crepe desserts completely stuffed, ready for bed and the adventures that awaited.

The next day, we hopped in the van and drove to Mt. Ucka national park. This mountain, known as the Ucka Massif, is about 3,000 feet high and overlooks the Adriatic and the mountains of Italy. We drove right up to the top, then pushed our bikes the final few metres to the top. Remants of a castle stood on top of the mountain, along with a small gift shop in its base. The views were spectacular.

Doug the Aussie and I took turns riding down the spiraling castle steps and then we set out en masse, with our Croatian guide Martin leading the way.

We ducked into the forest, past a group of German hikers, and entered some beautiful forested singletrack. It alternated between sections of smooth dirt and sections of technical rock. We exited onto the road a few kilometres down from the castle and then rode down the road until the next section of trail. Which is where things took a different turn.

The next section of trail was unforgettable - not for its fun, or beauty, or any other positive adjectives I might throw at it, but because it was sheer survival for 60 minutes. The 'trail' became narrow doubletrack, so rocky that at times I felt my bike was going to explode and I'd be forced to walk the various parts of my bike down to the valley bottom 2,000 feet below. A few thorn bushes added to the excitement.

Joe the American and I were the rear guard - Team Hardtail as we called ourselves - and we cursed ourselves for leaving our nice soft squishy full suspension bikes at home. We exited the trail several kilometeres later, feeling a few inches shorter and a few fillings lighter.

As the saying goes, you win some, and you lose some. We'll call this one a draw. The traditional lunch at the base of Mt. Ucka made up for the bone-jarring descent, and later that day we drove to the beautiful medieval seaside town of Rovinj. A ferry took us over to the island of St. Martin, and we had a beautiful open-air dinner with the smell of sea salt in the air, Istrian wine accompanying a delicious feast.

Later that night, we swam under the midnight stars, the warm Adriatic sea a perfect end to a demanding day.

Our first client tours to Croatia and Slovenia take place in June 2009. Sign up for our newsletter at www.sacredrides.com and be among the first to get a spot on our Alps and Adriatic tour!