Doug Landauer: mtb

Coyote Creek bike path

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 06:29:34 GMT

So, taking my own advice on Monday, I decided to take a ride on my (road) bike that's been sitting idle in my office for the past few months. The office is on Montague Expressway, just east of I-880, so I have to cross one busyish street (Oakland/Main), one freeway entrance, one freeway exit, and one less busy street (McCarthy) in order to get to the bike path. From there, I can go north to 237, and there are other paths along 237 that I didn't explore that day. Looking at the on-line San Jose and Santa Clara County bike trail maps and walking trail maps, it looks like the connectivity might still be incomplete on the 237 path. Anyway, on my way back I took Tasman/GreatMall/Capitol (but I turn off before it turns into Capitol). Nice bike paths on that route! Felt pretty safe despite big street crossings at McCarthy and Abel, and the I-880 on- and off-ramps. The Coyote Creek path itself is partly gravel, partly paved, heads north above the creek's west bank, and has a few dip-down loops that drop off of the levee, into the creek's wide flood channel. Heard lots of loud birds in a few spots; saw a couple of egrets. I guess I'll try exploring south next time, but I don't think the path connects (yet) to the much longer ones near downtown SJ.

Daylight Saving Time (DST) remains asymmetrical

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:29:09 GMT

For a few years, I would annually issue a "Daylight Saving Time Asymmetry Reminder" on certain work-internal email lists; a couple of times, I posted weblog entries about the DST Asymmetry. Whaddaya know, I check today and one of those is the top google result for DST Asymmetry. Anyway, since the times of the DST changes are different this year (in the US), some of the timings noted in that article are different. However, the principle remains even though the springtime change has now been moved to (about a week and a half) before the equinox. The springtime change this year was this past Sunday morning, Saturday's sunset was around 6:13, and Sunday's sunset around 7:13, so full dark is already quite close to 8:00 pm. The autumn change this year will be somewhere around seven weeks after the autumnal equinox, instead of the normal two or so; this year's change will thus be even more cruel than it usually is. Oh, well, it's time to get out and enjoy the extra light. In California, this winter was (except for a frigid week in January) exceptionally warm and dry, which has me a tad worried about the severity of the coming summer, and gives me added incentive to enjoy this month's gorgeous weather.

Google mac blog

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 06:58:02 GMT

After seeing a hint yesterday, probably on diggdot.us, that Google now has a Mac-oriented weblog, it took me a while to locate it again — the "More Google Blogs" section of their main Official Google Blog doesn't appear to link to the Mac one yet. It did get me to finally download Google Earth for my mac; very cool and fun to explore with. While looking around for the G-mac blog, I noticed their entry about participating in a 24-hour race at Moab. Cool. Time to get back in shape so I can do some massively parallel MTB searching... It is a bit strange that the photo of one of their MTBers has a title that starts with "MOAB", but appears to be a photo from Long Ridge, just off Skyline here on the edges of Santa Clara County, CA.

Remodel, two bike rides, and some backpack plans

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 06:35:14 GMT

Two plus weeks on Kaua`i, and only about one afternoon actually felt like it would count as vacation (a visit to Allerton Gardens). We (Deb and I) more or less remodeled my Mom's condo in Lihue. Came out great. I'll link to some photos once I put them in a more public place. I got to do two more bike rides lately -- one on the 3rd or so, where Ben & Marty & I rode from Rincon, up U-Conn into UCSC, across the top of UCSC into Wilder, down Chinquapin and the east side of the Big Meadow, across Old Cabin, and then the long, long climb up Long Meadow. It's all covered with large gravel these days, icky to ride up. Ben and I were in crappy enough shape that we walked up. Still icky. Gorgeous day, though, and great scenery. Amazing amount of time without seeing anyone. The second ride was mostly paved -- Ben rode the road bike. We started in kinda the western edge of Scotts Valley, near where Lockwood hits Graham Hill Road. Rode a mile and a half down G.H.R's bike-lane-less narrow shoulder, to that end of Pipeline Road. Then we could take Pipeline across the park (Henry Cowell) to park HQ. Some cops were driving on that end of the road, looking for a guy with a dog. We never got the story on why. We road through Roaring Camp, out to GHR, across to Conference Road, and then up through the Conference Center area, and along the landslide singletrack that connects over to Mount Hermon Road. Then it's a reasonably gentle climb back up Lockwood to GHR. Next up: tomorrow night, we head for Tuolomne Meadows to see whether we can get a permit for the 18-mile semiloop backpack from there to Vogelsang High Sierra Camp. Wish us luck.

West Cliff, Wilder, Bobcat

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 06:57:36 GMT

Got to take a bike ride Sunday. First time in way too long. My nephew Ben and I drove down to Bay, rode down to the Dream Inn, and all the way along West Cliff (got rained on a bit) to Fallen Arches Park, then out to Wilder and along the coast road/trail to the Fern Grotto. A couple of turns before the grotto, we saw a big bobcat out there. He was walking across the trail some 30 feet in front of us, and the only brush was a 20-foot-wide strip of low bushes between the trail and a plowed brussels-sprouts field. The cat walked to the other end of the brush, and then just held still (apparently hoping that we hadn't noticed it). We watched for two or three minutes, then rode on out to the grotto. On the way, we told a group of hikers to look for the cat. After clambering down to the beach and checking out the cave, we came back up and rode back towards park HQ. The hikers were clumped at the cat's spot, staring. It had made it farther away from the trail, and the people were just looking. One said that he thought it had caught something, because of the way its head was moving. The cat's tail was about six inches long, and it was amazing to look at, with tabby-like fur and black-and-white ear and tail markings. Way cool.

Rob and the Texas4000, More Puppies, and a touristy weekend

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 06:15:50 GMT

My long July 4th weekend was hectic: drove up to Grass Valley to pick up Henrike, saw a fun "American Music" performance by the Music in the Mountains orchestra, and returned on Tuesday. Then I turned around and drove back up to San Mateo, to meet my brother Tim, his wife Jorja, and their son Robert. Rob is 21 and is in the middle of the Coastal route of the Texas 4000 bicycle ride, raising money and awareness for the fight against cancer, while riding bicycles from Austin to Anchorage. Monday was the ride from Carmel to San Francisco (passing within ten miles of my home), and he had a day off in S.F. on Tuesday. It was great to see them, and to see how much Rob is enjoying the event -- surely something he'll remember vividly for the rest of his life. Tomorrow, they get a day off, in Redwood National Park. The reason that Deb and I had to be in G.V. and miss Rob's ride-by: last Thursday, Henrike had three puppies. All males; the biggest one is a Blenheim, and the others are tri-color like Henny, though little brown appears on them yet. Tim and Jo were in the area here for the rest of the week; we got together on Saturday to see some of the Santa Cruz tourist attractions -- rode the Roaring Camp steam train up into the redwoods, took the short stroll among Henry Cowell Park's old-growth grove, drove a bit up into UCSC, and spent some time out at Natural Bridges State Park. Fun day — I don't make a point of going and seeing those places as often as I'd like to.

Wilder Ride

Mon, 03 Nov 2003 06:57:48 GMT

A week ago, a friend was visiting; we took a nice MTB ride at Wilder Ranch and UCSC. It was almost too hot. Yesterday, there was plenty of ice on the table in my back yard. I spent most of the day putting new shingles on the roof of our small greenhouse. Many of the old ones had disintegrated. Got it done just in time: we're getting some real rain right now.

MTBlogs

Tue, 13 May 2003 07:20:54 GMT

Oops, most bloggers would probably think that MTBlogs is something about Movable Type, instead of mountain bikes. I guess I should spell it "MTB Blogs". Last year, I mentioned a few MTB-related weblog entries that I had found. (I am the secretary of MBOSC, the Mountain Bikers Of Santa Cruz.) Of the ones I mentioned last year:

Will Leshner has discontinued his weblog, though the UserLand archives still have a picture of his mountain bike.
The weblog for the trail in Wales is active.
It seems that I never put up the URL for the "Martin in Germany".
My weblogs are still active, though less than they were last year.

According to a posting from this past weekend, the author of code intensity appears to be a MTBer. I oughta fire up a Feedster search and make a list of the best of the results. One of these days ...

Cambria Coast Pix

Thu, 30 Jan 2003 08:11:59 GMT

[Macro error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "my_dmages" hasn't been defined.] /caT-EastWestRanch/Thumbnails/1.jpg" align=right alt="Jim and Deb"> I uploaded just ] /caT-EastWestRanch/">a few of the pix I took on our central coast sojourn this past weekend. Couldn't have asked for better weather in August, let alone January. On Saturday, Jim and I rode bikes up into San Simeon State Park and saw some cool birds that I mentioned a couple of days ago, and then rode on down to explore the East-West Ranch trail along the bluffs. Sunday, Deb and Jim and I made a (short) bike ride and (very nice) picnic out of the bluffs trail ride.
[Macro error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "my_dmages" hasn't been defined.] /caT-EastWestRanch/Thumbnails/3.jpg" align=left alt="Cool driftwood benches"> During/after the picnic on Sunday, we spotted an otter playing in the waves, but my 3x zoom wasn't really enough to get convincing photos of him. Plenty of Turkey Vultures, as usual, coasting along the updrafts at the edges of the cliffs, and pelicans coasting along the breaking waves, wingtips just inches away from the water.
I stopped in at Cambria Outfitters (one of the top two or three bicycle mail-order houses in the world), wandered around a bit, and one of the guys at the counter asked "Can we help you find something?" My answer: "Singletrack." He chuckled. Apparently there isn't much legal singletrack in the Cambria area. I did buy a MTB map of the area surrounding San Luis Obispo, though. MBOSC had SLO road trip plans last year, that fell through. Maybe armed with said map, we can make good on those plans, this year.

Trailwork: West Ridge Re-route

Wed, 22 Jan 2003 15:33:38 GMT

Sunday morning, I joined twenty other volunteers, to re-route around 200 yards of the West Ridge trail at Nisene Marks State Park. The section that we obliterated was severely eroded, with a whole series of ] /caN-WestRidge-ReRoute/Pages/Image5.html"> rooty drop-offs in a deeply bowled chute that was just getting deeper every winter wet season. ] /caN-WestRidge-ReRoute/"> Here are the photos I took: some trailwork, some mushrooms, and a puppy. I tried to be so careful, did not participate in the initial brush-cutting, removed shoes and other outerwear as soon as I got home (and left them outside), showered thoroughly, but I still ended up with a bit of poison oak on both forearms. Oh, well, at least it's a mild dose. I had never been on West Ridge trail before, as mountain bikes are prohibited from it and nearly all of my visits to that park are with my mountain bike. It sure is a beautiful trail, and would be a fun ride if we could get it opened to MTBs.

Caves at/near UCSC

Sat, 18 Jan 2003 06:18:21 GMT

I have heard about the caves on or near the UCSC campus for about 20 years. Never been there. They are in the upper part of Cave Gulch. The creek in Cave Gulch flows into Wilder Creek, and the infamous "Red Mailbox" MTB trail (now just called "Mailboxes" because the Red Mailbox itself got repainted with flowers), with its awesome "Granite Staircase" at the end, goes right down the ridge between the Cave Gulch creek and Wilder Creek. The bottom of Granite Staircase is just barely above the confluence of these two creeks. This link describes a fun, geology-oriented field trip around the UCSC campus.

Science vs "Use Bigotry"

Mon, 09 Dec 2002 07:50:05 GMT

This year, New Zealand's Gordon Cessford published another study comparing walkers with off-road cyclists.

"... most studies have concluded that while visibly very different, the physical impacts of bikes on tracks were not any worse than those of walkers overall." Walkers' opinions about off-road cyclists ... "are found to be more positive among those walkers who had actual encounters with bikes. By contrast, more negative opinions were found among those who had no such encounters. "

I wrote a bit more about this study and a few others, on my MTB impacts studies page, a part of the MTB section of my static site. The bottom line, as far as I'm concerned: in most cases, rules that prohibit bicycles from trails are based purely on prejudice, not on any science. This kind of unreasoned bias against some trail users (a.k.a. "use bigotry") often leads to unintended consequences. A few months ago, I mentioned some other subjects where laws backfire in similar ways.

The Dictionary of Mountain Biking Slang

Mon, 02 Dec 2002 06:58:00 GMT

I put together the early versions of This dictionary, and Jim Frost has maintained it for around 7 years. I have received many suggestions for additional terms to add, but various other priorities have prevented me from doing it justice. Maybe making this entry in my weblog will encourage me to collect those, write up reasonably amusing definitions, and post it in my own site.

Last 2002 Fall Colors Photos

Wed, 20 Nov 2002 08:17:20 GMT

] /bk5_LameFallColors/"> [Macro error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "my_dmages" hasn't been defined.] /bk5_LameFallColors/Thumbnails/0.jpg" align=right alt="Wisteria growing up into pine"> Here are the last few fall-color photos for the season. Even the wisteria leaves are yellow. It froze here last night. (Barely.) I still need to get in a few more mountain bike rides before it gets too wet out there. I put on new "egg-beater" clipless pedals and I haven't yet tried them out.

Riding with an IMBA Trail Care Crew

Tue, 23 Jul 2002 06:08:32 GMT

IMBA runs an interesting program, where they co-sponsor (along with Subaru) a couple of people as a "Trail Care Crew". ] /bgP_IMBATCC/Pages/Image1.html"> [Macro error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "my_images" hasn't been defined.] /bgP_IMBATCC/Thumbnails/1.jpg" align=right alt="The IMBA Trail Care Crew's Subaru"> The crew will go around the continent visiting local MTB clubs, working on trails, talking with the local club about what sorts of changes might be the most advisable, and riding around the area. One of the most memorable trail work days I've ever done was a few years ago, when the first IMBA Trail Care Crew, Mike and Jan Riter, came to Wilder Ranch and we studied Wagon Wheel Trail. Also present that day were Chuck Wisse (MBOSC's trail work coordinator for some years, and then later co-founded Trailworkers.com), and Bud McCrary, who (along with his wife Emma), designed and cut many of the trails in Wilder Ranch, and who have worked on roads and trails in this area for decades. Hearing these three folks describe the different possibilities for that trail was very educational for me. ] /bgP_IMBATCC/Pages/Image16.html"> [Macro error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "my_images" hasn't been defined.] /bgP_IMBATCC/Thumbnails/16.jpg" align=left alt="Riding up Twin Oaks Trail"> This past Sunday (21 July 2002), the current Canadian Trail Care Crew, Mark Schmidt and Lora Woolner, came out to visit. We studied some problems on Twin Oaks trail, Enchanted Loop, and rode back along the Ohlone Bluffs Trail. ] /bgP_IMBATCC/"> Here are some photos from the day, up until my camera's batteries started running out of juice. It stayed overcast later than usual, which kept it nice and cool. Great riding weather.

All-Terrain Skateboards

Mon, 15 Jul 2002 06:00:24 GMT

I've seen the "normal" off-road skateboards occasionally, at Wilder. They have knobby tires, five or six inches in diameter. This newer design has a teeny bit of suspension. I don't quite get what the extra four wheels buy you, though.
I think I'll stick with the mountain bike.

Fun at Boggs

Mon, 17 Jun 2002 02:20:28 GMT

Way fun trip to Bogg's. Perfect weather, great trails, great friends and fun. Trip up there on Friday afternoon took from 2:30 (Scotts Valley) to nearly 8 (but I stopped for dinner). Trip back, today, took from 2:30 to not quite six. Better traffic, no dinner. Went through SF both ways. Here are a few photos of the trip, with a minimal, caption-style trip report.

John Muir Quote

Fri, 14 Jun 2002 07:42:25 GMT

The Sierra Club has HTML versions of all of Muir's writings, in full. But there's a quotations page, and one of the ones that they chose to pick out by itself was, ironically, this:

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
-- My First Summer in the Sierra , 1911, page 110.

Well, I thought it was ironic, anyway. I was actually looking for this one:

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drip off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature's sources never fail.

Off to Boggs Mountain.

Carrot Fest IV

Sun, 09 Jun 2002 19:41:12 GMT

I went to the Carrot Fest yesterday, to feed some carrots to some horses. Rode the lower loop in Wilder, and took some photos. I'll clean up the surrounding HTML one of these days, but ] /bf8-CarrotFest"> here is the raw version. Later: I did clean up the HTML. I wrote a Python tool to make next/previous links. Still later: this event is co-sponsored by MBOSC, the Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz ... http://www.mbosc.org and by SCCHA, the Santa Cruz County Horsemen's Association ... see http://members.cruzio.com/~candg/SCCHA_Webpage.htm

Bogg's Mountain

Sun, 05 May 2002 08:30:55 GMT

State Demonstration Forest. Nice place to camp, surrounded by a fair amount of pretty fun singletrack. I'm planning a weekend trip there in June.

Another blogger with a MTB

Mon, 08 Apr 2002 19:28:47 GMT

No permalinks, but Martin's 30 March entry has picture of the MTB Martin's planning to buy. So, to add it to ] /2002/02/28.html#a46"> my short list:

] ">me, in Santa Cruz County;
Will Leshner in SoCal, I think;
a new trail in Wales ; and
Martin in Germany

DST Asymmetry Reminder

Mon, 08 Apr 2002 04:23:45 GMT

It's April: time for my annual reminder about the asymmetry of daylight savings time. If you've seen this before, well, here's a reminder. The summary: Daylight Savings Time is not symmetrical around the solar calendar -- it does not "surround" the days of longest light as one might expect if one hasn't thought about it. So if you like to do outdoors stuff (e.g., hiking or mountain-bike riding) while it's light out, especially mid-week after work, the time to get started with that sort of outdoors stuff is NOW. Some details: If we were to start DST at the spring equinox and end it at the autumn equinox, then it would be close to symmetric in the sense I'm talking about. Around the day we spring ahead into daylight savings time, sunset would change from being (say) 6:30 to being 7:30; and the day we fall back to winter time, it would go from 7:30 to 6:30. But we don't do the DST changes until some time after the equinoxes. We spring ahead in early April, roughly 11 to 18 days after the spring equinox, and we fall back in early October, somewhere around two weeks after the fall equinox. This means that it's lighter later into each day at the start of DST than it is at the end. In fact, a little bit of trigonometry (or some actual observation) will tell you that the equinoxes are the times of the fastest change in the days' lengths, so it's lighter a lot later at the start of DST than at the end. Around here (San Francisco Bay Area), the springtime change this year made our notion of sunset change from 6:30pm to 7:30pm. So it's already worth getting out for a short (~90-minute) hike or ride after work even if you have to work until 6:00pm. By contrast, the autumn change around here usually seems to make our label for "sunset-time" change from about 6:00pm to 5:00pm or so. That's an hour and a half difference, compared to the springtime change. It generally means that despite the usually dry autumn weather we get, those of us who have to work until 6:00pm or later have few choices by October -- learn to like riding with lights (and to find places where it's legal), or stick to riding or hiking only on weekends, "hookey" weekdays, or long "lunch"es. Bottom line: For those of us for whom snow is not an issue, the dry parts of April are the time to start those after work hikes or rides (except for El Niño years, whose Aprils have no dry parts).

MTB Weblogs

Thu, 28 Feb 2002 10:42:11 GMT

MTB weblogs A couple of years ago, I created an "ed itt hisp age" site for mountain biking , though I didn't get many chances to keep it current. Now I start seeing a few other spots where weblogs mention mountain biking -- Will Leshner (thanks for the kind words), and an MTB trail being built in Wales . It's a start... Note the odd spacing in "ed itt hisp age" above. I tried two other ways to spell that, with my own HTML brackets <a href=...> and </a> around the linking text. But Radio has its own idea of what you mean to link to if you happen to use the word e*itthispage either as one word (it links to www.editthispage.com) or if you space it out at the word boundaries (it links to a DaveNet piece). Weird weird weird. later: Weirder yet, a small test of this weirdness doesn't manage to exhibit the behavior at all. Was it cosmic rays? MUCH later: It was Radio's "shortcuts", i.e., text macro/abbreviations. All you have to do to get normal quotes is to escape them with backslashes. Of course, you first have to notice that you've accidentally run into one.

Bay Area MTB Summit

Mon, 25 Feb 2002 06:57:23 GMT

The MTB summit Dave B. and I went to San Leandro to meet with mountain bike advocate groups from all around the SF Bay. Among them were:

Dave & I were representing MBOSC from Santa Cruz;
Henry Pastorelli from the South Bay's ROMP (the oldest MTB advocacy organization in the country);
the Bike Trails Council -- East Bay (second oldest...);
the EBRPD's MTB patrol;
two groups from Marin County (BTCM and Access4Bikes);
IMBA

Productive meeting. We're all facing similar kinds of challenges and could benefit from better communication and cooperation at the regional level, not just with other MTB organizations, but with other shared use advocates like the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council.