mechBgon's ride reports, March 5th/6th

I hope a lot of you got a chance to ride this weekend? The days are getting longer, and the high temperatures are creeping upwards. Here's my quick ride report for the weekend:

Saturday's weather forecast looked encouraging, so I met up with Shawn Letson of Emde, and we rode on out to Spangle via Highway 195...

...where we met up with Chad, Alan and Ron from Spokane Rocket Velo. Alan and Chad were racing the time trial down in Lewiston the next day, so Chad was rockin' aero bars, and Alan had a full-on TT bike, which they were giving a pre-race shakedown. As if these guys weren't fast enough already...

The five of us rode the Liberty road-racing course, first used last year. This year, Liberty is the opening race of the Inland Road Race Series, presented by Larry H. Miller Lexus, and I liked the route. Between the round-trip ride to Spangle, and a feisty lap around the race course, Shawn and I bagged 67 miles and 2400ft of ascent, which was about all my legs could take at this point in the season. But what doesn't kill you... yeah☺

I also got a chance to try out my new ContourHD 1080p bike cam. Just before heading out, I'd installed the optional Garmin speed/cadence pickup, but the spoke magnet kept sneaking out of place, so if you see some anomolous speed readings in the video, that's what's up. The wattage meter's stuck at zero because I don't have a PowerTap, SRM or other power instrumentation. The data overlay is done using DashWare. I'm still getting the hang of it.
For higher quality, click "720p" at the bottom of the video after playback starts. This is video shot at 720p resolution and LOW quality. I've got a higher-capacity memory card on the way so I can try out the higher-quality modes and full 1080p resolution without running out of recording time.


On Sunday, Ron and I went for an XC mountain-bike ride at the South Hill bluff. Good news for the XC crew! There was a bit of mud and residual snow & ice, but the Bluff is quite rideable. Ron's an excellent Masters road rider who's just starting to try out XC, but he was game for everything that came at him☺We chalked up another 17 miles and 1600ft of ascent.
I took the Contour camera along again, and shot some video (below) for those of you who are interested in current Bluff conditions, or who've never been down there. Next thing on the agenda is to rig up a frame mount for the camera, so it doesn't turn with the bars. Stay tuned!


For higher quality, click "720p" at the bottom of the video after playback starts

I'm thinking about setting up a weekly XC-training ride in the evening, so give a holler in the Comments if you'd be interested (and not just the Bluff; once Riverside's snowpack melts, we can train there too). Daylight Saving Time's changing next weekend, but lights would still be needed for a while. This would be towards the pain-is-good-for-us end of the spectrum, not casual stop-&-go. ;)