Whole Other Sport

Two weekends ago I went up to Tahoe to do some mountain biking with Jesse. The first day we did a standard cross-country route near Castle Peak but the second day we decided to try out ski resort mountain biking at Northstar. When we got there it looked like we were way out of our league. Everyone had heavy bikes with lots of travel and were wearing elbow/forearm guards, shin/knee guards, full face helmets, and some even had back and chest plates with shoulder protectors. This was a whole other sport: downhill mountain biking.

Jesse already had some body armor so I bought some myself since it seemed like it might be necessary and I was very happy to have it. Ski resort mountain biking has the same concept as the winter version, you take a ski lift to the top and come down. The potential for injury seemed much greater on a bike, though. The first thing we tried was a trail called Limewire and right away we had to ride off the end of a log with a three-foot drop just to start it. After that it was just a trail for getting lots of air with table top jump after jump. It wasn't really our style and it definitely felt like our bikes were not made for that kind of thing.

We did find some other trails that were more like what we were used to. The trails were rated like ski runs: blue, black diamond, and double-black diamond. The single black diamond trails seemed to be where we were the most comfortable and although they had some exciting parts, everything was doable for us. We did get on some double-black diamond trails and although they looked possible, I felt like I would have wanted a full face helmet and a bike with some more travel. I consider myself a fairly advanced mountain biker but the double-black diamonds at Northstar showed me another level that I'm not sure I want to work up to.

The parts that I actually enjoyed most were called Skill Development Areas, which had narrow logs with drops at the ends, teeter-totters, and raised platforms with sharp turns. There was even a huge boulder with a flat face on which they had built approach and descent ramps so you could ride up the side of it and back down. These kind of things appealed to the juggler side of me that enjoys walking on ropes and other balancy things. I wish there more of these kind of things around here. Maybe I'll have to join one of the local trail-building groups and encourage the construction of more skill development areas.


Sending the bikes up ahead of us.


Me in my new gear.


Skill Development Area


Me riding the boulder.

Sausalito Steel Post

I wrote an entry last year about a potential catastrophic failure of a building in El Sobrante and since those are probably the more interesting things to read about, I'm posting another potential failure I saw earlier this week. This one is in Sausalito and I'm sure the house is easily worth over a million dollars just because of the view.



This house is on a hill and the rear portion, as well as a cantilevered deck, are supported on steel beams and posts. There are three 6"x6" I-shaped posts along the back wall, one at each corner and one in the middle. When I was out there watching a footing being poured I noticed that one of the corner posts had some serious corrosion at the base due to rust. It had eaten through a good portion of the steel and it looked like it wouldn't take much to break it loose, i.e. a good shake from a 6.5 earthquake maybe.




It can be hard to judge what would happen when you take out a key support piece since other members can take over, but in this case it looked like a good portion of that corner would collapse and possibly take out part of the house next to it on its way down. Luckily they're doing work down in that area so it was noticed and will be taken care of, but this is one of those things that might not be paid attention to otherwise. A few more years of neglect could have resulted in something quite disastrous.