This past weekend, I spent a couple hours riding at Day Pond State Park, which has a decent assortment of rocks that are suitable for trials riding. I pushed myself a little bit outside of my comfort zone with some of the lines. While I didn’t ‘clean’ all of them, Read more…
We’ve had snow on the ground for the entire month of February, so the trials riding options have been somewhat limited. The driveway has been either frozen and snowy or mucky, and the pallets covered with snow. There has been several inches to a foot of snow in the yard. Read more…
Over the past several trials rides, I have been trying to improve my rear wheel hops on extremely uneven surfaces, like bumpy rocks. For the past 2 weekends, I’ve practiced by riding on rocks at the park down nearby. It’s not the best riding on the planet, but there are Read more…
After my new Crank Brothers Stamp 7 pedals arrived, I swapped them out with the stock “cage” pedals that came with my Echo Mark V trials bike. Of course after swapping the pedals, it was time to try them out! Day Pond State Park is not too far from my Read more…
According to my habit tracker app, I hadn’t ridden my trials bike in almost a month due to health issues. This week I’m finally back on my bike. Whatever was plaguing me (it wasn’t COVID-19, thankfully), it kicked my ass. I didn’t even dare trying to ride since I felt Read more…
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic (among other things), 2020 has been a bit of a train wreck. Normally our ‘local’ group of trials riders would have at least one formal trials biking competition every fall, in addition to the weekly group rides. In addition to the formal competition, for the Read more…
I’ve heard it said that you should do something every day that scares you a little bit. Not stupid, dangerous stuff, mind you, but activities that push you outside your comfort zone. While I certainly don’t accomplish this on a daily basis, I do try to make it a habit. Read more…
Whether in trials biking, mountain biking, or numerous other things in life, improving your skills requires overcoming fear. Or more accurately, pushing through the fear. In general, a good practice is to take incremental steps that might be scary and push you a bit, but that are not so far Read more…
Sometimes the little things in life can leave a strong impression. After our group trials ride this past week, a chicken came out of the trails and into the parking area to visit our crew. After a few minutes, it came right over to us and visited each of us Read more…
My trials biking abilities seem to have plateaued. Progressing my abilities and learning new moves has been somewhat elusive. While there are several factors involved, one fairly important cause is that I need to move past my fear of crashing so I can actually try new moves and bump existing Read more…
