Barry

One week certainly isn't too long. But you may also consider taking the day to make the fairly short drive (< 1.5 hour, I think) to Fruita for the Kokopelli Area's Horsethief Bench and other trails. And while in Moab, don't forget Bartlet's Wash. It'll be a short, but fun ride. Do it on a recovery day.

Good point that it's repairable. I've had 2 steel frames break. One I had a friend repair (an old Jenson house brand, Zion), and one was simply replaced by the manufacture (Motobecane/Bikes Direct) since it was during the 7 year warranty. Good call going with Reynolds 725 as well. Both my steel frames have been 4130.

This is crazy cheap for a custom frame. For a person who doesn't break frames this would be a good deal. But a 6 month warranty is a non starter for me, unfortunately.

So doing everything once yields me about 20-21 miles now. Maybe 22 miles when all of Peddlers Pass and Mulligan dries up. I think the only thing I've never bothered to add is The Peddler's bike shop out-n- back. For anyone who's ridden that bit, is it a worth while addition given the neighborhood spin to get to it? It looks like the trail portion is almost 2 miles, and the road spin is only about 1 miles. So my total ride would work out to be maybe 26 miles.

They're a little hard to come by for free, that's for sure. And even harder to come by if it's an obscure bike. Take the RM Thunderbolt for example. Bicycle World promised they'd get me one in at the start of the year for a demo, but I only heard crickets. And now the time for me to demo has come and gone.

It seems like the morning wetness comes and goes every day. If I'm able to, I'll get over there for an exploratory ride this evening. Worst case scenario is that turns into a connector trail and concrete spin.

Good call.

Trail Forks shows a little under 3 miles of singletrack that it says is for biking and describes as technical.

I think this has a decent shot at making GG huge in the industry. Hopefully the launch goes off without too many issues. Congrats to them for the innovation all the way around--I love the modular front triangle idea. Funny that this announcement came out the day after I picked up my new bike, but I'll have to retroactively add them to my big 2019 list to see if I missed out on the perfect geometry bike. Edit: And the biggest news?? They fixed their stoopid high stand-over!

Deception proper was in good shape last night other than a couple or so spots on 1/4 Notch. I don't recall any mud at all on Double Down. But damn that rock was slippery. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

That's really good production value and a fun watch. No wonder my R37 wheels didn't ship with my 5010, their wheel builder department manager is too busy making videos. Here is a less singy/dancy videos from Bike Rumor that shows a detailed factory tour.

I live just north of WC, so when I do this loop I go all the way to Howard Ln. It isn't great getting there, but Howard has a decent bike path. https://www.strava.com/activities/2012876596

Certainly not "other-worldly," but more like..."post-apocalyptic." And I largely agree with your assessment. But I have made the special trip out there several times just to ride when the Austin local trails were getting rain and SA area was not.

Thanks for all the feedback. We are super excited about the trip! Dry lube and skinny tires it is. I may indeed need to check with those guys about Bear's Best. Trail Forks shows some trails as being closed. And the maps website that @GFisher posted, shows all of Bear's Best as being closed. It says:

@Hakalugi Thanks again for your help so far. We fly out Wednesday night, so I looking for some last minute advice. Tires: What's the sand trap situation? @Jessica has her 2.2" 29er tires and her 2.8" 27.5 Rekons as options. If there are lots of sandtraps, may be that the 2.8s are the way to go. Surely you just ran skinny 29ers as usual though. Chain Lube. I have used ProLink for 13 years, and it has served me well all but one situation. I've used it all over the country and all over Texas to good success, including Big Bend and El Paso. Only that red dirt in Palo Duro caused me problems. I only get about 5 miles in, and the grinding starts once the chain picks up the red dust. Next time I visit PD, I'm going to try a dry, waxy lube. I have some FinishLine Dry that may work out better. So for LV, should I expect Big Bend type of sand/dirt, or Palo Duro type of sand/dirt? Stick with my trusty wet lube, or go with a dry lube? It's hard to not consider world-class trails when you're so close. So indeed I think we're looking to spend one afternoon in the St. George area. Perhaps Goosberry. But it's all weather dependent. We don't want to go out there for a freezing cold ride, or find snow when we're planning on highs in the low 60s. The weather looks to be slightly colder than LV, but not terribly so. Are any of these trails high country/seasonal?

We also have no interest in gambling. We may spend $10 as a novelty one night. I drive a lot for biking. A lot. But I think I have a 13 hour hard limit. I plan to drive to Chattanooga next month, for example, but LV was out of the question too far. No package deals, but yes, we got direct flights through Frontier. I used Google flights to select the airline, but then actually got them on the Frontier site. If you plan far enough out, and are flexible, you could likely get tickets with Frontier for under $100 each way. Our flights to LV were only about $55 each. But our return flights were in the $170 range. One thing about Frontier is that the bike travel fee is $75 per bike per flight. And you can pack up to 99 pounds in the bike box for that price. Frontier is one of the better airlines in this regard, and priced the same as Southwest. At $50 per way, JetBlue is still the best for bikes, while Delta, United and American all have the GFYS pricing of $150 per bike per way. We got a minivan through Priceline, and a decent casino hotel right downtown through Groupon. One thing to be careful about with hotel pricing though...we kept finding decent deals, only to have an extra $50-100 placed on the daily rate at checkout--this happened over and over with Priceline. "Resort fees" or some such, it was calling it. Finally Groupon didn't seem to have those fees, at least for the hotel we found. And at $10/day, I don't see a reason to buy bike boxes with BSS renting them out so cheap. I think if you plan far enough out (which we didn't do), use Airbnb for a room (which we didn't do), pack your clothes in the bike box (we'll do some of that), and get a minivan, an individual could do a 4-5 night Vegas Vacation with rental boxes for about $650, and 2 folks could do it for about $900.

There have been a few very brief showers around the EB area, but now it looks like no persistent rain until very late... and maybe not at all if my radar-fu us working.

Given the very likely rain today and tonight, it does seem that Walnut will be out of the question. So as long as the rain doesn't get crazy, an EB(light) with a truncated GB and no Walnut would be the most prudent option, I suppose. @TAF, how late today do you think the call will be made? The real rain doesn't even start until 3 or 4, so it seems like a fairly late call.

So yeah, @Jessica and I are booked for Vegas for bike (and other non-gambling) fun from Jan 24 to 28. We should get 4 good days of riding, and maybe even a 5th Monday AM ride out of the deal. Certainly we're going to depend heavily on Trail Forks and Project MTB, but if anyone else has some knowledge out there (trails or food), then it woudl be greatly appreciated. So how about it, @Hakalugi, any pointers here? I'm going to dig through your Strava for some ideas. Is there anything else withing about 1.5 to 2 hours drive that are must-hits while in the area, or are there plenty of trails in town? And what isn't worthwhile and we should just skip?

Not going to make it, but Taco Flats is great. To anyone who enjoys a whisky sour and a peaty malt, I highly recommend their La Dosis. It is spectacular. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

Think I'll skip any R&I plans and look forward to a Thursday Oskar Blues ride at Walnut. It should be reasonable for one day on Thursday before Friday's downpour.

One thing I forgot to add about Franklin Mountains...my favorite trail there was the short Mule Shoe Loop. this is a short and very technical and fun trail that reminded me of RPR. Much of the trail is on conglomerate rock. It's a really good time.

Okay, I've been twice now, and I can say for certain that Franklin Mountains has some really great trails. The singletrack is a good mix of both fast and technical trails. I'd put it about on par with some of what you'll find on Big Bend's Dome and Fresno Divide trails. And the more technical bits kind of reminded my of Reveille. I've put it together in 2 different ways, once including Mundy's Gap, and once without Mundy's Gap. Both area really great options, and if you're going to be there for multiple days, I'd suggest doing Mundy's Gap at least once. Pretty much the entirely of both of those rides is singletrack with the exception of a few short connections, and Mundy's Gap. Mundy's is basically a VERY old road that is effectively loose cobble grinding up for almost exactly 1000ft, after climbing up singletrack for 600ft, And that overall 1600 ft is gained in just 7 miles. There are quite a few other trail systems out there, but the only other ride I've yet done is the Sierra Vista Trail. This is some really great desert singletrack, so long as you skip the southern 15 miles of "trail." The first 7 miles is an okay but beautiful gravel grind...but that is followed by followed by 6 miles of horrific sand and unmarked trail. Much of the "trail" and the wilderness looked the same. Massive sections are simply washed away. Much of the time I was just frustratingly navigating. It took about two hours to go those 6 miles. But then it opens up into really great trail. So, I suggest bypassing all of that nonsense. Drive up highway 10 into NM, and then travel east on 227 until you intersect the trail. Park there, and ride north. That will give you about 15 miles north of very gentle climbing, with the option of hooking up many more miles of trail once you get to the other end. And then you get a very fun fast slight downhill back to the parking spot. I had been told that El Paso was a shit-hole, but I didn't see any evidence of that that. Maybe by Texas standards, but perhaps the person who told me that hasn't been to many places in the northeast. We didn't try a lot of restaurants, but I can say that Leo's Mexican has crazy good shredded beef crunchy tacos. And as you leave town, do yourself the favor and go eat at Cattleman's Steakhouse. I don't want to say much about this one...you should experience it for yourself. But it isn't overly expensive for the quality. The steak is every bit as good as Perry's or Ruth's Chris, but way less expensive.

They keep their Facespace updated. They are open tomorrow. Personally as much as I love it, I'm RPR'd out at the moment. Luckily FRR's 2019 opening day is tomorrow! And Jimmy reports (Facespace again) that they had no significant rain yesterday and the trails are in great shape.

I do tend to push things to failure...or close to it. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk