Mtbthebruce.com

I stumbled on the website mtbthebruce.com a little while ago and was pleasantly surprised to discover mountain biking has come to my old stomping grounds. With five different sites to choose from, how could we not bring bikes home for the weekend?


G and I packed up a couple rigs and headed to Port Elgin Friday night. Found a second wind and ended up staying out a little too late, and drinking a little too much. But what would Saturday be if it didn't come with a hangover? We took our hangovers to Brant Tract to ride them out.


Double Track at Brant Tract

The temperature was perfectly crispy, the trails were nice and tacky, although wet and muddy in some places. We did a nice two hour ride through fall colours and sunshine, even stopping to help out another rider with a flat. The trails were all named, extremely well marked and just challenging enough, with lots of flow. I'd feel comfortable bringing mountain bikers of any level there. My favourite part of Brant was the teeter totter at the trailhead. Thus cured of hangovers, we made merry for another festive night.

Sunday, we decided to take the bikes out again, this time to the beach at Port Elgin and a lap around town riding curbs, stairs, parking barriers and other assorted skinnies. What a great time of year: no need to worry about "training hours" or "intervals;" just spend time goofing around with your favourite people and your favourite toys.


G gets rad at the beach

Besides riding, we spent a glorious three days eating my mom's amazing cooking, nature walking at MacGregor Point Provincial Park, and visiting with family and friends. Weekends like that remind me I've got tons to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Decompress: A day at Hardwood

Racing takes up so much time and energy that sometimes I forget how much fun just going out for a ride can be. Thanks to Jeff at Dropmachine.com and Giant Bicycles, I had a bike suitable for G to test out. No stranger to action sports, G picked up the way of the mountain bike in no time at all. I had some payback to dole out for the adventures he treated me to out west but try as I might, there were no trails at Hardwood Hills I could get him to shake his head at.

Typical male, he blamed the equipment. I have the Giant Trance X1 for a couple days in order to add my input for an upcoming review. And after the runs I put on it, I can safely agree that this bike will give even a first-timer like my boyfriend the confidence to point down into some pretty gnarly trails. It felt solid in the rough, and nimble in the tight with tons of adjustability in the controls to make sure that any rider can grab the perfect fit.

Our first lap was on the Trek-Toronto Canada Cup course set to be raced next weekend. Compared to the gnar of Tremblant, I was pleasantly surprised at how much more mellow Hardwood is technically. However, it's important not be fooled because although not as rough, Hardwood has a sneaky kind of technical quality in that your momentum is a very fragile thing. Touch the brakes for an instant, dab or screw up your gearing and you'll find you've lost your momentum and it's tough to get it back again. So it's a course designed for finesse and fitness with some decidely tricky bits thrown in for fun.

The start is wide open — a ton of room for a hammerfest of pedalling. The infamous "Boneshaker" was of course included but I was surprised (happy!) to discover that "the Grunt" seciton on "Radical" is not. The course is estimated at 9km so we'll do four of those come Sunday.

After that, I took G on "Serious" but since he'd done so well on the challenging Canada Cup Course, we quickly bored of "Serious" and moved onto "Gnarly". G greased all the bridges and skinnies, he fearlessly dropped into the roots and the rocks and even cleaned a section that I shied away from. Oh yeah, and then he offered me tips on how to bunny hop with flats — a skill he seemed to pull out of his sleeve in a matter of two seconds messing around in the parking lot. A natural! He's a devoted snowboarder/skateboarder so I doubt I'll ever win him over to the dark side entirely, but it was a great day spent together out of the city, in the fresh air and sunshine. He took to it so naturally hopefully he won't hesitate if I invite him for a ride again.

With the afternoon slipping away, we headed back to the city. It didn't take me long to crash right out. All in all, it was a pretty long weekend. But definitely well spent.

Happy Trails!