superman attacks...

went up to avalon saturday with tommy and a couple of his friends... a great day of riding around the park without taking ourselves to seriously. this is the first ride in a while where i haven't had workout goals at least in the back of my mind.

broke out the tracer for the ride, which i hadn't ridden since my dnf at the schwenksville race back in march. the bushings in the shock needed to be replaced and i finally got the replacement bushings, reducers and tool that i ordered on friday so i swapped out the bushing after work and put a set of big intense system 4 cross country tires that i used to use all the time.

the bike and tires felt great for the first half of the ride on the sometimes flowy, sometimes technical patapsco downhills and they were hooking up well on the climbs. i took a little while to readjusting to the tracer after riding the epic all summer. where the epic is fast, twitchy, and jumpy the tracer likes to stick to the ground and flow through whatever it come up on.

when we went over to the howard county side of the park my troubles started... following tommy into a hard right turn my front wheel broke loose and i went over the bars, taking most of the impact on my right knee, and putting a pretty good gash in it. a little while later, following tommy down a long fast downhill i overcooked a left turn and my tire broke away in the sandy soil and i supermaned over the bars... then exactly the same 5 minutes later.

part of the problem was probably riding trails that i only faintly know faster than i should, but i think these tires are coming off the bike... i might put a set of big motoraptors on or try out some of the 2.3 nokian nbx's that they've got in the shop. the intense system 4's would probably be good winter tires when the trails have a tack to them, but they didn't handle the sandy and loose conditions we've got right now. a day of rain would be a good thing right now.