Laurel Highlands 50 and Coopers Rocks

Don Powers asked if I wanted to ride on the mountain. I wanted to.

Don Powers mapped out a route that strung together every long painful climb in the Laurel Mountain area. I wanted to kill Don Powers.

I felt good for the first couple climbs, then my back started to lock up. It just wasn't ready to grind up that many miles of steep dirt.

Over on the Laurel Mountain side of the mountain parts of the fire road were still frozen.


We rode across on Beam Run Trail, which is just another fire road, then hit all the rocky single track through Black Bear, Wolf Rocks, and Fish Run.

I was eating vegan cookies and granola bars that I pilfered from Colleen. For some reason, they weren't doing shit for my energy levels. I'm done with sawdust and cranberries on long bike rides.

After beating ourselves to death on ten miles of rock gardens, Don insisted that we ride the whole way down the mountain.

Then we rode the whole way back up. Something in my lower back felt like it was going to rupture every time I turned the pedals over.

Don will probably want me to mention that I was tired in the last ten miles. So there. I mentioned it.

When we finally got back to the cars I drove straight to the Pie Shop and bought two cherry turnovers and a Starbucks bottled sugar coffee thing.

The next day we headed to Coopers Rock in WV for an easy ride with a hunchback and some other people.


I brought two king sized Twix Bars and some Reese's Cups and felt great all day. That proves that processed sugar garbage is superior to processed soy garbage for bike riding.

Coopers has a really nice network of trails. I'll have to hit that place more this year.

I was keeping my camera in a plastic bag (I'm very open to clever dry-camera suggestions), so it was a pain in the ass take pictures. I did a bad job of documenting the ride. But there were nice views:


Some standing and shin welts:


And dirty dirt:


We went to Burger King afterwards. Everybody ate some floppy little slabs of meat. Mine had two miserable slices of bacon. Don was very proud of consuming three double cheese burgers. I was very grossed out.

promiscuous nissan jukes and rotten couches

I was listening to the skatilites on Pandora and going about my rat killing watching a ball python kill a rat, when the music stopped for an ad.


We put a turbo in the Nissan Juke so you can be as promiscuous with the ladies as you are with your music!

I have a number of problems with this.

I've never met a girl that was impressed out of her pants by car, let alone a Japanese economy suv thing.

I don't appreciate that google tracks my every move on line, knows that I'm a young male, knows I like stupid looking cars, and knows that I have casual sex with my Pandora stations.

And lastly, putting a turbo in a car that looks like a retarded manatee trapped inside a Sketchers Shape-Up is not going to allow me to have "sexual relations with a number of partners on a casual basis."

Unless I can find a girl that's really turned on by sea-life and bad tennis shoes.

I did ride my bike yesterday, and I was going to come on here today and talk about how great it is to be a mountain biker in Western PA.

Then I ran into a branch that forced it's way up my nasal passage and made contact with my brain, killing the area that allows me to love Pennsylvania.

So here's my ride. There was a decayed couch. Yellow and orange shot gun shells. Slag heaps. An empty case of Keystone Lite. And some muddy ATV trails.

shoeing the snow

There's been too much snow on the trails to ride, so Colleen and I have been trying to find something else to do. Bananagrams was cool for a while, but the games always degenerated into fights over the validity of words like "zangs." But at least we haven't resorted to mixing downers and trying to burn down the house.

Today we went down to our place of summer employment in Ohiopyle and rented some snowshoes.


We started on the falls side of the Fern Cliff Peninsula and hiked around the loop. The sun was out for the first time in days. Place is pretty in the winter.





Then we found a little rodent thing on the trail:

Rat dogs aside, snowshoeing was fun. It's not as hard as I thought it would be, although some of us had trouble with the big rocks:


More exciting news about the new official Knobby Meats Racing Conglomerate transport machine next week. It doesn't look like this, but I would be lying if I said I didn't consider it:

the great coming of the blizzard of 2010

At work on Saturday night, Mike and I were making fun of the severe looking blondes on CNN. The headline "Northeast braces for massive snowstorm" flashed under the image of a grown man trying to roll a snowball in a light dusting. "Ohh merciful heavens..the world is ending. We better start bracing." At the time there was only a few inches outside the cafe.

When we shut the place down and parted ways, there was a little more of the slippy stuff. Rt 30 was covered in about 3 inches of packed powder and cars were inching along. The road felt like a snowmobile trail.

Once I got back into town, I went home and exchanged the cross bicycle for the mountain, and rode back out to watch people struggle to get their cars up hills. Anything without all wheel drive was completely immobilized. I watched a spinning and sliding 18 wheeler, a Cadillac, and a lowered Honda that was fantastic at making noise, but not so good at moving forward. There were a few handfuls of people out on the sidewalks that apparently just gave up on their cars.


I rode home and went to bed, and over night the storm did its best to prove the CNN reporters right:

Pretty eh? Too bad it all needed to be shoveled.

The Grumbler is one of the few motor vehicles that would have been capable of driving on Sunday, but it decided to break a few days ago. So I left it buried:

(thanks Grumbler. I'm glad I can depend on you.)

After moving a few tons of snow, I slammed my helmet on, grabbed the florescent death machine of doom, and struck out for the lady bear's house. I didn't get 20 feet from my door before someone yelled the first of many good natured comments "Hey! Ya got them winter tires on today!"

I find it interesting that crazier I seem, the friendlier people are. If I were riding the same bike on a nice day, they would think I was a jackass and try to run me over. But when I ride in heavy snow, or ride a unicycle, people love me. I guess it's like a little show for them.

As I rode, the shouts of encouragement continued.

"Hey! Got them snow chains on today!"

"Grug. You get some extra credit today."

Oh man... there's something wrong with your head."

"You've got the best transportation out there today!"