Day three in Moab was just a ride on our way out of town to go back home.  He went to the Top of the World trail.  Again, the road to the trailhead was an adventure.  Last time I was in Moab, we had Steve's convertible and stopped driving before we reached the real trail head.

Posted @ 11/16/2007 11:05:00 AM | 0 comments

Day two in Moab (AKA vacation day 3) was spent riding probably the most famous trail in the area, Slickrock.  It was a lot of fun to ride and did some things that I didn't think I could ever do.  There were some very strong winds.  I would say from 20 - 40 MPH.  The wind was blowing in your fact uphill and trying come from the sides trying to blow you over on the downhills.

Posted @ 11/16/2007 10:58:00 AM | 0 comments

So our first day in Moab was really the afternoon of the second day of our trip.  We did a morning ride in Fruita, drove to Moab and got settled in while we waited for Sam to join us.  We ended up doing a ride at Bartlett Wash.  It was so much a ride as a lot of goofing off on slickrock.  Steve described it as a giant slickrock playground.  I think there might be a trail but we didn't go that far as daylight was disappearing on us.  One note for anyone thinking of going there, the road to the trail head is a bit of an adventure.  I was definitely happy that I had my Pilot and not some sedan.  I would highly recommend that you have AWD or 4WD.  There were quite a few spots where the sand was really bad and presented opportunities to get stuck.

Posted @ 11/16/2007 10:36:00 AM | 0 comments

Day 2 in Fruita was a short and sweet day.  We wanted to get more riding done in Fruita but we also needed to get to Moab to meet Singlespeed's friend Sam and try to get an afternoon ride in there as well.  We decide to ride Horsethief Bench (as it was a shorter ride) and we were not disappointed.  This trail was a lot of fun, very beautiful, and a lot of fun, and a kick in the pants to ride.

Cool rocks along the Colorado River.

Awesome views!

The boys (Shane, Singlespeed, and Steve).

Steve took this photo of Shane, Dave, and me.

Another photo by Steve.

Turn on the camera timer and see how it turns out.

Posted @ 11/08/2007 09:22:00 AM | 0 comments

I am not sure if I determined the source of my problem posting blog entries with a lot of photos or not.  As I posted earlier today, any blog entries that I have tried which contained a large amount of data had been failing.  I just tried to post another large entry and it failed again.  I figured out that was because one of the accounts I was using for my online storage has not been upgraded from the original 25MB of storage to the the new 1GB of storage.  So I re-pointed my blog to copy the photos to another account that has room and it worked like a champ.  I guess I need to either update everything to use the storage on my main account, or be patient with Comcast while they finish upgrading the storage space on my secondary accounts.

Now the only I thing that I still need to resolve is to find a good backup solution for my blog so I don't lose any more entries in the future.  Anybody know of a good tool that will backup a web site?  Basically I need to copy anything hosted on my Comcast site to my local box.  I could probably whip this up without too much trouble, but I'm one for saving time and not reinventing the wheel to would prefer to use something that is already out that.

Posted @ 11/07/2007 01:38:00 PM | 0 comments

At the end of September I went mountain biking in Fruita and Moab with three friends and a friend of a friend.  We headed to Fruita on a Thursday morning so got there in plenty of time to get an afternoon ride in before the sun went down.  We started out riding up Prime Cut over and down Joe's Ridge.  We then went back up Prime Cut and over and down Chutes and Ladders.  Two very fun loops.  At this point, Singlespeed Dave, Steve, and I relaxed with some adult beverages while Insane Shane did another loop.

The view going up Prime Cut.  If you can't tell, there isn't any shade to be found.

  Steve and Singlespeed coming down the start of Joe's Ridge.

Another view of Joe's Ridge.

A view from the Ridge looking west.

Steve, Shane, and Singlespeed from left to right.

A cool view looking down the heart of Joe's Ridge.

Steve coming up a steep climb on Joe's Ridge.

Steve and Shane beginning their walk down an insanely steep hill on Joe's Ridge.  I was the first one to it and shocked myself by riding down it!  Dave also made it down on his bike.

Posted @ 11/07/2007 01:19:00 PM | 0 comments

About a week ago, I tried to put post some photos of the first day of my mountain bike trip to Fruita and Moab.  Seems like this should be a no brainer right?  I thought so as I had done this literally hundreds of times.  I posted my entry but when I went to view it, the photos were not displaying because they did not get uploaded.  I've had this issue once or twice before and to correct it, I just have to delete the bogus entry and repost the real one.  I re-posted the entry but still the photos were not uploaded to my site.  WTF???  deleted the local copy of my post and what I thought were local copies of many other posts that Widows Live Writer stores.  After deleting about 6-8 posts, I caught a glimpse of the confirmation message (which I had been ignoring) and it said that I was not only deleting my local copies, it was also removing the entries off my blog.  Oops!  I'm not sure exactly how many I lost, but I had not backed up my blog (as it is not stored on my local box) for several months so all the entries I deleted are lost for good.  My theory about why some entries failed to post while most others work relates to how much data I am posting.  The entries that I recall failing seemed to have more photos to upload to my online storage.  Oh well, live and learn I guess right?

On a side note, Microsoft just announced the first release version of Windows Live Writer which I have installed and am using to make this post.  It is still free and is the best blogging software that I have used to date.  I will be doing another post shortly to see if the release version can handle a blog entry with a lot of data.

Posted @ 11/07/2007 12:42:00 PM | 0 comments