La Costa Morning

Nothing more than a couple of pix snapped while riding the trails at Carlsbad's Rancho La Costa this morning.

into the white

wet web

Weekend Photo Dump, pt. I

 

 trail skull, Rancho La Costa, Carlsbad

 

 Pacific from Rancho La Costa trails

 Architectural Salvage of San Diego

 Casa Artelexia

antique fans, Klassik Mid-Century Modern, San Diego

Clear Skies, Dry Trails

After Saturday morning's rainstorm blew over (we're ready for our summer now, mmkay?), the skies cleared and provided some impeccable views from atop the hill at my favorite local mountain bike trail.
It's somewhat hard to see from this pic, but Santa Catalina Island, about 40 miles away as the crow flies, was visible on the horizon. Even San Clemente Island, 50 miles away, was visible to the naked eye (if not the tiny iPhone lens).
The trails themselves were absolutely perfect. Only a couple of small areas of mud and zero dust. Borderline-Velcro traction, thanks in part to the tubeless Continental tires. Beautiful Moab-like red dirt surrounded by a carpet of verdant green grass shoots. Too bad this little guy didn't have a good day.
First time I've come across a tarantula at these trails, looks like this guy might have been squished by an errant bike.

Rancho La Costa - The Short, Poorly-Edited & Plotless Video

I'm very happy that my friend Derek turned me on to Carlsbad's Rancho La Costa trail network when I moved out here. There are only about twenty miles or so of trails on this south-facing slope, but what's lacking in distance is made up for in location (15 minutes from home), topography and trail "flow".

I've ridden it dozens of times, written about it a couple of times (here and here) and I shot some video using a point-and-shoot camera (posted here), but yesterday I decided to take a GoPro HD camera out to document some of my favorite parts of the trail. After three loops I had about 25 minutes (400MB) worth of footage that I edited down to this:

As you can tell, I'm definitely still wrapping my head around both the camera and editing in iMovie. Celeste is far better than me at the latter. Plus I'm a little bummed how "compressed" it became when loaded on to YouTube. Time was also spent fiddling with GarageBand order to lop off 2:40 from the song (which had been looping endlessly in my head when riding yesterday). A couple of hours netted the result above. Hopefully experience will make me much more efficient. Kind of like mountain biking.

Electra Bicycle Camera Mount

I thought I'd give my new Electra Camera Mount a little shakedown on my local mountain bike trail this morning.

Although the unit is not designed for off-pavement use, as the product manager for the item, I should push the limits a bit and see if it would hold up the rigors and vibrations present when riding off road.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the result. I have about ten minutes of footage and will review sometime over the weekend to find some good clips.

You Can Say It's A Little Dry Around Here

Nice coating of red cocoa powder-like dust on the Pivot from riding the Rancho La Costa trails Friday morning before work.

Nice day for a mountain bike ride

Since Allie gave me a hall pass this afternoon, I decided to use it to ride my local trail network. Rancho La Costa is on Denk Mountain, on the east side of Carlsbad. They've built a nice network of trails in a relatively compact area.

The best part about this network is that it's "real" mountain biking very close to home (less than ten miles). I am able to get to the trails in about fifteen minutes and can knock off loops in about 30 minutes - it's easy to get in some good climbs and ripping descents in a relatively short amount of time.

my route

Today I did two laps, climbing the fire road and descending down the technically easiest but most fun (thanks to the switchbacks) trail. I have to ride here more with my local friends so I can get a better lay of the land.

The trail has some nice rock outcroppings and is very well maintained. Nothing too sketchy here. Just lots of nice, flowy trails.

Due to some Santa Ana winds, there was excellent visibility at the top of the hill today, the pic above shows Batiquitos lagoon and the ocean, we live just north of the lagoon. I only had my phone with me, so the resolution isn't all that great. But I could see Santa Catalina and San Clemente islands from this vantage point.

Nice cairn, looking south

Ride stats - 7.7 miles, 3.2 miles of climbing a total of 1600' (average grade 9.2%)
Average heart rate - 145 BPM (I gotta get back into shape!)

A great way to spend a total of 90 min from the time I left home to the time I returned.

Freshly-waxed van + dirty mountain bike = a productive day!

Saturday morning mountain biking

Thanks to my buddy (and North County native) Derek, I now have a great network of local trails to ride.
Ranch LaCosta, just east of Encinitas and all of about 15 minutes from home.

Rode it Saturday morning - good, rugged, true mountain biking. No true "epic rides", but nice singletrack and several options both up and down Denk Mountain. Next time I'll bring my camera.

We spent a good chunk of the afternoon at the beach. No wonder everyone out here seems to be in a good mood all the time.