Riding in Calgary

I've been slacking on keeping up with the blog - its mostly the travel - I had probably the best work trip yet, where I had to take an early flight and I got most a day to rent a bike and ride. I wrote this up on the plane ride back:

This week I had a business trip to visit some customers in Calgary Canada. I’ve been there once before during the winter, it was extremely cold although that time I got some skiing in – perhaps one of the best skiing days of my life (not that I ski a lot, but…). Our meeting was on Monday and we needed to prepare for the meeting, so I needed to be there early Sunday afternoon at the latest. After looking through the flights, there was no way for me to get there before 6:00PM, and the only reasonable cost flights got me there at 11:00PM. The only way for me to comfortably get there would be to leave on Saturday morning. I really HATE giving up any kind of weekend time for work, but there was no way around it.

I went out to MTBR to see what kind of riding opportunities were there, figuring I could ride most of the day Sunday. I found a few places to ride and found a few places that rented bikes – even good bikes! Most of the riding was west of Calgary heading towards the Canadian Rockies. Unfortunately they had unprecedented rain a few weeks ago and it did serious damage, not only to trails but also to roads – luckily most of it had be reopened, though I was expecting to see some serious washouts. Most of the riding I found on line was out and back kind of stuff, its not like loop type riding we have in Connecticut.

After investigating a few options I decided on the Olympic training facility in Canmore. The trail system on paper kind of looks like a Kingdom Trails type place and they have a bike rental place right there on premise. It was built for the 1988 Olympic games and has been kept up by the Canadian government since then. It’s a beautiful facility where they train for XC skiing, biathlon and mountain biking. There’s something great about being around that many fit people who enjoy the outdoors. In my day to day life most of the people I interact with really don’t understand my love for the outdoors and mountain biking – just being in a place where I could relate to everyone is nice.

The drive out to the ride spot started off very flat:

...but you quickly get into the foothills:

I lucked out and found a local guide on MTBR ( what a great resource), brentP was a serious XC rider, luckily(?) he had taken a fall while riding in the 24 hours of adrenaline the weekend before and had to ride cautiously. I’m sure if he wasn’t injured (or being kind) he would have blown my doors in. The riding spot is at 3900’, that’s not that high, but high enough for this sea level dweller to feel it, exerting for even a few minutes lead to my heart rate soaring through the roof.

The trails were a bit like Kingdom Trails – at least in their density and general layout – the trails at KT are certainly better designed for mountain biking with more flow. It was a great 4 or 5 hours in the woods cranking along on the Rocky Mountain (what else) Instinct 650b wheeled bike. It was a bit funny when Brent warned me about technical sections – in Connecticut we would call those the smooth sections. Surprisingly there were no jumps, lips or drops of ANY kind on the trail – trust me I tried to find them! I did a lap with Brent then when he went off to join his wife on a mellow ride I wandered around the trails taking pictures and just enjoying the place. What a great way to spend a day!

I have found that I am a terrible bike reviewer. I feel like I can adjust to just about any configuration so even if I feel something different with a bike, that feeling is fleeting and in a few pedal strokes I’m adjusted and it just feels like “a bike”. So I liked that Instinct, it rode nicely, the rear suspension did what I thought it would do, when I thought it would, it had very little pedal bob that I noticed. I wish I noticed the wheel size more – I really didn’t notice that much difference between that bike and my 29ers for its ability to roll over stuff. I was expecting it to feel “snappy” compared to the 29ers, but I didn’t really notice that, of course having a long travel fork and a slack head tube angle meant its not an XC bike by any stretch.

The one huge negative to the bike – that stupid Fox Float fork. It felt exactly like the one that used to be on my RIP – it ramped up quickly and provided very poor small bump compliance (which is pretty much all there was out there – small bumps). I had my shock pump with me and I adjusted it a couple of times, I got it to work a bit better, but it still was very “jack hammery” when I got going fast on the rooty trails. If nothing else it made me feel a lot better about my White Brother’s Loop fork – its far superior to the two Fox Floats I have ridden.

They had a “skills area” as well and I did do a couple of table tops with the Instinct, it felt well behaved and under control in the air.  

All in all a really great way to spend 5 hours on a beautiful day. I convinced myself I could live there, forgetting for a minute about the common -25F degrees day in the winter.