What Just Happened?! - Part 3

Stumpy!! After a solid year of riding my Trek to it’s limits, I decided to upgrade. Sometime in early 2007, I demo’d a Stumpjumper and realized “I can go faster!!” which immediately translated into “I WANT IT” and this is when the real trouble began. I started LOVING to ride. All I wanted to do pretty much was ride my bike. We started doing harder and harder, and longer and longer trails, and I just ate it all up. SART on my stumpy, Awesome. Sedona on my stumpy, Awesome. San Juan trail on my Stumpy, Awesome, any other new trail we tried, Awesome. Even Loma Linda, which I thought I was tired of, started to be awesome again. Somewhere along the way, I guess I got fast. I also started figuring out things like how to ride switchbacks consistently and how to hit small (baby) jumps and bigger drops. 2007 and early 2008 I was just having a ton of fun riding my bike. Here's a little photo montage....

Summer 2008 took us to Whistler, where I tried out my first DH bike. And fell in love. THANKS LOUISE for lending me your bike, and Neil and Whitney for making that happen! As soon as I tried it, I knew that buttery suspension and that fast flowy technical riding was what I wanted. GIVE ME MORE. Progression from here out felt astronomically fast. Suddenly I was riding my XC bike harder and faster than I ever had. Like immediately. It’s weird how that happened. It was like having extra suspension for 3 days gave me superpowers on my own bike when I came back. We went to Mammoth I think 3 times that summer as well. The first time, I rented bikes. A Kona Stinky which I hated and a Demo 7, which I liked OK but still didn’t fit me properly. There was 1 small rental bike in all of Mammoth Lakes apparently and it was already out. It was then I decided I needed my own DH bike to prevent this unfortunate circumstance from happening again. I got a deal and dropped the cash for my very own Demo 7 (Russell and I actually got matching ones... aww...). We got a few more trips to Mammoth as well as trips to Utah and Vegas with the big bikes before winter. I can’t believe all this was less than a year ago!! Seems like every ride I got in on the big bike I wanted to try something bigger or steeper or more technical, and every ride on the xc bike I just wanted to go faster. More Photos Please!

One more installation should get everyone caught up to speed... but right now, I need to go ride my bike... get out there and do whatever it is you do.