Big Ring Adventure Team
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We no longer conduct organized rides but Rich Ries continues to ride and he'd love for you to join him. He posts his ride schedules on Twitter. Click here for more information.
We're almost caught up. After years of planning some changes to his career, Rich Ries is finally implementing those changes. "I've been doing writing and photography for over 25 years," Rich said. "This will be the fourth - and I hope final - change in direction. I plan on working the rest of my life. I enjoy my work too much to quit. But now's the time to reconfigure things a bit and break into new markets." The effort has filled the few interstitial spaces in what is already a very busy time of year and Rich has had no time to update this Web site. He hopes that will change by mid-February. "One more trade show. A few more business matters. Then I can catch my breath. I haven't worked this hard or sweat this much since my last hot-weather flat repair!"
We'll have some new product reviews coming your way soon, plus a report of our winter hikes at Kentucky's Natural Bridge State Resort Park and the Red River Gorge area.
Our review of the Klunkerz DVD is now posted in our Gear section. It's the only film history of mountain biking we know of, so saying it's the best means little. But if there were 50 such films it's doubtful this would fall out of the top 5.
We found a cool new Web site: www.goby.com (it's "GO-bee," like the desert). You can use it to search for activities by time and location. We clicked Adventure and Extreme>Mountain Bike Trails, selected Indiana, left "Anytime" in the "When?" box and got 108 results. Goby is basically a consumer application of a Web crawler such as the search engines use to find Web site information. The good news: it's fast and easy to use. The bad news: it doesn't discriminate. Among those 108 hits were many duplicates as well as links to trails that are no longer open. For example, Goby linked to my description of the trail at the Crane Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, a U.S. Navy base near Bloomington. That description was in a book I co-authored for Menasha Ridge Press some 10 years ago. The trail at Crane was great fun but the whole base was put off-limits to the public after 9/11. There are links to rail-trails. Also linked are all the routes I showed to Layne Cameron when he was writing his first book about mountain biking in Indiana. (The heavily revised new edition is available from Amazon.) That was maybe 15 years ago when most of the trails available for mountain biking were on the Hoosier National Forest. The routes I showed Layne were fun to ride and BRAT furthered the concept in developing our H.I.C.K.™ rides. But with quality trails now open in Brown County and Versailles State Parks and other locations in Indiana, no one looking for a singletrack mountain bike experience would take one of these old routes. Despite its limitations, Goby is a great place to start researching your next outdoor adventure trip.
Our review of the Sette Max Flopak 100-ounce hydration system has been added to our Hydration Packs page. We also updated the general information on that page.
Coming Soon
Stuff. We don't know what specific stuff. Keep an eye on the site and we'll be surprised together.
Recent Additions
Okay, one more MTB tire review and then we're done with those for a while. The Panaracer Fire XC Pros are reliable all-conditions tires.
MTBR.com has listed their Top 10 MTB videos. (Roadies can skip to the last page where they'll find a hilarious sendup under "Funniest Roadie YouTube Video." Actually, dirtheads will likely enjoy it, too.) A few observations. Bobby Root (#8) is the reason we bought New World Disorder II, where the Inflate-a-Mate sequence is much longer and utterly awesome. We ordered the Klunkerz video (#4) weeks ago and will have our review posted soon. Danny MacAskill (#1) is a phenomenal rider. What's cool about watching him is to see how expresses the joy of riding along with his unmatched urban trials skills. You can view all the vids on MTBR's site. And why is Mark Gish's Cliffside video not on the list? Hey, it takes a while to rise to the top. There's always next year.
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Here's a summary of what's on our Web site. Click on any link to learn more.
Events tells you what we're doing, where we're doing it, and how you can join us. The Go section covers stuff we've already done. Each review typically includes a written summary, photos, maps, and elevation information. Our convenient Google-powered search tool will help you find the info you need if our review motivates you to go explore on your own. Gear is where we share our impressions of the goods and services we use. Use the Google search tools to help you find out more or shop for the best value on the items we've covered. About tells you who we are, where are, how to contact us, how to become a member, why we exist, and provides some legal stuff. Mix is where you'll find all the information worth posting that didn't fit anywhere else, such as our Six Tips for Selecting the Right Road Bike. Search Results will display the results of Google searches you've done on our site, so that additional information is just a click away.
At the Big Ring Adventure Team we ride our bicycles on the best roads and trails we can find and we'd love to have you join us. We research new roads and trails and new gear in order to improve the riding experience. And we report our findings here so that you can get the most from your time in the saddle.
We ride all year 'round and always have, but you won't know our plans in advance unless you take steps to stay in the loop. Read this paragraph on our Mix page for more information. Don't wait for the review to show up on the site and then wish you'd been along for the ride.