Moving on, the trails here have been and are still covered in snow. I haven't ridden my mountain bike since the Sedona trip from my last post, with the small exception of a couple of wet commutes to work. With the weather being warmer here, I figured that I would be able to more winter trail riding than I have been able to do. In STL it stays cold enough for the trails to freeze when they are wet, and you get that dry crunchy snow which is awesome to ride in. Since it is warmer here the moisture, which we have apparently had record ammounts of this winter, doesn't freeze solid enough to ride. I still have yet to see a temp below 23 for the low, and two hours later it is in the upper 40's. This being the case I have been doing a lot of road riding, mostly the highway going out past the shop. I will take some pics one of these days, it is an awesome ride with a lot of sustained climbs. Until I get pics of that this will have to do:
At this very moment I am awaiting a very important call from the shop telling me that our QBP order has come in. This call will give me the opprotunity to spend some of my hard earned tax refund money on a few key upgrades for both bikes. I got a great deal on a 2009 SRAM force crankset for the cross bike. This will allow me to run a standard double instead of the cross gearing, and it is a slightly longer crank arm than my current 172.5 which is too short for me. Since I am off today I will have to test it out. Maybe I'll remember to take the camera. In other tax refund news, I am finally doing something that I have wanted to for some time, and building a tubeless wheelset for the MTB. Details to follow. In the meantime, here are some pics of Mrs. Doctor's new favorite place to go hiking. This is the Granite Dells area which is about 3 miles from our house. I did a lot of early winter base riding on the rails to trails/ wildlife reserve out there. The rock formations are estimated to be 1.4 billion years old.
