ADAM CRAIG’S BLOG

FALL AND WINTER 08/09 WHAT-NOT 

I’m going to try to stick to the “10 Reasons” format for this extremely long-range update on the life and times of this glorious extended off-season. There might end up being thirteen reasons or there might be four. We’ll see what my memory sees as noteworthy. It’s been a good time, to say the least, thanks to California on a lot of accounts. I’m sorry to admit it, but Golden State dishes it up…

1- Pretend Dual Slalom and Freeride Career practice. As an example of my tardiness on this newsbyte, you can actually read the article in the current issue BIKE magazine that I was a part of in Humboldt County, California, this past October. This helluva good time pit stop on the way home from (trying to) race the Jeep KOM Dual Slalom Series race in San Luis Obispo involved ripping rad NorCal singletrack with some local shredders who just build and ride. Good people, great trails. Check it out, and don’t ask about the outcome of the Slalom racing, lets just day I don’t have the courage or skill for it. Yet…

2- The North Fork of the Yuba River. When hydropower projects need to be worked on but there are still downstream water flow demands (in this case California Central Valley rice farming) previously de-watered stretches of classic Sierra Foothills whitewater are rejuvenated, if only for a short period of time. Not nearly long enough to restore sandbars to their natural shape and wash away non-native brush in the riverbed, but enough time for fortunate kayakers to run ten miles of classic Granite whitewater through an otherwise strangely dry fall. I ran the NF Yuba a handful of times and had a great day each and every one of those times. Especially the one that ended with an impromptu party at the takeout, complete with trundling and rock throwing contests…

3- The East Coast for a week. I had the opportunity to go to DC for some Olympic Afterglow stuff (see photo) and took the chance to head up to New England for some classic fall bike riding. The trails on Mount Waldo were in all time shape and so was the Highland Bike Park in New Hampshire. I got to shred there for an entire day with some old high school buddies, Matt and Brian (who were PUMPED), my original Mentor Beau Lambert and the two guys who own the park. They knew all the lines and all the speeds to have a holy crap good time all day. We rode till the lift stopped, then did sweep, then shredded the pump track and dirt jumps until there wasn’t enough light filtering through the changing foliage to see your landings. Classic east coast stoke! Go there.

4- SuperMoto Racing. Somehow my buddy Eric Eastland not only sold me a sweet KTM Supermoto racebike, he also tricked me into racing it at the AMA Supermoto finals at Infineon raceway in Sonoma, California. I rocked up with full intention of slummin’ it. Late to Tech Inspection left little time to fix some nagging stuff (Thanks to Troy Herfoss of the MDK/KTM team for helping me with parts, and for winning the series in stylish fashion) and even less time for “practice”… I gridded last in my heat race and finished third from that, unfortunately, my pit crew chief, one Carl Decker, noted that a kid racing the mini class on a 65cc dirt bike was not only clearing the 50 foot gap jump but also was lapping a half second faster than me… I totally got fourth from last in the Amateur Main Event though and put a solid three seconds a lap into Junior… And didn’t die. Then we went to a rad Ozomatli concert in Petaluma and on a rad Marin singletrack ride the next day with some damn fast old guys. Successful weekend.

5- Downieville!! An unusually dry and warm fall meant no early season skiing but left the door open for a whole bunch of high country riding in perfect dirt along the west coast. This gave me cause to finally ride those trails we always hear about in Downieville. We were on the way to the North Yuba but had bikes and figured we’d catch a weekend shuttle to Packer Saddle and check out the downhill. Turns out it’s one of the most diverse, entertaining trails I’ve ever ridden. I supposed it would be fun to race down too… Timmy Evens and I did our best blind race run right off the bat and ended up cackling like Hyenas on many occasions, usually to celebrate not having just died… At one point we passed a happy family of DHers stood by the trail, I stopped just long enough to should something about the Awesomeness of the situation and high five them all before blazing off into the old growth once again. Rad. I’ll be back to race this summer for sure. And to ride. I even went so far as to convince Josh to drive down with our dirt bikes on his two days off that week and we railed about 120 miles of singletrack in two days with motor assist. I’m still faster on Second Divide on my trusty push-bike though…

6- It snowed. Finally. Towards the end of December. Robbie, Josh and I fired up the snowmobile and headed up to Ball Butte for some early season lines. Short, steep and fun. Josh did a pretty sick huck with his climbing skins on to enable him to continue traversing a bare rock ridge. Off to a good start…

7- Montana. For some reason there are never bike races in Montana that I end up going to. Since I’ve never really been there I jumped at the opportunity to spend the holidays in Whitefish with the English Family. Fortunately Lizzy’s Mom got a snowmobile for her birthday/Christmas so we got to spend lots of time being lost and stuck and a little time skiing great snow. Fortunately we saved enough energy for the best party concept ever. Take a backyard freeride park come Slopestyle course, sprinkle it with things like burn barrels and homebrewed beer for warmth and live local music for entertainment and you’ve got a winner in any town. We shredded the Jib contest and were rocking out to my new favorite local hip-hop group Custom Holmes when the cops inevitably showed up. I’d like to spend more time up in those parts, maybe even in the summer. At a bike race?

8- Mount Baker!! Anyone who’s a decent cartographer can figure out that Mount Baker is directly on the way to Bend, OR from Whitefish, MT. Nestled in it’s own special little microclimate in the northwest corner of Washington, it’s always worth the trip. On the way there we stopped at one of the dozens of Little Areas That Rock. Lookout pass straddles the MT/ID border and happened to be serving up heaps of Mashed Potatoes on this particular December afternoon, we used huge rockered skis to our advantage and buttered those taters good… After that the drive along the emotional rollercoaster continued. It’s not until you get within a few miles of Baker that the rain changes to snow and your fears of getting skunked are appeased. It did and we were pumped. Two days of pow on some of the raddest terrain around, accompanied by none other than Luke Pennington (after we dug out his ski that blew off on the first air of the day, under the chair, naturally…). That place rules and has a great crew that appreciates it to the fullest.
9- Bike Riding. Instead of riding in January while the weather was sunny and warm and the skiing was all hardpack I decided to get back to my roots. Took out the old race skis a bunch of times up the road at Mount Bachelor and roosted icy groomers at speed. I hadn’t realized it because the mountain is usually cloaked in pow, but when they groom it out there’s a decidedly east-coast feel, nuking down twisty rolling corridors through the trees, airing off knolls and having a generally good time with the wind in your ears. Loud wind… But, we’re off-topic, I decided that the first day of training would be the first nice day in February. This happened to be the first… I got straight out to the high desert and realized the trails were in all-time condition so that’s been the MO for the last couple weeks, riding rad desert singletrack and, now that it’s winter weather again, getting in some good shredding on snow at places like Paulina Peak and the Putt Putt Panorama, avoiding the crowds…

10- Epiphanies. While putting on my ski boots during a blizzard in the parking lot at Squaw Valley, California over the weekend I ran into a friend of a friend who asked; “why aren’t you racing?” I responded “where, why?” and was informed that the Tour of California road race was going on. I immediately started laughing as I realized that those poor chaps were racing in the same residual Cyclone moisture that we’d been shredding for the last couple days at Squaw. Getting rad while a bunch of guys get really wet. Here’s to a winter of having fun and re-charging for the summer I’ve been waiting years for, 2009! The last time I had a fun, easygoing late winter was living at the University of Maine with Josh Edgar in 2001. That summer I broke through and got fast enough to battle with Carl Decker for 8th place at most Nationals. Here’s to the same kind of prep for the same kind of breakthrough, except maybe at Downieville, or the World Champs…

Thanks for reading. Here are some photos of random stuff, some that I talked about above, some that are just nice to look at.