Biking

Hammerfest Ten is now over and what a weekend. Shane and I headed to Nanaimo on Friday so we could do practice runs on Saturday. No problem. We got up at a reasonable time Saturday morning, made our way to the course, grabbed a shuttle, and began our day.

The first run down was a slow roll. Shane needed to see the course, and I needed to see what had changed. There were a couple new sections that were a little tricky, and the last section to the pits was brand new. Actually the end bit was pretty nasty. A sandy uphill section, that then dropped into some really loose sandy berms before a step down jump to the finish line. We headed back up for a second slightly quicker run, and I felt a bit better about the berms.

Last night was supposed to be an easy ride to loosen the legs. It turned out to be much, much more. I met up with Shane and company whose destination was Sofa King. I had been to the trail many times before, but I am not a big fan of gap jumps. I decided to give a couple of the smaller ones a try. Hmm, I think I can now see why people like them so much! When you nail one, there is no other feeling like it. It is almost like a roller coaster cresting a hill. You feel the upwards motion, you feel a little weightlessness, then you feel a downward motion. There is no hard impact like doing a regular drop.

Last night I attempted my first ever oil change on my fork. After getting all the tips and tricks from CraigH on MTBR I felt confident that I could do it. The steps seemed easy enough.

I picked up a couple tools to help in the process, and around 9pm started on the job. Everything went very smoothly, and by the time I was done I felt pretty happy with what I had done. Then I decided to hop in the bike and see how it felt. Therein lies the problem. The fork wouldn't compress at all! Crap, what could I have done wrong?