The band is back together! One of my good friends assembled the group for a 40th birthday get together, with mountain biking, river floating, and exploring Bend Oregon. I’m lucky enough to have a great group of friends, and we all try and ensure we get together at least once a year for some fun. This time, the plan was to do some biking and hanging out in Bend Oregon, a rad little town that I’d heard so much good about.

My trip started by flying into San Jose, California with my bike. My friends picked me up and then we drove 6 hours up to Ashland, Oregon. My buddy Jeff (aka @2wheelshredy) has a dialed Ford Transit van that would perfect for 3 of us to road trip in, with plenty of room for our bikes, gear, and beer. The next morning, 2 of our buddies (from Las Vegas) met us to do some shuttle riding in the trails that I’d heard a lot about over the last decade. And the trails didn’t disappoint, I owe the trail builders lots of beer, as they put together some amazing trails! So fun, a little bit of everything, great flow, jumps, and we had a great day of 2 shuttle runs, basically all day. After working on the bikes (thanks Jeff for bleeding my brakes) we loaded up and drove up to Bend, to meet up with the rest of our group.

The next day, we did some chairlift riding at Mt. Bachelor ski resort. I’ve been mountain biking for a long time and was heavy into racing for a few years, which enabled me to ride: Whistler B.C., Mammoth, Park City, Deer Valley, Big Bear, Northstar, Crystal Mountain, Mt Snow Vermont, Brianhead, Moab, and a lot of great places in between. So it’s always fun to rid e anew spot. The crew at Mt. Bachelor built some really fun trails! The lava rock is a little scary as they are so sharp, but they did a great job building all types of trails for a “modern bike park” setup: jump lines, watered trail, berms, stunts, and a healthy dose of rocks. I let this section of video run long as I think most haven’t seen the trails here and I wanted to show them off.

2 epic days of riding, and no one had any big crashes or bike issues, a huge success! A few of the guys in our group absolutely RIP so my goal is to “hang”, as a washed-up rider/ dad/ business owner (here come the excuses)I was happy, and have had a good year riding, mainly due to my Ebike (more on that later…). After that, we explored Bend, and floated the Deschutes river 3 times, it’s so much fun! We couldn’t find float tubes, so we had to buy truck inner tubes from Les Schwab, they got the job done!

Thanks to my friends for organizing this epic trip, I plan on taking my family back up there. Next Summer I need to do a proper PNW road trip, I LOVE Northern California (lived there 2005-2008), Oregon, and Washington!

Transcription:

All oh that’s it. It does go straight down the rock garden i think you should just run it i don’t think it’s gonna be a bad one look what you find in the middle of the trees of ashland yeah rudy that last one and then that one slowed the triple nice that wasn’t that huh tabletop like you’d have to yeah let’s go catch our shuttle guys you got it right yep yeah i think so no you are relax you are one pedal coast that’s it that’s it all right i just whisked out on the first one but i did jump that second one so i’m gonna get some footage of the boys i don’t know if i uh feeling froggy enough to hit this first one see how they do is good day jerk oh yeah made it epic epic day didn’t die no big uh parts failures no big crashes no i almost took my foot off but that’s about it everyone had a good time thinking i wanted like to run a 160 on the leva but turns out i’m like i like 170 bro action rules definitely lives up to the hype i heard a lot about this place for years so really good first stop we’re gonna get some grub head up to bend for some more riding on mount bachelor tomorrow awesome day riding yesterday in ashland now we’re in mount bachelor yeah first time here riding for everybody right yeah the trailer trail so gonna be real fun weather is awesome cool new terrain none of us have been on beautiful weather today got eric in the house yeah marky yeah jeff nice and smooth mind if i jump in okay so which one we riding we haven’t done oh this one’s closed now that was open this morning right there oh cool on the weekends let’s see on the weekends which today’s count as a weekend um close from one to three for watering on weekdays they close they open at noon cool have you ridden this trail rockfall yeah pretty fun it’s so down there and then you cross the chair for the second time it’s a pretty gnarly part right there but then other than that it’s pretty just basic thanks bro what’s up so yeah that was detective i like it yeah everything’s built pretty safe but you don’t know what’s on the other side of stuff i know there’s that one baby head rock that’s gonna grab my pedal i’m worried about good good start recording uh oh that ain’t sucked whoa uh so is this enough speed right here to get down this i don’t know how to gap that but you can roll this if you don’t clear it can i roll it the gap looks pretty far pretty big from there like two good pedals you’re done you’re good yeah go for start recording of course he did i’m not i ah he needed a couple pedals that a boy couple strong pedals is coming in stand up stand up oh i got the one more back up there’s a wi-fi hey baby