After Friday’s reconaissance mission to the Métairie du Milieu de Bienne with the cyclocrosser, I knew that we had some very favorable snow conditions to conquer the Chasseral. Saturday morning, I left early armed with digital and video cameras to do just that. Well, I spent one of the most amazing days on the bike riding miles and miles of tracks that snow-shoers had stomped into the snow. A hobby of others serving mine. Without them, this ride would not have been possible and I totally appreciate that.
Our server at the office seems to mirror the business as a whole. It runs pretty darn crappy to say the least. Today, as many times before, one of its vital organs failed. As that single black box is our only hub to the whole universe and beyond, I shut down my now utterly useless desktop client and armed myself with pencil and paper. But there just wasn’t anything to do other than drawing stick figure cartoons. Rather than sit on my butt at the office doing nothing, I could sit somewhere else and enjoy the second half of unlucky Friday the 13th. Might as well make it my lucky day, right? I called it a day, jumped on my Litespeed and speedily pedaled home. Without a pause for grub, I slipped into cold weather gear and told my Focus that we had some work to get done. I climbed out of Biel on my usual route with the silly idea to hop up and over the Chasseral. With all the snow up there, chances were nil that I’d actually get there, but that should stop no one to try. I rode to Cortébert on the road, first in thick fog, then under an occasional sun. The climb up to the Milieu de la Montagne (the middle of the mountain) was on wet roads under a now cloudy sky. I took it easy. Pushing hard was not today’s goal. It was all about getting a few miles in and enjoy an early start into the weekend. As I reached Les Goguelisses Dessous, the road started to turn white and beyond the Goguelisses it completely vanished. Luckily for me, a snowcat had paved a path to the Petite Douanne and the Métairie du Milieu de Bienne. I shifted into small gear and stayed on it. The snowcat driver must have had a wee bit too much fun in the snow. He neither stuck to the road nor did he take the shortest way. Right before the Métairie he further tested the uphill capabilities of his snowcat and steered it up the steepest pitch. I duly followed, now pushing the cross bike. At the Métairie I was greeted by the restaurant’s dog. He seemed as excited as myself to be in snow wonder-world. I jumped from snowcat tracks onto cross-country ski run and headed east. The skate skiing path was nicely groomed and hard enough to be ridden on my 35C tires. I wouldn’t recommend being up there on a bike on a sunny weekend day, but on this Friday afternoon I only greeted two cross-country skiers. I made it to the Place Centrale and could only find a foot wide path heading downhill. Mountain bike? Null problemo. Cross bike? Ooh la la, mucho problemo! Patience and low speed got me and the bike through in one piece. More patience was needed to pass by the small ski resort of Les Près d’Orvin. Moms, dads, kids and cars all blocked the road and impeded a quick fly-by. The subsequent downhill into Orvin offered a bit more speed but zero adrenaline. Too much up and downhill traffic. As I shot down into town the sun now sat low and blinded the view. It had nicely cleared up. Our office server can die every Friday!
According to Swiss Ride Magazine, the Canton of Berne wants to ban mountain bikes. Their reasoning: mountain bikes cause permanent damage to the ground, especially when riding in wet conditions. What a bunch of bullocks! Whoever wrote this legislative draft, must have never set foot in a forest. If they really wanted untouched forests, they should start with a ban of all forestry machinery.
A 20 ton harvester slices through the forest leaving tire tracks two feet deep, yet it’s the slim 70 kilo mountain biker who is the cantonal authority’s bête noire. According to the proposal, mountain bikers caught riding single tracks would face a fine of 20’000 Swiss Francs. I hope this will never be signed into law else I’ll consider paying future taxes in a canton that appreciates residents with a healthy lifestyle.
Living at about 440 meters above sea level everything outside is currently green and brown. A few snow flakes managed to travel all the way to us, but they pretty much melted on impact. It rained a lot the past few days. Trails are wet and muddy up to an altitude of about 900 meters. Rain down here though meant loads of snow higher up and I was itching to check it out. I easily climbed to Evilard where the ground was only barely covered with snow. I rode through the Jorat then took the Charriere Trail to reach Les Près d’Orvin. Here, I had to push the bike for the first time. I was back in the saddle once I hopped on the road and for the lower section of the climb that followed through the Bois des Ràpes. Midway into that climb, I had to shoulder the bike and find my way to the top hiking through more than knee-deep snow. What’s usually a rather speedy climb on the singlespeed turned into a hike at a pace of about 3.4 kph on average.
I was hoping to find groomed cross-country ski runs at the top. To my disappointment there were none, so I hiked several miles west until I crossed path with a snowcat who was putting down a cross-country ski run. I used it to reach the Place Centrale quicker but kept walking. I would have caused too much damage trying to ride it. It’s a cross-country ski run and not a bike trail after all. The descent into Les Près d’Orvin went trough deep snow, was fun, treacherous and not without several crashes. Each of them was a result of the front wheel diving deeply into the snow. Other than losing my Vincero water bottle those crashes had soft landings. To get home, I turned into the Spaghetti Trail, which always seems rather easy in the snow. I rode all the rocky sections; actually benefitting from the snow holding the bike in a steady trajectory. I’m looking forward to more such excursions and hope for lower temperatures and firmer snow surfaces.
Well, hello 2012. I left the land of the holey cheese for Christmas and New Years and spent it in good old Northern California, which for my taste buds, makes much finer cheese than alpine Helvetia. The bikes had to stay at home and 29in.ch went forgotten while I overdosed on GT’s Kombucha, Maine Root Ginger Brew, Chai BaBa Chai and an occasional Zin. Yes, I was a regular at Whole Foods and wish they’d invade Switzerland so that the country would finally get a grocery store where choice isn’t a foreign word. One can always hope.
I’m glad to report that Apple USA fixed my MacBook without charging an arm and a leg and did so within a few days. Customer service and efficiency, Americans definitely got those down. Need another example? Went to Macy’s and bought a pile of clothes, 50-60% off. Telling the sales girl that we have no Macy’s card because we’re visiting from abroad, she pulls a bunch of extra rebate codes out of a drawer and scans one after the other until one goes through and takes another 15% off. The money saved on those clothes and the laptop repair paid for my plane ticket alone.
MacBook operating again, I whipped up a short video with the footage taken back in December. Still need to find the right settings to convert and upload an iMovie project to Youtube within a reasonable time frame. Any good tips on that?
Sunday already marked my last ride of the year, at least on Swiss soil. It had been raining a lot all week so trails were both super slippery and extremely muddy. It didn’t deter me to head out for a short loop, and surprisingly it didn’t deter hikers to head out in droves. I received some flashlight mounts from DealExtreme last week, which will be used to mount my Replay XD1080 action cam. A short, easy ride was ideal to test the setup, so the camera was taken along. Besides the simple helmet attachment with a single velcro strap, the rubber mounts now allow a quick placement of the cam on the handlebar, the seat tube or low hanging branches out in the woods for ride-by shots. For other mounting locations, the rubber block needs modification. For 2 dollars a piece, I have several to modify. Interestingly enough, the rubber block sort of keeps its shape if you bend or twist it. If the cam doesn’t point exactly in the direction needed (like pointing upwards on the seat tube) a slight twist will position the cam in the right angle and stay that way. The camera shot some descent footage and I learned a few things. Unfortunately, I will not be able to whip up a video clip as my 2008 15-inch MacBook Pro with the dreaded NVIDIA graphics card decided to die (fried logic board as far as I can tell). I’ll take it to a Californian Apple store to see if they can do something for me. The local Apple reseller in town said a repair would cost me about a thousand Swiss Francs. Not the amount I’m willing to shell out right now - neither for a repair nor for a new laptop.
This week I ordered a new microSDHC with the huge capacity of 32GB for my ReplayXD1080 action cam. If I think back at my first home PC, a Gateway desktop PC running Windows 95 on a dinky 6GB hard-drive, it’s pretty amazing to see the progress that has been made. This tiny Kingston microSD fits on top of a fingernail and is less than a millimeter thick. Pretty soon a cellphone will be no bigger than that, implantable into one’s cheek and voice-controlled. Sorry, back to the cam. The new microSD needed to be formatted. The cam did the job and I additionally edited the config file to match the settings I had on the old card. I thought the cam was all good to go. I mounted it to my helmet and activated it during today’s ride whenever I wanted a recording. Back home I hooked it up to my MacBook and big surprise. Instead of finding video files, the card’s media folder was filled with close to 800 JPGs. Rats! Instead of dropping the photos into trash, I figured I might as well handpick a few dozen and make a photo album out of it. Et voilà!
Well, not losing many words about today’s ride other than it’s been another several hours of spectacular cyclocrossing. Truly blessed to live in such a wonderful country, have enough disposable income to afford two new bikes in one year, a wife that lets me buy them and ultimately have good legs to go climb some of the finest trails. Thanks!
