This weekend I made it out to Eagle Park on Saturday and the back on the Coast to Vines and Veloway on Sunday. Saturday was warm and very Spring-like. The trails at Eagle were dry, fast, and more crowded than usual. I managed about 20km with about 90 minutes of riding time.  I also managed to flat-spot my rear Crossmax ST and lost some of the ceramic braking surface.  Ugh.

Sunday was also Spring-like, but in this case it was overcast, rainy, and unfortunately very windy.  I started out from home, rode north to the River Sturt Linear Park Path, then to the Veloway, and finally onto the end of the Coast to Vines trail at Willunga.  I turned around there and took the Coast to Vines trail east to Reynella and back onto the Veloway, then back up the River Sturt path and then home.  All of this added up to a total of 101.53km.  This was my first metric century, though a few years ago I did manage a couple non-metric centuries.

Shorty after I took this photo I was attacked by an angry magpie.  Apparently these evil birds like to attack pedestrians and cyclists, but prefer cyclists.  This particular magpie gave me five or six swoops and managed to hit me in the head/helmet a few times.  Next time I ride through this area I may have to take protective measures.  (Thanks to Rachel for these tips.)  Also of note is that these foul birds prefer to attack the head, face and eyes.  Charming.

I finally got in a decent ride on the Gunnar.  This morning (Sunday) I rode from Glenelg to West Beach and then up the River Torrens to the Zoo, which is a little north of the Adelaide central business district.  The 43km ride was mostly on paved trails with some road, dirt and gravel and took about one hour forty-five minutes.  The weather was cool, around 10°c with light rain.  In my opinion, this is great riding because it cuts down of traffic and washes the mud off of my helmet and shoes, which I also use off road and on recently muddy trails.

Speaking of which, I took the Eriksen out to Eagle Park again on Saturday afternoon.  This time I took a lot of video both on the bike and off.  I have several videos I’m working on now, but this one should be done soon.  The ride at Eagle was better than previous rides, mostly because of greater familiarity with the trails, I found some good climbs, and I didn’t break my chain.

If this is all too boring for you, here is an article from the Museum of Mountain Bike Art & Technology (MOMBAT) on The History of Manitou.

These videos were taken at Eagle Park on August 1, 2009 with the ATC3K camera. Being Australia, this is winter and temperature was a nice 13-15°c. I’m going to experiment with different on-bike and off-bike camera mounting and angles, but until then these bike-mounted angles will have to do.

This video has a pretty good sampling of the terrain at Eagle Park. The trails in the video include “Top Deck”, “Jammin”, “Sunset Blvd”, “Tunnel Vision”, “The Mixer”, “Overlocker” and “Hawkeye”, but not necessarily in that order. Trail difficulty ranges from green/easy to blue/intermediate and black/difficult. The trails are mostly clay and rock singletrack with some sandy sections.

This shorter video is uncut beginning from near the parking lot, down the green/easy “Top Deck” trail, then onto the black/difficult “Jammin” trail, and ends when I broke my chain.