Black Star Ugly Sweater - Annual Holiday Ride & Food Donation. Please join us!

I wasn't there....by choice. In 2011 I didn't do group rides.

 

Yeah... And the first set of dead links I see belong to some guy named @Grego ! I think he needs to update his STR ride report.

 

That was my first group mountain bike ride... fond memories of it.
Man, STR was deep at one point. What a shame it all imploded.
Perfect storm coinciding with the prominence of Facebook.

 

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Yes it's a large group of peeps celebrating the holiday (whatever holiday you want) and enjoying bikes. Everyone is spread out even on the descent. Come out and encourage those who have not experienced B* or are having a tough time getting to the top. I think we have participated in almost every B* holiday ride - it's pretty much the ONLY holiday social activity we do.

 

I peeked into the old STR posting and it sure brought back memories. We had some fun group rides back then. Every once in a while I still see guys like Maxwell and Painfreak riding around.

 

I just found my 2011 camera's memory card. There's over 900 pictures of STR rides to sort through. Those were some good times.

 

I'll be there. Facebook can kiss my a$$. Let me see... let me give all of my personal information to a private company to own for all time. What could possibly go wrong!

 

My Christmas jersey arrived today. It is hard to imagine, but I think it is even awesomer than my Halloween jersey

 

I was there as well.

Gabe and crew over the top per usual. lol

 

I'm going to try to get my son to ride, but it will be tough. He flies in from Penn on Saturday night... and then we have a Polish Christmas Party to go to... which has been known to devolve into rounds of shots of kirsch And we're not even Polish

Note to self - make sure to get my Lithuanian flag ready!

 

...and I'm out. Kid's team practice started this last weekend, going to be doing that for the foreseeable future...

 

Gonna be windy Sunday AM. They are forecasting sustained 30mph with some big gusts!

 

When I initially saw this, I forgot about my kid's practice... good parent that I am, will need to be going to that and sending my regrets to Blackstar.

 

I made it out today. It was a good ride, but the wind was challenging in spots. There were a couple of times I had to dismount and wait for the gusts to calm down before starting to climb again.

The wind was much stronger at Beeks, so I passed on the Doppler ball. Met Grego and saw the new retro-direct bike, so that was pretty cool. I saw a couple other IMTB jerseys, but I didn't get a chance to say hi. It was a good time.

 

Crap!!! I got up and forgot all about this. Hope everyone kept the rubber side down and no unintended Mary Poppins action.

 

I got knocked off by the wind coming around one of the corners. One of the windiest days I can remember. I contemplated heading to motorway but my mind changed really fast.

 

Think I heard your strangely exuberant voice right at the beginning before we started climbing at the bottom before the falls. I was having trouble with my front derailleur so I got to "single speed" it today on the climb because I couldn't drop out of the big chain ring.

The wind was definitely a factor, but if I just kept my head down I was able to muscle through it. Interestingly, several people turned back at Hidden Valley... but the wind dropped substantially from that point forward. It was still strong at Beek's but I didn't find it much of a factor on the second half of the climb.

Coming down though, it was really easy to carry too much speed. I came around a corner and caught the wind sideways and it almost pushed me off the trail!

 

Had a commitment today so only enough time for an early 7:15 AM start up to the 5 mile mark. Got pushed around by the wind going up. On the way back down had to pedal to keep going on a 1/4 mile section of the switchbacks. At that time the Garmin 810 gave me 80 feet of elevation gain even though it was 100% downhill.

 

Ah yes, the wind... Never before did I have to pedal to keep going downhill towards Hidden Ranch. Great turnout. I heard around 200 people. Nice to meet Earn Your View and see some STR friends including Bike the Planet, some of the hike a bike crew, Indy, JSD, Von Petrol, Hey it's Dave. We had a B* virgin with us. Vince took him down all the singletracks. They missed the sharp left at the begging of the last one and bushwhacked down a mountainside. Now there's an 8th singletrack lol. Tripped people out with the retro direct. Fun day on the bike.

 

....AND only two e-bikes

 

@BonsaiNut i had no legs or lungs today and it was one of the hardest blackstar rides I’ve had in years. Still enjoyed myself and glad I could help out with the charity.

 

And according to your Strava elevation, you did the Blackstar ride all the way to Pleasant's Peak.

 

I had hoped to go, but back when it was initially posted didn't plan on Sunday MTB practice with my kids. Of course my kids were too lazy (It's vacation, Dad!!!) so ended up not doing that either... errrrr. But sounded like all that wind would have made it a lot of driving for a challenging day, so I am 100% okay with staying home today!

 

Ha ha. It felt like I climbed that much. I had to pedal into the valley the wind was so bad.

 

Yes it was strange. You had to pedal to go downhill The only redeeming quality was that it was pretty mild temps - I think it was in the mid 50's at the start.

Next year it will be better and a nice comparison. People will talk about the "Christmas Ride of 2017" for a while

I thought the little speech they gave at the beginning of the ride was touching. Made it feel special

 

Funny ... I also remarked to another rider about having to pedal downhill into Hidden Ranch. But wind was better afterward, at least until you got to Main Divide. I skipped going to the ball...

It was a miserable, yet fun ride. Pretty sure its my slowest trip up Blackstar ever. Sorry I didn't see Grego - I would love to see that bike in person!

 

Ha hah! Picture Slot Machine!
I moved the thread and then moved on. never saw this or the remainder. I'm getting this tattoo!

No flippin way Noel! This is awesome!
Regardless of what anyone says, STR had it going on. Sure some will disagree but I look at it this way. It filled the perfect OC niche. It had participation and they had a blast! How can anyone dis that?

 

Eeeeesh!
Just went over to check out the thread, then went to the recent posts. Looks like the protomolecule has completely taken over...

 

Why don’t we get ads for Vietnamese hot dogs? All we get is that guy who wants to know our ancestors for 10 generations.

 

Everyone wears eye liner ...and the songs are so complicated!