This past weekend, I attended the Newsong Men’s Retreat at Forest Home. The retreat was pretty good with speakers from the Newsong leadership team. The retreat site is well equipped and the food was slightly better than most camp food. It was a good time to connect with the men at church since most of the time we are too busy to meet each other in the regular church setting.

One of the things that we were also looking forward to was using our free time to ride the Santa Ana River Trail, which is supposedly one of the epic singletrack rides in Southern California.

We got up early Saturday morning for our first ride to do the loop from behind the post office. We were able to find the trail fairly quickly, but unfortunately, it was not as ‘epic’ as we expected. The trail condition was really loose and there were several trees that had fallen across the path, so we had to keep stopping to climb over the obstacles or walk through unridable patches.

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In the afternoon, we took a friend along for his first mountain-bike ride. Aside from falling off the trail at one point, he did great. This time, we rode further up SART from where we turned off in the morning. It had some short interesting sections, but for the most part, it was pretty much more of the same as the morning ride. One thing we didn’t account for was how quickly it would get dark, so at the end of the ride, I pushed up the fire road to get the van and drove back to pick up the guys who were trailing behind.

There’s still another section that I would like to try the next time I am up in the area. In the end, it was good to get out to ride, but SART doesn’t really standout as a destination ride.

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With the fires finally getting contained, we can start to breathe the air again and assess the effects of the fire. After talking it over with Chik and Elijah during our Aliso Creek ride this past Saturday, I decided to try and do an overlay of our STT ride just before the fires with the areas that were burned.

It looks like most of the trail was burned all along the ridge. But if you look closely, it seems that Flagpole, a famous trail landmark, may actually be outside the burned area. But we’ll have to wait to see if that is really the case. You can try and find it on the right-most part of the loop. This is normally the spot that we meet up after the long climb up the ridge.

While we were riding Aliso Creek this past weekend, we could still see smoke rising from the remaining fires in Silverado Canyon and also on the backside of Saddleback Mountain. Fortunately, the temperatures have cooled down and there was even a little bit of rain in the afternoon, so it looks like this fire season is coming to an end.

Like everybody else in the area, I have been following the fires in Southern California and more specifically in Orange County. The OC Register has started putting together near-live coverage. They are providing updated fire maps via google.

On an intellectual level, I knew that the property loss has already been great, but it wasn’t until this afternoon that I realized it on a personal level. One of our favorite mountain biking trails called Santiago Truck Trail was just east of the Santiago fire, but as of this morning the fire had jumped Santiago Canyon Road and by this afternoon had burned across the ridge to Flagpole and down the Luge. I can’t believe it, we had just ridden this trail on Sunday right before the fires started later that afternoon.

Actually, trails getting burned happens somewhat frequently because after all, we are living in a desert. And, beyond the debate of whether we should be building homes near fire-prone areas, the reality is that we are living, working and riding in the midst of nature, which we must respect and appreciate in its entirety, both the wonders and the disasters.

Please continue to pray for the health and safety of the firemen fighting the fires and those families that have been affected.

I’ve been avoiding riding at Aliso Woods because I can’t stand the long flat asphalt part just to get to the dirt. A couple of weeks ago, Elijah showed me a way to get into the park from the back that drops straight onto the trails. We did a quick loop that day, but figured next time we would have the time and energy to do a longer ride.

Last Sunday, a bunch of us decided to do it. We mapped our ride: up Cholla to Top of the World, then down Meadows, and across Dripping Caves and back up Mathis, then back down Rock-It and out. Turned out to be one of our best rides with a great group of riders.

Before going up for our second climb, Chik gave me a Gu pack, which helped me not to be overly fatigued for the remainder of the ride. Gotta remember that for long rides in the future.

If you download Google Earth, you can save the KML file (right-click to save and open in Google Earth) and watch the ride as it plays out.

Earlier this year, I got a GPS unit for my bike. The reason (or excuse, depending on who you ask) I wanted to get one was because my bike computer of several years had not been working for the past couple of months. And there’s no way that I could live without a constant stream of data inputting into my brain, even when I am riding. And with a GPS, I’d be getting even more information!

I decided on getting the Garmin Edge 205 because it was designed and worked well on a bike. I was using it more to track my own movements rather than as a normal mapping device. And I didn’t need the higher end model which had an integrated heart-rate monitor and displayed altitude (both pieces of information that would distract and discourage me rather than provide me useful info to ride on).

So after a few months of usage, I had a good sample of data to start evaluating and displaying my rides (or “tracks” in GPS lingo). Initially, I had tried the Garmin software that came with the unit, but that was not a happy experience. I then looked for some third-party solutions, and found an open source application, GPSBabel, that enabled me to transfer and convert the proprietary GPS data to an open format GPX. I would then be able to view the GPS data in Google Earth.

Unfortunately, the conversion application didn’t work as well as I would like. The good thing was when I looked again at Google Earth, I found that the Plus version allowed for importing GPS data directly. I had to pay a little for the Plus functionality, but I figure it was worth it because it worked seamlessly and properly.

The next step was to figure out how to save and display the tracks that were generated from the GPS data. Fortunately, Google Maps could now display GPS data from Google Earth (as KML files). Here’s a screenshot of one track:

From there, I used one of my dormant del.icio.us accounts to create a feed linking to each of my mountain biking tracks. This way, I could post new tracks after each ride and even put down some ride notes.

You can see it all on the right side panel under MTB-Tracks or directly at del.icio.us/emmfan/mtb-tracks.

P.S. Wouldn’t you know it, the day I post this, I forget to bring my GPS on my ride.