24 November 2009

Dirt & Knobbies in Santa Monica

In September, I rode the Santa Monica mountains with the So Cal Riv Riders in a classic underbiking regime: road bikes with fattish road tires, ridden on dirt where most folks would employ full-suspension mountain bikes. Its not technical riding per se – mostly fire roads – but being on an under-equipped bicycle can be pretty fun. I’ll write more about underbiking in another post.

I rode much of he same course with a couple of friends on Saturday, but this time with a more appropriate set-up for dirt riding. We were going to ride with the Rough Riders on their November Semi-Epic, but missed them by about 10 minutes. So we proceeded into the mountains with knobbie tires: me on my rawland running 58mm, Aaron on his Romulus with 35mm cross tires, and David on his Rivendell All-rounder with 40s.

All three of us agreed that the ride was much different: faster and easier. Riding less gingerly than on my previous trip to Dirt Mulholland, the Rawland floated and bombed over everything. It was pretty darn fun.