A Northstar Tuesday

After putting some big wide bars on my Giant Glory, I've waited patiently for the perfect, bluebird, smoke-free day to try them out. Today was that day. OK, to be honest, work and a bunch of other stupid stuff got in the way before the smoke did. I rolled up to Northstar to meet my friend Ben.

I had two goals today: 1. Check out the bars and see how many bolts I forgot to tighten while installing said bars. 2. Stay upright. The Downieville Classic is just over a week away, and I'm at enough of a disadvantage when I'm healthy. There's no need to go taking myself out now.

For those of you who've ridden Northstar, you probably know how difficult it can be fulfill goal #2. So my plan involved numerous laps on Livewire, Gypsy, and Karpiel-to-Speed Control-to Pho Dog. After a few laps, Ben and I ran into Kathy Pruitt and Cam McCaul. They were taking a little vaca and riding Northstar for the first time. Kathy was on my goal #2 program, having ridden all the gnar-Star stuff on Monday with a crew of friends, and needed a fun flowy day to get stoked for the rest of her action-packed summer. It was so fun to ride with them!

I couldn't believe how blown out some of the trails had gotten since I'd been there two weeks ago. Boondocks is a complete sandbox, so the upcoming race on that trail should be interesting. All-in-all, it was a successful day. I stayed upright and was super stoked with the new bars. (They stayed upright too.) It took a few runs on some tighter stuff to not feel like a complete beater cornering at slower speeds, but they felt awesome immediately on the fast jumpy stuff like Livewire.

Now it's all smokey again and it'll be after the Downieville race that I get back on the Glory. I can't wait!