Oops, I've Misplaced My MTB V-Card

Pop's gave me a mountain bike that he wasn't using to it's fullest potential and now I've decided that since it's named after the great John Tomac, I'd better give it all it can handle. That's not really happening, but I can dream. I went out and got real mountain biking shoes and pedals even! It might be 6 or so years outdated by todays standards, but it's new to me. Weekend before last, I gave it my best effort to keep up with some local downhill specialists down the Eastside and Sweet Connies trails. I didn't really do the best job at that, but I'll chalk it up to comparing a 5k downhill specialty bike to a 1K crosscountry bike. Well, maybe it had something to do with lack of experience. Either way, it was crazy fun. So Saturday I went out with the mission of developing some handling skills in the local foothill trails. Check.

Then tonight (Monday) my teammate Justin M. showed me a Reserve - Freeway - reverse Corrals loop and I realized that I can't decend, but I'm not too bad on the climbs. After all was said and done on the trail, I found out that 50+ psi in the tires isn't even kinda sorta close to optimal. Nor is the hardtail, but ya take what ya can get when it's free. This stuff rocks for some offseason workouts!

That's War Eagle Mountain way out there, with the highest peak (Hayden Peak) in the Owyhee's at 8400 ft just to it's south (left). Table Rock is overlooking Boise to the far left

If you're into finding new trails in Idaho (hiking and mountain biking) or just a GPS mapping fan, check out this link: http://www.gpstrailmaps.com/idaho/ Select a trail from the list and then click on the file that ends with .html

According to the GPS, this is where we went:

On a totally different topic, a complete double rainbow is something I'm pretty sure I've never seen before, so Sunday's sighting was kinda cool: