November 26 2008

Well I got the spacer moved to the bottom and I was off to Pena Adobe park in Vacaville CA. Today is a rainy, rainy, day with a little chill in the air but I set out for ride # 2. The trails at this park are not marked what so ever which kills me because they charge you 3 bucks to get in. Any way after about a half an hour of riding around looking for a good trail I found this fire road that pointed up into the beautiful hill that surround this area. So I locked out the suspension and climbed. The bike was a nice steady climber and swapping out the stem made the bike a lot more comfortable. What was cool about this ride was as I got hirer up the fire road, I found myself in the clouds. As I got to the top I could see a twisting ribbon of singletrack weaving through the grassy hills and I prayed there would be an inlet to the trail coming soon. Sure enough there it was and bam I was off surfing sweet singletrack with sticky mud and switchbacks. A first for me was as I was riding down the trail, there would be these crumbled pieces of dirt sections about 10' long on the trail unaffected by the rain. When I hit these sections of dry dirt the accumulated mud on my tires would grad this dried dirt creating a larger tire till it hit the brake arch and then KABOOM there would be an explosion of dirt everywhere. You would think the Sierra Club was out to get me. This happened about 10 times and after a while I stated enjoying it. The suspension felt a little firm for this trail since there were all these tiny hoof marks in the trail from cows or something but it felt much better than a hard tail! The bike was great in the 10 plus switchbacks I rode through and the few technical sections the trail provided, the tires covered with mud were the only thing holding the Fantom back. The brakes finally broke in on this ride and were great. I finished the ride and the Fantom did everything you would expect a fullsuspension cross country bike to do.