This is not my actual second ride; it is my second attempt at trying to ride the bike in 'rekluse mode', meaning ~zero manual clutch lever activation... I was pretty successful at keeping fingers off that lever this second time... Still places where it's a little spooky grabbing a handful of brake and not touching the clutch lever ... Like intersections with real live cars and steep downhills... In any event, its somewhat of a marvel of a device and just like all the new types of bikes made today that do extraordinary things, if given the chance, ride with one of these and just let the device do the work. It can take most of the load off the rider in specific places during a ride. It can very easily be an old-person riding device, maybe even extending yrs riding yrs or time ... (I demonstration this old-guy style. ). Add an estart to the bike and more load is off the rider. Here's a few pics of the small trail up and around the hill before videos of the climb ... I've looked at this hill for ~3yrs and never climbed it on any of my clutcher-only bikes ... I've always though I could climb, just never went up it ... Now, with a rekluse device, I climbed it. Sort of like a micro gauntlet has been thrown down at my clutcher-only bikes ... I'd give this hill about a 2 on a scale of difficulty of 1-20 ... Some steepness at the bottom coupled with very loose rocks&soil plus a couple turns along the way, makes it a hill not for everyone and too easy for others... Another view. I was gonna name it The Eiger but don't think this climb is worthy of this name. So I'll have to come up with something else a little bigger than a mole hill for a name. Busted out the Klims ...I wear these on the cooler days and the white ones on hotter days Pretty good tire committed to this bike
Staging area just off the road and across a small creek before the actual climb begins on the east side. I was gonna ride the bottom side of that ridge line in the background (west) but ran out of time that day. The small creek that must be crossed to get to the climb. I was really just checking the place out to begin with ... Then a crowd starts forming and I started feeling like if I did not attempt a climb, it might look a little weak... so it was gonna be a climb attempt this day. Another view looking up from the small creek at the hill with some people walking down the trail. Looks like someone dropped a birthday cake ... A chocolate birthday cake ...
Great Pics! I'm a huge fan of the Rekluse. Being 5 ft 6 can have it's challenges with a non-lowered husky on climbs or tight technical terrain. Not really caring what the old school boys think of these because it enables me to ride trail quicker, faster and smoother Mine is an old school z-start pro.
The view from the top. Another view from the top, looking a little more to the south. I can see a road over on that ridge... I gotta have been down it before, I just don't know where it is at just now. This is the back side of the hill I just climbed back up towards the top Swimming hole. Same creek as in previous pics and just downstream an 1\8 mile or so and my exit point .. I gotta cross here and climb up the side of small hill and back out on the paved road.
Thanks and I inherited this rekluse... I'd guess, the more technical, the better someone is gonna like this device ... It's still a little weird to me, but if you watch the videos, I think the first one where I cross the small creek, you can see I do not alot of room so I have to make a 8 point turn or something, and its very easy rocking the bike back&forth to get a line I want and you can even pull the bike backwards with enough effort ...I think now that the guy who set mine up did a very good job. When I screw up the first climb attempt, I go back down to the bottom and look around ... It's somewhat steep down there and that rekluse only made things easy for me there also. Not that I can't do the same with a clutch bike, but as I've said before, it worked as expected ...
This is the part of trail down the backside of the climb to the same small creek. The creek is between us and the hardtop road I came into the area on... It's not too long, but its a cool intense trail ... And if you look close at the far right side towards the bottom just to the left of that grass patch, sled tracks ... Carabao Hiway 103 discovery? I think so and during the return trips with different bikes early next week, I'll be looking for verification... I'll ride it out also from end to to end also ... It'll be short and intense ... Going the opposite way from the video in this section, there's a uphill that is gonna have airtime logging as default action pretty much when you come out of that small covered area. Another shot of the creek on the backside of the climbed hill Back up this creek branch to the left a couple hundreds yrds will be where I first dropped across this creek. Part of todays' crew ...
Don't laugh ..Just tryin' to make a dollar out of 50 cents here ...I'm playing with the rekluse most of the time and trying not to fall over, trying to get 100% traction and a forward push up that hill. This begins where I transfer across the creek that is in-between the bike and start of the climb... That drop down is just about vertical.. I've been on bikes where the forks are so soft that they collapse on a VERT drop like that and the bike rotates 'over' on the axle instead of the wheel rolling ... View: http://youtu.be/mIULMJqSzTc I'm stuck on that uphill and small step-up coming out of the creek area and at the start of the climb for the same reason as always ... Too weak a move by the rider ... I've got to stepup for sure. Forget the rider and watch the bike perform with the clutch ... at the ~40 second mark, you can hear some clutch growling but as the day went on, the plates got much quieter...
Going over the top here ...You can't tell it much from the video, but directly in front of me is a straight-up 1' step-up that is giving me that initial issue .. View: http://youtu.be/5UigXulxk6A
Here's the rolldown from the top side, again to the small creek, for another break . Cool short little section here and its goes about another 1/4 mile the other direction in some cool rolling stuff. View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=titVgRWbVcg
This is the climb from the creek back out to the road ... It was not exactly what I was looking for ... I'd rather find a more defined trail or just go back around by the creek and look for other trails heading in the direction back out. The last step back out to the road was a little fun to ride up. I might have been on the clutch after the 3/4 point mark on that climb. View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bremWT-NuXQ
