Riding at Big Bear & Hiking at Idyllwild

Before I start off this is a Great Video. Basically based around a Kiwi Huey Pilot taking the 'piss' out of Aussie Jet Pilots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BzU1sYPjzo

I have just spent a great weekend up in the Mountains, and a good weekend it was to leave the heaving metropolis behind. Down here in Redlands and the Inland Empire the temps got above 100f or about 40 degrees C. This is smoking hot and something we New Zealander's are not use too. The closest I have come to this back home is in the McKenzie Country and that's not all the time. Over here I can look forward to weeks of these temps and hotter in a row. Great huh...

I just got back from a ride after work to see if I could handle the heat. It went better than I thought. Prob around 36 degrees when I left work. It was strange though as I did not sweat as much as I thought because the heat and lack of humidity meant that the moisture just evaporated before it ran off me in small waterfalls as some of you fellows know occurs when I exert myself hard. Ever seen me after a lap of a 12 or 24hr MTB race??? Well you prob don't want too!!!

Anyhow on the Saturday just passed we tried to get out of the heat by driving up to Big Bear (via Onyx Summit 2600m) to try out some of the Trails at Snow Summit via the chair lift. We had a few newbies with us and some average bikes which meant I spent lots of time on a fully ridged 15yr old bike while Tabetha enjoyed the pleasures of the DMR. A bike I love having here as I have yet to see another one here in the States. Next time I will definitely have the Enduro up the hill also mind you. I did miss the full sus goodness.


Up the Snow Summit Chair lift with the bikes. Its a great learner Snowboard Mtn so I look forward to that after the 5 months of living in an oven.


Big Bear Lake (2100m asl)


Some of the Trails


This is steeper than it looks and is a great effort for the first time Mountain Biking... Hmm! must be the DMR :-)




The High Altitude glare off Big Bear Lake.


The Camry loaded up heading down to the 'High Desert'. We took the long way home. Some great Mtn roads to stretch the legs of my new old car.

So Big Bear was pretty cool to ride overall. Certainly not Downhill riding as such. It use to be but they stopped that due to erosion and because they got sued when someone broke there back or neck riding there a few years ago. Yep this is the land of Denny Crane. Still from an XC fun point of view its a good spot to go. I'm sure there are many more trails to find also. Bring on Mammoth Mtn in June, then Whistler in August. Can't wait.

The next day since it was yet another hot one I wanted to check out San Jacinto State Park. San Jacinto rises about 3000mm from the desert floor and is a big day climb/challenge called the 'Cactus to the Clouds' that I want to do at some stage this year. Idyllwild is the Mtn town in the Shadow of San Jacinto Pk and was our destination for Lunch before doing a small climb to a lesser peak in the sweltering heat. It was a lovely area and the Mtns seem really easy to climb in someways. Back home if you are above 2000m it is proper alpine and the tree line has long since diminished and you are either rock climbing/scrambling or on ice and snowpacks. This is not the case here due to different tree species and a warmer climate in summer. As you will see in the pics below trees cover San Jacinto Peak which is about 3300m high.


Leaving the Interstate and Palm Springs valley behind and heading up into the hills of San Jacinto State Park. The Mountains in the background are the San Bernardino's incorporating Big Bear.




This is a Trike. A 3 wheeler with a Motorcycle engine on the front. Strange alright but a cool way to travel and it sounded real good.


Speaking of small furry animals I managed to see a few chipmunks on our hike up here. Made sense as there were acorn trees everywhere.


Idyllwild is a great wee Mtn town just 1hr from my place. Can't wait to Mtb here. There is very good riding apparently.


Goes without saying. Had to take this since there is dutch blood running through my veins. Hey Oma I would take you here for lunch if you ever made it out here to see me :-) For those that don't know Oma = Grandma in Dutch


A lovely wee stream basking in the continuous weekend sunlight. There was no respite until it dropped below the horizon for the night.


San Jacinto Pk in the background. The Cactus to the Clouds climb starts in the Desert almost 3000m below the summit on the other side of this peak.

Hermosa Beach, David Beckham and Ladybugs

Well a couple of weekends ago I headed down to Hermosa beach with a few of the boys. We played some American Footy and hang out at a bar for the afternoon. Gotta love happy hour :-)
Hermosa Beach was a nice spot but the weather was overcast and not very warm so certainly not swimming weather.


The Hermosa Beach Pier

After lounging around in Hermosa we arrived late at the Home Depot Center. This is the home of Beckham and the LA Galaxy Soccer team. It was actually a pretty decent game. A bit of action but LA have terrible defense and after coming back from a goal down they let the New York team leisurely stroll through their lacking defense to score a good goal. Beckham also got a yellow card. He fully deserved it but you would have thought that everyone was just told they had had there car stolen. They worship the guy here, think he's the bees knees. He played ok but is a bit lazy these days, just his delft touches being all that remain of his former self.

The next day I headed up the into the local San Bernardino Mtns with a friend from work. She is into tramping (well hiking as they say in these parts) and the outdoors and that's a bit of a rare find over here, though I am slowly meeting a few more people interested in getting into the great outdoors, be it biking, hiking or camping. Anyhow we headed up to Forrest Falls. A lovely wee spot and just 30 mins drive from Redlands. The Mtns are just so different here, and the flora and fauna.

Had to play round a bit. Heaps of fun climbing round the bottom of the falls. There were some nice but pretty advances cruxes around for you guys into rock climbing virgin spots with Natural Pro. A couple of pitches would get you to the top of the falls. The rock is also all granite so has heaps of grip and is pretty trustworthy. Not to the quality of the Darrens back home in Fiordland though.

Yep, they have ladybugs over here to. Some things are the same :-)

Airfest 2008

Last weekend on Sunday I headed out in the traffic to the Airfest Airshow held at the US Airforce's Reserve Airfield about 35km from Redlands. It was a great day. Not to hot but still got toasted, however you have been once you have been enough. Its all about big boys toys and excessive spending on wars. However after seeing what some of the gear can do, well it is pretty special and beyond belief.

Hearing and F-22 Raptor smash through the sound barrier without sweating then a moment later hovering in space a few 100 feet above the tarmac in one spot like a Chopper truely is a site to behold. When it does a loop basically in one point well its awesome. Shit it has a smaller turning radius than half of the massive trucks people drive round in over here to pick the kids up from school or go shopping at a mall. If only they had to pay as much for gas as we need to in NZ.
So all in all not much more to say. The pics and attached Vid (albeit a little cheesy I put together speak for themselves).

Enjoy. Especially you Darryn :-) Bit different than the NZRAF eh???


A Canadian Parachute Dude with a US flag.... Mmm. Well whatever...


Inside one of the many Cargo Planes. A couple of Tanks can fit in here. Or hundreds of grunts.




A Maserati MC12 on display. Only 50 were made. Nice


Anyone want to ride the Fanny???




Open Up




A Great picture. The F-22 with a couple of WW2 Planes. Mustang on the left.






One Big Arse


A mini version of the big Plane Above. Kinda Cute actually.






The Marines love anything with a big Engine. Especially a V8



The Video I put together is on my Youtube site. First Vid I have ever put on there and it was pretty easy. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiQ9LnYSltE