Bobby McFerrin Concert 3/27/13

The first thing I think of when I hear Bobby McFerrin's name is his song "Don't Worry Be Happy". I love that song.  As a kid, I used to play it over and over and never got sick of it.  To this day, the song still brings a smile to my face.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend a Bobby McFerrin concert at the Ellen Eccles Theater in Logan, Utah.  It was awesome.  What made it so great? A lot of things, some of which I'll mention.  Here's some of my favorite highlights:

*"He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" song-McFerrin changed the key of the song something like 20 times all while alternating the style and tempo of the song. Did I mention he had a band backing him up the whole time? (Keyboard/accordion player, 2 guitar players, upright bassist and drummer) Throughout the craziness each musician kept up with the changes without even blinking an eye.

*Crowd participation moments: Audience members (Jen) singing "Natural women", (Wally) singing some random song and then McFerrin singing Happy Birthday to a girl in the audience. All these were fun moments where McFerrin and the band turned the interactions into special musical moments.

*Encore performance-After a standing ovation McFerrin and the band came back and McFerrin asked the audience if we had any questions for him. Immediately a guy yelled out "Sing Don't Worry Be Happy!" Other audience members cheered for that request (including myself). McFerrin quickly responded "No...I've already sung that 5 trillion times." The audience continued to cheer for him to sing it and he finally consented to sing only the background of the chorus if the Audience would sing the melody. We all sang repeating the chorus twice and then McFerrin stopped it. As short as it was, it still brought a smile to my face.

I enjoyed this concert so much because the whole show felt like one huge improv session.  It felt like I was hearing these songs like they'd never been performed before.  Thanks Bobby McFerrin for an amazing evening!  I hope to catch another one sometime soon. :)

More great McFerrin Videos:

The power of the Pentatonic scale. Given at The World Science Festival.

Bobby McFerrin improvisation with Richard Bona

"Thinkin' About Your Body" Song

...and I say to myself, "What a wonderful world"

Hi.

2 years since my last blog post.  Wow.  I feel the sudden urge to explain and justify why it's been so long since I've written something...but I'm not going to. I just feel like writing.

I went on a run tonight for the first time in 3 months.  It was 30° outside and snowing.  Not ideal running weather, but it was great to get out of the house.  I'm always amazed at how hard it is for me to buck up and commit to go for a run, but once I commit and start running it feels great.

I love the earth we live on.  It's beautiful.  Seriously, have you looked around lately?  The mountains, the snow, the trees, the clouds.  It's awesome.  Yes, I sound like an earth loving hippie right now and no, I'm not on any drugs.  Just enjoying and loving the outdoors man!

During my run I had to stop and snap a picture of the beautiful scenery around me. Surely this should be documented. It's beautiful. I quickly pulled my cell phone out snapped a shot and kept running. The result is below:

Needless to say, once I got home and looked at the picture I was disappointed.  I had felt inspired by nature and this boring picture was all I could come up with?  I went to delete the pic but couldn't. It reminded me of what I felt when I pulled the camera out in the first place. Could anything be salvaged to create an somewhat interesting image?  Here's what I ended up with:

I decided to zoom and crop a beautiful tree from the background.  The grainy pic still reminds me why I took the picture in the first place, which is this:  The world is a beautiful place. Every little piece of it.

Art and Technology

I came across a company called "Mr. Beam" this morning and was amazed at what they do. This company specializes in 3D video mapping, then projecting their work onto buildings and structures using multiple projector screens. This blows my mind. Here's my 2 favorite videos showing what they do.

Video 1---(Quoted Directly from their website):

Gent

Licht Festival Gent

For the first time in Belgium the city of Gent organized a Light Festival and Mr. Beam was a part of it. For this special event we chose the backyard of the conservatory of Gent, what gave us a beautiful 180 degree canvas to work with.

Projection: Mr. Beam

Audio: Starling Music

Tech: XL Video

Video 2---(Quoted directly from their website.)

Living Room

Concept by Mr. Beam

We created an unique 3D mapping video experience by turning a white living room into a spacious 360 degree projection area.

This technique allowed us to take control of all colors, patterns and textures of the furniture, wallpapers and carpet. All done with 2 projectors.

Living Room from Mr.Beam on Vimeo.

Happy New Year!

Hello 2011.

"It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life For me

And I'm feeling good."

Lyrics from the song "Feeling Good" sung by Michael Buble, Lyrics by -Nina Simone

1 week into 2011 and I'm still thinking about new years resolutions: Run every day, Read scriptures, Work out, Consistent guitar practice, Take more pictures, Record more music, Write original songs, Blog more...that's just a few. Bottom line of my resolutions: Be Better, Do More, Work Smarter, Play harder, Enjoy Every Moment.

This morning I woke up and looked outside and everything

was covered in frost. It was a beautiful sight, so I grabbed my camera and headed outside. Here's a few of the pics I took. I love winter time!

And a few more....

That's all for now. Thanks for stopping by.

James

Am I allowed to say the "C" word yet?

11/10/10

"Christmas"

Even though we're still in the month of November, I've already been busy getting ready for the upcoming Christmas season. The month of December is always CRAZY full of performances including the annual 3 night Eclipse Christmas Concerts. Planning, rehearsals and conference calls started back in September. Going on my 4th year singing with Eclipse, the Christmas Concerts are one of the biggest highlights of the year. It sounds cheesy, but Christmas is a magical time of year that I don't get sick of.

"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,
Jack frost nipping at your nose..."

How can you not feel all warm and fuzzy when singing these lyrics? I love it. Thank goodness for headphones, otherwise I'm sure someone would punch me in the face for all the Christmas music I've been listening to. This years concerts will be different in that we'll have no opening act. Here's who we've had the last three years:

2007-Russ Dixon--------------From the band "Colors"
2008-Jenny Jordan Frogley---LDS Vocalist
2009-Hilary Weeks-----------LDS Vocalist

Since we don't have an opening act we'll be filling the time with more Eclipse music. It's been nice to have amazing artists open the concert, but it will be nice this year to sing a few more songs and have a little more time to get to know and enjoy the audience.

This year to help promote the concert we'll be releasing a few videos to try and hit the social marketing scene better than we have in the past. Here's the 1st video we've put out. It's our "Christmas Rap". We're excited about this video because we're at 1,000 views after only 2 days. We hope the web traffic continues! If you like the video, please share it with your friends. Even if you have to wait till AFTER Thanksgiving...I understand. :)




Thanks for stopping bye!

-James

Happy Halloween!

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! I HATE spiders!

I came across this lovely little guy when I was cleaning off the patio of a vacant apartment this afternoon. I moved a piece of wood laying up against the building and this guy was just hanging out behind it. After I recovered from nearly having a heart attack, I regained the use of my mind and watched it in awe of how big it was...and how much it looked like the fake spiders rings that people give away this time of year (during Holloween).


If the pictures weren't enough to creep you out, here's a wonderful video I shot of my little friend just for you.

New videos from Eclipse

Yeah, so I need to post a normal blog one of these days...but for now here's a couple videos from the group I sing in (Eclipse).

We've got one of our biggest shows coming up at the end of this month on Friday June 26, at the Sandy outdoor amphitheater. We're hoping to make this concert a summer tradition every year in Sandy City so spread the word to everyone you know!

Thanks for stopping by!

James


This video is an EFY show we did at BYU-I in Rexburg this year (4/18/09) What a crowd!

Eclipse Christmas Concert 08'

If you didn't make it to any of the Eclipse Christmas Concerts this year, I found some video clips of our concert from our Saturday night performance:

"This Year" An Eclipse Original
Eclipse (Paul)


Shayne Performing his Macys day parade Balloon impersonation:

Eclipse 2


Me playing "Have Yourself a Merry Christmas"

Eclipse (James)


Another Eclipse Original called "Lullaby":

Eclipse


"Joy to the World" on Recorder Flutes:

Eclipse


Here's a few photo's too:

(LtoR: Jake,Shayne,James,Scott Frogley,Jenny Jordan Frogley,Dan,Kevin,Paul,Dan Beck)

Dan

Dan and Jake during sound check

Paul

Jake

Flyer for the Concert

Part of the Set

If you did come out to the concert...Thank-You for coming! All 3 concerts went awesome and we had more people than we anticipated every night. This was the first time Eclipse has ever done a 3 day public Christmas Concert and it went great!

I especially enjoyed this years concerts because I felt WAY more comfortable than I did last year. Last December (07'), was my first time performing Christmas songs with Eclipse and it felt like I had just finished learning the normal "summer" songs when they told me to start learning all the Christmas music. I learned it in time for the Christmas concerts...but it wasn't completely solid. Anyways, this years shows went awesome and now I'm looking forward to our summer shows.

Thanks for reading and watching!

James

My First Televised Voice Overs!

Here are a few commercials my friend Vaughn Armstrong created for a business called Campus Book Rentals. We did 15 and 30 second spots on each commercial...but they've only posted the 15 second ones on Youtube...so that's all I get for now.

These have been periodically played on Utah's local television stations. It's a start! :)

Bathcrest Commercial Jingle

I sing in a couple acappella groups and one of them is called Eclipse. About a year ago one of the guys from the group asked if I wanted to go to a recording studio and sing a bass line for a radio commercial. I was like: "Heck Yes!" I was just excited by the idea that I could be a part of a radio jingle of some sort. Everything was set up that me and two other guys from Eclipse (Dan and Kevin) would drive to a recording studio in Bountiful where we were going to record a jingle for a business called Bathcrest AND they told us they'd pay us for our time.

Cool.

I'd never recorded a jingle in a professional studio before, so I was excited to see how this would go. We got to the studio met the engineer, got our sheet music and then everyone looked at me: "You're up."

"Uhhhhhhhh.....Ok."

I went into the recording room, put the headphones on and started studying the music while the engineer set some levels. Fortunately I didn't have to completly sight read the music. I was able to listen to a midi file of the jingle and sing along a few times before we started recording. The recording went quickly and then it was onto the other guys. Dan laid down some background vocals and then Kevin laid down some backgrounds along with some beat boxing. The whole process for all of us took about 2 hours. Not too long at all. As we were leaving David Osmond arrived to lay down the lead vocals. We talked briefly then headed for home.

Why am I writing about this 1 year later? Nothing seemed to have ever come from the recording session and we never heard any ads on the radio or tv....so we guessed they decided not to use the jingle. But then today a Bathcrest commercial came on TV and it totally had the song we recorded playing as the background music! It was fun to hear the end result and If I don't say so myself....it sounded awesome!

If you'd like to hear the awesome acappella jingle, here's the link with TV commercial (the music plays in the background):

http://www.bathcrest.com/video9.html


Thanks for reading!

-James

Locked in the bathroom

Have you ever been locked inside a bathroom? Yeah, me either....until yesterday morning.

I went into the bathroom to shower and get ready for the day locking the door behind me. To lock the door, one just pushes the knob in and turns it to the right. Easy enough.

Upon finishing my shower and shave I went to leave the bathroom. I simultaneously kept walking forward as I turned the knob to the left. The door remained closed as I continued to walk into the door, hitting my face.

I looked down and the door knob was stuck in the locked position. Usually, the knob will automatically pop out when turned...but for whatever the reason it wouldn't pop out.

I wiggled, twisted, pulled and pushed to get the door unlocked with no success. I looked out the window to see if there was any tree branches I could climb out on. No branches.

It doesn't help that I live on the third floor. Forgetting the window idea, I went back to the door and gave it a few turns in hopes it would unlock. It still didn't unlock, but I did notice two Phillip screws that were holding the knob onto the door. After noticing the screws, I began to ransack the bathroom in hopes of finding something to unscrew the screws.

In my little fingernail kit I found a little thing. I don't even know what the heck it's called....or what it's even used for. (See picture)

It's a cross between a pocket knife and a bottle opener. With this handy little tool, I unscrewed the screws....took off the door knob....and (15 minutes later) freed myself from the bathroom prison.

Thank goodness for Nail clipping sets that have this random pocket knife/bottle opener!

~Dream~

I was reading some articles online today, and came across some uplifting and inspirational quotes. The last of which is a song that I’ve heard a lot, but have never payed attention to the lyrics.

These are a reminder to myself that we should never give up on our dreams...but dreams still take massive action. Here we go:


"All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible."

-T.E. Lawrence


"The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success."

-Hamilton Wright Mabie


Then of course the beautiful song:



"The Impossible Dream"

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

-music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion

Lake Powell Triathlon

It's been a while.

Running and writing.

I've taken a leave of absence from running and apparently writing this winter. Before the absence, I did complete a third triathlon (The Lake Powell Tri) since I last wrote. That one was on October 13th, 2007 with my sis Liz and nephew Steve S.

What a great experience!

This was Steve S.'s first tri. When Steve finished, Liz and I were waiting for him.

"I can't believe I did this!" were his first words after he finished. I nearly teared up knowing exactly how he felt. There's an intense feeling of accomplishment when you finish a triathlon....no matter how long it took....no matter what place you come in.

Don't worry. I didn't start crying. I was just proud of my nephew and knew exactly how he felt.

The Swim (1/2 mile)

Still no training for this portion of the race. Same difficulty as the other tri's. Maybe this next summer I'll get some swim training in. Side note: After the tri, one of my other nephews invited me to go swimming at a local swimming pool where we swam laps for 1/2 mile. This experience reminded me of the excellent cardiovascular workout swimming is. My heart has never beat harder than when I'm swimming. Or it could just be the fact that I'm a terrible breather and I'm not getting enough oxygen. Moving on.

The Bike (12.5 miles)

Once again I rode my wonderful mountain bike. Riding a mountain bike in a triathlon is like wearing a fanny pack, pocket protector and duct taped glasses to school. Enough said.

Training wise. I tried to ride as many trails in Ogden as possible. This meant 3 to 4 trails a week. Not a lot, but I think it helped.

Great course....I just need to get a road bike.

The Run (3.1 miles)

I felt the most comfortable running this time. I ran everyday (minus Sundays) 1 month prior to this tri. My time on the run ended up being 23:18. I was very happy with this time because in my daily runs up to the tri, I was running 3.2 miles in between 23-24 minutes. Not only did I stay around that same time....but I stayed at that time even after swimming and running! Cool!

The Lake Powell tri ended up being a great event and experience. As great as it was....it was by far the most expensive tri to participate in. I think the bottom line price was like $110.00. Ouch. Location must have something to do with it. The Rexburg Tri (http://www.rushtriathlon.com/) was only $30 and had more free stuff than Powell and Bear Lake. Too bad there isn't a houseboat rental included with that 110 bucks. :)

Running In the Rain

It's Saturday morning. Laying in my bed, I look out my window to see grey clouds filling up the sky. I pull my warm comforter a little tighter to me as I notice the pine tree swaying from the wind.

It looks like a cold morning.

The last few weeks I've been trying to run every morning...but this morning I'm feeling tired and it looks too cold to run outside anyways. In my mind I question myself: "How long am I going to keep this daily running routine up anyways?", Am I going to run during the winter?" , "Won't I get sick if I run out in the freezing cold weather?". These are just a few of the things going through my head. Meanwhile, I turn on my side pulling the comforter with me.

This feels good where I'm at.

Eventually I did pull myself out of bed, put on my basketball shorts, red stinky shirt, socks, and my makeshift running shoes (Hiking boots). Yeah, I know hiking shoes are probably the worst shoes a person could run in....but it happens that these are more comfortable than any of my other shoes that I own. Just as I step outside my apartment door a gust of ice cold air nearly blows me right back into my apartment. Literally. Not only was it cold, it was strong.

I've been timing myself lately to trying to add a little excitement to my run. I do this by taking along my cell phone. It has a nifty stopwatch on it that once you start the time the screen stays lighted until you stop the time.

When I got down to the street I started the stopwatch and started my run. Not even a minute into my run I felt raindrops on my head.

Great.

Not only is it freezing cold outside, it has to rain on top of that. "Can't you get hypothermia running in the rain?" I thought. Oh well. Let's just get this over with.

Wait.

Did I just say: "Let's"? It's official. I'm going mad. Look what running does to the mental mind. I should just stop running altogether. Sure I'll get a big fat beer belly from not exercising, but at least I'll have my sanity. Let's see.....doh! There I go again.

Maybe I'm not insane. Let's....no....I'm going to analyze this myself. I have my mental self (Who would be in bed right now instead of running) and my physical self (who is running right now). So technically I can say "Let's". (I smile) So I'm not insane. Cool. Back to my run.

It doesn't take long to forget that it's raining. I'm running at a medium tempo which gets my heart pounding fairly fast. I start counting my strides as I run: "One, Two, Three, Four, One, Two, Three, Four". As I'm counting this song pops into my head: "Party like a rock star, Party like a rock star"....so I sing this over and over for a little bit. I just happens to have the same beat as counting so it works pretty good. My sister (Liz) kept playing it on her phone this summer...and that's where I originally heard it. I think about my sister for a minute wondering if she's going to do the Lake Powell Triathlon that we'd talked about doing. "I wonder if she's running or riding her bike to train. My nephew Steven mentioned he'd like to do the tri too if Liz and I were. About this time, I begin to push myself a little harder to run a little faster. Steven took first place in his age division at the Rush Tri up in Rexburg, ID.

I need to push myself a little harder.

I focus on the mountains in front of me. I notice there is a little snow in the mountains already. "That's awesome. I can't wait for winter" I think as I start thinking about snowboarding this winter.

If I haven't already lost you....this is a similar patter of thoughts that go through my head when I'm running in the mornings. Yes. They are random. But that's just the edge of the iceberg. Running is a great time to think. Not necessarily think about coherent things...but just a chance to think to myself.

Try it for yourself.

You may discover that your crazy. ;o)

The NOT so adventurous adventures of James

O.k....so I was getting ready to write a little entry into my blog here and noticed that all my blogs go under the Title "Adventures of James". This blog isn't really an adventure....more of a rambling...or Journal entry. So here we go.

I woke up this morning at 5 am to get ready to go down to Salt Lake City. A friend of mine invited me to sing a song that he arranged called "Praise To the Man" down at a morning fireside at the Church history building. I think that was the building. (It's the one with a big picture of the earth on the front of it) Over the last couple weeks we've gotten together a few times and rehearsed the song and then performed it this morning at 8:00 am.

There were about 12 people (6 guys, 6 girls) that sang the song. The overall performance of the group was great. Vaughn (the one that arranged the piece) asked people that he knew could sing, so everyone there had great voices. It was a nice experience....I love singing Sacred music. There always seems to be a spiritual strength that is drawn from participating in small things like this.

I carpooled down with 2 of the girls (Kerabeth and Nikki). That was fun by itself because they're both hilarious. On the way back we stopped and grabbed a Jamba juice for breakfast....mmmmm....I liked it. I had a mango somthin somthin (I can't remember what it was) with Orange Juice. Nikki recommended it so I gave it a try and it was delicious.

After getting back, I headed over to a flooring store to try and catch the manager. I dropped a resume off last week and I was trying to do a little follow up...but he wasn't in. I'll try this afternoon again to see if I can catch him.

More later...........

24 Mile Bike Ride....on a Friday night.

I was going to go on a small 2 mile bike ride with my friend Jake after he got off work. He called and had to cancel because his wife wasn't feeling good. I decided that I'd still go on a little ride so I filled my camel back with water, put on my shoes and headed out the door. From Washington Terrace I rode down into Riverdale to the weber river trail. This was a nice paved trail that follows the Weber river...very relaxing.

This didn't take long and I looked at the pedometer on my bike and it read 6 miles. I was still feeling good so I decided to ride from Riverdale up 40th street to Harrison Blvd. and down to 27th. Once I got to 27th I headed east toward the mountain. That's where I jumped on the BST (Bonneville Shoreline Trail) and started heading south. 1 mile up is an great view of the Ogden Valley. (This was the place I was originally going to take my friend to.) The trail up to this lookout is a pretty good workout....but it doesn't take very long to get up. (between 15-20 minutes) So it's a good night ride. After looking out over Ogden for a while I got back on my bike and continued to ride south. Eventually, the trail took me to a section where I could have ridden up to Beaus canyone, or start to go down the trail. I headed down because it was starting to get dark....and I was feeling pretty tired. The trail popped me out just above the weber state football field. I rode up to 4600 and headed back to River Heights.

That was my ride. :0)

Me doing a Triathlon?!

Triathlon #1(Bear Lake Brawl):

All the articles I've read about doing a triathlon talk about all the training necessary to participate. That's where this blog differs. I did nothing to prepare....yet still I conquered!

Ok...so I may have had a little training, but not the three months of daily training that I read about on the tri websites. I enjoy mountain biking. This summer I've usually rode between 2 to 4 trails a week. The distances have always varied...anywhere from 2 miles up to 40 miles. It all came down to how much time I had and how good I was feeling.

My sister has been home for the summer (she's a P.E. teacher in Vegas), and was talking about doing a 50 mile bike race. It sounded like fun so we both were planning on doing it....even though neither one of us did any hardcore training. That ended up falling through and that's when we decided to do a triathlon. Neither one of us had ever done a tri and it sounded like fun. I looked up on the Internet and found there was one taking place in Bear Lake in about 2 weeks. Not much time to train but we had the desire....so we signed up. The following 2 weeks we went on a few runs and decided to do a shortened mock tri on the upcoming Saturday before the real deal. We would bike the 13 miles then run 4.

We did the mock tri and felt pretty good about it. I think it took us around 1 hour 20 minutes. Not bad for us....we were still alive and felt like we could do the swim in addition to it.

The Swim (1/2 Mile)

Really the only thing that we literally did zero training for was the swimming section.

The morning came and the tri started with the swimming. I now know why they put swimming first: so nobody drowns! It took me around 20 minutes to swim a 1/2 mile. Wow. That part was harder than I thought. I quickly discovered that I'm not a strong swimmer. Since I'm one of the the only ones that read this, I can admit that I spent a whole lot of time on my back doing the elementary backstroke.

The Bike (12 mile)

The biking section was my favorite part. My legs were burning, but I didn't feel like I was going to kill over and die. Plus I passed quite a few people...which made me feel good. Especially after doing so bad on the swim. The whole section was relatively flat which made for a good ride.

The Run (3 mile)

I'll be the first to say it. I hate to run. Maybe my mind will change in the future, but for now I despise it. I dropped my bike off in the transition area and started jogging. My first thoughts after those couple of strides was: "I'm already super tired...can I really run for another 3 miles?" After I got over the feeling of being tired, I got into a rhythm running and just kept with it. When going on a couple runs the week before my sister told me not to stop while running or I'd cramp up....so I kept running and it worked pretty good. This section was also pretty flat.

My 2nd Triathlon Experience (Rush Triathlon):

Having done 1 triathlon before (The Bear Lake Brawl...6/30/07), I had a general idea what I was getting myself into. My training was pretty laid back, but I was glad just to be doing some type of training. I did better on going on longer bike rides and getting out to run, but I still did nothing for the swimming section.

Swimming: (1/2 Mile)

Really the only difference between this time and last time was that I knew what I was getting into. It didn't change the difficulty of it at all...I just didn't feel as nervous the second time around. I may have swam slightly faster this time around but I couldn't tell because the time wasn't recorded on the charts. This time as I was exiting the water I found my nephew who hadn't been out of the water very long and he was throwing up by his bike. After throwing up he kept on going and eventually placed overall 1st place in his age category. Pretty cool.

The Biking: (13.8 Mile)

The biking this time was different. a little longer and much more challenging on the terrain. There was one long hill right at the beginning then rolling hills after that. The hills seemed to hinder any progress I made on the flats. I'd pass bikers on the flat stretches and then I'd get passed going up and going down. As a side note which I failed to mention in the first tri entry....I rode my Mountain bike in both tri's since I don't own a road bike. This slowed my down quite a bit.

The Run: (3.1 Mile)

Like I said before....I hate to run. I learned a huge lesson on this run: REVIEW YOU TRAIL MAPS BEFORE YOU RACE. I ended up running an extra 1/4 mile because there was a section that crossed paths of the sprint runners and Olympic runners...there were no people around to tell me I turned the wrong way.

This trail was also very difficult. There was a massive hill climb that seemed to take forever. Keeping true to the no stopping rule my sister told me about I passed a lot of people on the hill even though I was going slower that a turtle! I didn't see one person that was running or jogging up the hill. They had all stopped and were walking up the hill. Very hard hill.

Good times....Good times!

Clipless Pedals for Mtn Bikes

The Story

Last weekend I purchased Shimano PD-M520 clip in pedals and some shoes. Since I've owned my 06 Specialized Rockhopper comp, I've debated getting clip in pedals but have never purchased them because I always think of other things to buy instead.

Long story short...I was going to hike the Grand Canyon with my sis Liz but ended up buying the pedals and shoes instead. (She decided to buy them first, so I just followed her) So rather than pay for gas and other expenses to go to the canyon we bought ourselves some new toys.

Replacing the pedals was fairly easy...clicking the shoes in was not quite as easy...riding with the pedals......that was interesting. I started off with one pedal. Piece of cake. I clicked in with both pedals and started riding around feeling pretty confident. It didn't feel much different. Liz was riding around on hers too...clicking in and out just getting a feel for it. I decided to "pop-a-wheelie". Earlier on in the week I'd been riding around with my nephew Steve J. and we had been seeing how far we could pedal with just our back wheel on the ground. This is what inspired me to try and pull this off. I pulled the wheelie and pedaled a little too hard. I let go of my handle bars and forgot for a brief second that my feet were still attached to the bike. I landed right on my behind. Ouch! That was an immediate note to self....don't try wheelies with click in pedals.

Street Riding

My own opinion (so far) about the pedals is that they're awesome for street riding. My sis and I rode 40 miles on pavement this last weekend with the clipless pedals...and they performed great.

Trail Riding

I'm still forming my opinion about this. I've been on trail rides so far: 1)Logan river trail and, 2) Green Canyon trail. Technical areas make me more paranoid because I start thinking about clicking out before I even hit the terrain. I think the more terrain I ride the more comfortable I'll get. Downhill seems to be even better. When I hit rocky patches my feet don't slide off like they normally do. One thing I've really enjoyed about the pedals is that it makes bunny hoping even easier....for example: at the Green Canyon trail there were logs placed into the trail to help prevent trail erosion. These small logs were fun to hop over. Very cool. Better riders wouldn't need the clip ins to help them hop over the logs...but having them makes it so much easier.

Conclusion

I like the clipless pedals. There's a definite learning curve to getting used to them. I'm still trying to figure them out. Even on my ride tonight I thought about putting my old pedals on. I'm still sitting on the fence with the pedals....but I can see the definite advantage to keeping them on. I'm going to force myself to become more confident in them on the technical terrain.

Ride On!

Green Canyon Trail (Aug. 9th 2007)

Green Canyon Trail Location

Logan, Utah

Go as far East on 1900 North....This will take you right up Green Canyon. (e-mail me for better directions)

The Trail

What a great trail! My nephew and I bypassed the 3.7 miles of dirt road and went strait to the singletrack trailhead. We traveled a total of 4 miles (2 up 2 down). The trail itself had quite a bit of vegetation overgrowth throughout the trail making it difficult at times to see rocks and roots. Terrain was fairly easy until 1 and 1/2 miles up. Then it got fairly technical with an increase of rocks and roots.

One sidenote about this trail is that the majority of the trail is a rut. This just adds another aspect of the trail. The rider needs to take caution to always watch is pedal position to avoid hitting your pedal on the side of the trail.

Time

Overall this trail took us less than 1 hour to complete at a medium pace. From 1400 North in Logan allow about 15 minutes to get to the trailhead...and the reverse to get out.

GREAT TRAIL...GO RIDE IT!

1st Blogger Blog Ever!

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Welcome to my life adventures. I look forward to sharing my hiking, biking, camping and other outdoor adventures!

Logan River Trail

I rode this 7 mile trail Monday....

Sardine Canyon

On Saturday my sister Liz and myself rode our bikes from Hyrum to Brigham City and making the ride a great 40 mile ride.....

I'll expand on those two rides on in my next blog.

Thanks for stopping by!!!!

Jamez