Last weekend I participated in an event put on by a local endurance cycling club called Operacion Muerto. The task was pretty simple: ride to a pre-determined set of checkpoints as fast as you can. The checkpoints were in and around Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba, and mostly comprised of ranger stations, back country campsites, and a few trail heads. I teamed up with my buddy Graham and we decided to throw out the 'as fast as you can' part of the event and treat the ride as an extended weekend tour, rather than a race. In the end we rode some long days on trails - 180km, 132km and 110km, but it was all done slowly and comfortably, with many stops to enjoy a quick swim, sip on some bourbon, smell the flowers, etc.
My write up is pretty long and there are a ton of photos, so I think the easiest way to check it out would be to visit the original ride report <http://operacionmuerto.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/mark-reimer-summer-2014/> *Direct link: http://operacionmuerto.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/mark-reimer-summer-2014/* The Atlantis was the perfect steed for this event. I put 2.1" Nano's on earlier and they rolled fast on the gravel roads, and with reduced pressure soaked up the roots and rocks on the single track. I love this bike. I also took a leap of faith and rode the whole thing without bib shorts, which normally isn't a big deal, but 420km of trails is a lot of bashing down there. My B17 Special combined with merino wool underwear and some loose-ish synthetic shorts kept me DRY and comfortable, despite temperatures rising to 37C at times. Only equipment semi-failure was my Bagman Expedition rack for the Carradice Camper Longflap. I didn't have more than maybe ten or fifteen pounds in the bag - ultralight tent, tube, rain jacket, shirt and 2L of water. But when I got back and removed the bag, I noticed all the bouncing around had actually bent the rack a fair bit. It still works just fine, but the bag sits about 1cm lower now. All in all not a huge deal. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
