Category Archives: Uncategorized

I pur­chased these boots last win­ter, replac­ing a pair of well-worn Gaerne’s that had final­ly sprung a leak. For Tri­als rid­ers in West­ern Wash­ing­ton, leaky boots are a real down­er, since we spend sub­stan­tial time walk­ing through muddy/wet sec­tions. I’ve now rid­den 5 or 6 events with these boots, so I fig­ured it was time … 

Con­tin­ue read­ing “gear review: Alpines­tars Tri­als boots”

Well, here we are at the start of a new tri­als sea­son. I had­n’t got­ten near­ly as much prac­tice over the win­ter as I’d hoped, part­ly due to the pres­sures of my job, and part­ly due to the 2 FEET of snow we had around christ­mas! yikes. That is real­ly unusu­al for west­ern Wash­ing­ton, and … 

Con­tin­ue read­ing “The Ice Tri­al, Gold Bar, WA Feb 1, 2009”

A short sto­ry of deferred main­te­nance, dirty carbs, and bro­ken kick­starters. At the last tri­als a few weeks ago, I noticed that my ’04 sher­co was becom­ming a lit­tle hard to start and was occa­sion­al­ly kick­ing back dur­ing start­ing.  So I got on the horn and ordered a few parts for some main­te­nance, and some … 

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Main­te­nance Observations”

Check­ing the weath­er fore­cast on sat­ur­day con­vince me to take the chance and leave my portable shel­ter at home: 10% chance of pre­cip­i­ta­tion, highs in the upper 50s. If that actu­al­ly held up, it would be one of the nicest rid­ing days we’ve had in quite a while. Sun­day dawns way too ear­ly, and chilly: about … 

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Event Report: April Fool’s Tri­al, 11 April 2010, Walk­er Valley”

walk­a­bout day 4. today was vis­it­ing day. lunch with an old high school friend, tea with an author/teacher friend in oak­land, cof­fee with anoth­er old high school friend, and then din­ner with motor­cy­cle friends in Galt. not much rid­ing, only about 185 miles, but a busy day non­the­less. spent some time check­ing out road con­di­tions in … 

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Walk­a­bout day 4: vis­it­ing old (and newish) friends”

Com­ing down in the world, now back in alpha… Black­dog and Mag­pie is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing heavy ren­o­va­tions. A few bits and pieces still work, but most of it is thor­ough­ly tossed up and over. We are Jim (black­dog) and Lara (mag­pie) Har­riger. You can reach us by send­ing email to blackdog_at_blackdogandmagpie_dot_net or magpie_at_blackdogandmagpie_dot_net Drop by again in … 

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Anoth­er Day, Anoth­er Web­site goes Alpha.”

This turned out to be an inter­est­ing day for a vari­ety of rea­sons, not the least of which was the park­ing and loops sit­u­a­tion. There was appar­ent­ly some last minute con­fu­sion between the club and the land man­agers about where we were sup­posed to park, and as a result, we wound up park­ing near the … 

Con­tin­ue read­ing “PNTA Points Round #8, Walk­er Val­ley, June 13, 2010”