NRAO’s First Annual Space Race Rumpus!

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is having their first annual Space Race Rumpus.

This unique cycling festival is located at the home of the world’s largest steerable telescope, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, or GBT as we call it around here. The Observatory is located in beautiful Pocahontas County with some of the most scenic roads and trails in the mid-Atlantic. The Space Race Rumpus routes explore both the Observatory’s unique property and the surrounding area.

Over the weekend long event you can participate in guided rides–for both mountain and road enthusiasts–and compete on a cyclocross course right next to eight radio telescopes, including the 485-foot tall GBT. There will be rides and races for all ages and levels, as well as cycling clinics and vendors.

Registration
You can register online at BikeReg for single- or multi-day passes. Your registration includes

•     a t-shirt
•     cycling clinics by experts
•     race/ride support
•     post-race/ride refreshments
•     kids’ activities/day care
•     a campsite and bathhouse facilities (with multi-day pass)
•     live music by The Steel Wheels
•     movie showings
•     festive bonfires

All proceeds of the Space Race Rumpus will help the community build a Wellness and Fitness Center in the Green Bank area!

Check back often for updates- or contact us at rumpus-at-nrao.edu or 304-456-2150.

Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/SpaceRaceRumpus?sk=wall

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Want Frequent Updates?

Are you so in love with WV Cycling that you need up to the minuposts and updates about all things related to bikes in and or around West Virginia? If so, head onto facebook and “Like” our group! There’s frequent posts daily, and a lot more humor and news!

A lot more gear, local news, and random quips from about the internet are posted here. You can see little samples of the Facebook posts to your right, but the widget/app thing acts pretty weird.

Click to Visit!

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While Over In Europe…

The Velohottie has been taking pics of cycling related things for me to ogle over. Unfortunately, my imagination has me imagining everyone riding $7000 Bianchis and Colnagos. My imagination has been known to wander, but Austria and German are not the cycling utopias I imagined… well at least her photos are not showing me what I fantasize about.

Take a look:

All of these bikes could have come from a big box department store, or crappy sporting goods center in America. Where are the flashy names, pretty bikes, or hell, even the sharing bikes I hear so much about? My expectations were high, but I still feel disappointed with the bikes, not the photos.

Well, this bike is pretty cool. It too has fenders and a rack, but it just looks a little cooler. The crank is a dead giveaway that it is a crap bike, but I still think I would commute on it if I had to…. 😦

On a drive to a friend’s today, I saw better bikes loaded into vehicles on Rt.33 (the highway) than I did in all of these photos so far. There was a Toyota with three MTB’s, one being a Top Fuel EX, and a Cannondale Scalpel. I can’t remember what the third was, but it was a Cannondale also.

She has also been taking random pics of other things that I thought would share.

Here is a MTB trail in Germany (Usingnen?) The guy with his back facing the camera has some kind of indistinguishable dual suspension MTB, with Schwalbe tires on Mavic rims, and a Rock Shox fork. The bike is pretty serious with hydraulic brakes, a remote seatpost, and computer/GPS mounted on the stem… Wish I knew what the frame was…

More Trail:

 

Here’s some other things that she took photos of, like bike lanes, trinkets, and signage~

 

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Trail Maintenance – Progress & Help

The velomihottie is also a runner, and was outside in the rain at 6am this morning. This kind of dedication to one’s sport is awe inspiring. Don’t get me wrong now, I haven’t picked up running, but I was motivated to go out and ride in today’s heavy downpour. By the time I got home from work, and was kitted up, the roads were already steaming and evaporating the rain off of the hot surfaces. Very eerie!

I’ve been working on a local trail for about two days now, and since it rained today, this was the perfect time to see how well my modifications to the trail have held up. There are about twenty-something coroplast arrows creating a trail path that maximizes the available land, while creating a very efficient and fun topographic course. All I did was cut up some coroplast boxes, make a cardboard stencil, and spraypaint each one with the little arrow design. To create a little less than thirty of them took about half an hour from idea to completion.

I’ve been placing them about five feet from the ground, 6-10 feet before a turn on flat sections, and about fifteen feet before a downhill section:

Very easy to see, no?

I’ve dug up some edges around ponds like the one above to allow the water from the rutted out ATV potholes to runoff down the hill, or disperse into wooded/grassy areas. This took a lot of time, but I’ve been wanting to do a lot of this since 2009 or so.

I’m having trouble determining what to do for one section of trail that the ATV’s have decimated with their tires, and there is about a fifty foot section of horizontal ruts full of water. Video below:

Related articles

• June 4 is National Trails Day (naturalhistorywanderings.com)

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Loose Dogs Mean Lost Lives

Well, in this case, there were no lost lives on either account, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen. Anybody have a story of crazy dogs chasing you, your friend, or anyone else? Have you ever been bitten? What kinds of precautions do you take?

This being West Virginia, have you ever been attacked by anything else? Rabid Possum/squirrel/raccoon?

My buddy, Mike Miller, had a bear lunge out at him on the trails before… Came within a very close radius of his foot/leg, and he about shat himself.

I don’t ever really worry about dogs too much. Either I ride away from them, or I throw stuff at them. I haven’t really met any vicious dogs either…. so…. yeah…

Related articles

• Dundee dog owner charged after Rottweiler mauling (money.marksandspencer.com)
• 5 bitten after dog gets loose: Saskatoon police (cbc.ca)

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