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December has been a pretty relaxed month with bursts of action and work. We got things set up at the factory so that we could work remotely for a few weeks and headed to Ojai for some quad sculpting in the sun with friends Serena, Kasia, Taylor, Jordan, Sean, Patrick, Arya and myself.

we rented a spot for 8-10 of us and split the cost. nothing to do but occasionally check emails and ride until our brains melted. and melt they did. the above photos are when we had just arrived and unpacked. fresh as the oranges on the ground were before they fell to the ground.

our first ride was more of a hike — well for half at least. an abandoned forest service road that was terribly over grown. 3 miles 3 hours lol. it met up with the coast view trail and we took that back down to mieners oaks. great ride, sorry for the poison oak exposure Jordan!

had a lot of rain and even some snow the next evening —so we went out for a road ride up the highway. way up. great climb, and not much traffic.

the dirt was far from dry the next day– found out the hard way by getting stuffed by the mud on sulfur mountain. sulfur mountain has hot tar seeping from natural tar springs on the side of the road. very interesting. we turned back and headed to the farmer and the cook place we’d been eating burritos at every day.

we made up for it the next day. went up sulfur mountain from the other direction and finally looped it. still too muddy to get deep into the mountains though.

then it was time for the big day. too much to write about, I don’t think I was coherent after hour 3. several mechanicals early on, and nearly 10k of climbing in 55 miles made for a 12 hour day in the deep mountains. we crawled down a snowy trail in the dark for what seemed like several eternities, and nearly lost Namz — although she was fine she will have you know. I mangled my der hanger at mile 10 so single speeded the rest of the 10 hours. Kasia and Taylor are Olympic ATBers.

check out my strava if you are wondering what we did.

flew home after 8 nights and it was time for the final days at nutmeg needleworks before the staff went on holiday break for the next 2.5 weeks.