For those that don't know, Green River is a town in Utah, and for any freerider looking to film a video segment, the ability to ride and build here is endless, it is a mecca. The grey and gold covered cliff mesas are home to some of the most uniquely shaped landscape that you'll ever see, the best part, it's all shaped in a way that caters to the bike. Erosion here causes the hills to have the perfect balance between smooth rolling hills and sharp knife edge cliffs and ridges, together these build natural lips and landings.

The perfect balance between smooth rolling hills and sharp knife edge cliffs and ridges, together these build natural lips and landings

The town here is small, it caters to the passerby of the nearby Interstate-70, with restaurants, motels and gas stations littering the main strip, the population of nearly a thousand are good small town people perfectly content with the small town lifestyle. There aren't any tacky tourist shops or traps, with the town marketing the tourist towards its world class watermelons, river rafting, and the River History Museum.

Not quite the lights of the Vegas strip - but they're a nice sight when you're driving back from the desert each night starving and tired.

The town is littered with abandoned businesses - these are bordered by bustling restaurants and busy gas stations.

Geoff Gulevich has been on a trip here before, so has Harookz. I have been here briefly while passing through on my way back from various events in Colorado, but together the three of us had never been here on our own creative mission. For the past couple years it had become a goal of ours to come here, as many have before us, and try to create something with help of the unique landscape. There have been so many video segments filmed here, so to be unique is difficult, we decided to embrace this idea and look for a few unique lines while interspersing them with the classic hips and ridge lines that Green River is known for.

I'll be honest, this hip was a poach, Alex Pro hit it last year - the lip is like 25 feet tall and the run in starts a few hundred feet up a ridge line.

The signs here all seem to have holes in them.

Rolling into the town late at night is a bit of a shock for someone who comes from a city of two and half million people, it's small, and it operates small with most of the restaurants closed by 9pm. That's ok, it's late October and we'll be done shooting by 6:30, plenty of time to eat. Once we're settled in we'll hit the hay as soon as possible, the next week is going to be hectic, early rises to shoot and explore, and long afternoons until dusk in the heavy heat. Exploring the landscape here is key as so many of areas close to town have been picked over, having 3 or 4 sets of eyes to comb the landscape is ideal, as is keeping an open mind with stuff that could look really cool if worked the right way.

7 AM moon rock session - golden light out here is really really gold.

Kevin leads out Geoff on a fun warm up descent.

With a 4X4 truck one can get in and out of the zones quite easily, but to truly explore the untouched, a quad or dirtbike is necessary. Water here is sparse, so bringing buckets in from the Green River is necessary to pack lips or landings, carrying these without an ATV sucks, we found that out the hard way. Luckily we had Kevin Soller assisting us, Kevin was more than game to carry the water on his back or to help carry gear up the hill for us. If you don't have an ATV, try to bring someone willing

We can get the cliché out of the way early and say that mountain bike trails are something most of us take for granted. As we’re ripping, shredding, climbing, descending, and even skidding (GASP) our favorite trail, its origin is rarely the first thing on our mind. It’s usually how much fun the last section was or how terrified we are of rag-dolling in the next rock garden, or thinking “I hope no one sees me on this 29er!"

The vast network of North Vancouver trails begs some questions. Where did the trails come from? Are they remnants from the Gold Rush? Were they built by the Vietcong to spread communism to North Van soccer moms? Did elves build them? And, what’s the deal with that guy with the red truck always parked by Ladies’ Only?

To get to the bottom of these questions once and for all, Rocky Mountain recently signed up with the NSMBA to adopt a trail that RMB staff members would help maintain.  Last Friday was our first trail day, and the RMB staff marched into John Thompson trail on lower Seymour Mountain armed with elf traps and the knowledge that communism only works on paper.

We were a rag-tag bunch and probably IMBA’s worst nightmare, but thankfully, professional trailbuilder Matt Preston was there to keep a watchful eye on us. Before we got started, he made sure to explain all of the safety rules of working on the trail. It was apparent immediately that everything we found funny was very dangerous.

Matt telling us how not to become a statistic.

RMB pro rider Andreas Hestler was there, not afraid to get his hands dirty with the staff. He also wasn’t afraid to keep pulling up his jeans to flex his leg muscles at us, which was a bit weird. Everyone from the bossman, Charles Russell to the lowly team mechanic was there. Joe the Intern wasn’t invited but still came anyway.

"You hold the nail, I'll hammer."

After an awkward moment when diminutive RMB product manager Alex Cogger got caught in one of the elf traps, the team rallied and after much wood splitting, digging, and rock piling, we had polished off a little section of trail. It was more work than we anticipated, but also more satisfying.

Cogger right before the incident.

Lessons were learned that rainy day on the Shore. Lessons like:  The hatchet is not a can opener. Lift with your back, not your legs. Trail builders built the trails, not elves or communists. The politically correct term is “little person”, not “elf”.  Lucky Lager is giving away free hats with 15 packs. Trail work is hard and fun. Only losers throw handfuls of mud.

Don’t worry, we aren’t about to pat ourselves on the back too hard for going out one time.  We should be commended, however, for cancelling our weekly tire fire to make time for trail work. Of course, that just means more tires to burn next week!

We drink a lot of coffee at Rocky Mountain Bicycles. Most of the office is somewhat dependant on nature’s hot brown nectar, and those who aren’t are completely addicted. It’s safe to say that when something gets in the way of our constant caffeination, things can get a little squirrelly around the office. Yesterday the coffee pot broke, and although we have zero proof, we’re confident our engineering intern, Mike Sullivan was responsible.

Here’s a picture of Mike we stole from his Facebook. He's dressed for what appears to be some sort of weird safari.

Hailing from what some consider paradise and what most consider the opposite of that - Waterloo, Ontario - Mike is the latest addition to the R&D department. One of the most positive changes at Rocky over the last couple years has been the intern program in which we get a fresh faced, math savvy, and socially not-so-savvy student every four months. Right as the intern’s will to live is at its breaking point from ridicule and heavy workload, a new one comes in and the cycle of torture is renewed.

Mike is kind enough to make coffee often, probably more than anyone in the office, and that is why we think it was him that broke the coffee pot. Our coffee pot is a big jug that our commercial grade coffee maker drips into. Once it’s full, you close the lid and a lever pops up with which you pump the coffee into your cup. Something in the pump broke and it was all Mike’s fault.

Being the problem solver that we’re barely paying him to be, Mike enlisted our master fabricator and frame builder Al Kowalchuk to fix the pump. They quickly identified the culprit as a broken piece of plastic that broke after eight years of heavy use. With a full machine shop at his disposal, Al began fashioning a replacement part out of aerospace grade 6061 aluminum billet.

Aluminum on the mill.

Now on the drill press.

Taking shape.

A perfect reproduction.

Ready for reassembly.

You can tell by his duck-like expression that he's happy for the heckling about the broken coffee maker to end. Special thanks to Al for fixing the coffee pot on his birthday and to Kicking Horse Coffee for keeping us buzzed.

And that, Ladies and Gentleman, is a small glimpse into what happens at Rocky Mountain each day. Lots of people think working at Rocky is all private jets and champagne, but we put our pants on one leg at the time like everyone else. Well, actually, we get Mike to put our pants on for us.

Stay tuned for our next blog update where we crush a can of Manwich in the ultimate frame failure machine.

Well Howdy there,

I've been in Tucson for about 6 days, 22 hours, and 14 minutes so far. And up to this point its been warm, its snowed, I've roomed with drunk heroin addicts, cooked some awesome meals and done a bunch of pedalling in the desert.

My first couple days I decided to live like a cheap cyclist, although I did live cheaply..I also shared a 6-bunk hostel room with some "interesting people". And by people I really only mean one dude. You can read the full story here: http://evanguthrie.blogspot.com/2011/02/drunk-heroin-addicts-in-my-room.html <http://evanguthrie.blogspot.com/2011/02/drunk-heroin-addicts-in-my-room.html> . To sum up quick, I had an experience with a drunk heroin addict puking and peeing all over the room. And it was a good thing I had a top bunk, otherwise I would have smelt pretty interesting.

After this incident I decided it was time to relocate. I luckily found an open room to rent in house for the same price as the hostel. Thanks to the one and only Cody Canning from: http://codycanning.blogspot.com/

Now to the reason I am down here. I decided it might be nice to get out of the cold and snowy Okanagan for a couple weeks and ride my bike, as the season is approaching quickly. And since 98% of my endurance work has been done on the snowshoes I knew it was time to actually ride the bike and why not in the sun. So far everything's been going great, the rides are getting longer and feeling easier. Which is a good thing, because this time last year I was down here training with Mononucleosis, and of course I didn't know. But to ride 4 hrs with 2 hrs of coasting I felt like I had just raced a 24hr solo. So this year things are back on track, and I'm ready to race again all healthy and mentally fresh!

I've had a couple chill coffee rides so far, and we tend to ride over to the University and people watch. This time of year, there's some good scenery for sure.

I experienced my first Shoot-Out ride on Saturday. It was hard and it was damn early in the AM. I was on the bicycle at 6 am sharp for my hr commute to the start. Then we proceeded to ride out of town in the Master group, having not done the ride before I didn't know why we were so much faster...Then it hit us. So we stopped and waited for the actual normal ride. I would have rather kept rolling slowly because the "normal group" had Todd Wells in it and oh boy let me tell you, never try and stick his wheel on a long uphill sprint for your "endurance ride". I think I did 1000 watts for 20 sec trying to stick it. Then I quit.. Honestly it was a wicked ride. A bunch of US U23 National Team guys were out for a training ride as well. We finished 140 km by 11 am. Then headed to the University to watch some local crit's.

Oh and by the way, the people down here are interesting. Half of the time I have a Canada vest on, and people keep asking me " Are you from Canada...Eh? haha" Sometimes I reply with no, I just like their clothing.. I've also heard some people down here talk about "ice hockey". Yes "ice hockey", not just "hockey". Had some master guy roll up beside a group of us the other and asked the same "are you from Canada" question, but this time we replied with "yes". And he asked "do you kids know the Sedin sisters?" And we were all like said hold on a minute there buddy. But he quickly came back with "do you know what colour skirts they are going to wear for the playoff?" I gotta give it to him, it was somewhat funny.

It actually snowed down here a bit the other night. Just a light dusting. but it was funny how big of a deal it was. Haven't seen a day that nice back home since like Oct.

The weather looks promising the next week, looks to be 25 degrees or more everyday. Now its time to hunker down and put in some hrs. Then back home, where is -5 and 80 cm of snow in my yard.