PUMP 20th Birthday Party and Ride

Did anyone have a head count on the B-Day celebration?  If I had to guess I would say there were about 20 folks on the ride and about 30 that showed up for the party.  Along for the ride were several long time members and even a few first timers!  Welcome everyone and great riding with you - inspite of the hail storm :)

We did a loop along Leif, up Saltzman, and down Fire Lane 5.  The lower part of Fire Lane 5 is holding up fairly well, and several of the last work party additions were working.  There is still work to be done to improve the upper portions of the trail.  After desceding Fire Lane 5, we all boogied towards Lucky Lab's NW location.

Piles of pizzas, a wonderfully decorated cake, platters of veggies/cookies/crackers awaited to refuel our bodies.  Thank you to the organizers of this fun event!  A slide show of PUMP photos from long ago and not so long ago was provided for our eyes to feast upon, while we chomped down the edibles.

Next ensued a very heated contest for fastest flat tire fixer!  Jordan and Dave went head to head in the final round, with Jordan edging Dave out at the end to win a beautiful hand built wheelset generously donated by Sellwood Cycles!  Perhaps worth even more than the wheelset was the Eric Tonkin autograph attached to the wheelset :)

Thanks also to Fat Tire Farm for supplying bike tune up gift certificates for the winners of the best vintage bike ridden in Forest Park that day (Don won this prize) and the best vintage mountain bike outfit (Bob won this prize).  Bob also provided his vintage mountain bike and display photos for show and tell.  In case you haven't met Bob or seen his bike, it is a true piece of mountain bike legen - worthy of hall of fame recognition!!  His bike is the first to employ a disc brake.  Chat him up next time you see him at an event, he's full of great mountain biking tales.

The fun continued when Theo, PUMP's founder, made an appearance and gave a short talk on the history of the club.  Theo provided info on past PUMP rides and volunteer efforts.  He also brought along some original PUMP stickers for folks to plaster on their vintage bikes and what not, and some very cool original Forest Park mountain bike trail maps.  Theo generated these trail maps himself when Leif and Saltzman were the only legal bike trails!  The maps, published +10 years ago, alluded to the efforts to open up biking on the Fire Lanes, including groundwork being laid to open up Fire Lane 5!

This was my first PUMP ride. I had a great time even though it was cold and wet. In fact, I think that made it more fun in some ways. I wanted to go to the party but already had plans for the evening.

In case you're curious, I was the guy on the silver 29" Gary Fisher wearing camo pants, which were thoroughly soaked but seemed to keep my under layers from getting too wet.

You'll definitely see me on future PUMP rides, and I'd like to get involved with volunteer work (assuming I can find the time).

Yes, although I should clarify.  The final round was a stage race, with the fastest cummulative time winning.  To level the field of competition, Dave and Jordan changed flats twice, once each on a single tire/rim combination and then trading tire/rim combinations with each other for the second stage.  I'm sure we've all experienced the difference between kevlar and steel beads, tire inflation volumes, stiffness of rubber compounds, friction of different rim tapes, and so on.  Gotta keep it fair :)

We had about 5 new folks during the ride by my count!!  Welcome everyone :)  And a few of them made it down to the after party.  On behalf of PUMP we look forward to seeing you at future events.  It is going to be a great year of BIG events.

Hope to ride with you all soon.