So Ben finally got his Surly Karate Monkey
together. What's a Karate Monkey you ask? A 29" wheeled single
speed mt. bike made by Surly. So where do
you take Karate Monkey's to play? Fair Hill
of course. It's singletrack
heaven. Just the kind of thing a Karate
Monkey needs to keep it healthy and happy.
The bike on the left
is the monkey. You can see it peeking around the doors of the
jeep at the horses. We were a little afraid of how the
monkey would behave around all the horses of Fair
Hill. Luckily it behaved nicely. As long as we kept
feeding it miles and miles of single track, it
was happy.
Here's the monkey and 1x1 back to back. The difference in
wheel sizes is a little more obvious here.
Ben took his eye off
the monkey for just a minute and look what happened
- climbing trees and monkeying
around.
Here's a series of
logs we did. It's what I call the out-and-back trail.
You basically ride to the end, turn around and
come back - doing the logs both ways.
Here's ben and the
monkey on the same log as above.
We got about 50 yrds.
down this trail when Ben called a do-over. It was a perfect
example of the many miles
of single track
fair hill has to offer.
You can see the trail
snaking through the trees.
Here's some serious
monkeying around. This tree is about 40' long. The
approach is ramped pretty nicely. The tricky
part is staying on it. My 2.5" weirwolves were a little
squirmy on the rotting bark.
The monkey of course had
no trouble with this tree.
One more for the
tree.
We rode a
little over 24 miles that day. The pictures ended about half
way through the ride. We were just having too much
fun to stop and take anymore pictures.
