Mountain Biking Balm Boyette | Saying goodbye to the Giant Trance... скачать в хорошем качестве

Mountain Biking Balm Boyette | Saying goodbye to the Giant Trance...

Balm Boyette is a huge scrub preserve in Lithia, FL, in it are about 25 miles of very fast flowy singletrack. Alafia, Balm Boyette and Carter Road, all within a short drive of eachother are old phosphate mining grounds, mining activities lead to having big lakes and ridges, the perfect place to build flowy trails in an otherwise flat area, and the guys who built Balm Boyette definitely did it right. Balm Boyette is not particularly technical, instead it favor fast sweeping narrow singletrack, but don't be fooled, that doesn't mean it isn't fun for the more advanced rider. As a matter of fact, its one of my personal favorite spots. Its not uncommon to spot Alligators here, but in general its not something to worry about as they're usually just chilling in one of the lakes. Gators really don't want to deal with humans, most usually, if they're not already there, they'll just jump back into the water before you approach; that being said, its always worth treating them with respect if you do run into one on the trail, which I have had happen before, just not here. Balm Boyette is pretty unique for FL riding in that the trails do not loop upon themselves very often, instead giving you the chance the keep your speed up for prolonged sections, you'll still be pedaling your heart out, but the up and downs of the terrain help keep the speed and feel of flow up. There is one detail here, the access road from the parking to the first trail is just shy of 2 miles, I see it as an opportunity to warm up, some people don't like it very much as that road is rather sandy. The important thing is that sand is rare on the trails aside from that access road. If you've been paying attention, you'll probably have noticed i'm on my Giant Trance instead of the Jeffsy. A few days before this ride I was going through a rock garden and a spoke on the Jeffsy's rear wheel snapped, I didn't have time to fix it so I grabed the Trance. I didn't do it on purpose, but this sort of became a goodbye ride for this bike, I noticed that I hadn't been here since early 2015, the first time I took my bike out of Miami, so it was a fitting end to say goodbye to this bike at the same place as its first trip. The Trance is now for sale, it was an awesome bike, but its too similar to the Jeffsy in functionality, so I'm only keeping one. You see, when I upgraded to the Jeffsy I went with a Large bike instead of a Medium like the Trance, I really wanted the extra reach after a few demo's I had done. I noticed myself get a lot quicker in a short period of time, mainly because the fit of the Jeffsy was spot on for me. Once I got comfortable and improved on the Jeffsy, upon riding the Trance, I did feel rather cramped in space, but I noticed that the bike was much more capable than I gave it credit for. Being cramped before had hindered my confidence, and that's the importance of getting proper sizing, comfort and trust on what you're riding. The bike could always do it, I was just uncomfortable enough on it to not notice. And that is true, when the rest of the country is half frozen, we get to ride in the high 50's to low 60's, and yeah, before you say it, lets not talk about summer at all. Around this part, the far side of the park, the trails get a bit more technical, there's more rocks, the rollers are bigger and the climbs get tougher, you loose a bit of flow, but you gain a lot of fun in variety. One of the cool thing about Balm Boyette is how remote it feels, since the loop really pushes you away from civilization there is an amazing sense of nature that you don't find everywhere, that also of course means, you're far away from everything, so bring plenty of water and your flat management kit. Balm Boyette has so many good trails that for the first time since I started this channel I decided to cut the video into two parts. The rest spot at the end of this video is a pretty common place to stop before heading into Ridgeline, what most people consider the main attraction of the network. We'll take a look at that next week, in the mean time, I hope you had fun with this one and happy riding! Balm Boyette on Trailforks: https://www.trailforks.com/region/bal...