Korner Talk

If I haven’t talked to you about it yet, then let it be known now that one my new “thing”s is biking.

Biking isn’t exactly a new thing in my life. I remember my first bike was a black bmx that my grams bought me in first grade. It had a nice heavy steel frame with black and white checkered foam padding on the handle bar and top tube. Fast foward past all the nostalgia, my current bike is a Raleigh full suspension mountain bike that was on clearance because the line was being discontinued. If you’ve been following my blog (pat yourself on your back if you have), then you know that I’ve been riding it mostly in the MDR/Venice/SM area. Occasionally I’ll take it up to the SM mountains, although I shy away from actually riding my mountain bike in the mountains because 1) I’m scared of mountain lions and 2) I hate prolonged ascents, but it’s a necessary evil in order to enjoy bombing down.

Anyhow, I’ve found a couple of new sites/blogs that pertain to biking that I want to share. The first one is MTBR. I’ve been going to mtbr for a while and it’s probably the most comprehensive mountain biking site out there. The site has a ton of reviews and a pretty strong forum. Similar to mtbr, but with a more local focus, is SoCalMtb. It has a good listing and reviews of local rides, but the forum doesn’t seem to get much traffic. The next site, SoCal Trail Riders (STR), however, has a really strong forum. I only stumbled across STR this week and wondered how in the world I went so long without finding STR. They seem to have a very active membership that organizes group rides centering around some wacky theme (i.e. dress like a pirate).

Two blogs that I want to mention are Biking in Taiwan (BIT) and Bike Commuters (BC). I started looking for biking websites in Taiwan after my mom and her bf strongly discouraged me from further pursuing mopeding my way around Taiwan. BIT came up as the first link and also happens to be on this other blog about Taiwan that I follow. I found BC after looking for reviews for a messenger bag. I  don’t commute to work by bike because work is too far, but BC does offer some interesting bike commuting stories and reviews that could come in handy if I decide to commute to school in the future.

Feel free to share any bike related thing you find with me. And if you ever want to go biking with me, give me a ring. Biking with a buddy decreases the chance of me getting eaten by a mountain lion by 50%.