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Oh yeah, this is technically my personal blog. So I guess I should write about how I smashed my face open the other day eh? OK so let me explain. Me and my buddy Greg were biking in the Burlington Landlocked Forest. Most of the trails were kind of 'untechnical' but there were a few interesting structures here and there. The one very cool area was a downhill trail with these two massive inline wooden ramps. They weren't really what you would call jumps. More like launch pads. You just float off of them, get an amazing amount of air, and land probably 20 feet down the trail. When at the bottom of these trail, there are two dirt jumps. The one on the left is like a newbie dirt jump, and the one on the right is more of a big boy dirt jump, although it's hard to get a good angle on it.

So we were biking in these woods for a good 3.5 hours. We went down that "jump line" several times. We went all over most of the rest of the woods too. There must be easily 20 very old junked cars in this place too, its so strange.

So on the way home, we decided to stop at the Melrose skate park. It's a tiny outdoor skate park. It only has 3 objects, one barely counts. So I see it and I think, meh this place is tiny I'll just sit on my bike. So I grab my gloves, and leave my pack and helmet in the van. Object one is a miniramp, object two is a mini box jump. So I go up to object 3 which is like a ramp towards the box jump. I hit the mini box jump backwards (up the flat side, down the curve side). But I forget that it's only 1.5 feet tall, and not 5 feet tall. I went big, and I landed in a massive nose dive probably 6 feet past the landing ramp. I'm also riding my mountain bike, not my park bike. My 6.5" travel mountain bike. It's a tall bike, so if you go over your handlebars, you're falling down a long distance. So I smacked my face and started gushing blood all over the place. I also scraped my knee, right shoulder. I also have a sore left wrist, sore left and very sore right shoulder, and my right hand is fucked. It felt like someone whacked my right hand with a sledge hammer. This was Sunday so 4 days later its actually doing much better and I plan on riding tonight.

So I don't crash often but when I do, I crash big. Better crash on a skate park than on highland mountain I suppose. It was a very stupid crash though. I shouldn't have been riding that bike in a park, I shouldn't have hit the ramp the way I did, and of course I should have grabbed my helmet before trying something dumb.

And no there is no video of it. Don't you think I would have posted that already!

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It's been a while. But winter is here, no matter what the calendar says. The normal biking season is over, which means it's time to take my indoor bike and ride... indoors. I just had new seals and oil put in the fork. And honestly, it totally made a huge difference. It actually WORKS again. I can't wait to go USE the bike, probably tonight.

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A mountain bike isn't going to hold itself up you know. From the bike, and the parts on the bike, I can tell you this was taken around spring or early summer 2007. Just taking pics of the bike, just to have pics.

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I finally managed to get a really nice set of pictures of my old Maverick ML7.

When I bought my new ML8, I wanted to keep using a lot of the parts I had put on my ML7. SOOOO half the parts went from my ML7 to my new ML8, and half the parts on my new ML8 went to my old ML7. Hence, this ML7 if half new, half used.

I have a full parts list along with a crap load of pictures on this page:
www.johnmasone.com/ml7/

Email me if you are interested. Asking price is $3000.

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This is what happens when you take the rear shock out of an Maverick ML8. It kinda just falls apart. But the new shock seems to be a much better fit. It's a shock for someone who weighs 175 lbs, but I only wait 135 lbs. And based on my body weight, it's supposed to be pumped up to about 122 PSI, but I have it pumped up to 150 PSI. It seems to handle much better than it ever has. So maybe the biking season can START finally!

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Heres a Pic of my new bike. I just finished putting it together. I had to put some shitty old pedals on it because my new ones haven't come yet. And the brakes are acting kinda... messed up. I'll have to look into that. And I need to properly pump up the rear shock. But otherwise it's good to go. Very good. And very go. You'll see a lot more of this bike, I guarantee it!

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Here's a new video of me on the halfpipe. I'm getting pretty damn high. I've actually gone above the coping before, but you know the saying "video or it didn't happen". Maybe next week I'll do better. Still this is pretty decent.

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I'm getting pretty high on that thing. I'm still too scared to go above it but one of these days I will...

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I had to take the shock off my Maverick so I can send it in and get it fixed. It makes some really funny noises when you compress it. And during the summer, the dampening went away completely for like an hour, then it came back and was fine. Very strange. So they're going to fix it. Meanwhile, the shock is not just suspension, its a structural piece of the Maverick frames, so when you remove it, the bike kinda falls apart. It makes me sad to see my bike like this. Oh well, it will be back whole soon enough.

I might be selling it anyway, I'm not that attached to it :-) I need an upgrade to their bigger frame.

BTW the title of this posting is a reference to Deep Space Nine, NOT a reference to a shitty Vin Diesel movie.

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Behold! The trailer for the mountain bike movie I've been working on. I'm only briefly in the trailer, but I have a real part in the acting part of the movie, and I'm all over the biking part of the movie. The DVD comes out next month, most likely. Buy it. You know you wanna. After watching this trailer, could you not want to?

Plus there's a surprise at the end :-)

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So there's a pretty cool picture of me on the front of DieselBikes.com. It was up for a while before anyone told me. I'm doing a huge wall ride in B&T's in Gloucester. I'm going right to the top of the rock. It's a really nice wall ride, all it needs is a kicker for those that want to gap up on to it :-)

Speaking of DieselBikes, I've got a character part in the movie this year, in addition to having lots of riding in there. Once the movie comes out, EVERYONE needs to check it out!

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Well, my last collection of Urban Freeride clips didn't go over to well. I called it a 'movie'. I think that was my mistake. This newest collection of clips is just that, just a collection of clips, to some excellent music. You know what they say, Go Big or GFY.

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Yeah, downhill mode just means I put the seat all the way down, and put on the biggest, knobbiest tires I own. I was all ready to go up to Highland mountain Sunday, but thanks to the usual reason, things got messed up and I couldn't go. And I'm very angry about it to. I was very pumped about going, and I was really going to step it up and go big. But instead, I did a quick one hour loop in the Fells. I mean the Fells is great but still. I wanted to go to Highland.

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So technically its an Oryg not a Gyro. Anyway, the important part is that its made for a BMX bike and rim brakes. But with lots of cutting, welding, and half-assing, I got it to work on my Kona mountain bike, with mechanical disc brakes. How fucking sweet is this! It really works too. I can't wait to bring it to Rye Wednesday to really work it out. Oh I also put a new BB on there since my old brand new one from like 2 months ago disintegrated on me!

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Since they don't make Gyro's for thick, Aluminum mountain bikes, I had to make some modifications to the kit. That included cutting with a dremel, then pounding with a hammer, then finally welding it back together, as seen below. Note the towel I used to cover my seat. It caught on fire and burned my seat anyway. Oh well.

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I've made some changes to Orange bike. No more shared wheels, Orange bike now has its own dedicated, full time wheelset. Its also much lighter than my other set of wheels, which is great. The new wheels have new tires, 2.5" Maxxis park tires. These tires are twice as wide as my older 2.0" slicks. Go figure. So I should be getting much better traction in the parks these days, and with the drop in weight, I should be able to get that much better air. Plus the new wheels just have one cog on them. Thats right, no more casette, Orange bike is now a full time, honest to goodness single speed. Running at 32t-17t for anyone interested. Its a perfect ratio for skate parks. Also JRA has my gyro so bar spins just might be in my near future!!!

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Went to Rye this Wednesday. It was friggin awesome. One of the best sessions ever. There were very few people there so I got tons of ride time in. And I put clipless pedals on the Orange bike just to "try them out". I'm never going back to flats, clips ALL THE WAY! Everyone thinks I'm crazy but as it turns out, I am right and everyone else is wrong. Also, I am not in any of the pics since I was just shooting around with my cell phone. I also got some really big air in a couple of spots, bigger than I've ever gotten before up there! I would be totally stoked... you know, if I talked like that.

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Who cares about the super bowl, there's a bike session at Skaters Edge sunday morning :-D

I shot some video from my cell phone, it's really low quality but look close and you can see what's going on. The sound got stripped off, which seems to happen every time I upload stuff to youtube.

Anyway the first half of the session was really fun, but then they started letting in really little kids on skateboards that were literally just throwing their boards around the park and then sliding down the ramps on their asses, almost getting run over by kids on bikes doing backflips etc.

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Another really crowded Wednesday at Rye. It sucks when it's so crowded, you don't get to do much riding. But I guess it's better than sitting at home watching the Boston bomb squad blow up Aqua Teen Hunger Force characters.

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Lots of people who mountain bike, don't use their big ring. So they remove it. Then they go buy a huge bash guard to go in its place, so they have something to smash into instead of that gear they don't use. Problem is that bash guards cost like twice as much as big rings. So when I was building orange bike, I decided to make it a single speed. So I removed the granny gear. And i put the chain on the middle ring. Then I removed the big ring, used a metal grinder to grind all the teeth off and make it nice and smooth, then put it back on. I'm so friggin' smart!

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Now look at this!! This is damn near a bike now! All I really have to do is remove another link out of the chain, get it nice and tight, and its good to start going. The rear brake just goes straight down since I didn't get the gyro yet. And there is no front brake since that hasn't arrived yet either. But it's definitely skate park worthy! And I may give it a first run Sunday down in Taunton...

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Hey, Orange bike is starting to look kind of like.... a bike! It would look even more like a bike if my camera phone didn't suck. Handlebars would also help. I've got a large order of parts coming in the mail, hopefully friday. Then I have to pick up a few parts at the bike shop, and by next Wednesday, the bike should be complete. Then I'll be off to Rye with it, or maybe even Taunton! More pics to come...

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You know, its funny. I went to the bike store with my old frame, and I come home with two frames. But they were right, my old frame really wouldn't make a very good skate park bike. And the new one I got will make a very good one, and I got a really good deal on it. So now I have an orange Kona frame that I need to turn into a crazy park bike. And now I REALLY have no use for my old Klien frame, so I need to sell that. I'm hoping I can get $200 for it but, we'll see. This will make a good park bike, good water jump bike, and hopefully a good backup mountain bike for when the Maverick has problems (problems meaning a broken derailer hanger most likely). But I'm not giving up suspension and going hardtail single speed like everyone else is these days. OoooOOOOOoooooh no, my Maverick is the shizzz-nit and it's not going anyway. I just need something better for the half pipes :-)

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Went back to Skaters Edge in Taunton this morning. It was fun until I jumped off some stairs and on landing, my derailer hanger broke AGAIN and my derailer went into my rear wheel and got very mangled, as did my wheel. I don't know what I'm going to do about this hanger situation. My first hanger lasted forever, but all the rest of been breaking on drops after minimal use.

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It was in the mid 60's today, the last day of November. I went for a bike ride in the Fells and it was a great ride. I also brought a GPS with me to start remapping the woods. I haven't checked out the data yet so I don't know if it even worked, I hope so. Oh and I also took a picture of Roosevelt Circle from the top of Pine Hill.

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I took my first trip to Rye today. It really sucked. It was super crowded. We really didn't ride anything but the half pipe all night. By the end of the night, I was getting pretty high on the half pipe, but I can't do turns. I think my full suspension is just not so great for half pipes. Next time I may bring my haro. I say that every time, I have yet to do it. This pic is just of one small corner of the building. It has some pretty cool stuff but the floor was really slick, like it was smooth but then has a layer of dust on it so you were sliding all around. Hopefully this place will be better when its not completely packed. I didn't even get to touch most of the park. Not like Taunton where we kept moving around riding everything. Oh well. As someone just told me, "it beats writing papers all night". Yes it did.

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I went to the Skaters Edge skate park last night with some friends. JRA Cycles in meffa rented the place out. It was so much fun. It was my first indoor skate park ever, and my first real skate park. I brought my mountain bike with my street tires, which worked awesome. I just wish our session lasted longer than 3 hours.

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Ok, this is starting to make me very angry. I've bent tons of derailer hangers in my day, but I've never broken one until Monday, and now I've broken two. Monday's was from a stick, there's no way to prevent that, it happens. But last night was not excusable. I was jumping off a small wall. The size of wall I've been jumping this bike off of all Spring, all Summer and all Fall. There was nothing special about this wall at all. Other than the fact that when my back tire hit the ground, my brand new derailer hanger snapped. Not only did it snap, but it got into the wheel and messed up the spokes. So I went back to ATA cycles in Cambridge and told them, the sold me (not gave me) another one and said they would call Maverick and see what they say. I have a feeling I'm never going to hear from them again. I'll probably send Maverick an email anyway explaining the situation. Anyway I installed the new one, and I trued my wheel, plus they are my street wheels so its not a big deal to me if they get beat up. So I should be good to go for JRA's event tomorrow. Oh, and when I was at ATA, I go "hey do you give nemba discounts?" HAHAHAHA! Next time I'll have to say FellsBiker or Dieselbikes of course.

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Hmm, raise your hand if you can find something that doesn't look right in this picture. If you're thinking that the wheel looks like it's missing spokes, you are wrong. So yeah, I snapped my derailer hanger today while biking in the Fells. I ran over the tiniest little stick, and it just reached up and slammed into my derailer and snapped it right off! Pain in the ass! At least I got two hours of pedaling in. Other good news is I called around and found a bike shop in Cambridge that has the part in stock so it is already fixed. Good thing too because it is going to be relatively warm this week.

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Here is a real nice Trials video I found on Google Video. I can do very little of this right now, but stuff like that is my goal for next year. Whats holding me back the most at this point is upper body strength. Hopping your bike up on to a four foot wall is all in the arms. But by next season I should have it covered :-)
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