VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Several years ago I published a video about a very simple trick used to loosen and remove even the most stubborn pedals from just about any bike. Over the years I've used this trick on hundreds of bikes that I've worked on or had to disassemble for shipping.
I recently sold this 20 inch Specialized to an online buyer and ran into a minor issue when attempting to remove the pedals. So the pedal spindles on this particular bike have really narrow wrench flats and neither of the 15 millimeter wrenches that I have were narrow enough to actually fit on the pedals to be able to loosen them. I didn't have an actual pedal wrench available or time to locate one. My adjustable wrench was way too wide to make proper contact with a flat portion of the spindle so that wasn't a solution either, until I came up with this idea...
These are a couple of the hex bits out of a small screwdriver set. I placed one of the bits on the top flat surface of the spindle then grabbed the other one and held it on the other side, then I took the adjustable wrench and clamped it down against both bits like this. With the adjustable wrench in place I grabbed the bike firmly by the handlebars and applied both brakes, and then using my trick, I loosened the pedal by stepping on it and then applying my body weight to the wrench with the heel of my foot.
Voila! Piece of cake.
Hope you found this helpful, and thank you for watching.
VIDEO TREANSCRIPT
The ride started early Saturday morning at the Pedal Driven bike shop located in the historic district in Sanford Florida.
"He's got skinny tire bike"
"We are about this embark on this
adventure here with Matt"
"Oh yeah"
"Matt's the owner of this shop where we're starting here. Also here with Tony"
"What'sup guys?"
"Ready to do this?"
"Yeah definitely!
Riding to Alexander Springs"
"All right let's go!"
The ride was planned having two different starting locations the first being at the bike shop. Shortly after nine when we started we were joined by one more rider the four of us then rode nine and a half miles to the second starting location where we would be joined by the remaining ridersand what would make up the bulk of our group.
"Hey we got a good group here!" "Nice! Hello!"
I wasn't exactly sure how many more riders to expect and so I was stoked to see an additional 12 show up for a total of 16.
"Frank what's going on man! Good to see ya!"
About five minutes after the second group of riders arrived we resumed by entering the Markham Woods trail system right across the street from our second starting location. The route then took us into the Seminole State Forest a few miles later. About halfway through the Seminole Forest we stopped for some quick local knowledge about Blackwater Creek from Ron.
"Upstream is also really really cool. It splits - sulfur run goes one way if you go up far enough you run into an old railroad bridge. That's where most people like to go, it actually is a full bridge across the River."
From there we continued moving north toward the Cassia trailhead at the north end of the Seminole State Forest. Once there the group stopped for a moment to regroup and be updated on what lie ahead.
"Yeah we're gonna be on pavement here for about two two and a quarter miles on 44 and then we turn left on Royal Trails, that's another roughly two two-ish miles, maybe two and a quarter and that takes us right to Maggie Jones, which, Maggie Jones is gonna be a lot like what we just did except the final, I guess the final two or three miles, it turns into
pavement and it starts becoming light residential, but the majority of it is just like what we just rode - gravel, wilderness. Yeah so if you guys need any water, drinks, food, bathrooms, whatever, get it at the Dollar General because once we leave there that's our last stop until we actually get to Alexander Springs, which is like another 12 miles of
singletrack up the road and it's so it's a good, at least a good hour. By the looks of this we'll probably have a little bit more sand than expected so that's going to probably slow us down a bit."
A little over an hour and 13 miles later we arrived in Paisley at the Dollar General - the only store for miles in any direction. Here the riders restocked withwater, drinks, and snacks. After what was around a 20-minute stop at the store we resumed progress on what was the final leg of the day's ride: 12 miles of singletrack on the Paisley trail.
"All right we are taking a quick break here to regroup, we are still waiting on I think two riders that are falling back a little bit. We're basically almost in the middle of nowhere. And here they come!"
"All right breaks over let's go!"
"All right we just made it to Alexander Springs!"
About 33 miles and several hours after the day start we arrived at our destination: Alexander Springs.
"So here we are at Alexander Springs and we just grabbed a couple picnic tables and grilling some hamburgers hotdogs, and some food that was driven up for us."
A couple of the riders had someone meet us there with a grill and some great food.
"I'm about to go take a shower over that way facilities might take a swim in the spring. Yeah we're all here and we've just eaten so in a little bit get cleaned up and then go to camp."
"So I'm walking down to the spring over there apologies if the video quality isn't optimal because I have my phone in a plastic bag right now because I'm trying to try to get an underwater view of the spring itself. It looks like this awesome crater."
Well that didn't work too well... I had my phone and closed in a sealed plastic ziplock bag for waterproofing but the pressure of the water up against the touchscreen pressed the stop record button so this is all I was able to get.
"Alright here we are we just left the springs park proper and we're a little bit across the street in this wooded area, you can see everybody is about to set up camp, everybody's clearing their spot."
"This is gonna be home sweet home for the night. Matt here's testing out his new hammock, already got it set up, just about two stragglers just rolling in."
So I should mention that most of the riders in our group hadn't planned on camping or riding back and so had made arrangements to be picked up at the picnic site. That left the following eight that you see here plus myself.
"So we are here I think everybody's, uh, as you can see behind me everybody's pretty much got their sleeping arrangements fully set up. Most of us are in tents as you can see, except for these three guys here in hammocks but we're basically set up for the evening and we started a fire which will be adding wood to here in a little bit. So we're fixing to have a pretty cool night we should have fantastic weather. It's gonna be awesome.
DAY 2
"What time is it? All right here we are morning two, 7:08 am and everybody's packing up ready to hit the trail in a little bit."
"I think we're all getting ready to make a deposit"
"In the safety deposit box?"
"So this turned out to be a fantastic campsite, got a fantastic campfire. We've all eaten breakfast and we're about ready to rock and roll here in probably 20 or 30 minutes more or less so we will be making the trip homeward bound."
"That spring did a great job"
"It did, it did."
"Cleanest water you could find."
"So how were you sleeping in a t-shirt?"
"Next time you'll bring more stuff right?"
"So Speedy Gonzales wasn't so... all of the lightweight approach wasn't so much the way
to go on this was it?"
"Alright this is what's left of our campsite this area here is we where we had two tents and two hammocks set up over here there was another guy with a hammock over there and some tents over that way. We extinguished the campfire, we had a nice fire going on right here and that's taken care of."
"All right we are packed up and ready to roll we're waiting on one rider who went to get some water."
"All right we're back here at the Dollar General on the return leg home we just finished the Paisley bike trail and there's the rest of the group waiting for us we're here at the basically the almost halfway stop on the way back at the Dollar General. We stopped here yesterday on the way up and this is the only store around for a miles in this area so it's kind of like an Oasis in the middle of nowhere."
This was the point where we lost two more riders. One of the guys lives in an area that's in the opposite direction to where we were heading and so he broke off from the group here and rode home. The other rider was becoming a victim of fatigue and decided it best if he hung back at this location and had his wife come pick him up.
"I don't know I think we may have a slight holdup here I don't know what's going on we got a rider back there whistling for us oh okay so one of our riders left his backpack at the store and he's gotta.... he's got to run back toget it." So while we waited for Dean to retrieve his backpack this rather unique and interesting vehicle drove by and we were trying to figure out exactly what it was.
"Is that a new model of something? I didn't get a good look at it just the
sides and the back. What kind of car was it?"
"Yeah that ain't an Excursion though. An Excursion is longer than that."
"That sounded like a Ford engine though, GM diesels don't sound like that."
"All right we just pulled into the Cassia trailhead now. We're at the north end of the Seminole State Forest now so we only have about less than 14, 15 miles to go to complete this ride. We just came up a section of paved road over there which was pretty challenging because it's an uphill and into the wind and we're starting to get tired and we stopped
here to regroup eaten a little bit of snacks here.
"What say there Tony?"
"It was, that was good, that was good thanks to Speedy Gonzales over here. I'm gonna
start calling you t-shirt guy. How's that?
"This guy didn't bring ****. He brought like a... he he brought like a silk sock to go bike packing, meanwhile everybody else is pretty loaded. Frank here wussed out, dropped his bag off with somebody so a car is gonna come get him... I'm just giving you crap Frank. No it's all good. Yeah we're almost done."
"All right guys we're on the homestretch. Bear Pond Trailhead. And how many miles is it to your place from here?"
"You come here all the time! It's gotta be like probably about five miles..."
"...five miles?" "Seven? All right home stretch. Almost there!!" "Let's do it"
"Alright we're here on the home stretch on the Markham woods single track we've got like just a couple miles to go when we ran into some people from yesterday that rode up with us. They're out here riding their Sunday ride."
"You did something when you did something like that."
"This is it man we're done."
"Great weekend, great ride, great times great weather, pretty much great everything."
"Suck it up guys."
"Here we are. We made it. Ride completed!"
"Strike a mean pose like a total badass or something."
"Yeah you mean that mean pose no no no no no I need I need you to stand up man."
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Me:
"Today is Wednesday, February 20th and I'm about to pull into the Markham Woods trail. Let's go for a ride."
Two Orlando area bike shops collaborated with Kona bicycles and on this day they showed up with the Kona factory van and a full fleet of demo bikes for riders to try out.
Me:
"Now I'm here with Wilson, he's out of Richmond Virginia with the Kona demo truck, awesome setup here and all of these awesome Kona bikes. What can you tell us about Kona bikes?"
Wilson:
"Oh man so we've been around for a little bit over 30 years now, one of the last few independent mountain bike brands in the US. Yeah so we make all kinds of bikes we make bikes that are a good time have fun on, we make a range - so out here I've got my long travel enduro bikes, I've got short travel cross-country bikes, I've got hardtails that are fun for trails and going fast, I've got some gravel bikes - we have a new gravel bike out this year that's a good time on trails or the road. Yeah man I mean we're all about having fun on a bike and out there."
Me:
"Awesome! Well we want to thank you for coming to our Wednesdays at Markham ride it's it's quickly becoming one of the premiere weekly off-road rides in the Orlando area."
Wilson:
"Sweet! Awesome!"
Me:
"We're stoked to have you here."
Wilson:
"Glad we've been able to work. Yeah it's cool to see all
the enthusiasm in Florida."
Me:
"I'm here with Kyle from Kyle's bike shop."
Kyle:
"What's up John?"
Me:
"What's going on man?"
Kyle:
"Going good"
Me:
"Good deal. So tell us - people that are
interested in buying a Kona Bike, tell us about your shop where you're
located, that sort of thing."
Kyle:
"Sure, so yeah we're in downtown Orlando in the milk district in downtown. Wwe've been at Kona dealer since 2008,
pretty cool company to deal with we've always had good relations with them. One thing I like about Kona is they're a small company who has a big reputation. They're kind of rider owned, rider developed... everybody that works with their company rides, so you can tell when they put the packages together that these are
people that care more about the riders and say maybe the bottom end."
Me:
"Okay so am I correct in thinking that you are one of two Kona dealers in the greater Orlando area?"
Kyle:
"Right, that's right. There's this awesome new bike shop now in Sanford they're also a Kona Dealer you know so we worked together on this Kona demo to where it could be right in the middle between the two shops and we both came and help out and we're really far enough away to where we're really only helping each other grow the brand."
Me:
"Very cool, very cool."
Me:
"All right I'm here with Matt from...
Matt:
"...Pedal Driven in Sanford."
Me:
"Sanford. So you are one or two of two Kona dealers in the
greater Orlando area?"
Matt:
"This is correct."
Me:
"So if people on the north side of town and further want a Kona bicycle they would come to see you?"
Matt:
"Come to see me."
Me:
"What else can you tell us about your shop and especially in relation to Kona here?"
Matt:
"So we are Kona a shop obviously, we sell Jamis also, love everything steel,love hardtails, all that good stuff, yeah we just have a shop you want to come hang out and that's where we're gonna try to be very inviting. Come by and have a cup of coffee!"
After an entire afternoon of test riding various 2019 Kona bikes the riders turned their attention to the Wednesday's at Markham weekly night ride.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Hey my name is Brian Baker and I'm the trail boss for the Minneola trailhead bike park here in Minneola Florida, and this trail has been here for about about five months now. It took what was a year in the making, actually started way back in last July, and had to work with City Council members and county officials and got together with OMBA and SORBA and got a whole bunch of help from everybody, and was able to put this trail together in a matter of four hours actually. We're able to cut it out to put it together in four hours with the help of about thirty-four volunteers, and it's really been an amazing gathering of people, amazing gathering of effort.
We have a lot of sponsors that we're very thankful for helping us out, helping us with the trailer bringing out free swag, free snacks, you know, keeping us hydrated out here, and as you can see you know we got plenty of riders coming out here and enjoying the trail.
We're right off the South Lake Apopka Trail, (the paved trail) that goes all the way over to Orlando, and all the way out to Groveland, so we have awesome access here. You can essentially you know come right off the trail right down here in Minneola trailhead and come over here - it's just a single track and get on and have a good time. We have so many bikers in the area - you know that's one of the things that really inspired me to get the trail going - is that you know we didn't have another trail for another 45 minutes from this destination, and so my kids and I, you know we wanted something that was closer to home, so I said "What the heck, you know let's see if we can get a bike trail here", and Minneola was you know really good about catching on and donating this terrain, this acreage here that we could put our bike trail on. So again, it was just really, to me, an inspiring gathering and support coming together to make it happen.
So here we are enjoying the trail, it's a beautiful day in Florida and let's ride!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Hi I'm Harry. We're here at Soldiers Creek Mountain Bike Park. This is a nice trail maintained by Sorba Orlando It's a singletrack it goes along the Soldiers Creek. The trail goes along soldiers Creek and it winds along about 1.3 miles. It's nice - a little bit of elevation here and there nice and cool under the big trees and it's a really good ride here and local, just outside of Winter Springs, and right near the Boombah Park.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Hi how's it going? My name is Joshua Jianuzzi and welcome to the Orlando mountain bike park. We're located here inside of Lake druid Park which is off of SR 50 also known as Colonial Drive of back road of Coy drive here and we're in between Coy Town and just outside of the milk district about ten minutes outside of downtown Orlando.
This is a SORBA Orlando mountain bike park. This property was donated by the naval base about seven, eight years ago, we tried to open this once before and had some issues with soil and the city was nice enough to help us out get us going. With the help of city individuals, fellow mountain bikers, local organizations like Summit Church with their NiServ, Green Up which is also a part of the city Orlando, thanks to Janice Rahill and David Wagg, Tommy and Anton, big help all the individual riders have been a big part of the build up and construction of the park... Been here for a little over three years maintaining it.
We've got just under a mile of singletrack, we've got a pumptrack here, its a mix between a skills area and also another tot track with some other wooden features as well to kind of hone in your skills. We are mostly a beginner park as we are fresh here for the last three and a half years. We opened up October 31st of 2015.
Yeah so we've got new features we're building and designing, I'm out here as much as I can with different volunteers, different organizations I'm just digging in and trying to share the fun with everybody so you can get out and enjoy the ride.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Hello I'm Bobby and I'm the trail volunteer for the Florida Forestry Service out here at the Little Big Econ State Forest. The Snow Hill Bike Trail has been around here since the late 80's and it follows mostly in the deer paths. There's about 15 miles of singletrack out here at snow hill bike trail but most of it winds through the state forest here and a group of volunteers from SORBA Orlando comes out here and maintains the trail and works with the Florida Forestry Service.
The terrain out here at the snow hill bike trail consists of mostly sand but it's also mixed in with some muck and some loose dirt but most of it is sandy. This land used to be used for harvesting turpentine and it was a farm for cabbage and celery.
This is a wildlife preserve and there are all kinds of wildlife out here that are native to Florida. Since it's a Preserve you might find alligators in the water which is common here in Florida as well as snakes, turtles, gopher turtle and also wild hog and wild turkey. There's quite a few deer out here as well that you'll find along the bike trail.
A good portion of the trail runs along the little big econ River. On the weekends the river is quite active - there's kayaking and camping along the river.
The Snow Hill bike trail is located just outside of the town of Geneva and sits between Geneva and Oviedo Florida. The Little Big Econ State Forest is located about 15 minutes east of the University of Central Florida and it's about a 30-minute drive from downtown Orlando.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
I'm Mitch Greenberg and welcome to the Markham Woods mountain bike trail. This trail was established in 2013 thanks to the generous contribution of Wekiva Springs State Park. We currently have about nine to ten miles of trail here, mostly beginner-friendly. We cater to mountain biking, trail runners, hikers, family use. We do have some interesting features on the trail such as log overs, jumps, various sinks out here, varied terrain for people to see but this area is generally beginner-friendly. There are some other interesting features such as palmetto roots and some historic features to this piece of property as well. We have a great facility here parking lot provided by Seminole County, restroom facilities that are taken care of also by Seminole County, parking and access is easy. The location is near I-4 & Lake Mary Florida, so check it out have fun!
