'25 Summer (literal) Steamer

I'm gonna use my experience at the Summer Steamer in Knoxville this past weekend to do a little Share the Wisdom Wednesday (but on a Thursday) throwback post, but first...

I didn't start visiting the Knoxville area until the Covid days back when the boom booms fell.  

I was immediately smitten.  I think I went back three or four times, but then I've fallen off on my visits since going back to reality.  Any dreams of visiting last year for the AMBC Bike Fest were knocked back when Helene significantly increased the drive time by force-feeding the Pigeon River a significant portion of I40.

Anyhoo, the Steamer was my chance to do something I've wanted to do ever since staring at the massive trail system on Trail Forks and planning routes almost five years ago, to ride all (well most of) the things.  I'd get to see frands, ride a butt load of incredible trails with a variety of "feels," and just enjoy the hangout of a long day on the bike and post-ride festivities.

The Summer Steamer did not disappoint.  I personally might have tho.

Scott Smith, owner of Tennessee Valley Bikes and also Head Steamer and also my '19 12 Hours of Santos duo partner and also fun hang guy in general.

I wanted to be just off the back of the local fasties and mebbe find myself in a group of Knoxvillians that would keep me rolling and not so much navigating the route with the aid of my Wahoo data acquisition device.

That's Evan leading us out after Scott started us with a shrug and a smile at 8:01am.  Scott had told me the day before that I should follow Evan.  I had no idea I was following him all day long, but Scott was right about all that. 

I fortunately and mebbe unfortunately latched onto the back of about fifteen fast locals who not only made quick work of the trails but were also willing to prioritize their day accordingly.

The beer and also mebbe other things stop at mile twenty or so at about 10:00am.  Notice the moisture on my lens?  I'd vowed to do a better job documenting this ride, but between my sweat and a layer of waterproof Otter Box between me and my phone, I struggled to get my camera to work with the touch of a finger, nose, knuckle, elbow... all the body parts.  It might as well been raining out there. 

The first official aid station was at mile twenty nine or so and the next one was mebbe mile forty.  Somewhere in between, half the wheels fell of my bus.

Me, doing nothing... but making mistakes at Aid One like it was my job.  Apparently, thirty miles and over three hours of riding... and I've drank what looks like a bottle and a half.  Trbl.

I started thinking about the sweaty fever dream I had the night before where I thought I was in heaven but I got there in a '70s car driven by a guy who looked homeless and I was dressed the same and we got out of the car and walked around in nothingness and he told me I just had to believe or I'd end up back in the car and I didn't believe so I ended back up in the car with him and also another guy dressed like us and the car stopped again and we once again stepped out into nothingness and this time I told myself this dream sucks and I woke up and wiped the sweat off my forehead...

Nobody likes hearing about someone's dream but a mini-Share the Wisdom Wednesday (but on a Thursday) might be don't follow up a few post-long drive beers by eating a burrito, a basket of tortilla chips, and several mini-tubs of salsa at 8:00pm chased by a couple more beers and go to sleep in a strange bed at 10:00pm thinking you're not gonna have fever dreams.

I was feeling more than just a bit off.  We stopped to regroup (which was getting easier as our numbers fell off steadily), and I happened to notice that my heart was beating like a big bass drum just standing there.  Swap my Wahoo data acquisition device from maps to data and.. 

Shit.

Am I dying?

My heart rate is in the high 150s just standing still, and it's not coming down.  I wanted to google if a high heart rate was a symptom of heat stroke, but I'd have to bust open my Otter Box with a coin I don't have just to do it.  Poop.

It took some googling, but this is the exact place I was on Transfarm when I was pretty sure I was dying or something.

From there, I struggled to focus on the trail, and was also quite distracted by my condition and possible premonition'ish dream the night before.  I figured I would sort my world out at the next aid station... probably... or not.

Down at the aid station, I put ice down the back of my bibs, grabbed multiple Freeze Pops, and went prone in the grass where I could watch the Wahoo data acquisition device from a distance, hoping to see my heart rate field go from orange to mebbe yellow hopefully green and wishing for blue.  I told some of my compatriots that I might be on my own journey from here, so it was no surprise that when I finally looked and saw blue... they were rolling on up the hill.  Poop.

Grab my shit and make chase... up the steepest (IMHOMO) climb of the day.  My heart rate was closer but still higher to my perceived effort than before, so I decided as long as I could keep it there, I'd be fine.  Our groups is down to six now, and I'd hate to leave them (and all their local knowledge) so close to the finish.  It was a struggle bus to the end, but the six of us managed to stay together.

So.  Good.

Many beers, hot dogs (sans bun, some veggie), high fives, and proper beverages followed.

So, my Share the Wisdom Wednesday (but on a Thursday) bit.

Me at the start wondering how many wrong things can I do today.

I can remember two times when I was way younger, had no Wahoo data acquisition device, and went way too hard in the heat.  At the '10 ORAMM and the '09 Cowbell Marathon (where the real feel got up to 114°), I ignored blatant warning signs up until I felt like a firecracker went off in my head.  Like I said, I was way younger back then, and I was also slightly better than okay at making great bike race.  I had performance-based expectations, and I allowed them to sway my decision making into the bad zone.  I was an idiot.

I hear the "but did you die?" comments from the crowd, especially the chest-thumping, sissy-purse boy hating, jingoistic, stand back but stand down folks who wear their masculinity on their brown shirt sleeves.

No, I didn't.  

That said, in these hotter conditions, do yourself a few favors.  Listen to your body.  Take advantage of any way to keep yourself cool.  At the first aid station, I skipped the Freeze Pops, didn't take a Super Soaker load to the face, didn't shove ice down my bibs, didn't sit down in the shade while I waited for everyone to regroup at aid station one, drank nothing but room temperature (outdoor temperature) liquids, also probably coulda wore lighter colors and my non-black helmet...

I know the local weatherman has been taking great joy in shouting out "beat the heat" tips lately, but if you're like me, you might assume that you're an "athlete" and have the bases covered.

I also know some of you are saying "who watches local weather?"

Whatever.  Take care of yourselves... regardless of your political stance or if you think I'm a purse-carrying sissy boy.  I care about you too... because that's how being human works.

Or at least it should.

The Horny Cat 69: Still Not Brought to You by Mutual of Omaha

Okay.  It's official.  I want to voluntarily make my life difficult for awhile and make great'ish bike ride for others.

The date will be October 4th, with a rain date of October 11th*.  Some things will change from when this grand occasion occurred two years ago.  Other details will be the same.  There will most definitely be a hangout after the ride. I would love it IMMENSELY if you could donate $13 to the pizza/beer/soda fund, because a hangout without pizza/beer/soda is dumb.

"THIRTEEN AMERICA DOLLARS, YOU SAY!?!"

Yeth.  The cost of this non-event has gone up $3, or approximately 1/2 the cost of a reasonably priced pint of decent beer in Charlotte.  I have "reasons."  Mostly, I think if you were okay with the potential of throwing away $10, you're probably okay with $13... keeping in mind if it rains or the trails are closed on October 4th AND on October 11th, I might just end up with a sad ride/party on the 11th or donate all the money to the Tarheel Trailblazers as opposed to just the proceeds after all expenses are paid for (excluding incurred on any trips I may or may not make to the emergency room).  So mostly because of that and a little bit because 13 is funny like 69.

It's a charitable donation to a party, and as I said back in 2023:

"I have a hose if you're thirsty because I literally can't stop any cheapskate party-hater from joining us on a bike ride. This is America, and you have all the rights to do all the things you think you can do."

And sadly, despite me once saying "all the rights to do all the things," this is America two years later.  I'd like to exclude certain unspeakable things that have been brought to my attention lately.  Mebbe ask me if how I feel before you do something in my backyard that borders on rights-trampling.  If you find yourself thinking, "what unspeakable things does he speak of?" this might not be the right party for you.  That would include illegal "deportations" and "detentions," taking food out of children's mouths, possibly kicking my mom out of a nursing home, squashing LGBTQ rights, taking away my daughter's ability to make decisions about her own body, or more generally speaking, fucking around with someone else's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness because you're afraid of some boogeyman you heard about on a not-news channel... a boogeyman that is currently not the source of your real problems now anyhow... **

Poaching the route and/or horking a beer are low on my list of offensive actions.

*pushes soapbox back in the closet but keeping it handy*

The ride will start and end near the Back Yard Tails system @9:00am to give you a general idea that you can sorta plan around (think about showing up @7-45-8:00am), but the exact information will be in an email, and obvs I'm gonna need you to get there much earlier than the start time to sort yinz out.  It will be a Ride With GPS route, so know how to load things on your data acquisition device and follow bleeps and bloops.

Donations.  I'm not collecting them yet, so please don't send an email to the address from last time nor Venmo me party/donation fundage right now.  I'm going to wait until I get back from Breck Epic in mid-August for two reasons:

I need to live through the Breck Epic.

I don't want the hassle of dealing with the "can I give you cash on the day-of?" or "can I pay you half now and half when I get my settlement money?" messages until then.

The route is 95% done, but I'm leaving room for tweaks.  

This will be a good time, if you're into this kinda thing.  If not... why did you even read down this far?

Off to the Summer Steamer in Knoxville this weekend, and I will surely return to regale all with tales of derring-do and misadventure. 

* Crap.  I might have created a conflict... might need to change the dates to Sep 27th, rain date Oct 11th.

** If Brawley's can pre-sort their clientele, so can I.

In the Zone

What can I say?


I've either been "in the zone" or pulled in so many directions that it feels like "focus," but on all the things.  Ever since the Mountain Cat 100, I've been thinking a lot about personal situations that are probably just distractions from being all-consumed by the people out there doubling down on their hopes that this whole "authoritarian thing" works out and they won't have to face the consequences of their actions.

Anyhoo.

Watts had thrown out a term whilst we toiled away and also enjoyed ourselves in Richmond, VA a few weeks ago.  

"I'm starting my fitness journey this weekend."

I woulda credited him with coining the term, but a quick google of "fitness journey" tells me I'd be wrong.

"It's a slow and steady journey with no clear destination or finish line."

Well, hey.  Me too.

I'd been starting, quitting, and restarting my fitness journey all year long...

I just didn't know it, but that's what I was doing.

I'm mostly interested in making my body into something that will suffer the least amount necessary to get to the finish line of Stage 6 at the Breck Epic in August in one happy piece.  In order to do that, I need to fit in some longer rides, get slightly more focused on what I'll call "goals," and perhaps the shedding of a few pounds of bonus me that only slows me down when going up the side of a mountain.  In an effort to respect the conditions of my human form, I'm committing to doing a better job at some things...

I have a tendency to only drink water if a ride will be short enough to stay under 1,500 calories, and I only start dipping into the CarboRocket Half Evil if I'm gonna be in the 3,000+ range (or if I'm bicycle sport racing).  That said, if I'm trying to make the most out of my longer rides in this heat, I probably need to respect my body's needs for electrolytes, even if I'm trying to end my day burning more calories than I consume.  All that, and I'm going to start Cheat Juicing on the daily starting this past weekend to give my hemo goblins the super powers they crave.

I have some goals that are very reachable over the next seven weeks, a couple that I'll call "stretch goals," and mebbe one dream.

On top of all that, I need to get my ass to the mountains in order to get my brain (which is housed in said ass) switched back into "trail speed mode."

Too much riding around in the lowlands and gravel sad dadding has taken my thousand yard stare down to the distance of my arm outstretched in front of me with a beer in my hand.  That's a big no bueno for the big descents in Breck, so time for some eye/brain/body synergy work.

The other half of my functioning brain has been thinking about whether or not to put on another Horny Cat 69 this fall.  I've already got a few ideas I've been tossing around.

The route.  I'm gonna change it.  Slightly.  I've gotten better at working with Ride with GPS to plan a route, so the less I have to think about riding the whole loop at least once before the event to get a decent map, the happier I get.  I want to get as close to 69 miles as possible, because..

Hilarious.

The money thing.  I think this year, I'm going to complicate and also simplify things.  I'll give anyone the route, regardless of any money changing hands.  You can ride the whole thing that day at a certain time, or you can ride it whenever you want.  Don't matter to me one bit.  That said, I'm going to take up a collection for a pizza (and other things) party (you guessed it) that is at my house later in the day, with any remaining proceeds after expenses going to the Tarheel Trailblazers.  Assuming some of the benevolent benefactors return from the previous Horny Cat, we should be able to hand over a chunk of change when it's all said and done.  I might increase the price of admission from $10 to $12, because despite what you heard, I can't get the Chinese to eat the tariffs on stuffed crust.  

I'm thinking about doing this later in the year than last time in order to beat the heat and also reduce the mosquito population in my yard.  Probably (most likely) October 4th with a rain date of October 11th.  Once again, if it were to get totally rained out, your $12 would go straight to the Tarheel Trailblazers OR I'd just throw the party and we could ride wet greenways and golf courses.  Obvs, the money is going towards the trails, but I'm not getting taken down for encouraging people to "destroy the trails" either.

Other than that, I'm motivated to bring this back due to "popular demand."  Enough people had a good time, and if I can manage to not rip my knee open ten minutes into the event and spend the better part of the day in the ER, I think I might "enjoy" it as well.  I like seeing people smile and also suffer.

Tripping 'round the sun

Today, I am fifty shit in my tiny hat and hand it back to me six years old.  Start the...

What did I get for my birthday other than a lingering cough from a cold I picked up somewhere and a day of cleanup from the 500-1,000 year rain event* this past Thursday that turned my frown even more frownier?

Trying to get my lungs back to something close to fully operational and not lose what I'd call the "fitness" I've gained from recent cycle sport escapades, I took all the closed trails in Charlotte as a sign that I should get my Sad Dad™ on.  I kinda needed to anyways, as I'm heavily considering bringing back the Horny Cat 69, but there are a few snags in my plan, so assploring I must go.

A lot of people would like to tell me that my potential issues that I foresee are just small bumps in the road, but I like to have 95% of my ducks in the row before I start asking people to play my stupid game.

Planning this silly thing does force me to go out and poke my nose around where it don't belong.

This is nowhere near where we will go, but Saturday's adventure and the persistent cough tempted me into another "adventure" on Sunday.

As I wandered around this vast, couple hundred acres of mostly dried red clay mud wasteland that apparently will one day be "progress," I pondered, "is this a good thing for an almost fifty six year old human person to be doing on their day off?"  The only thing driving me forward in my obvious trespassing, given that I had no proclivity towards theft or mayhem, was my desire to not leave from the same place I came in, thus admitting what I would deem as "defeat."  As someone who resides and works in a "big city," it was nice to be somewhere on the planet about as alone as I ever get, although I was truly never more than a half mile from shit stain suburbia, a strip mall, or seven QT gas stations.  

I Unbounded myself.

Horny Cat might happen again.  It might not.  I have no idea when the go/no-go moment will be, but I'll assume it will make itself obvious.

Tonight I will celebrate my birthday in a very low key manner and just hope this coming weekend will bring much needed single track time on a single speed bike mebbe even with single speed frands.

* My issues obviously seem small in the wake of all the flooding in WNC, but The Pie often reminds me that comparative suffering does more harm than good.  Feeling bad about feeling bad is almost as terrible as feeling bad about feeling good, and Tony! Toni! Toné! would not approve, so tonight I will feel good about feeling good.

Mountain Cat 100 (109.something?) 2025

I think there are a plethora of reasons why I had to go back to the Mountain Cat 100 for the third time.  There are still so many mysteries to unravel.  How is it possible that this event has so much rider support for only $30?  Why are so many people amped up for it, and given then amount of amperage, why do so few folks finish?  How do people ride 108 miles in denim in the heat and humidity of Richmond, VA in June?  How is there this much interconnected dirt, gravel, and whatnot in such an urban setting?  What's wrong inside my head that allows me to think "of course I'm going to always come back until I physically can't?"

I headed back up to Richmond with Watts, but also to meet up with Dr Mike.  I would say we were much better behaved the night before the "race" than we were in 2023, but mebbe we came a little more off the rails than we did in 2024.  If I had to pin the blame on anything, I guess it would be the fact that we got an email letting us know that if any of the strong rains that were predicted were to fall, we were expected to be good trail stewards and abandon our quest for a dirty 108 miles.  There were slim to slightly chubby odds that we would be denied our finish.  It also didn't help that we were a one minute walk from so many beer taps.

Late night squeezings...

Up at 4:00am regardless of the potential for sadness and out the door after some expired-date donut sticks and coffee.

This year, we were given an interesting scenario.  Instead of getting the GPS route sent to us with plenty of time to deep dive the squiggly lines and contemplate our fates, we were only getting "half" the course up front.  Once we hit the check point at mile 66.6, we would then be able to download the second "half," assuming you studied up on how to make your phone talk to your data acquisition device without having access to Wi-Fi.  I've done a fair job letting myself down with electronicals in the past, but I did a few practice runs at the Trans-Sylvania Epic, and mebbe I got it dialed... because twice I had the route loaded backwards?  Yeth, I got this.

The first "half" is quite the slog, and other than being stuck behind multiple families of geese that are enjoying the single track experience on the Poop Loop, we move through it at a pleasant pace.

We only stop for occasional navigational head scratching and some eating and drinking of all that the land had to offer.

Both Dr Mike and I have a guess about the second half of the course that we agree on (admittedly, Watts hasn't give it too much thought).  We agree that the math doesn't suss out to get the 26 mile round trip to the extensive trail network at Pocahontas State Park and enough riding down there to make it worth going that far south like in previous years. 

Twenty six miles of sweet, mostly flat, spinning glory takes a fair chunk outta the hundie.

I gleaned my suspicions from the pre-race email we got earlier in the week.

“One thing about us: our trails are open to all and multidirectional. A curse, a blessing.”

We both guessed we'd be turning this thing around in some form or another.  "Form" TBD.

When we se some fasties coming right back at us at Forest Hill Park at about mile 52, we're pretty sure we figured correctly.  This is somehow the mental blow that I'm guessing was intended.

We get to Larus Park and the checkpoint with the second half deets... but we have to complete the trails there before we can get at them.  All three of us struggle to get the arrows on our devices to point in some agreed upon direction (or show up at all), so we hop on some wheels and get to 66.6 miles (and then some) back to the aid station.

Deviled eggs?

Might be a mistake, but I have five.  And a few other things I probably shouldn't eat as well.  YOLO and all.

Sigh.  The route is basically reversed.

Not my art but art worth appreciating.

Dr Mike's Garmin is choking on the upload, but Watts and mine own Wahoo data acquisition devices pick it up seamlessly (or so it seems).  That doesn't stop us from compounding a problem that we don't anticipate.

I eat all the wrong things and also add Nuun tablets to my bottles which now contain a combination of Carborocket, water, Gatorade... who knows what at this point?  We leave the aid station with 42 something miles to go, but we've already spent eight hours on course?  Dr Mike cramps and difficult discussions are had amongst the stupid single speeders.  He still doesn't have the route loaded, but we've always known that gears and squishy riding VS 32 X 16 and rigid might make it hard to spend the whole day together.  As the way of the Mountain Cat is, you get used to making frands and then just losing them to the unknown ahead or behind.  As easily as the bond was forged, it is also sacrificed in the name of forward progress.  After reaffirming Dr Mike had finally got the route loaded, we lose him to the abyss that is the Mountain Cat around mile 75.

After that and mebbe around the 80 mile mark (if I had to guess), the wheels quietly fall off the bus, but in the most private of manners.  It's not audibly communicated between us, but Watts and I have spent enough time in the woods together to just know.  The longer climbs are demoralizing, the heat and humidity are oppressive, the act of holding on to the handlebars feels like something I don't want to do anymore, and the deep-fried pickle and ham/egg/cheese biscuit I washed down with a Modelo decides to stick sideways in my lower left gut.  Steep stairs up and down, scrambles up an impossibly steep hillside under an overpass but still in the direct sun, familiar hobo paths from earlier, freshly mown "paths" through an overgrown field... and eventually to trails that we rode eleven hours ago? 

Oof.  How?

Knock out the trails behind the cemetery, back out to the aid station... and PBR me ASAP.  

Four miles of road and two miles of gnarly burger trail left and then we done.  Woohoo.

Hmmm.

Of note...

We were out there over thirteen hours... totally unaware there was a cutoff'ish at fourteen hours.  We probably wouldn't have mucked about so much had we known we might not finish.  Also, there was a cutoff to get to the Larus Park just to get the second half of the course data.  Many had missed the cut, while others got the "good news" from riders coming back at them and threw in the towel right there.  Suffice to say, the attrition rate was higher than many of the participants. 

That was, and I mean it, hard.  

Dr Mike ended up coming in shortly after we did, zero cramps the rest of the day and stoked to be one of the few, the proud, the Mountain Catters of 2025.

Apparently, it takes 10,000 calories to move a four apple tall man and his sorta mountain bike this far.

Watts literally walking a woman to a church service in a movie theatre Sunday morning... because... Richmond.

New Mountain Cat 100 patch acquired and painstakingly sewn into my stupid old PAC Designs messenger bag that will one day be hanging on a hook back in my bike room when my kids tell the dozers to take down my house because I'm finally ded not like single speed and 26" wheels and me after Mountain Cat but more like Abraham Lincoln and Ronnie James Dio.

Three or four things or so

Hmmm...

Did someone order a well-beaten dead horse?

*epilogue enters the chat*

"Winning" wasn't as fun as it looked.  It's been years since I was in the hunt at a stage race, and I'm a whole 'nother animal now.  Where I used to descend with somewhat reckless abandon and sheer joy, all I could think about this year was how many times I'd let 'er rip here in the past and ended up with a flat.  I've done so at least four times in thirteen attempts, with one finish on a flat for a stage win and one flat on the last day that bumped me from second to third.  Not only was riding on the brakes reducing the size of my smile, I was looking over my shoulder constantly for the first three days.  I didn't open up a comfortable gap (like enough time to deal with a non-hassle free flat) until I started stage four, and I think I can only attribute that to Colin being even more poorly dressed than myself for the cold rainy conditions on stage three and losing energy just trying to keep warm.

That said...

My legs never felt bad... like "mountain bike stage race bad."  I did some things right.

I squoze my legs.  A lot.  In the morning, post-stage, and at night before bed.  I drank something for recovery and ate massive amounts of Pringles within an hour of every finish.  Not only was I drinking Rocket Red before every stage, I'd been loading with the cheat juice since the week before PMBAR (daily for a month straight).  I took a nap every single day, except when I found my woobly crunk that required attention.  The Upper Eagle bunks were basically empty, except for Jeff and I, so it was easy to take some "me time" and not get caught up in all the "what are you doing right now," 'how did your day go," or "you need some help with that (insert broken bike part here)?"

Relatively speaking, I still had what people call "a good time."  Certainly looking forward to being a "washed-up, has-been" pack fodder single speeder at Breck Epic in two months.

Thankfully, I'm not burned out, and I'm looking forward to Mountain Cat 100 (108?) this Saturday.  It's sure to be a long, grueling day riding around Richmond on trails, roads, and hobo paths with Watts on what we used to call "mountain bikes" back in the day, but it certainly is one of the best of days.

My mandatory Mountain Cat 100 Valentine card to complete the registration process.  It's that kinda event.

I could/should mention that last weekend, I did the Cutty Cap Challenge: Charlotte Chapter.

I woke up early with the intention of just getting out as soon as the cap locations dropped at 8:00am, try to snag one that might be close to my house, and then ride to some other locations hoping to bump into someone fun and have a limited adventure and mebbe a beer?  I ended up having some strange thing going on the with my Ride With GPS app (olds and tech don't mix), letting it frustrate me for forty five minutes, just leaving the house on my bike because I was dressed and bored, deleting the app, and reloading it...

And then all the locations lit up.  

Dammit.

I went to the closest one to my house less than a mile away.  The cap was gone.  I decided I might as well follow through with my plan of hopefully meeting up with random frands along the way and plotted a route for a couple more stops... and after one more, the RWGPS message alerts started coming through my headphones.

I don't know that's what I'm hearing because I'd never heard them before.

I ignored them at first until I ran into someone at another location where the cap had already been snagged.  He said something about "how about all those side missions... and some are down at the state line?"

WTF.

I looked at all the side missions that had dropped.  What had been eight (or ten) cap locations was now close to twenty two cap locations and missions... and some of the side missions were really close to where I'd already been.  Argh.

It was at that point that I texted The Pie and said I'd be out a lot longer than expected.  I decided that despite my hour late start and zero chance at a cap (or probably running into a frand), I was going after all of them... for... "reasons."

And stupidly, riding hard from mission to mission fueled by anger at my own technological stupidity coming between me and my original plan.

I ended up with all the checkpoints at the South Carolina state line at mile 43 with a 10 miles ride back home to go. 

Pulled out my phone, and now with time to "explore" the challenge and other aspects of the game...

Hey, a leaderboard.  Who knew?  I'm on top.  For now.  Neat.

Hey, messages.  They were keeping track of my progress and my fuddling through the process of loading bonus photos.  To say I struggled with this part is an understatement.

Hey... it says there are still two side missions I missed... to include one I'd already done at mile 14?

Mmmmm.  Head back out to grab an image of a mural and back north to the Seigle Ave skyline location.  Again.  Ten "bonus" miles.  End up back at home with 64 miles.

Sitting on the couch and squeezing my legs and checking the leaderboard to see if anyone is moving up...

And now my mural mission points are gone.  Dammit.  Guess they didn't consider the pinup girl on the wall of Brawley's to be a true "local mural."

Get outta the squeezy bags, jump back on the bike, ride another five miles to snag not one but two murals.

I guess I won Charlotte?

Dunno.  Didn't hear anything as of yet.  I found out I had two accounts, one on the app I was using and one when I'm in a broswer.  There was also a global competition that was HUGE, so I'm doubting my late attack from the back will be prosperous there.  All my pestering Ride With GPS at least halped me sort out my issues some issues, so mebbe we know a winner before the end of the week.

Anyhoo, it was a fun distraction from reality, and I got a butt-load of unwanted but needed exercise and mebbe I do better next year because mebbe I less dum.

Now that I'm used to pointlessly riding all over a city, I gotta be ready for Mountain Cat.

2025 Trans-Sylvania Mountain Bike Epic Stage Race: Part Two

I spent the better part of Stage Three thinking about mebbe making the effort to bring the Optimus Meatplow V.10 back out to play.  It would save me from changing the brake pads on the Radimus, but I'd have to figure out how to bust that bolt that's torqued to 52nm outta the eeWings without my cheater bar (busted 30.4 Syncros seat post) and the strap to hold the non-drive side arm to the chain stay.

Gorilla tape and a 130lb man standing on a ratchet might could do.

Remove the eeWings, remove the broken plastic cranks, shove shiny cranks into sad, empty crank hole...

Shit.

I always forget that my plastic cranks use a spacer orientation that defies all instructions and manuals, and the eeWings are 2.5mm of space from being happy.  Reinstall cranks, install new brake pads (the rear ones were down to the spring), and forget the dream of riding the Tussey Stage on the Optimus, something I'd been fantasizing about ever since I bought the bike last year.  

Stage Four.  Tussey Ridge: 38 miles, 4,100 feet

At least it wasn't going to rain (a lot) today, but the previous two days of precipitation meant that some trail had to get taken out and replaced with BONUS gravel mileage.  We were still gonna get John Wert's ill-shaped, fuck-faced rocks and the joy that is Tussey tho.

I always get dropped on the gently rolling gravel outta camp at the start on Stage Four.  At one point, I found myself in fourth place reminding myself that I'm racing a stage race, not racing for stage wins.  Let it go... but less than a satisfying feeling of finally getting to wear the leader's jersey outside in the world like a champ and falling off the back like a chump.

I honestly can't remember when or where I got around who, but eventually I was back out front and mashing the potatoes.  Gob bless you, John Wert, inventor of rocks... I guess.

For what it's worth, trails like John Wert are why I kept coming back all these years.  I just love the constant battle of trying to move forward and plan three steps ahead, only to have that plan fall apart two steps in and start all over again.  It's so mentally engaging, I don't know how to make the normal people I work with even come close to understanding how I get so much joy doing such a silly thing.

Tussey was a sheer delight, and I can't remember many happier moments up there.  It's never felt easier or shorter.  I felt like all the rocks and log-overs were air-hugging me.  I ended up with the stage win and a better buffer back to second and third.

Stage Five.  Bald Eagle: 22.5 miles, 3,300 feet

It was really up to the guys to decide if we were gonna party pace or not.  Colin and John were separated in 2/3 by only three minutes, so it's not my decision if they wanna duke it out and actually race five outta five days.  Fortunately and also unfortunately, they decided to lay down arms and throw up high fives.  Fortunately, because it's tradition (sorta) and fun to finally ride with all the other single speeders.  Unfortunately, because a lackadaisical start means getting on the trails intermingled with slower company, and at 150 feet of climbing per mile, the moderate paced roll was gonna hurt on stupid single speeds.

It rained.  Of course it rained.

Not in the photo, Colin... who was smart enough to snap the photo...

But mebbe not smart enough to dress himself for the coldest, wettest day on Stage Three.  Heroic display of guns.

There were no drop bag beers and very few shenanigans outside of a broken dropper lever (manUfaCtureR: iT's a FeAture!).  We made sure to honor the year one tradition of reversing the podium on the day, and I was stoked to finally celebrate a hard earned DFL.

Only slightly bummed that we weren't up to no good, but for the most part, not too many (if any) racers stick around to hang out Saturday night.  Not a difficult choice to avoid tipping back a few when I'm planning on driving halfway home after the awards.

I'll probably epilogue this whole thing if I can find the wherewithal to do so.