Ride #3

Knowing that there is an impending, quite possibly bike-less travel coming up soon, I decided to head to the mountains. Although I'm not keen on hopping in the car alone for a two hour drive just to ride my bike, I was headed to White Pines where eleven other people were celebrating the Rampton twins' birthday. Everybody else had arrived Friday and slept in the dirt under a Silver Bullet haze, but they were getting ready for the day's ride by the time I arrived.

I was a little concerned when I saw that Thomas Turner was sitting at the breakfast/picnic table. I'd had more than a few beers the night before and stayed up a little too late to be trying to keep pace with the Jamis Factory rider who constantly wins bike races. Live, learn, repeat mistakes anyways.

Twelve of us headed out to do a semi-aggressive loop that I had actually ridden with the Dude just over a year ago. Before heading down Turkey Pen, the group decided to split up. By the time we reached the bottom, the 5-7 split became 3-9.

Worthy of note: Thomas, by far the raciest of our bunch, was wearing the largest pack of the very few people that bothered to wear any hydration on their backs. I think it had rocks in it.

So it was just Thomas, Zac, and I. Following Thomas, I was able to clear more of the climb on Squirrel than ever. New bike fever or watching Thomas's lines? Dunno. On the way down, he and Zac left me to get jostled down the rocky descent, alone in my world of turgidity.

Going up the Wheelchair Ramp climb, I followed Thomas wheel closely. I think he was seeing if he could make the whole climb while holding his breath. I never heard him breathe, so I think he managed to do it.

Up and over Black Mountain to one of my top three favorite descents ever in Pisgah... but it has changed a lot over the past year. It's always been rough, but I remembered a discussion on MTBR regarding its current condition and what needs/doesn't need to be done. Sadly, the trail is being destroyed by the massive amount of water that flows right down the trail. I'm all about the gNar, but the trail is suffering, and I have no idea how one would begin to fix it WITHOUT taking the Black outta upper Black. I imagine that once things get that bad, the rate of decline increases exponentially with every heavy rainfall.

Sucks.

Lower Black was still money.

Then there was beer, food, fire... the usual campground stuff.

I slept in the back of my car and snuck out early in the morning before anybody could try to pressure me into another ride on Sunday. I had lawns to mow, groceries to buy, a sick wife, a bike that needed to be made race ready, and a slight Torpedo headache to work through.

Awesome ride, good times.

EDIT: Nik put some photos up on facebook AFTER I posted this, so tomorrow I shalt borrow them for entertainment value.