WRE 9/12

Saturday.  The alarm goes off at 6:30AM.  My eyes are slits.  I drank beer last night.  How much beer?

All the beer.

What am I doing up?  Oh yeah, a ride in the mountains.  I think Zac is riding with me.  I send him a a message with mental telepathy. He only has a wifi phone, so I figure it's my best shot at getting a hold of him.

"Don't show up."

A sad bowl of cereal. 32oz of coffee.  Zac shows up in total disregard for my message.  His front tire needs tubeless juice and air.

"Help yourself."

On the way, Zac tells me he needs food.  We're running a little late for the meet up.  Riding with guys I hardly ever see.  No idea if they will run late as well.  I make the call to Zod.

"We're at the Bojangles in Morganton."

We're barreling down the highway at 6MPH over the posted speed limit in the Honda Fit of Rage just minutes away.  Zac gets his Bo on with the rest, but I can't see stuffing a greasy biscuit in my face.  He wants to go over to Food Lion for ride food... for the ride he's known about since yesterday.

"No time.  We're running way behind."

We drive way further back into the forest than we normally do for a ride in the Pisgah.  How many dirt roads?

All the dirt roads.

Some guys in the parking lot are there for the Boone Binge (a Tour de Burg style stage race).  I see Zac's eyes light up.

"No."

We join our ride as scheduled... well behind the schedule.

We climb.  There's a lot of dead fall.  Too much dead fall.  Eventually it becomes apparent that some hikers do not want bikes to be there.  We ride, clear the not-so-dead fall, ride some more, repeat.  Fortunately it ends before we hit the first good descent.

At the bottom, Ben rolls up with a bent rear derailleur.  Half-ass tools, awkward attempts to fix, too many cooks in the kitchen, half disassembled, reassembled wrong, back to where we started, and we're rolling again... for about a half mile.  The hanger breaks off.  Another stop.

We single speed a full suspension bike.  Destined for disaster.

At least the scenery is nice.

 In the other direction, the scenery is less than fantastic.

The single speed fix lasts about a half mile.  Looks like Ben has a long walk back.  Goodbye Ben.

We climb out of the river valley.  The climb is long and we are only four miles into the ride, yet we've been out for a couple hours, and I'm many more hours from my cereal than I was an hour ago.

My window is closing, and I started the ride with a flask of gel left over from the Shenandoah 57/100.  I better make it last.

The trail climb tops out on gravel.  Zac is hungry and asks me if I have anything to eat.

"All I have is this one flask of gel."

"Can I have some?"

I toss him my sustenance.  One fifth of it goes down his gullet.  Back to finishing off the 1,400 feet of climbing.

The decision is made to skip one climb and one descent.  No one argues.  We move on.

A sweet downhill.  A total ragefest.  The reason for the season and all seems well... until there was more climbing.

Zac borrows some food from another brother from another mother. 

Out of food myself, I wonder if this has enough calories to fill my belly or at least enough poison to kill me.

I decide to not eat it.  It's shaped like an inverted cockandballs, and I don't want to give these guys future fodder for mockery.

"Remember that time Dicky ate a penis..."

We head out and Zod says, "it's mostly rolling from here to the next descent."

It rolls in the up direction, only some sections being steeper than anything we've climbed yet.

Zac reminds me that he wanted to go to Food Lion.

Details get fuzzy from here.  The ride drags on and on.  Two ridiculous hike-a-bikes, one right towards the end that requires ropes.  Descents rewarding the effort, assuming you still had your energy-depleted mind in the game.

Our average speed was 3.3MPH with an estimated 5,530 calories burned.  I packed 550 and gave 110 away.  I am on life support by the time I get back to the car.

A great ride with Zac, Zod, Shart, DPC, Pagan... and sorta with Ben.

And then Mexican food.  Nachos.  How many nachos?

All the nachos... times three.

WRE

What's that mean?

They call these journeys into the forest "Worst Ride Ever."

I don't not strongly disagree with that backwards logic.